The Gaza operation was an exercise in deception, designed by six intelligence chiefs to trigger two coups – one to restore Mohamed Morsi’s powers as Egyptian president and the other to purge Hamas of its pro-Iranian elements.

Barack Obama second term is a changed president. After approving Israel’s operation in Gaza he is no longer holding back from direct US military involvement in Syria and has big plans to plug the Sinai smuggling routes through which Iran arms and supplies its surrogates in the Gaza Strip ...

Iran suffered a serious setback in the Gaza Strip as a result of the Israeli operation to get rid of Hamas’s pro-Iranian leaders. Tehran had conceived of the Gaza Strip as its gateway to the Muslim Brothers of Egypt and Jordan. Though small in time and scale - and relatively inconsequential in the large Middle East picture - the eight-day Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip helped elevate the US to the Middle East major league at Iran's expense.

For Egypt’s President Mohamed Morsi and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to obtain Hamas’s consent to a ceasefire Wednesday, Nov. 21, Israel made certain concessions. The most damaging was acceding to Egypt’s role as truce monitor and arbitrator between itself and Hamas and the address for complaints of violations, misunderstandings and brokering future negotiations for regulating future relations. By this step, Israel accepted Egypt’s superior authority and demoted itself to an equal footing with a terrorist group, Hamas.

Five Grads hit Beersheba and a shell explodes in Metulah on the Lebanese border minutes after
the announcement in Cairo by Egyptian foreign minister Mohamed Kamel Amr and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Cairo Wednesday, Nov. 21. A statement from Israel’s Binyamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak and Avigdor Lieberman follows half an hour before the ceasefire is due to go into effect at 9 p.m. debkafile: Prime Minister earlier called President Barack Obama to inform him of Israel’s consent to the ceasefire.

The US embassy guard in Tel Aviv was injured by a man with an axe and knife Tuesday, Nov. 20. The man was captured.
The US has returned three amphibious warships with 2,500 Marines aboard for standby off Israel’s shore in case US citizens need to be evacuated. They were sailing west of Gibraltar on their way back to Norfolk, Virginia, when they were turned around. debkafile: Washington evidently does not share the optimism in some Israeli quarters about an imminent ceasefire with Hamas but rather envisages a general conflagration.

Missile alert sirens sounded across Greater Tel Aviv Saturday, Nov. 17, before an explosion caused by Iron Dome’s interception of one of the two rockets incoming from the Gaza Strip against Israel’s largest conurbation for the third day in a row. The second rocket landed harmlessly on open ground.
Hamas claimed to have launched Iran-made Fajr-5 long-range missile against Tel Aviv. The Iron Dome anti-missile battery was deployed for the first time in Greater Tel Aviv that morning,

President Barack Obama, in a phone conversation with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu early Saturday, reiterated his support for Israel’s right to defend itself. He also spoke to Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi. Where does the sudden harmonious Obama-Netanyahu cooperation over the Gaza operation come from? debkafile: The US is using Israel’s Gaza operation to drag Iranian ruler Ali Khamenei to the negotiating table. Netanyahu hopes Obama will be led into a military confrontation with Iran. An Israeli ground operation is up to both.

Knowing that the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt had egged Hamas on to launch a major missile offensive against Israel, the Netanyahu government took the precaution of getting US backing before launching Israel’s counter-offensive to degrade the terrorist group’s rocket capabilities.

Israel's report to Ban Ki-Moon supposed to defend IDF conduct in the Gaza Operation adds weight to the war's critics by naming two high-ranking commanders who were disciplined for exceeding orders by allowing the UN center in Gaza to come under artillery attack. Their fellow-commanders are furious, say the two officers have been placed at risk of international prosecution.