Writing at Commentary’s blog, Abe Greenwald looks at the more problematic aspects of Israel’s escalation in Gaza. He thinks the difficulties are surmountable, though, so he’s safely out of juice box territory, but his analysis is in considerable tension with his conclusion. For instance, Greenwald recognizes every day the Israelis remain in Gaza, the greater the need for "the end result of the operation be both dramatic and easily defined." But what would such an end result require?

Israeli leadership needs Hamas to say, even disingenuously, “We give up.” Either that or the IDF needs to degrade Hamas leadership to the point of recognizable impotence.

 The fact that these are the conditions of success on the part of the invasion’s supporters should indicate a great deal about the wisdom of the operation. No one in Hamas will ever in any circumstance say that they "give up" while the Israelis are attacking, and certainly not disingenuously. Degrading Hamas’ leadership to the point of "recognizable impotence" is the more interesting criterion, and the one with the most plausibility, but Israel still won’t escape the problem of subjectivity. You can decapitate the entire leadership — Israel has proven again and again that it’s able to do that, as the corpses of Sheikh Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi attest — but the organization will nevertheless find people to replace them. So will the Israelis have achieved their goals or not? In other words, who is the relevant population cohort to judge whether Hamas’ leadership is "recognizably" decimated?

The goals of this operation are more elusive the more you apply scrutiny to them. That’s the biggest indication of a blunder, and the response to a blunder is mitigation. If the Israelis decide tomorrow that they’ve met their goals — Gaza is pummelled, after all — and they’ll pull back and accept an internationally-brokered-and-enforced ceasefire, that’s better for all parties than continued warfare.