Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is on the right track. In his Christmas Wall Street Journal op-ed, he laid out Israel’s three criteria for achieving real peace in the Gaza Strip:

Hamas must be destroyed, Gaza must be demilitarized, and Palestinian society must be deradicalized. These are the three prerequisites for peace between Israel and its Palestinian neighbors in Gaza.

Netanyahu is well down the right track, but I disagree with him to a slight extent.

The destruction of Hamas (and of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, I add) is the Critical Item in this trio, and so it is the sole prerequisite to peace in and with the Gaza Strip. Without this, the other two, necessary as they also are, become irrelevant.

Gaza will never be demilitarized so long as the terrorist organizations exist.

It is possible to deradicalize Palestinian society, but that at best will be a multi-generational task—and the Palestinians themselves must be willing, beginning with their letting go of their deeply emotional hatred of all things Jewish.