This article was originally published by The Mercury News and is republished with permission.

Palestinians inspect the site of an Israeli missile strike in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. (Hatem Omar, Maan Images)

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has thrown down the gauntlet to "totally change the rules of the game" in Gaza. By killing 230 Palestinians on his first day, he certainly did change the rules. The Israeli military set a new low in its callous disregard for the lives of Palestinians it has subjugated for 60 years.

But the emerging question is whether President-elect Barack Obama will also prove to be a game changer. Will he break with decades of American presidents who have indulged Israel's dominion over the Palestinians? Thus far, Obama himself has not offered up the customary American obeisance to Israel's self-described security needs.

Israel's war crimes must not be condoned if he hopes to have any chance of effecting a peace deal as a tough-minded mediator. Nor should the American public be misled into thinking this is a war against Hamas. Israeli officials used the same talking points in 2002 when they destroyed the Palestinian Authority infrastructure in the West Bank. Israel gets to avoid negotiations toward a peace based on two states when it escalates conflict and impairs the Palestinian ability to self-govern.

Hamas agreed in 2006 to accept negotiations led by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas toward a final status agreement based on the June 4, 1967, lines, indicating its acceptance of the two-state solution. And in 2008, Hamas' political bureau head, Khaled Meshaal, reiterated his commitment to that agreement.

This is a war against Palestinians - approximately half of whom in Gaza are under age 16. A visit to one of Gaza's hospitals curdles the blood of even the most experienced human rights advocates. My friends in Gaza tell me that walking the hospital halls is an unbearable agony. They lack medicine, equipment, electricity and the infrastructure necessary to treat the hundreds of injured Palestinians.

No American would tolerate the devastation they have endured since Dec. 27; nor would they accept the cruel siege of the last 18 months or the lack of equal rights or freedom for the past decades.

Yet the conundrum can be solved if Israel realizes that its long-term security is based on Palestinians' right to live free and have equal rights. For 60 years Palestinians have rejected servitude with nonviolent resistance, grass-roots mobilization and, some, with violence. While violence is always abhorrent and should be condemned, there is sadly no surprise in this.

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People everywhere resist foreign domination.

This is where Obama can make break with decades of failed American policy. Change is undoubtedly why Americans elected Obama. Surveying eight years of total failure under Bush in the Middle East, the American public presumably recognized new thinking is desperately required.

Obama has a narrow window in which to deliver. All eyes in the region are on him - and the American-made F-16s terrorizing Palestinian civilians. He must display the fortitude necessary to stand up to an ally and the Israel lobby. Obama must assert in an authentic American voice that the U.S. backs Palestinian freedom and will not tolerate Israel's expansionist West Bank ambitions that sabotage any prospect of a viable Palestinian state.

Palestinians may soon recognize that an independent state is no longer a realistic possibility among all the settlements and bypass roads Israel has illegally constructed. If so, Israel may yet regret its failure to accept the eminently fair Arab Peace Initiative - full peace by 22 neighboring countries in return for a Palestinian state based on international principles.

Some day soon, Palestinians may move on to insist, like black South Africans, on equal rights in one state. And like black South Africans, the numbers and fundamental principles of justice will be on their side.

The Obama administration will have the last shot at a two-state solution. This cannot wait.

Sam Jadallah is a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and former Microsoft executive. He wrote this article for the Mercury News.