Examining the effects of the October 7 attacks and the ongoing war in the broader context of Israeli history, Neil Rogachevsky writes:

Since the end of the Second Lebanon War (2006), Israel had enjoyed a run of relative safety and stability, unlike any period in its history—perhaps including the early Zionist settlements in Palestine in the 1880s. The suicide terror that had tested the social fabric during the 1990s and especially during the second intifada (2000–05), when thousands of Israelis were killed or injured, largely tapered off, despite occasional flare-ups. In the West Bank and, above all, in Gaza, the terror threat seemed to be “in a box,” with violence met by the Israeli strategy of “mowing the grass”—killing a certain number of Hamas fighters and taking out infrastructure while avoiding the risks involved in trying to destroy the Hamas regime.

A broad consensus emerged during these years that the Palestinian conflict could be managed or contained, rather than solved. When Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud was elected in 2009, he adopted a policy of containment that persisted all the way until this past October 7. Its key elements were status quo on the diplomatic front, neither moving toward annexation nor toward a two-state solution; limited small wars in Gaza, in response to Hamas atrocities and missile barrages, but no ground incursions; and efforts to uplift the West Bank and Israeli Arabs economically, giving Arabs on both sides of the 1967 Green Line a stake in the success of the Jewish state—or at least an incentive not to rock the boat.

It is understandable that Israelis enjoyed the period of relative stability that has now passed, even as hard questions must be asked about how the country let its guard down. But if Israelis hope someday to devote themselves again to the art of peace, they must now gird themselves for a long period of war.

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.