The Writing On The Wall

"Seven years ago, Israel withdrew from every square inch of Gaza.  Now, Hamas took over the areas we vacated.  What did it do?  Rather than build a better future for the residents of Gaza, the Hamas leadership, backed by Iran, turned Gaza into a terrorist stronghold.
"I'm stressing this because it's important to understand that there is no more symmetry; there is no moral equivalence between Israel and the terrorist organizations in Gaza.  The terrorists are committing a double war crime.  They fire at Israeli civilians and they hide behind Palestinian civilians."
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu

Israel is in an awkward, difficult, stressed position.  If the Israeli government wondered how everything was going to end up in their neck of the woods once the Arab Spring events of the last year and a half settled down, they have a fairly good idea now.  It's not a terribly appealing picture.  If they were in a difficult situation before, that situation has become even more straitened now. 

The frosty peace deals signed with Egypt and Jordan are yet intact.  But barely.

The Israel-remote-but-amicable regime of Hosni Mubarak has melted into history with the introduction of the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt.  The Muslim Brotherhood is on the cusp of ascendancy in Jordan.  It is in the background of the Syrian civil war.  And elsewhere in the Arab and Muslim world of the Middle East, Islamism in Turkey and Tunisia and Qatar threaten Israel's stability.

They all, without exception, have closed ranks around the most visible, closest enemy outside of Iran.  And though Iran has sponsored Hezbollah and Hamas, trained and armed them, chartered their militia services to their agenda of eliminating Israel, there is now growing competition from among Sunni-majority countries as well.

Israel may be ferociously determined to hold its own, but with friends like the Europe and the United States it isn't an assured feat of survival.

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi recalled his ambassador to Israel, he made a heated public condemnation of Israel's "brutal assault" on Gaza, vowing "Cairo will not leave Gaza on its own.  Egypt today is not the Egypt of yesterday".  Nor is it.  Its economy is collapsing, crime is endemic, public unrest is palpable, but all eyes are on Israel. 

Where the Egyptian prime minister demonstrated for the Egyptian public where sympathy should lie, and anger be diverted.

Enabling Ismael Haniyeh, just one of a number of malevolent forces focused on the eternally despised enemy, to crow that what transpired was fairly obvious: "a message to the occupation".  And while a courtesy ceasefire was supposed to be in effect during the visit of Hesham Kandil while he commiserated with Gaza's misfortune, 50 rockets were launched at Israel, two at the "occupied" city of Tel Aviv.

So the rocket-besieged towns of Sderot, Ashdod and Ashkelon, along with Beersheva are joined by the understanding that Tel Aviv is not too far from rocket reach, nor is Jerusalem.  All of Israel can be under siege, should Hamas so decree, fortified with the satisfaction of knowing it has all of Arabdom behind its mission in solidarity with the plight of the Palestinian people, suffering under the vicious predations of Israel.