I agree with Richard Haass that the United States needs to find the sweet spot between allowing Israel to restore deterrence without completely flattening Gaza.

That is harder than it sounds. A ceasefire now would undermine the Israeli state’s reputation for protecting Israeli lives. 1,400 Israelis have been murdered in the most gruesome circumstances, and a further 200 or so taken hostage. No state can allow that to happen on its watch without exacting revenge—not for revenge’s sake, but for making it clear to the perpetrators and their backers that this will not again be tolerated under any circumstances. Whatever they may say publicly, the various Arab leaders will respect Israel less if Israel does not restore deterrence by force. This will not be pretty, as Hamas hides its leaders and fighters among civilians in places like schools and hospitals.

The upshot will be civilian casualties that will enrage the Arab street, no matter how careful Israel is to minimize such casualties. Enraging the Arab street could have consequences. Relatively moderate rulers may be politically undermined, further weakening their ability to do business with Israel. 

This is particularly the case in an age of social media when graphic images of suffering civilians in Gaza can stir deep emotions among the Arab public. That is why while the United States must allow Israel the right to restore deterrence, it must later pressure Israel not to conquer Gaza altogether. The problem with conquering Gaza is the day after. Israel should not want to rule Gaza, and finding moderate Palestinian leaders to do so will be extremely difficult since they will be seen as puppets of Israel. Israel withdrew from Gaza nearly two decades ago precisely because it found it impossible to rule Gaza.

With a bigger population and diminishing natural resources, the situation there has only gotten more difficult. Because of this conundrum, the United States will have to pressure both Israel and its neighbors to accept a new reality that denies Gaza to Hamas and protects Israeli security. There may be no way to accomplish this without a new Israeli government willing to accept some sort of a two-state solution. In the course of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the Nixon Administration allowed Israel to exact revenge and restore deterrence but then pivoted by fashioning a diplomatic process in which Israel ceded territory it had conquered in the 1967 Six Day War.

Something analogous must happen now: Israel must be allowed to win militarily in Gaza while giving way to an eventual two-state solution in the West Bank. This is the reality. The Biden Administration, in short, must allow the Israeli military some running room now but then immediately bring pressure to bear on it later. Rarely has such tough love been so challenging to accomplish.

Robert D. Kaplan holds the Robert Strausz-Hupé Chair in Geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is the author most recently of "The Loom of Time: Between Empire and Anarchy, from the Mediterranean to China."

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