Gaza was always there. In the nineteen-fifties, it was the region of simmering animosity from which fedayeen terrorists came to blow up homes and murder farmers in the remote villages of southern Israel. In the sixties, it was the hub of Palestinian refugees who lived a miserable life in the wretched camps in which Arab nations let them rot after Israel drove them out of their old homes in Palestine. In the seventies, it was the occupied strip of coastal land which the Israeli Army and the Israeli secret service kept under tight control following General Ariel Sharon’s brutal crackdown on the local resistance movement. In the eighties, it was the cradle of the Palestinian popular uprising, the Intifada, that led tens of thousands of desperate, rock-throwing youngsters to revolt against Israel’s occupation. In the nineties, it was the launching pad of Palestinian suicide bombers who undermined the Oslo peace process by killing Israeli civilians in Tel Aviv as they were killing themselves. In 2005 it was the decolonized territory in which twenty-four Jewish settlements were demolished and from which eight thousand settlers were uprooted so the Palestinians would have—for the first time in history—a (tiny) piece of land that was not occupied by an oppressive alien power.

Yet in 2006 and 2007, semi-liberated Gaza was taken over by Hamas, which crushed the Palestinian moderates while establishing the first mini-Islamic republic in the Arab world.

So in 2008 and 2009 the new fundamentalist entity saw some thirteen hundred of its citizens and warriors killed by the Israel Defense Force’s bloody Operation Cast Lead, carried out in response to the firing of hundreds of primitive Qassam rockets from Gaza that terrorized a quarter of a million Israelis living it its vicinity. Cast Lead ended with a cease-fire—as will the present conflict, if the deal announced Wednesday by Hillary Clinton, in Cairo, holds—but by this summer increased rocket-firing and border clashes eroded the three-year-old truce. Once again, it was clear that something must be done regarding Gaza. And yet it was clear that whatever would be done regarding Gaza will would not resolve Gaza. For after Israel tried occupying Gaza and tried peace in Gaza and tried unilateralism in Gaza and tried brutality in Gaza we learned that nothing works in Gaza. With more than a million and a half inhabitants squeezed into a hundred and forty square miles of despair, Gaza has no solution, at least none based in reality. Gaza contains within it all the poison of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For Gaza it not merely a place. It is where all the sins of the Jewish national movement and all the sins of the Palestinian national movement have created an unbearable human condition that forms the bile duct of the Middle East.

It is within this context that Operation Pillar of Defense was launched, on November 14th. There were no illusions this time. No lofty expectations. After having gone through the traumas of the failed 2006 Lebanon War and the notorious 2008 Gaza offensive, Israelis have learned that there are no happy wars in this day, and age and hence they are no longer trigger-happy. They know that wrestling with Gaza will not lead to victory or glory or peace. So all that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers wanted when they instructed the Israeli Defense Forces to terminate the life of the Hamas military commander Ahmed Jabari, a week ago, was to reëstablish deterrence and to buy some (truce) time. Unlike previous Israeli war campaigns, this one was not ambitious whatsoever in its aims. Its real target was maintenance: to sustain for a few more years the ultimately unsustainable, hostile coexistence between Israel and Gaza.

The lesson of the second Lebanon War was internalized: no confusion this time and no strategic hesitation. The operation unleashed was well-planned and based on remarkable intelligence. The lesson of Cast Iron was internalized, too: no mass killing this time, despite wrenching civilian losses, and no on-ground forces pushed into highly populated areas while being shielded by a wall of fire whose human ramifications are catastrophic. Neither Prime Minister Netanyahu nor Defense Minister Ehud Barak came across as a blood-thirsty war monger; they appeared to be trying to carry out a sophisticated operation with caution and care.

This is why the Israeli public rallied around the campaign. Opposition leaders did not dare criticize it, while the major peace movements did not take to the streets with the traditional ritual of anti-war candle marches. Instead, there was a surprising degree of international legitimacy, internal legitimacy, and regional understanding. President Barack Obama did not utter a word of condemnation. (The American killing of so many innocent Afghan and Pakistani civilians with drone attacks may have made it difficult, if not impossible, to do so.) After responding aggressively to any violation of Turkish sovereignty, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan kept relatively quiet, too. Even Egypt’s recently elected Islamist President, Mohammed Morsi, played a highly constructive role in trying to put out the fire. While the astonishing Iron Dome system intercepted most incoming Hamas rockets and prevented an Israeli blood bath that would have led to a full-scale war, a political Iron Dome was given to Israel by the United States, Turkey, and Egypt. Hamas got it wrong: it may turn out that the new, predominantly Islamic Middle East still has enough moderates and pragmatists to put enormous pressure on Gaza’s extremists to stop firing rockets into Israel and accept a reasonable cease-fire that would give Israel security and would give Hamas de-facto recognition.

In a sense, this was the real significance of the Netanyahu-Barak operation. For unlike all previous rounds of Israel-Gaza violence, this one was carried out in the uncertain strategic environment brought about by the Arab awakening of 2011.

And this uncertainty was unprecedented. No one knew how the new physics of the new Middle East really works. It seemed quite possible that an escalation might draw Egypt, Turkey, and the Arab masses into the fire. Yet Pillar of Defense did not get out of hand, did not spiral out of control. A hundred and forty Palestinians and five Israelis lost their lives, but the violence didn’t spark a regional conflict. It actually proved that some of the new Islamist players are quite reasonable and responsible. It also proved that when Israel manifests sanity, some of its neighbors respond with sanity, too. A bit of good news, really. Amid the killing and the terror, still good news. Perhaps, with some luck, Gaza and Israel would find a way to contain their mutual animosity, at least for some time.

Ari Shavit is a senior columnist for Haaretz. His book about Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be published by Random House in May.

Photograph of emergency services at the scene of an bus explosion in Tel Aviv today. Ziv Oren/Getty.