I know they generally believed the following:
The Palestinians have it coming for what Hamas did, and you certainly have to allow Israel some collective punishment, as a treat. All Palestinians have genocide in their hearts, they deserve it anyway.
It will all be wrapped up by January or so, and we can gloat about how it was all worth it.
For a couple of months we get to yell at hippies, which is our favorite thing to do. What fun we're going to have!The more wrong they turn out to have been, the more they completely fucked it into the sun, the more they'll keep doubling down. I am not kidding when I say that "proving the hippies fucking wrong" is a primary interest for these people, though "killing subhuman Arab people" is a bonus treat for some of them.
I said, at the start, that in any major conflict it doesn't much matter who is right or wrong, the goal needs to be de-escalation. That isn't always an easy goal to achieve, but it should be the ultimate goal! The kill the brutes crowd got their way, as they always do, and they're still yelling about college kids.
As I said, my list is very long or very short now, depending on how you look at it, because a bunch of powerful people had the easiest test in the world and they will keep failing it rather than admit error.