Israel faces a moment of reckoning in its decades-long clash with Iran

The decisions that Israel's war cabinet takes in the hours and days ahead about what comes next in its now open shooting war with Iran could represent a pivotal moment in the history of the conflict in the Middle East.

From Iran's view, its unprecedented overnight drone and missile attacks on military targets in Israel represent a settling of scores that should not trigger further military escalation.

But for many Israelis, Iran's actions amount to an outright declaration of war. 

Should, as the United States and other Western nations are reportedly urging, Israel accept the so-called "off ramp" Iran claims it has offered, or will Israeli leaders forge ahead with further military escalation against the Islamic regime, possibly hitting targets in Iran itself?

The early indications are that Israel's government is strongly leaning toward the latter.

"This is something that will have to have a major response," said Likud Party Knesset member Hanoch Milwidsky, a close ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"You cannot have an attack like this left untreated," he told the BBC Sunday morning.

While the attack by Iran's military on targets in Israel was certainly a first, it was also not a surprise — nor did it appear designed to inflict maximal damage.

The country's Islamic regime had given plenty of notice that something significant was about to happen, and Israel had days to prepare its population and to beef up its air defences.

Even after the first drones were launched, Israel had hours to take measures to shoot them down.

Israel's military says 99 per cent of the missiles and drones were intercepted and that the few that did get through inflicted only minimal damage on a military base in the country's south. 

While Israel and Iran have been waging a shadow war against each other for decades, the trigger for this latest escalation came two weeks ago after a suspected Israeli strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria, which killed two senior Iranian military commanders.

The attack annihilated the building and killed 16 people, including two civilian bystanders, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Israel has not officially claimed responsibility — nor for any of the other assassinations or precision strikes it is suspected to have made on targets in Iran over the years — but Israeli leaders have also not denied they were behind it.