For several years, Israelis and Palestinians played the land-for-peace game. Each side engaged in a series of elaborate maneuvers designed to get the best possible deal when it came time to negotiate a final status agreement.

But when Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran became leading players in the Middle East struggle, that land-for-peace game was suspended. A different game with different rules was begun. This new game is not oriented toward a final agreement. The extremist groups believe in the eventual extermination of Israel. They’re not interested in a handshake on the White House lawn.

In this new game, both sides seek the destruction of the other, but neither has the power to achieve it. They are engaged in a struggle that has no near-term practical end. The extremists’ goal is to kill as many Jews as possible and wait for God (or Iran) to kill the rest. Israel’s goal is to restrain the brazenness of the extremists until their movement somehow burns itself out or is destroyed from within Arab society. Israel’s realistic immediate goal is not to achieve some permanent resolution, but to merely suppress terrorism week by week and month by month.

The writer Michael Oakeshott captured Israel’s quandary in this game in a famous passage: “In political activity, then, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea; there is neither harbor for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting place nor appointed destination. The enterprise is to keep afloat on an even keel.”