The lost balance of power in the Middle East may be making its way back

The Islamic Resistance Movement “Hamas” dared to direct this painful blow to Israel to the extent that Israel and the West felt that Israel’s future was critically threatened. Can we dare to talk about a balance of power?

Western countries have mobilized their capabilities in an unprecedented manner, and expressed their willingness to provide all forms of support to Israel, and this is only because they felt that the balance of power had moved from the zero level only to minor degrees.

But for them, this is considered a long-term threat that begins with a first step. All this frantic and rapid mobilization for the sake of a resistance group confined in a cage and under microscope and control.

But how did Hamas choose to raise levels of confrontation and bet while being certain that the response from Israel would be devastating? Taking into consideration the American and western backing.

It is likely that Hamas and its allies’ reading of the timing was the result of an analysis of the international changes that began since the Russian-Ukrainian war. The Gaza war is considered the first manifestation of the tensions that began to take root in the world in the form of the Cold War, but they will certainly take new manifestations and new forms.

Russia may not be directly involved in the current conflict between Hamas and Israel. But Russia and its "allies" such as China and the BRICS group, which share a vision and strategic goals regarding the end of the unipolar system and that this system is no longer sustainable, have intentionally or unintentionally opened the way for this conflict to occur.

This conflict heralds a recalculation of the West regarding the Middle Eastern region. Russia is also now in a confrontation with NATO countries, who are prolonging the conflict with Ukraine to exhaust Russia, and in the same context they are looking to China, this quiet and dangerous competitor, and the future challenge it represents to American hegemony.

Note that Iran is the back that supports Hamas and Jihad, and according to the accusations of Israel and many Western politicians, they point the finger of blame at Iran. As it was clearly expressed by the Veteran Israeli diplomat Itamar Rabinovich  who regards the current Gaza conflict as the “first Iran-Israel war.

This opinion is supported by the extent of Israel's eagerness to drag the United States into a war against Iran, or at least to create a rift, a state of neither war nor peace, and an advanced state of hostility. As for Israel, despite the blow it received from Hamas, it achieved a goal and is trying to focus this goal on removing the specter of American and Western understandings with Iran regarding its nuclear program. Especially, under the Democratic administration, especially the Biden administration, the engineer of the nuclear agreement with Iran during the Obama era.

The West and Israel have realized that the mere doubts about the balance of terror in the region, as some hostile countries began issuing threats of war with Israel, showed the extent of their willingness to defend it, restore things to normal, maintain Israel’s position as a force to be reckoned with, and remove all the threats it may face.

The bigger and broader picture is what major countries like Russia and China might think, who see this war as an opportunity to express their ability to maneuver and put the West in similar to Russian position in its war with Ukraine. Where Western countries pushed Ukraine into war with Russia to weaken the latter and remove it from the scene to protect the future of American hegemony, and this is a legitimate motive for a power like the United States. Can we doubt here, even a little, that Israel was the target of the Russian reaction? The latter chose Israel, this central element of Western hegemony, to send a warning to the West that if Russia were exposed to a fateful reality, America’s allies in the region would not be immune from Russia and its allies.

At the end of this scene, it can be said that the West's calculations will be different from now on and that what happened before the war on Gaza will not be the same as after it.