It may just be that Israel will do what President Bush promised but failed to do: bring about some serious regime changes in the Greater Middle East by overthrowing the Islamic fundamentalist Hamas government and then destabilizing the decrepit Syrian dictatorial regime.

With Israeli troops poised to enter the Gaza Strip, the first goal is within Israel’s grasp.

One can only hope that by buzzing President Assad’s summer palace with fighter planes on Tuesday, Israel also was signaling that the second act will follow.

Muslim fundamentalists and rotting Arab dictators are the gnawing evils of the Middle East. They have a lot in common, most particularly their use of the tired and abused Palestinian Arab cause as the eternal vehicle to their taking and retaining power.

It happened with the dictators first. Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser took power in Egypt in 1952 to build a model of subsequent pan-Arab dictatorships premised on vows to unite everyone around the promise of eradicating Israel. He quickly became mired in two wars with Israel, in 1956 and 1967, when he lost the entire Sinai Peninsula.

Similarly, Hafez Al-Assad, the father of the current president of Syria, came to power in the late ’60s on a platform of upholding the Arab dream of unity. And what was it centered around? You guessed it.

In 1967, Assad went to war against Israel and lost the Golan Heights, which the Assads have yet to recover, even as they continue to urge the masses to liberate Palestine. It is not for nothing that Palestinian Arabs will tell you that Bashar Al-Assad will fight to the last Palestinian Arab.

Jordan’s King Hussein, another Arab potentate, followed Nasser and Hafez Al-Assad into the 1967 war and lost all of the West Bank of the Jordan River.

In Act II, Islamic fundamentalists with their many names – Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Islamic Republic of Iran – are again all focused on uniting the ummah of Islam around the liberation of Palestine.

Potentates or fundamentalists, the dynamics of their tactics always lead in one direction: another attack on Israel. Hamas was bound to get there sooner or later. It starts with renouncing all peace treaties signed by previously chastened Arab potentates – in this case, the unlamented Yasser Arafat. Then they promise a dash of military struggle, but the results are inevitably the same: suicide bombers, lame tunnels to Israel from Gaza, killing soldiers, and kidnapping Corporal Gilad Shalit, the Israeli army recruit.

Islamist fundamentalists and Arab potentates, in principle so very different, end up acting alike.

It is no coincidence that the commander of Hamas’s military wing, Khaled Meshaal, lives under the protection and sponsorship of the Assad regime in Damascus. Nor is it a coincidence that Hamas was born, established, and intellectually weaponized by Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood movement. The cycles are connecting.

Indeed, while Israel points a menacing finger at the Damascus-based Hamas leader, it also points at his benefactors – the Assads and Syria.

Is it time for America, Israel’s strategic partner in the Middle East, to get some help from its friends? I think so.

America has never failed to support Israel politically and militarily. Now we need the Israelis to lead, since we have so plainly failed to deliver the regime changes we promised.

The first order of business is for Israel to widen and deepen the military operation in Gaza, until it results in the arrest and jailing of all Hamas representatives starting with the prime minister and the foreign minister, who happen to be Hamas’s top leaders in Gaza. This time, Israel should not leave Gaza until every Palestinian Arab clearly understands that the clocks will never be turned back.

Then Israel should demand that Syria hands over the Hamas military leader – with the full knowledge it will not happen, but with the clear intention of attacking Syria when it does not.

The timing and circumstances are perfect. Not one Arab country would entertain the notion of helping Syria. Indeed, many would wish to see Mr. Assad dispatched.

Iran can yell a lot, but it will do little. Hezbollah in Lebanon, which may be tempted to jump into the fray, this time must suffer the relentless bombing of all the Shiite villages in south Lebanon, its power base.

Finally, it matters little whether the Israelis kill Mr. Assad, so long as they clearly humiliate him from the air and with special operations on the ground. Mr. Assad humiliated is Mr. Assad finished.

We have rarely asked our Israeli friends to do us a favor. Right now, we need them.