Word: destroying
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...body blow - and may yet prompt a furious retaliation - Israeli officials did not characterize it as a "targeted killing." Indeed, Israeli military-intelligence sources tell TIME that Rayan was killed when he remained in his home after Israel had phoned and ordered those inside to evacuate - before striking to destroy command facilities in the house. Israel says it has used this "knock on the roof" practice of phoning warnings about strikes on the homes of Hamas leaders throughout the current campaign. Israeli officials say the campaign thus far has not significantly targeted or damaged Hamas' leadership and chain of command...
...time available. Israel has made clear from the outset that its objective is to attain a cease-fire on its own terms that will last at least a year or two. While they hope to weaken Hamas, Israel's leaders are aware that they're unlikely to destroy the organization, and among their primary concerns is to avoid getting dragged into a quagmire. Destroying Hamas would take a massive invasion of all of Gaza, but it would also require an open-ended reoccupation of the territory, a trap Olmert and Barak will avoid at all costs...
Still, many Israelis believe their "deterrent power," weakened in Lebanon two years ago, will be re-established only if ground troops go in to destroy more of Hamas' infrastructure. Right now, it's not clear whether it is political calculations or simply the weather - which restricts the ability of the Israel Defense Forces to fly ground-support missions - that keeps Israel from sending in its armored columns. Reports in the Israeli media on Tuesday that Israel may hold off on bombing for 48 hours in search of a truce were quickly denied...
...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 with the movement in order to ensure security along Israel's southern flank - hence the combination of "calm for calm" and the unrelenting economic siege. But even "calm for calm" represented what Israel saw as an unacceptable humiliation...
...been a graveyard for Israeli military ambitions. The 2006 war helped ruin the political career of Ehud Olmert, the outgoing Israeli Prime Minister. But with less than two months before leaving office, Olmert and his cabinet appear to have absorbed some of the lessons of the bungled attempt to destroy Hizballah in 2006. In that conflict two and a half years ago, Hizballah defied Israel's aerial onslaught to maintain relentless barrages of rockets into northern Israel. Olmert found himself bogged down in an unwinnable conflict...