In a series of interviews with Vanity Fair, Israeli intelligence officials have revealed the extent of Hamas’s complex system of tunnels and its (temporarily) thwarted plans for a series of violent attacks on civilians. No less informative in their way are the vigorous denials of Khaled Meshal, Hamas’s leader. But Hamas’s tunnels are not the end of it. Israel must also contend with the threat of a nuclear Iran, spillover from the Syrian civil war, and this:

Tensions have also escalated on Israel’s other northern border—with Lebanon. In the past week a member of the Syrian opposition was quoted as telling CNN that Hizballah appears determined to flex its military muscle on the Israeli border. IDF troops have fortified their positions there. And Israel has other worries as well. Sources in these northern neighborhoods tell Vanity Fair that the IDF is planning to send an engineering team to one of the Israeli towns whose residents have been awakened by subterranean clamor. Although some officials are publicly skeptical (possibly to avoid alarming residents and parry criticism that they have ignored another threat), privately they say they have serious concerns about what Hizballah might have in the works. A recent account in the Arab newsmagazine al-Watan al-Arabi quotes a Hizballah member as asserting: “Quality-wise, [our tunnels] are on par with the metro tunnels in the major European cities.”

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.