It seems to me that Israel has a few choices:

1) Ignore world opinion, and ethnically cleanse the West Bank and Gaza and then annex them. The US might be hesitant but would eventually be on board for that, and that’s the only friendly country they need really. Gasp! Yes, we’re talking mass executions. To make it more palatable to Western sensibilities, the killing should be done from aircraft, or using missiles or an artillery barrage. We in the west frown on the up-close-and-personal shoot’em in the head approach these days. Very uncivilized (not to mention unfashionable)! Don’t believe me? Check out the Bible to see what happened to the citizens of Jericho and Ai. I could easily see Israel doing that, and I could easily see our government looking the other way if not supporting it. In fact, the Israelis could write the resolutions that our congress and administration would pass in their support. Oh wait,… that already happens!

2) Annex the West Bank and Gaza, and enslave the Palestinians. Yes, that happens too. You’d have to use a word other than “enslave” (so 19th century!) of course, but a completely viable option non-the-less. But then the citizens of Israel would always be on edge worrying about a slave revolt. Makes option 1) look more attractive!

3) Annex the West Bank and Gaza, enslave the people, and gradually give them rights (to reduce the probability of a slave revolt) until the slaves are full citizens. The “South Africa” option. We’ll see how it turns out in South Africa. Wait, wasn’t that the Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) approach too?! Gasp! I guess that doesn’t always turn out so well. Of course that would “wipe Israel off the map.” Any one-state solution (other than genocide or enslavement) would. They’d rename the place Israelestine or Palesrael or something… at least until the Jews are such an insignificant minority that they aren’t even worth accommodating. Maybe the new majority would do some ethnic cleansing themselves to move that trend along a little faster.

4) Continue to do what they’re doing: Don’t annex Gaza or the West bank, but every couple of years, near election time, let the bombs and tanks loose. Kill some “terrorists” and a heap of “civilians”, take a little heat from the toothless world opinion and then carry on with business as usual.

5) Oh, yes, the two-state solution. Have to throw that in the mix I guess, however improbable.

6) Oh wait, here’s another approach. Pick a fight with a small weak country (Yemen?) well away from Israel, destroy them utterly, and establish a military colonial government. Then deport the Palestinians there. Then annex the West Bank and Gaza. Ooo, I like it!

My money’s on option 1) 4) or 6). Any takers?

In short, yes. You can’t win fighting a nihilist.
In my view this is what we are witnessing now in Gaza.

Israel will come out of this the loser even if they destroy Hamas, which they wont.

In case you missed it, Jeffrey Goldberg last week, in a post titled “The World’s Pornographic Interest in Jewish Moral Failure”:

One more thing, speaking of pornography — we’ve all seen endless pictures of dead Palestinian children now. It’s a terrible, ghastly, horrible thing, the deaths of children, and for the parents it doesn’t matter if they were killed by accident or by mistake. But ask yourselves this: Why are these pictures so omnipresent? I’ll tell you why, again from firsthand, and repeated, experience: Hamas (and the Aksa Brigades, and Islamic Jihad, the whole bunch) prevents the burial, or even preparation of the bodies for burial, until the bodies are used as props in the Palestinian Passion Play. Once, in Khan Younis, I actually saw gunmen unwrap a shrouded body, carry it a hundred yards and position it atop a pile of rubble — and then wait a half-hour until photographers showed. It was one of the more horrible things I’ve seen in my life. And it’s typical of Hamas. If reporters would probe deeper, they’d learn the awful truth of Hamas. But Palestinian moral failings are not of great interest to many people.

Israel might end up losing more than it can afford here.
The whole democratic experiment of this country is now in peril.

We come across a local family in one of the buildings. Grandparents, a few young parents, some children and a few toddlers. Sitting on a rug, their legs are covered in blankets and two soldiers are standing guard nearby. “What about them?” I ask. “They’re free to go if they want to, but they don’t want to,” said Eilon Perry, Givati’s operations officer. “They informed us they would be staying in the house and we have no choice but to accept that.”

The family suddenly notices the cameras, and immediately, the expression on their faces changes. “We have no food,” they say in Arabic, as one of the youngsters suggests we interview him in English about their plight. Givati troops are extremely concerned about being portrayed as abusing innocent civilians. Perry points to a stack of canned goods, water bottles and other provisions. “We provided some of that and they cook and eat quite well,” he said. The Palestinians seem to understand him and one of them smiles. It’s a war – they had to try.

The Palestinians are unfortunate pawns and the critics of Israel are knowingly or unknowingly, doing the work of the Islamic ruling class to keep their populace down.

Israel will have to withdraw achieving very little in the end. I do believe that hitting a school or a hospital was a big mistake. History looks favorably upon success and has swallowed a lot of civilian deaths. But this is not it.