The Syrian civil war has already spilled over into Lebanon, where it has mainly been confined to the northern part of the country. There, over the past few months, the al-Nusra Front—a local al-Qaeda affiliate—has made multiple attempts, supported by Lebanese Sunnis, to capture the crucial port city of Tripoli. Although the attacks have been repulsed thus far, Lebanon’s government is deadlocked and its military could easily fracture along sectarian lines. Jacques Neriah writes:

[O]ne cannot overestimate the importance of the fate of Tripoli to the Sunni jihadis. Its fall would mark the beginning of the disintegration of the Lebanese state as a nation-state and the awakening of the old sectarian fears that could provoke its implosion and partition into Christian-Maronite, Shiite, and Druze enclaves facing a Sunni entity related either to al-Qaeda (if conquered by al-Nusra) or to Islamic State. Such a situation would undoubtedly represent the beginning of a new civil war that could end with . . . a redrawing of the regional map already heavily transformed since August 2014 by the establishment of the Islamic State (IS) caliphate. The possible fall of . . . Kobani . . . in Syria would definitely fit the current scenario of establishing an IS nucleus from the Mediterranean to the very doors of Baghdad.

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.