After this weekend’s horrific Hamas assault on Israel, the ball is now in Jerusalem’s court, and the most important question is how the Netanyahu government will respond. Inevitably, that’s a complicated issue.

Israel’s immediate goals are obvious. It needs to rescue the Israelis who have been taken hostage, cripple Hamas militarily to prevent or deter another Hamas attack, and simultaneously prevent a wider war with Hamas’s allies, Iran and Hizballah, which could cause more Israeli casualties and complicate the IDF’s operations against Hamas in the near term.

These goals translate into four obvious military objectives for the IDF. Israel wants to rescue its hostages, kill or capture as much of the Hamas leadership as possible, destroy as much of Hamas’s military capabilities as possible, and defend or deter attacks on Israel by Hizballah, Iran, or other members of Tehran’s “Axis of Resistance.”

In turn, these objectives shape themselves into three obvious military options for Israel at this point.

The first would be to maintain the “siege” of Gaza that Jerusalem has already declared both to prevent Hamas leaders and fighters from fleeing and to try to convince the Palestinian population to turn on Hamas—either to provide Israel with better information on Hamas or even move them to take up arms against Hamas. This would be coupled with continued air strikes and special operations forces (SOF) attacks to kill or grab Hamas leaders, destroy Hamas military forces, and free Israeli hostages as Israeli intelligence identifies them.

The second would be a larger version of the first. It would maintain the siege, but rather than limiting the Israeli strikes to just air and SOF, it would include much larger Israeli ground incursions, with infantry and armor punching into Gaza whenever possible to smash Hamas militarily, kill or capture its leaders, and find and free the Israeli hostages similar to other operations into Gaza Israel has conducted in years past. While some such Israeli ground operations might last for days, the goal would be to limit them to just hours and avoid re-occupying any parts of Gaza for any length of time.

The last option would be a major ground invasion of Gaza. In this case, the IDF would re-occupy all of Gaza and then systematically search out and kill or capture the Hamas leadership and its military forces, and likewise find and free the Israeli hostages.

Again, obviously, the first option would minimize Israeli costs and risks—at least in the short term—but would be least likely to succeed in achieving Israel’s goals and objectives. Moreover, a prolonged siege of Gaza could still prove politically and militarily onerous as Palestinian suffering continues while little is accomplished and the damage to Israel fades into memory.

Nor is the middle option necessarily Goldilocks’s “just right” solution. While it incurs fewer costs and risks and entails a greater likelihood of success, it doesn’t guarantee that Israel gets what it wants or at an acceptable price.

The last, most extensive option seems most consistent with Israel’s mood and public statements so far. Moreover, it is exactly what Egypt has encouraged Israel to do in the past as the only way to remove the festering sore of Hamas’s control over Gaza, a major problem for both Cairo and Jerusalem. But it too has its own costs and risks.

Firstly, because the Egyptians are right. If Israel is determined to smash Hamas and potentially even remove them Gaza, re-occupying Gaza for a matter of weeks or months and methodically rooting it out is the only way to do so, but that would mean Israeli forces engaging in protracted guerilla warfare in a dangerous urban environment. It would risk heavy Israeli military casualties, heavy Palestinian civilian casualties, and possibly the death of many hostages as well.

Moreover, if Israel succeeds in extirpating Hamas from Gaza but then pulls out quickly to avoid another permanent occupation, as seems likely, it would leave the huge unknown of who would rule in Gaza in place of Hamas? Jerusalem could see an even worse leadership seize power—zealous Salafi Jihadists like ISIS—or no leadership at all leading to civil war.

Because of the potential for high casualties, a major assault on Gaza would also be the most problematic for Israel’s rapprochement with the Arab states—which was undoubtedly one of the principal targets of the Hamas offensive, and of Iran’s support for that offensive. And finally, a major offensive that threatened Hamas’s military viability and its control of Gaza is also the most likely to provoke intervention by Iran and its other allies.

Finally, Prime Minister Netanyahu will doubtless add his own personal political and legal calculations as well. This is his war. It happened on his watch. If he is seen as “winning” it, he can probably hold on to power which he seems to calculate is the only way to avoid prison. If he is seen as losing the war, he probably loses everything: power, his reputation, even his freedom. And in the end, none of us knows what Bibi believes “victory” over Hamas would look like.

Kenneth M. Pollack is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he works on Middle Eastern political-military affairs, focusing in particular on Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf countries.

This article was first published by the American Enterprise Institute.

Image: Shutterstock.