Whatever the clauses of the new settlement reached in Gaza or its duration, the war “exercise" to which all sides participated has ended as it appears in public defeat for both Israel and Iran, and in another concealed defeat for the Palestinian Authority, the latter being the most dangerous. Indeed, the first of the three (Israel), chose military escalation for internal reasons, despite its prior knowledge of the possession of both the Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements of Iranian-made long-range Fajr missiles, then discovered after a few days of aerial bombing that it had reached a dead-end, as a result of its powerlessness to stop what it had started and, at the same time, its inability to broaden it into a land operation. Thus, instead of its “deterrence" ability being restored, as it political and military leaders had planned, it has become reduced as a result of missiles reaching the suburbs of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The military equation has therefore changed. And when the negotiations started, the Israelis discovered that the role of the Egyptian “mediator" had also changed, and that, instead of seeking as in the past to come out with a settlement that neither slays the wolf nor slaughters the sheep, such a mediator now seeks to achieve a long-term truce that would involve major gains for the Palestinian Islamist movement – after the latter completed the shift it began with the start of the Syrian uprising, i.e. that of joining the new axis in the region: Egypt, Turkey and Qatar. This is what forced Israel to seek help from the Americans, who had preferred from the beginning to stand aside and watch, in order to teach Netanyahu a much needed lesson. They then decided to intervene in order to relieve him from the siege that surrounded him, fearing that this would lead to an imbalance that would be difficult to repair later. As for Iran, which showed clear signs of relief at the new war, because it diverts the attention, even if temporarily, away from the situation in Syria, where it is gradually losing its battle, it has discovered itself to be a “cheated wife", having provided missiles but seeing their political benefit go to others – after the Egyptian- Qatari-Turkish trio seized the opportunity of the fighting that erupted to formally declare its sponsorship of the “Palestinian Spring", a process that had started with Hamas moving to Doha and Cairo, and had been completed with the Emir of Qatar visiting Gaza and offering aid and investments worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And while waiting for Cairo to be able to provide the guarantees Israel is demanding in order to accept a long-term truce which resembles what was done in Lebanon after the 2006 war, and which would eventually mean for Hamas to be prepared to put a stop to military action and to unite military decision-making in its hands in Gaza, the possibility for any of the parties involved to resort to additional pressure on the field, as took place yesterday with the bombing of the bus in Tel Aviv, remains standing. Yet what is certain is that Hamas, which will emerge with gains from any settlement, will surely seek to make use of such gains in the Palestinian interior. And if one were to put aside its excesses of rhetoric and the talk by some of its leaders of “the start of the phase of liberation" and of “uprooting" Israel, the possibility of “liberating" the West Bank seems the most credible, after the movement has said that the “Resistance" should be leading Palestinian diplomatic action, not the opposite. This would explain the fact that the Palestinian Authority has been completely excluded from the Cairo negotiations, as well as the fact that the US Secretary of State focused her talks with President Mahmoud Abbas on the issue of the Palestinian request to obtain partial membership at the United Nations. And if Israel and Iran are being forced to pay the price for the triumph of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and in other Arab countries, political Islam in Palestine will not delay very much to address the issue of it taking hold of decision-making in the “liberated territories".
