June 1982 marks the end of the "Shifting Sands" campaign set, but not end of turmoil in the Middle East; not by far.
Following the historic Camp David agreement (which eventually cost Anwar Sadat his life), the Arab-Israeli conflict changed form, from interstate warfare towards intra-state uprising and suppression, this time focused on the Arabs living in the territories taken over Israel in 1967. With Egypt largely removed from the strategic calculus, the Palestinians in the so-called "Occupied Territories" were left on their own, and decided to pursue their quest for statehood via armed uprising. This sparked broadly two periods of "Intifada", between 1987 and 1991 and between 2000 and 2004. These periods of violence gave birth to various new extremist factions, most notably Hamas and Fatah. This was also the beginnign of the construction of the Israeli wall surrounding the West Bank, a gesture that has freshly fanned fires of hatred.
The triumph of Hamas in the 2006 Palestinian elections led to outright civil war within the settlement communities and, combined with extensive rocket attacks against Israeli territories, pushed Israel into a large-scale offensive into Gaza in 2008 (Operation Cast Lead). The fallout of this operation and the subsequent ramifications are still felt today, with the additional complications that have risen as a result of the topplings of the secularist regimes in Egypt and Libya.
Meanwhile, Israel continues to very actively pursue its policy of preventing any of its neighboring states from "introducing nuclear weapons in the region" (yes, that is Israel claiming this).
On September 2007, in a virtual repeat of Opera, the Israeli air force undertook an air operation that destroyed a suspected nuclear reactor in Syria (Operation Orchard). Similarly to Mole Cricket 19, the IAF extensively used electronic warfare (some insist that this included network and cyber attacks) in order to penetrate Syrian air defences, strike the target and return apparently without losses.
Additionally, Israel continues to monitor, and actively interfere with, Iran's nuclear weapons program. Stuxnet, a computer "supervirus" targeted specifically against nuclear industrial equipment, was likely created in a joint US-Israeli project and used with devastating effect against Iran's uranium-processing centrifuges. In addition, a number of Iran's top nuclear scientists have been assasinated between 2010 and 2012, with Iran publicly blaming Mossad for this. Israel has not denied (or confirmed) complicity in these actions, and has repeatedly asserted its right to prevent a nuclear Iran by any means. (Ironically, in this endeavor Israel has found Saudi Arabia as an ally, themselves clearly alarmed by the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran. Geopolitical strategy does indeed make strange bedfellows). The threat of a new Osirak-style operation constantly looms on the horizon, although Iran's much more sprawling and extensive infrastructure would necessitate a much more massive air campaign.
Seventy years after the bloody events through which the Israeli state was formed, the sands of the Middle East are ever shifting. Can this region ever know true peace again?
"A man once jumped from the top floor of a burning house in which many members of his family had already perished. He managed to save his life; but as he was falling he hit a person standing down below and broke that person's legs and arms. The jumping man had no choice; yet to the man with the broken limbs he was the cause of his misfortune. If both behaved rationally, they would not become enemies. The man who escaped from the blazing house, having recovered, would have tried to help and console the other sufferer; and the latter might have realized that he was the victim of circumstances over which neither of them had control. But look what happens when these people behave irrationally. The injured man blames the other for his misery and swears to make him pay for it. The other, afraid of the crippled man's revenge, insults him, kicks him, and beats him up whenever they meet. The kicked man again swears revenge and is again punched and punished. The bitter enmity, so fortuitous at first, hardens and comes to overshadow the whole existence of both men and to poison their minds."
-- Isaac Deutscher