In the Jewish state’s latest round of fighting with Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas sat out the conflict almost entirely, and the IDF—with only a few exceptions in the final rounds—struck exclusively at Islamic Jihad targets. By deterring Hamas, writes Hillel Frisch, Jerusalem may have also succeeded in driving a wedge between it and Islamic Jihad, which, like the divide between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, could work to Israel’s advantage. Frisch probes the benefits, and the limits, of this divide-but-don’t-conquer strategy:

There are two possible solutions to the violence emanating from Gaza. Either embark on a massive fourth round of conflict like the 2014 confrontation and hope that it will bring Hamas to non-belligerency . . . or adhere to the “taming Hamas” approach used by Netanyahu since [the border riots known as] “the March of Return” began at the end of March 2018, which minimizes the sticks and maximizes the “carrots” for keeping the peace.

Initiating a massive round [of fighting], including a ground offensive into Gaza, . . . plays into the hands of Tehran’s regional strategy to use the Palestinian card to deflect the focus from its buildup in Syria, and entails other obvious costs in terms of lives and treasure. . . . The costs of [the latter] strategy are equally obvious. Any carrots offered to Hamas might buy peace and ameliorate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, but Hamas will use those same carrots to enhance its military capabilities.

Just as Israel “tamed” the PA—in part because after 2007, [both] faced a shared enemy in Hamas and Islamic Jihad—giving rise to unprecedented levels of security cooperation between the two, Israel and Hamas are cementing a mutual interest in weakening Islamic Jihad.

As auspicious as this wedge in Islamist ranks may be, however, . . . Israel should give the fewest carrots and concessions possible, knowing full well that some of these carrots are quickly converted into firepower to be used against Israel in the future. This also means scuttling the visions promoted by Benny Gantz and [some Israeli analysts] who argue that Israeli sticks should be accompanied by a Marshall Plan of goodies to improve the welfare of Gaza’s inhabitants. That only worked after Germany and Japan were totally defeated and a mutual threat to the Western alliance, the Soviet Union, emerged.

While I’ve seen much speculation—some reasonable and well informed, some quite the opposite—about why Jerusalem chose Friday morning to begin its campaign against Iran, the most obvious explanation seems to be the most convincing. First, 60 days had passed since President Trump warned that Tehran had 60 days to reach an agreement with the U.S. over its nuclear program. Second, Israeli intelligence was convinced that Iran was too close to developing nuclear weapons to delay military action any longer. Edward Luttwak explains why Israel was wise to attack:

Iran was adding more and more centrifuges in increasingly vast facilities at enormous expense, which made no sense at all if the aim was to generate energy. . . . It might be hoped that Israel’s own nuclear weapons could deter an Iranian nuclear attack against its own territory. But a nuclear Iran would dominate the entire Middle East, including Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, with which Israel has full diplomatic relations, as well as Saudi Arabia with which Israel hopes to have full relations in the near future.

Luttwak also considers the military feats the IDF and Mossad have accomplished in the past few days:

To reach all [its] targets, Israel had to deal with the range-payload problem that its air force first overcame in 1967, when it destroyed the air forces of three Arab states in a single day. . . . This time, too, impossible solutions were found for the range problem, including the use of 65-year-old airliners converted into tankers (Boeing is years later in delivering its own). To be able to use its short-range F-16s, Israel developed the “Rampage” air-launched missile, which flies upward on a ballistic trajectory, gaining range by gliding down to the target. That should make accuracy impossible—but once again, Israeli developers overcame the odds.