Nothing stands still here even if it seems as though nothing changes.
The writing has been on the wall for some time now, any pocket of instability in the region from Iraq to Somalia, is going to attract Al-Qaeda and Co, and the chaos, porous borders and feuding factions that have characterised Gaza since Israel pulled out last summer are an ideal recruiting ground for the worst kinds of bloodthirsty extremism.
There is no vacum in the Mid East, either the Israeli government tries to initiate some kind of negotiations with the Hamas led government or someone else will intervene with some new hairbrained scheme that will destablise the region even further.
Meanwhile Kassam rockets still fly over the border from Gaza into Israel, and Israel sort of tries to fight terror from Gaza with a government that is scared of further escalation and an army treading on egg shells to avoid civilian casualties in densely populated areas while fighting an enemy who revels in them.
In other words, same old, same old, and if we're really lucky Olmert will go ahead with unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank too, ignoring the chaos that ensued from the Gaza withdrawal and us folks in central Israel will get kassam rockets coming our way as well.
Sometimes you just got to love being an Israeli civilian.
Did I mention how highly I regard our political leadership? If I wasn't caring for my baby girl I would have spent this summer with the demonstrators camped outside the government in Jerusalem's hot sun demanding that someone take responsibility for this summer's Lebanon debacle before they race on to the next snafu.
