Over the course of two days, Israeli forces last week entered the West Bank city of Jenin, where they killed twelve terrorists, arrested several others, confiscated weapons caches, and destroyed military installations and bomb factories. No civilians were killed. Richard Kemp, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, comments:

That is a remarkable achievement unparalleled in any comparable campaign worldwide. . . . In most high-intensity operations in urban areas, even those conducted by Western armies who adhere strictly to the laws of war, more civilians than fighters are killed, sometimes in a ratio of three- or five-to-one. This is of course not deliberate but an unavoidable consequence of fighting an enemy among the population who themselves dress as civilians, occupy civilian buildings such as mosques, schools, and hospitals as bases of attack, and use innocent civilians as human shields.

Israel’s enemies in Gaza and the West Bank go further still, using tactics that deliberately try to lure the IDF to kill their own citizens. You might wonder why any force that sets itself up as protectors of its people would do that. It is because they know they can never defeat or severely damage the IDF on the battlefield, and they can rely unfailingly on journalists, academics, international bodies, and activists to blame Israel for these deaths, leading to vilification, condemnation, and isolation.

In this situation it is quite remarkable that the IDF was able to avoid killing any civilians at all. I doubt any other army would be able to achieve that.

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.