After three inconclusive elections in a year’s time, Israel’s political stalemate seemed to come to an end last week when the leaders of the two largest parties—Benny Gantz and Benjamin Netanyahu—agreed to form a governing coalition together with some of the smaller parties. According to the deal, Netanyahu will serve as prime minister for eighteen months, after which he will be succeeded by Gantz. This compromise, paradoxically, has led to the breakup of Gantz’s Blue and White party, as two of its three constituent factions have refused to join the unity government. Their leaders have denounced Gantz for supposedly crumbling before Netanyahu, but Jonathan Tobin argues that he has acted bravely:

At a moment of crisis for the state of Israel, while everyone else around him was thinking only about short-term political gains and grudges, Gantz chose to save the country from further turmoil—and a possible fourth election—at a time when it was staggered by the high cost of dealing with the coronavirus pandemic. The government he forms with Netanyahu will enable the country to pass a budget and begin the work of recovering from an unprecedented economic disaster.

Gantz . . . had it within his power to cripple Netanyahu’s hopes of forming another government by using the votes of the 61 Knesset members who wanted to oust the prime minister to pass a law that would prevent someone currently under indictment (like Netanyahu) from forming a government. That would have doomed Netanyahu, but it also would have plunged Israel into political chaos at a time when the country is under a near-total shutdown as its overburdened medical staff and emergency workers fight the spreading contagion and rising toll of victims.

Though Gantz had been tempted to try to form a government with the support of the Joint Arab List, the former soldier also understood that this was a moment to transcend political grudges. That wasn’t true of [his erstwhile allies] Yair Lapid and Moshe Ya’alon, who clearly regard their desire to get even with Netanyahu for past offenses as more important than serving the country during a national crisis. They and many on the left, who have been praying for a chance finally to beat Netanyahu, are enraged that Gantz snatched it away.

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.