The human-rights activist Bassem Eid, who describes himself as “a proud Palestinian who grew up in a refugee camp,” argues that if Palestinians want to achieve statehood and better lives, they need a strategy that involves neither rockets nor the International Criminal Court:

To make peace with Israel, we need to change our approach. We need to accept that the right of return will be resolved through financial compensation that will allow Palestinian refugees to settle either in Arab countries or in Palestine. We need to accept that Israel’s security is a key to any solution. We need to accept that East Jerusalem may have to remain part of Israel. . . .

[T]he Israeli and international rationale that strengthening a non-democratic corrupt leader will ensure that he is “able to fight Hamas and forge a final peace with Israel” does not work. . . . President Abbas has no credibility among Palestinians, and even if he wanted a peace deal (which seems doubtful), he has no ability to sell it to the Palestinian public.

What we Palestinians need is a strong civil society and strong democratic institutions, and we need an end to human-rights violations, including those perpetrated by Palestinians and other Arabs. . . . [A]t the very least we need to reverse the current trend that is causing Palestinian society to drift even further toward corrupt and brutal rule, both in Gaza and in the West Bank. Ironically, it is only in East Jerusalem, under Israeli rule, that most Palestinians feel adequately represented by their politicians.

If there is to be peace, Palestinians will have to unlearn the hatred of Israel they have imbibed during nearly two decades of Hamas rule. This will be a difficult task, but Cole Aronson argues, drawing on the experiences of World War II, that Israel has already gotten off to a strong start:

The population’s compliance can . . . be won by a new regime that satisfies its immediate material needs, even if that new regime is sponsored by a government until recently at war with the population’s former regime. Axis civilians were made needy through bombing. Peaceful compliance with the Allies became a good alternative to supporting violent resistance to the Allies.

Israel’s current campaign makes a moderate Gaza more likely, not less. Destroying Hamas not only deprives Islamists of the ability to rule—it proves the futility of armed resistance to Israel, a condition for peace. The destruction of buildings not only deprives Hamas of its hideouts. It also gives ordinary Palestinians strong reasons to shun groups planning to replicate Hamas’s behavior.