Word: civiliane
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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...
...acted in response to pressures to protect its citizenry from rocket attacks, but it is probable that such attacks will continue and possibly intensify as a result. That will draw Israeli ground troops into Gaza, where they, too, will suffer casualties at the hands of Palestinian gunmen. The Palestinian civilian death toll will be far higher, which will, in turn, isolate Israel on the diplomatic front - even those Arab regimes that would have been discreetly pleased to see Hamas dealt a harsh blow (because they fear the Islamist movement is becoming a model for those challenging their own governments) will...
...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...
...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...
...used Pakistan as their base to organize their attacks but that Pakistan's shadowy but powerful military spy outfit, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), may once again be linked to the radicals allegedly behind the late November assault on India's financial center. The old, poisonous contest between civilian and military leadership seems to be emerging again...