The Nusra Front, a branch of al-Qaeda, is on its way to controlling Syria’s border with Israel, and could be there to stay. Or, if Assad succeeds in overpowering Nusra, the area could fall to Hizballah and Iranian forces. How should Israel respond? One idea is to create a buffer zone—but it, too, raises difficulties:

Protecting such a zone, even if it does not serve as a launch pad for rebel operations against Damascus, might require more than just denying Bashar al-Assad’s air force. It might require neutralizing his missile capability. That would mean either taking out his missile batteries, or extending a defensive missile shield over the zone, or both.

In other words, the very act of creating the buffer zone could suck Israel into the Syrian civil war and might even introduce threats on the border that the zone was supposed to forestall.

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.