The Powder Keg that is the Middle East has exploded, once again. And this time, our ally, Israel, lit the fuse.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak signaled that Israel is ready to escalate its military operations against Gaza after at least one long-range missile was fired at Tel Aviv by Palestinian militants.

The missile attack and the volume of fire in general toward Israel “is an escalation and there will be a price to pay,” Barak said on Channel 2 television yesterday. It was the first such attack on Israel’s commercial hub since Iraqi missiles in 1991 during the Gulf War.

Neither side showed signs of yielding as international diplomacy ramped up. Hamas kept up rocket fire in the most serious conflict since Israel sent troops into Gaza in December 2008 in a three-week offensive it said was aimed at stopping such attacks. Israeli Army Spokesman Brigadier General Yoav Mordechai told Channel 2 that the military was calling up 30,000 reservists hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the military was ready for a “substantial expansion” to stop rocket attacks.

In a phone call with Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi, U.S. President Barack Obama supported Israel’s right to self defense as the two leaders agreed on “the importance of working to de- escalate the situation as quickly as possible,” according to a Nov. 14 White House statement. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon plans to go to Egypt and Israel next week, according to a Security Council diplomat informed of the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity because the trip hasn’t been announced. The UN spokesman’s office declined to comment.

Israel began a military operation termed Pillar of Defense against militants in the Gaza Strip on Nov. 14. At least 19 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli military strikes, including the leader of the Hamas military wing, and three Israelis died in one of 300 rocket attacks launched from Gaza in the past 24 hours.

Israel launched a wave of air strikes at 70 underground launch sites for medium-range rockets late yesterday, and direct hits were confirmed, the army said in an e-mailed statement. Israeli naval vessels fired on Hamas bases on the Gaza shore, the army said.

The rocket fired at the Tel Aviv area of Gush Dan, home to about 1.3 million people, probably fell in the sea, said police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld, noting there was no damage and no injuries reported. Air-raid warnings sounded in the city, which is at the limit of the approximately 70-kilometer (44 mile) range of the Iranian-developed Fajr-5 rocket.

About the elimination of that Hamas Terrorist…the Jerusalem Post reports that

Israel’s leaders were literally looking in the opposite direction, and making sure everyone knew it, just before catching Hamas’s top commander in the Gaza Strip off-guard in an air strike that killed him.

In what now appears to have been a diversionary tactic, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak paid a visit to the Syrian frontier in the north, hours before the air offensive began in the south.

In fact, Israeli experts now say, the visit may have been part of a ploy to deceive Hamas into believing that a truce was in place in Gaza, so that the Israeli army could catch its target, Hamas military mastermind Ahmed Jabari.

“The sense of complacency that Barak and Netanyahu created … brought Jabari and his friends out of his holes and made possible the surprise attack,” military affairs analyst Alex Fishman wrote in Yedioth Ahronoth.

Israel has a thick list of potential targets in the Gaza Strip, an enclave regularly criss-crossed by IAF drones and where militants’ movements are routinely logged. The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), which oversaw the assassination of Jabari, keeps tabs on Hamas leaders with a network of informers.

So it is surprising that the usually cautious militant, who had just returned from a pilgrimage to Mecca, chose to drive in broad daylight down a main Gaza street. His car was hit by a missile in an attack filmed from the air and put on YouTube.

Jabari may have been lulled into the open by public signals from Israel that a round of cross-border violence along the frontier in the past week had run its course.

On Monday, Netanyahu convened the nine-member inner cabinet to discuss an upsurge of Hamas rocket attacks last weekend that had been disrupting life for a million Israelis in the South but seemed to be abating.

It was at that meeting, political sources said, that a Shin Bet plan to assassinate Jabari was approved and the first act of deception was played out: Minister Benny Begin, a member of the forum, went on Israeli radio to say the current round of violence appeared to be over.

Hamas apparently bought the message. Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, said Israel, in launching the offensive, had violated an informal truce brokered by mediators.

“The factions abided by the understanding of calm, and the occupation bears the responsibility for the consequences that will follow the ugly crime,” he said.

Israel had largely suspended assassinations of top Hamas men in recent years, strikes that could have triggered wider violence along the Gaza frontier.

It focused instead on targeting rocket launching crews in low-intensity warfare marked by cyclical cross-border exchanges usually calmed by Egyptian-mediated ceasefires.

The IDF used similar ruses to conceal its plans before launching its three-week Gaza war in December 2008.

Days before that offensive began, Defense Minister Barak made an unusual and unannounced live appearance on a top-rated TV satire show, giving the impression that starting a war could not be further from his mind.

In another twist at the time, officers were summoned from garrisons around Gaza to a weekend with their families at a countryside spa. All but the most senior of those invited commanders were then surprised to be woken up, that Saturday morning, and sent back to base for combat within hours.

Were the Gaza missiles a  retaliation for Israel’s strike against Syria? It’s certainly a possibility.

Will President Barack Hussein Obama continue to defend our closest ally, or will he stand with the Muslims “should the political winds shift in an ugly direction”?

Considering Israel launched their attack on Syria after Obama’s re-election, I think Israel’s Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu knows exactly where Obama stands.

So, they threw the first punch.

I hope y’all are all prayed up.

You see, I know how this whole thing ends. I’ve read The Book.

Until he comes,

KJ