Yesterday and the day before, Israel hosted an unprecedented summit, attended by the foreign ministers of Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Egypt, along with the U.S. secretary of state. But as the delegates gathered, two Islamic State-connected terrorists opened fire at passersby on the streets of the northern town of Hadera, killing two and injuring several others. While the Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad hailed the attack as a “heroic response to the summit of humiliation and shame,” David Horovitz notes that, if anything, the shooting spree strengthened the resolve of Israel’s Arab allies:

One after another, in their public statements at the formal conclusion of their talks on Monday afternoon, Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and his four Arab counterparts condemned the latest instance of the deadly terrorism with which all of their countries grapple, and then swiftly moved on to stress their shared determination to build a unified front against extremism.

Three of the four Arab foreign ministers—Bahrain’s Abdullatif bin Rashid al-Zayani, Egypt’s Sameh Shoukry, and Morocco’s Nasser Bourita—took a few moments in their brief speeches to highlight the need to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. [Only] the U.S. secretary of state Antony Blinken went further, declaring that the Abraham Accords that brought these ministers together were no substitute for progress on the Palestinian front.

But this gathering, determinedly undeterred by terrorism, was a confident, unabashed display of normalization with Israel—of acceptance of Israel, legitimization of Israel—held adjacent to the final resting place of Israel’s first prime minister.

And just as Blinken appeared to be reading from a somewhat discordant script with his familiar comments about the Palestinian conflict, he was also the rather off-message participant when it came to confronting Iran. . . . The Negev summit, and the new, open alignment of these four Arab countries with Israel, is principally designed to facilitate better cooperation—practical, life-saving cooperation—to tackle the Iranian threat.

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.