Over the past few days I've read many bloggers expressing the tried and true sentiment of all is hopeless in the Middle East, it's a "cycle of violence" meme. Something that has become a popular explanation over the last couple of years, in a weak attempt to explain why the conflict has to date been insoluble. Sorry that just is not the case, IMHO we are seeing a historic turning point in relations in the region. This from Riel World View:

Current news from the Middle East may be terrible, even horrific, but it, for very good reasons, is far from depressing. That's a better characterization of the news from the region for the last fifty years. We are experiencing a defining moment in world history and it's far from depressing.

I think Riel World View  has it completely right, we are now starting to see the end of business as usual in the Middle East. This has also been noticed and commented on over at Iraq The Model:

The key point in this strategy is to keep the half-solution alive. This method proved successful in keeping the despotic regimes in power for decades and these regimes think this strategy is still valid. What makes them this way is their interpretation of international comments which came almost exactly as they always do; calls for restraint and urging a cease-fire which they (Iran and her allies) think will mean eventually going back to negotiations which they know very well how to keep moving in an empty circle.

That was clear from Nesrallah's earlier speech when he said "whether today or a month or a year from now, the Israelis will sooner or later find themselves forced to negotiate…"

Of course Nesrallah did not talk about the rest of his hidden policy which is provoking another crisis once the first one cools down.

The same is going to happen in Iraq if the situation did not change from the way it is today and maybe one day the Iraqi south will be similar to the Lebanese south and we will probably see the militias embarrass the country with "adventures" just like Nesrallah is doing now, that's of course is what nobody here wants to see; nobody but Iran.

The question is did Iran make the right calculations this time? And is the world willing to accept more of those half-solutions?
I don't think so…

I don't think so either, when the history of this time we are now living in is written, in say another fifty to a hundred years from now. This will be seen as the moment in time when things actually started their progress towards a real solution to, and cessation of the so called, "cycle of violence". That has been the plight of mid-east, or more specifically, Israeli, Arab relations for the past 50 years.