Hillary Clinton is going to have her hands full when she is officially sworn in as secretary of state. Not the least of her problems is going to be mediating peace in the Middle East, particularly between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

In the seventh straight day of violence in Gaza Friday, Israel bombed a mosque it claimed was used to store weapons, and leveled the homes of some Hamas operatives. Hamas is an Islamist group labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S.

Israel last weekend launched an aerial campaign to put a stop to weeks of Palestinian rocket fire from Gaza. Israel is trying to take out Hamas’s leaders. An Israeli bomb on Thursday took out Nizar Rayyan, 49, the highest-ranking terrorist killed by Israel in four years.

Israel is allowing foreigners, many of them married to Palestinians, to leave Gaza before more violence ensues. The New York Times reports about 300 spouses of Palestinians, including women from Russia, Romania, Ukraine and Western Europe, began leaving early on Friday with the help of diplomats from their countries.

"I want to come back when the situation allows it. I have nothing in Ukraine," Alla Semaks, a 34-year-old Ukrainian woman married to a Palestinian who evacuated, told the Times. "My children are very afraid for their father. We fear there will be an Israeli ground offensive."

So no doubt, Gaza will be a priority on Clinton’s to-do list, should the violence continue much longer. The problem of Hamas won’t go away so long as it continues to be confrontational. But it’s not just that region that poses serious threats to itself, its neighbors and others. Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and a bevy of other countries also merit much attention.

CNN says outgoing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has briefed both Clinton and President-elect Barack Obama about what is playing out in the Middle East.

"There’s going to be a desire to think the new (Obama) administration is better," David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy told CNN. "An administration that prioritizes the Arab-Israeli conflict will be seen as a breath of fresh air."

The New York Times notes that although Clinton brings many strengths to the Middle East problem — not least of which is Bill Clinton’s efforts to broker a peace deal toward the end of his presidency — some on both sides of the war may be skeptical of where Clinton’s alliances lie.

She’s going to have to prove that, despite being a loyal friend to Israel, she’s also willing to work with the Palestinians – as well as Egyptians and other Arab countries in the region – to put pressure on the Israeli government when needed.

"She’s going to have to demonstrate her independence from Israel," said Aaron David Miller, a public policy analyst at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, told the Times. "Our interests are inevitably going to diverge from their interests. We cannot be an ‘amen corner’ for them."

Barack Obama hasn’t said much on the current crisis, going along with her mantra of "one president at a time." But the foreign press is blasting him for his silence. 

Knowing Hillary, she’s probably already somehow working behind the scenes to try to get into the thick of what’s happening, so she can hit the ground running once she’s sworn into office. She’s got a lot on her plate, but we have no doubt she can handle it — and handle it well. Good luck, (soon-to-be) Madame Secretary.