After 10 days of aerial bombardment, Israel sent tanks and ground troops into Gaza to keep Hamas from pummeling Israeli cities with rockets and carrying out terrorist attacks via underground tunnels. The tragedy is that innocent civilians on both sides of the border are paying the price, once again, and that military action will not guarantee long-term stability or peace.

There was no way Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was going to tolerate the Hamas bombardments, which are indiscriminately lobbed at Israeli population centers. Nor should he. As President Obama said on Friday, “No nation should accept rockets being fired into its borders, or terrorists tunneling into its territory.”

Well over 1,000 rockets have fallen on Israel since July 8, and they have reached farther than ever, threatening Tel Aviv and beyond. Only two Israelis have died (a civilian was killed by mortar shells from Gaza as he distributed food to soldiers near the border on Tuesday, and an Israeli soldier may have been killed by friendly fire at the start of the ground offensive), but Israeli citizens are running for cover from incoming rockets. Hamas can’t defeat Israelis, so it tries to terrorize them.

Innocent Palestinians are being killed and brutalized: four Palestinians boys playing on a beach; four children playing on a rooftop; a rehabilitation hospital, all destroyed by Israeli firepower. The United Nations says that of the more than 260 Palestinians killed, three-quarters were civilians, including more than 50 children.