Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Egyptian Prime Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr today announced a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, ending eight days of violence that resulted in nearly 150 dead and more wounded. President Obama dispatched Clinton to the region yesterday and the nation’s top diplomat traveled to Jerusalem and Cairo today to help facilitate the deal.

But in a statement on the Gaza ceasefire today, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) — one day after intelligence officials debunked their attacks on the Obama administration over Benghazi — didn’t have any kind words for the president and his team. In fact, the new “Three Amigos” attacked Obama, saying there needs to be “smarter American leadership” in the Middle East.

Yet the three Republicans did have praise for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi:

We commend Prime Minister Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders for the role they played in reaching today’s ceasefire. We also are encouraged by the responsible leadership role played by the President of Egypt and his government. President Morsi deserves credit for successfully bringing an end to the violence and preventing further loss of life on both sides. These actions are befitting the commitment to peace and security that Egypt has traditionally upheld as a leader of the Arab world.

Indeed, Netanyahu, Morsi and others involved ending the hostilities deserve credit — but so does the Obama administration. And given their embarrassing campaign to bring down the Obama administration on Libya, it’s not entirely shocking that McCain and his allies don’t see it that way.

Israel has, for the moment, postponed or decided against a ground incursion into Gaza pending international diplomatic efforts to reach a cease fire. While Israeli leaders deliberate, it’s worth reviewing the last thirty years of Israeli ground wars, in which Israel conducted roughly four* major ground operations, to see whether Israeli they accomplished their strategic ends. The evidence suggests the incursions were occasionally tactically successful, but generally did not succeed strategically and always carried a high body count.

Two caveats. First, this is an attempt to assess whether Israeli ground incursions were successful on their own strategic-military terms, and does not examine any questions about the rightness or morality of Israeli actions. Second, the casualty counts below represent estimates from the entire conflict in question, not the ground campaign specifically. Since ground operations were major parts of each of the conflicts in question, and separating what counts as a “ground” casualty is methodologically difficult, it is fair to employ the more general casualty count.

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As Israel’s “Pillar of Cloud” offensive enters its sixth day, the Health Ministry in Gaza this morning reported a death toll of 91, with 700 wounded, including 200 children. On the Israeli side, three people have died.

Part of the credit for far lower Israeli casualties (in addition to fact that Hamas and other militant factions in Gaza are simply massively outgunned by Israel) has been given to the Iron Dome rocket defense system, the funding for which was provided by the United States under the Obama administration. Iron Dome has knocked down over 300 incoming rockets from Gaza since Israel launched its campaign — at a cost of around $60,000 a pop.

As I note today in a piece in Canada’s Globe and Mail, while it’s obviously a great thing to prevent rockets from raining down on Israeli towns and homes, technological marvels such as Iron Dome should not obscure the fact that real, long-term security for Israelis means obtaining real security for Palestinians, too, through a two-state accord in which both peoples’ national rights are recognized.

Moreover, the success of Iron Dome shouldn’t obscure the fact that, even if this latest war does manage to suppress rocket fire into Israel for a period of time, Israel does not seem to have any strategy beyond managing its conflict with the Palestinians through continued occupation, assassinations, and periodic offensives like the one taking place now.

Appearing yesterday on MSNBC, Israeli journalist Noam Sheizaf made this point:

SHEIZAF: I think that Israeli leadership with the great talent of Netanyahu is recognizing the fact that the equilibrium point from Israeli perspective is the status quo. Now, obviously, Israelis are concerned about the rockets, and it’s right now things are unbearable there. But ultimately, the status quo is the solution from the perspective of this government. And for the Palestinian, it’s a perpetual war.

HAYES: Right.

SHEIZAF: The Palestinian have their war every day of the week. So in the long term, this is a process that plays against Israeli interest. But there’s no incentive for the current political leadership to move from it, especially with the free hand it gets from the world and from the United States.

Watch it:

It’s axiomatic that sticking with the status quo is politically safer, especially when the stakes are so high. But as Sheizef says, no one is offering the Israeli people a better option, and this is where the United States and President Obama can play a constructive role by actively re-engaging in a peace process. No one’s suggesting this will be easy, and no, the current moment doesn’t seem to be particularly propitious for peace-making, but the alternative — simply continuing to try and manage a deteriorating status quo — will be disastrous for Israelis, Palestinians, and the United States.