Third in a series from a Middle East observer who just returned from the region and whose last report for IBD was "A Restive Egypt Faces Succession," nearly two weeks before the revolt began in that country that toppled President Hosni Mubarak.
The next Middle Eastern war may have already started.
Its first casualties may have been the five members of the Fogel family, Israelis slaughtered in their sleep by Palestinian terrorists in the town of Itamar on March 11 in the disputed territories of the West Bank.
Or the first shots of the war might have been heard on March 19 as the Hamas terror group significantly ramped up rocket and mortar attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip.
Or perhaps it was in Jerusalem on March 23, when a backpack bomb spiked with ball bearings detonated, killing a British woman and wounding at least 25 others, the first such attack in that city in seven years.
The Israeli response to this increase in terrorist violence directed at its civilians has been predictable: measured, targeted attacks and arrests aimed at those who struck Israel.
The world response is also predictable: condemnation of Israel for exercising its right of self-defense.
We've seen this cycle before.
What's different this time is that the shifting sands of the Middle East have raised the stakes in Israel's confrontation with Hamas in Gaza and its terror ally Hezbollah, the Iranian proxy in southern Lebanon.
Who are Hezbollah and Hamas and what might the next Middle East war look like?
Prior to the attacks of 9/11, the Islamic terror group that had killed the most U.S. citizens was Lebanon's Hezbollah (Party of God). Hezbollah carried out the 1983 bombings of the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon, killing 17 Americans and 46 others, and the Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, killing 241 U.S. servicemen.
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