On the achievable goals – Friedman in NYT:

‘As I said, Israel is not India, and there is no way that it could be expected to turn the other cheek — not in that neighborhood. But what is Netanyahu’s plan? The Israeli officials I speak with tell me they know two things for sure: Hamas will never again govern Gaza, and Israel will not govern a post-Hamas Gaza. They suggest that they will set up an arrangement similarly seen in parts of the West Bank today, with Palestinians in Gaza administering day-to-day life and Israeli military and Shin Bet security teams providing the muscle behind the scenes.
This is a half-baked plan. Who are these Palestinians who will be enlisted to govern Gaza on Israel’s behalf? What happens the morning after a Palestinian working for Israel in Gaza is found murdered in an alley with a note pinned to his chest: “Traitor,’’ signed “the Hamas underground.” Moreover, who is going to pay for Israel’s control of, health care for and education of Gaza’s 2.2 million people? Please raise your hand if you think the European Union, the Gulf Arab states or the substantial progressive caucus in the Democratic Party in the U.S. House of Representatives will fund an indefinite Israeli oversight of Gaza — while Netanyahu and his band of Jewish supremacists are pledged to annex the West Bank without equal rights for the Palestinians there. The cost of occupying Gaza could overstretch the Israeli military and economy for years to come.
On top of it all, how is Israel going to manage such a complex operation when there is — for good reason — scant trust in Netanyahu? Just last Saturday he pointed to the heads of Israeli military intelligence and Shin Bet as responsible for missing the Hamas surprise attack while excusing himself of any blame. A day later, an outraged Israeli public forced the prime minister to retract his wartime recriminations against his colleagues. But the damage was done.
Netanyahu does not have a team of rivals supporting him. He has a team of people being asked to make excruciating long-term choices while knowing their prime minister is a person of such low character that he will blame them for everything that goes wrong and hog all credit for anything that goes right.
In sum, dear reader, I understand why Israel believes it needs to destroy Hamas and thereby deter others in the neighborhood from ever contemplating such a thing. But the view from Washington is that Israel’s leadership does not have a viable plan to win or a leader who can navigate the stresses and complexity of this crisis. Israel needs to know the tolerance of its American ally for massive civilian casualties in Gaza in an open-ended military operation is not unlimited. In fact, we may soon be approaching the limit.
Israel should keep the door open for a humanitarian cease-fire and prisoner exchange that will also allow Israel to pause and reflect on exactly where it is going with its rushed Gaza military operation — and the price it could pay over the long haul.
That is why I raise the Indian example. Because targeted use of force with limited, achievable goals may serve Israel’s long-term security and prosperity more than an open-ended war to eradicate Hamas. At least Israel should be asking that question.’

(…)

‘I have always believed that you can reduce the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the early 1900s to one line: conflict, timeout, conflict, timeout, conflict, timeout, conflict, timeout, conflict and timeout. The most important difference between the parties is what they each did during the timeouts.
Israel built an impressive society and economy, even if flawed, and Hamas took nearly all of its resources and built attack tunnels.
Please, Israel, don’t get lost in those tunnels.’

Read the article here.

There are a lot of Friedmandisms in the text, but the question of the achievable goals remains important, even though it has been raised before. And the remark about the timeout, conflict, timeout sequence is accurate.

But if Hamas and Israel have concluded that this is zero-sum, then destruction is an end in itself. Whether is it called deterrence or not is a minor detail.
I’m not sure if the sequence of timeout, conflict, timeout has an emergency exit, and if somebody is going to use that exit?

Biden might do his utmost to avoid a larger, regional conflict, i.e. war, but small mistakes can lead to big wars.

And there is no viable plan to win, because it’s unclear what winning could mean. In the absence of that, it will be deterrence all over again.