Israeli officials have told the press that they are working on a plan for evacuating civilians from the southern Gaza city of Rafah ahead of a military operation to defeat the four remaining Hamas battalions ensconced there. Benny Morris explains why, despite American protestations, such an operation is “crucial.”

If this does not happen, Hamas will survive to fight and murder and rape another day—and its leader, Yahya Sinwar, will emerge from his hiding place declaring victory. And he will be right. For Palestinian-Israeli peace to have any chance, for regional stability and for the future welfare of Israel and Israelis, especially those living in the south of the country, Hamas must be obliterated.

Above all, an Israeli failure to take Rafah and smash Hamas’s last organized military formations and its governing structures will paint Israel, in its enemies’ eyes, as a weak, defeated polity, easy prey for the next potential assailant. Paradoxically, the spectacle of Israeli weakness—as much as a Rafah offensive—could tempt Hizballah to gamble on a full-scale war.

Any possibility of foreign troops (Emirati or Saudi) or Palestinian Authority/Fatah police replacing the Israelis in the bulk of the Gaza Strip will disappear, given the likelihood that those troops would be denounced and attacked by Hamas as Israel’s agents.

Washington, meanwhile, seems to be trying to discourage an assault on Rafah, which Secretary of State Antony Blinken said would be “a mistake.” As an alternative, U.S. officials have encouraged the IDF to pursue a strategy based on targeted raids and commando operations rather than large-scale infantry maneuvers. John Spencer and Liam Collins argue that this is bad advice, based on America’s own recent military experience:

A strategy dependent on raids and airstrikes alone has never been effective in defeating a large enemy. If Israel believes a military response is the only way it can defeat Hamas, it should ignore Washington and pursue a ground invasion supported by targeted raids and airstrikes.

Hamas isn’t a typical terrorist group. It governs Gaza with significant military capability, including prepared defenses, hundreds of miles of defensive tunnels, and thousands of rockets. Its fighters were believed to number 30,000 to 40,000 at the start of the war, and most of them hide among the civilian population. This makes a strategy reliant on targeted raids extremely difficult.

Even if the agreement with Hamas to secure the release of some, and possibly all, of the remaining hostages—and the bodies of those no longer alive—is a prudent decision for Israel, it comes at a very high price: potentially leaving Hamas in control of Gaza and the release of vast numbers of Palestinian prisoners, many with blood on their hands. Nadav Shragai reminds us of the history of such agreements:

We cannot forget that the terrorists released in the Jibril deal during the summer of 1985 became the backbone of the first intifada, resulting in the murder of 165 Israelis. Approximately half of the terrorists released following the Oslo Accords joined Palestinian terror groups, with many participating in the second intifada that claimed 1,178 Israeli lives. Those freed in [exchange for Gilad Shalit in 2011] constructed Gaza, the world’s largest terror city, and brought about the October 7 massacre. We must ask ourselves: where will those released in the 2025 hostage deal lead us?

Taking these painful concessions into account Michael Oren argues that they might nonetheless be necessary:

From day one—October 7, 2023—Israel’s twin goals in Gaza were fundamentally irreconcilable. Israel could not, as its leaders pledged, simultaneously destroy Hamas and secure all of the hostages’ release. The terrorists who regarded the hostages as the key to their survival would hardly give them up for less than an Israeli commitment to end—and therefore lose—the war. Israelis, for their part, were torn between those who felt that they could not send their children to the army so long as hostages remained in captivity and those who held that, if Hamas wins, Israel will not have an army at all.

While 33 hostages will be released in the first stage, dozens—alive and dead—will remain in Gaza, prolonging their families’ suffering. The relatives of those killed by the Palestinian terrorists now going free will also be shattered. So, too, will the Israelis who still see soldiers dying in Gaza almost daily while Hamas rocket fire continues. What were all of Israel’s sacrifices for, they will ask. . . .

Perhaps this outcome was unavoidable from the beginning. Perhaps the deal is the only way of reconciling Israel’s mutually exclusive goals of annihilating Hamas and repatriating the hostages. Perhaps, despite Israel’s subsequent military triumph, this is the price for the failures of October 7.