Word: campaigners
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...cease-fire proved to be untenable. "Calm for calm" - as Israelis call the agreement to simply refrain from military strikes and rocket fire - didn't work for Hamas, since it was unable to deliver economic relief to the long-suffering Palestinian civilian population. Indeed, the renewed campaign of rocket fire by Hamas was widely interpreted as a bargaining tactic aimed at securing more favorable truce terms, particularly lifting the economic siege. Israel, in the meantime, suffered from confusion in its goals. On the one hand, it wanted to destroy the Hamas government; on the other hand, it sought to coexist...
Still, the rival candidates would do well to recall the outcome of an earlier military offensive waged during an Israeli election campaign. In April 1996, then Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres was floundering in a stiff electoral battle with the very same Netanyahu. 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...
...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's southern towns and cities. This is, however, an Israeli election season in which polls show voters moving so quickly to the right that even the hawkish front runner, Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu, is losing support to parties more extreme...
...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 campaign will be limited, and it believes it can come out ahead in the strategic equation despite the heavy cost in blood that will be paid by its own leaders and militants, as well as by Palestinian civilians...
...under the boundary fence. Hamas needed a truce, but one on more favorable terms than what had applied in the preceding six months. During that time, Israel had largely stopped military attacks in Gaza but kept in place a crippling economic siege as part of a Bush Administration-backed campaign to pressure the Palestinian civilian population to overthrow the Hamas government it had elected in 2006. (See pictures of the Middle East crisis...