Much of the international community agrees that Israel must defeat Hamas, and how it goes about doing that will decide whether or not it achieves that goal:
Like the present Israeli government (or, better, its leading members), Hamas doesn’t believe in a Palestinian state alongside Israel. These two bitter enemies are actually helping one another. Every rocket that Hamas fires weakens the Israeli left and makes it more difficult for ordinary Israelis to contemplate a withdrawal from the West Bank—since rockets from there could make all of Israel uninhabitable. And every new settlement, every ‘price tag’ attack on the West Bank, weakens Fatah and the PA and lends credence to Hamas’s claim that violence is the only way.