Word: aires
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...Israel continues its air offensive against Hamas in the Gaza strip, one unsettling specter has emerged from the recent past: the failed campaign to crush the Lebanese militants of Hizballah in July 2006. Lebanon was clearly on the minds of Israel's military planners. Even as Hamas targets were pounded in Gaza, Israeli jets flew low-level saber-rattling sorties over southern Lebanon, a warning to militants not to launch reprisal attacks along Israel's volatile northern border. (See pictures from Israel's 2006 war in Lebanon...
This time, however, the Israeli government is earning praise in the Israeli media for its handling of the assault against Hamas. In particular, analysts cite the months of intelligence gathering and high level of secrecy in planning the air strikes. The timing of the first raids on Saturday appears to have caught Hamas by surprise, accounting for the high number of casualties among the militants...
...Peres, who initially was considered a certainty to win the election, found his dovish reputation was working against him amid a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings and deadly Hizballah attacks against Israeli troops then occupying south Lebanon. In an attempt to create a tough-guy image, he ordered an air and artillery blitz against Hizballah in Lebanon, an operation dubbed Grapes of Wrath. However, Grapes of Wrath turned into a political disaster for Peres when a week into the assault Israeli artillery gunners shelled a UNIFIL base in south Lebanon killing over 100 Lebanese civilians sheltering there. The operation fizzled...
...air strikes that began Saturday, in which Palestinians claim at least 280 people have been killed, marked a dramatic escalation of the high-stakes poker game between Israel and Hamas. Over the past seven weeks, each side has calculated the odds of outbidding the other. Hamas - and the civilian population it represents - paid a heavy price in human casualties over the weekend, but it may nonetheless retain a strategic advantage. The radical Palestinian movement that governs Gaza appears to have underestimated Israel's readiness to launch a military campaign in response to an escalation of Palestinian rocket fire onto Israel...
...rockets, possibly using some of the longer-range weapons smuggled into Gaza over the past year to strike Israeli towns such as Ashdod and Ashkelon. Hamas may even activate suicide-bomber cells in East Jerusalem or the West Bank. Israel had prepared for the first possibility by deploying additional air-raid protection in towns as far as 25 miles (40 km) from the Gaza border. And it will probably follow up the air strikes with ground attacks aimed at neutralizing as much as it can of Hamas' military capability. But Hamas has good reason to expect that Israel's military...