The Israeli military machine can destroy everything that stands in its way to Gaza. And if the air raids are not enough, it could resort to a land invasion. But all this violence will not change or alter the new equation in the Strip and throughout the region, and will not undermine the determination of the Palestinians who have started to feel they are no longer alone in this Muslim Brotherhood ocean, which has reached power in a number of Arab states. Moreover, it will not dissipate the Israelis' fear and panic, as neither the wall nor the Iron Dome are enough to deter the wide deployment of Iranian rockets from Sinai to South Lebanon or face the popular wrath from Tunisia to Jordan. Israel will no longer enjoy a safe border, whether to the west with Egypt, to the east with Jordan or the north with Syria, whose regime was always the most committed to calm on the border with the Hebrew state since the 1973 war. At this level, there is no need to recall what is happening on the border with Hezbollah, where the repercussions of the 2006 war have imposed a deterring equation and where the traditional rockets' industry proved capable of defying the principle of nuclear deterrence. Hence, the Hebrew state no longer has a loose middle in the West Bank, since all its “territories" have become loose! Benjamin Netanyahu, along with his defense and foreign ministers, want guaranteed results during the next parliamentary elections which will be held in January. They want the voters to head to the ballot boxes in a heated and tense climate. And since they are unable to harass Iran, they launched a campaign against the besieged Gaza Strip. There is nothing new about the fact that this trio wishes to place mines along the path leading to the United Nations, in order to prevent the authority from requesting Palestine's membership as a non-member state in the international organization. The purpose is not the elimination of whichever resistance in the Strip, considering that this goal would be difficult to accomplish and that none among the Israeli politicians is convinced that the military solution is the only way to achieve it, at the head of whom is Ehud Barak who led the Gaza war at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009, and is now leading this second campaign. Deep down inside, Ehud Barak is aware of what was secured by the Cast Lead Operation and the limits of Operation Pillar of Cloud. He also knows that the missile capability of the Palestinian organizations has skyrocketed since the first campaign, and that the current war will enhance the attempts of the Palestinian forces in the Strip to strengthen the deterrence principle in a way similar to what exists in South Lebanon. This means that today's attack on Gaza carries the seeds of a third campaign which will be inevitable in the future, in case Tel Aviv does not pay attention to the changes in the region. For his part, Netanyahu is aware of the fact that the electoral results might come as a surprise in the event of a bloody catastrophe in the Strip, just as it happened with Shimon Peres in the Lebanese Qana in 1996 and with Ehud Barak in the 2006 war in South Lebanon. Indeed, nothing is guaranteed at the level of bloody policies. The Israeli political and military circles were the first to express their concerns vis-à-vis the developments which have swept and are still sweeping the Middle East. They did not miss the total collapse of the regional system and have closely been watching the rise of political Islam to fill the vacuum left behind by regimes whose departure came late, and should have been seen with the collapse of the Berlin, along with many of their counterparts in Asia and Latin America which survived by aligning behind the powerful American camp or its Soviet opponent. Arab regimes have collapsed, and others are waiting in line, knowing that throughout decades, they constituted elements of stability which allowed the continuation of the policies adopted by the United States, i.e. the strategic partner of the Hebrew state. Washington – as well as Tel Aviv - knows that this drastic change in the region firstly requires a comprehensive reviewing of its strategies which deepened the Arab populations' wrath and hatred towards the West, after the latter disregarded and is still disregarding the injustice affecting the Palestinian people due to Israel's arrogance and its ongoing project to swallow what is left of Palestine. Such change further eroded the principle of strength on which Israel was established and caused the expiry of the old concept of its national security. It was strategically damaged by the Iranian revolution decades ago following the close ties it enjoyed with the regime of the Shah, and the Iranian rockets have started to surround the Hebrew state from all sides. And while it has relied for a long time on its relations with the two biggest Islamic states in the region, the policy of the Justice and Development Party and its leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan afflicted it with a major strategic setback. Moreover, the arrival of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood to power undermined all the foundations and effects of the peace agreement with Egypt, if not heralded its collapse. One could even say that the entire regional map has changed, along with the mood of the regimes and populations that now have an opinion that can neither be neglected nor disregarded. This is true from Tunisia, to Syria and Lebanon, even in Jordan which is witnessing a difficult labor whose repercussions on this country's position on the new map and at the level of the Wadi Araba Accord cannot be predicted. The map in the Middle East has changed, along with the balance of powers. And it is natural in this context that the rules of the entire political and security game change. It is no longer acceptable for Washington to hide behind its traditional policy to humor Israel at the level of its policy of thuggery and blind power. And unless President Barack Obama has the necessary courage and unless the Israeli leaders realize the extent of the transformations, the region will witness storms from whose negative consequences America's and Tel Aviv's interests will not be spared. Today, it is unimportant what Netanyahu's military machine will achieve in Gaza. What matters is what Israel will eventually reap, both politically and on the security level. In addition, what will Obama's administration achieve, after it failed to reconcile with the Arab world and the wide Islamic world, considering that its blatant stand alongside “Israel's right to defend itself" will deepen hatred in these two worlds? President Obama is facing a critical test, since it is not enough to push Egypt to the forefront. Indeed, he must exert all his influence, not only to prevent Netanyahu and his war minister from threatening with Gaza's invasion by land, but also to stop the aggression which is setting the entire region ablaze. The policy of blaming the Palestinians and their rockets while disregarding the historical injustice affecting them is no longer valid. On the other hand, calm is not only in Hamas's or the authority's interest, but rather in the interest of all the concerned sides. Washington does not want the situation to go beyond that, while the same goes for Israel, even Hamas and Cairo. Everyone wants a more stable truce for the longest period possible, considering that the American president is preoccupied with the formation of his new administration amid scandals affecting his highest ranking generals, while Netanyahu's coalition only wants to guarantee its victory in the next elections, obstruct the authority's step towards the United Nations, and push America and Europe to besiege it, even topple it. Deep down, Israel does not want to topple Hamas and its control over Gaza, as long as the schism between the Strip and the West Bank is serving its plans to undermine the two-state solution and eliminate what is left of the Palestinian cause. In Cairo, the Muslim Brotherhood does not want to implicate Hamas in a difficult test, as President Muhammad Morsi cannot allow the situation to deteriorate in Gaza and negatively affect his group's regime that has not yet caught its breath. Indeed, the situation does not allow any threats to annul the Camp David Accord, and the Egyptian army is definitely not ready for war. In the meantime, the anger on the Egyptian street towards the social issues and the problem facing the constitutional committee will mount in case Israel proceeds with its war on Gaza and the MB authority in it. Even Hamas does not want further escalation, since while it is trying to enhance its legitimacy, it would not wish to return to square one or lead Israel into a wide-scale land invasion against the Strip, thus jeopardizing its weapons system and the local arms factories it constructed. Indeed, this would force it to rebuild its missiles arsenal, which would be impossible to achieve in light of the developments in the Sinai area where Egypt's and Israel's interests converge in the face of the Jihadist groups that constitute a dual threat to both countries. Still, Hamas's rockets on Tel Aviv and Jerusalem carried clear messages, and provided the movement with the necessary pride and ability to contain other forces that do not want truce or calm, and can no longer practice blackmail against the movement. Hence, it is in everyone's interest to seek a new formula to strengthen the truce and block the way before forces and organizations that are located in the Strip, are providing Israel with pretexts, and are pushing towards further complications not only to embarrass the authority, Hamas and Cairo, but also all the actors in the region, at the head of which is Obama's administration. In the meantime, Obama is finding himself forced to place the Palestinian cause at the top of the list of priorities of his new administration, alongside the Syrian crisis which can no longer tolerate further stalling or hiding behind an initiative here or a Russian-Chinese veto there, at a time when the developments in that country herald a catastrophe which will not spare any of the neighboring countries.
