It is election season in the worlds most militarized state and Netanyahoo therefore does what his voters like him to do – killing Palestinians:
Israel killed the military commander of Hamas in an airstrike on the Gaza Strip Wednesday, bringing the two sides to the brink of a possible new war.
The attack came despite signs that Egypt had managed to broker a truce between Israel and Palestinian militants after a five day surge of violence which saw more than 100 missiles fired out of Gaza and repeated Israeli strikes on the enclave.
Additionally to the military commander a police station and other targets have been bombed. A second wave of strikes is ongoing as I write. The Izzis have given the operation a name, "Cloud Pillar" or something like that, which means that this will be longer operation and another war on Gaza.
If Egypt were still under Mubarak I would expect that the slaughter would end after about thousand death and nothing would have changed. Unless Israel fully occupies the Gaza strip there would be no lasting strategic effect.
But Egypt now has a government that is has to, at least somewhat, answer to its voters. There will soon be new parliamentary elections in Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood is in a political competion with forces on the left and on the right. Seeing their brokering of a truce sabotaged by Israel and under internal political pressure the Morsi government will have to do more than to just stand by and watch.
The situation is also different with regard to other players. Hamas has support from Turkey and Qatar. Jordan is very weak as is the Abbas regime in the West Bank. Both could fall.
This war on Gaza could thereby have strategic effects which would likely be of the kind that Netanyahoo voters will not like.