Since Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, Israel has waged a periodic but limited military campaign to control the violent Palestinian faction. Hamas fired rockets at Israeli cities, Israel bombed Gaza from the air or attacked on the ground, and then brokered a ceasefire.

The goal was never to remove Hamas; that seemed too expensive. It was just to keep it under control. Israeli military officers gave their recurring Gaza offensives a sad, cynical name: mowing the lawn.

Last week the lawn mowing came to an end.

Hamas’s murderous rampage through Israeli cities and towns, deliberately targeting civilians, prompted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to set a much more ambitious goal: regime change.

We will destroy Hamas, Netanyahu said on Friday.

We are crushing Hamas’s ability to function as a sovereign, Daniel Hagari, a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, told reporters. We cannot continue to live with this rule.

To remove Hamas from its grip on Gaza, Israel appears to be preparing a massive ground invasion. It has imposed a blockade, launched punishing airstrikes and called on more than a million Palestinian civilians to evacuate the northern third of the Gaza Strip.

Such an offensive would be difficult and expensive. Hamas probably knew that its terrorist attack would provoke massive retaliation.

The group has spent years building fortified tunnels, preparing booby traps and training for door-to-door combat. Former Israeli officers estimate that dismantling Hamas’ military power could take between two and six months of fighting.

The campaign could cost the lives of thousands of fighters as well as thousands of civilians. Israeli airstrikes in recent weeks have killed an estimated 1,900 people

/number can be updated/

even before a ground offensive began. The United Nations warned that a massive, chaotic evacuation would have devastating humanitarian consequences.

But even if Israel succeeds in outdoing Hamas, it will face a conundrum that Americans will recognize from the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq: who will govern Gaza? Who will control the streets and ensure that Hamas does not rise again in an impoverished area of ​​people who have lost families and homes? The answer is not clear.

The problem with Gaza is that no one seems to want it, except Hamas.

Israel does not want to occupy the area; that’s why it left in 2005.

Egypt, which borders the Gaza Strip in the south, does not want that either.

Even the Palestinian Authority, which governs the Israeli-occupied West Bank and is led by longtime opponents of Hamas, may not want to immediately take power aboard Israeli tanks.

The PA is the most natural address, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak said during an appearance at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace last week. There’s no point in giving [Gaza] back to Hamas.

In a poll conducted in July for the Washington Institute on Near East Policy, 70% of Gazans said they would rather live under the PA than Hamas.

But it is not clear whether the PA is up to the task. In the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority is widely regarded as inefficient and corrupt. The leader, 87-year-old Mahmoud Abbas, has not been allowed to hold elections for seventeen years.

Critics of Netanyahu say the prime minister deliberately weakened the PA by allowing the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank while quietly maintaining a modus vivendi with Hamas in Gaza.

Barak and others have suggested that a post-Hamas order in Gaza could start with an interim peacekeeping force provided by Egypt and other Arab countries.

It would be a great blessing, Barak said.

But that will require Israel to ask these countries, plus the United States and Saudi Arabia, for help in mediating such a settlement.

Some or all of the Arab countries involved would likely demand that Israel halt settlement expansion in the West Bank or make other concessions to the Palestinians as the price for their participation in a difficult and unrewarding mission.

All this brings the issue back to where it started: the Israeli-Palestinian standoff, which has been gradually worsening for fifteen years.

Israel’s strategy to cut the grass in Gaza failed not only because Hamas is committed to the destruction of the Jewish state. It also failed because Hamas had a seemingly endless supply of potential recruits among young Gazans who saw no viable future.

When Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken met Netanyahu last week, he reaffirmed the United States’ strong support for Israel’s right to self-defense. But he also reminded the prime minister that President Biden still believes that Israel can only achieve long-term security if it pursues a viable peace with the Palestinians.

We must offer an alternative to Hamas’s vision of violence and fear, nihilism and terror, Blinken said.

Netanyahu did not respond. Israel’s focus is understandably on recovering from the trauma of the past week and preparing for the coming military offensive. It is far too early to talk about a return to peace talks.

But that won’t be forever, especially when the alternative is endless mowing of the lawn.