Word: fray
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...Early on, the Israelis were reluctant to send lots of troops into the fray; Prime Minister Ehud Olmert wanted to keep down casualties and reassure the international community that Israel had no intention of grabbing real estate in Lebanon. And, according to military sources, the Israelis also lacked on-the ground intelligence, so they underestimated Hizballah' s strength and its determination to punch it out. Despite the Israeli offensive, Hizballah still managed to sling over 2,000 rockets onto Israel...
...those who believe that further spasms of violence will force Washington and its allies to give up their push for fundamental change. And there are worse possible outcomes. Iraq could become the launching pad for a full-on war between Sunni and Shi'ite, with Iran entering the fray on the Shi'ite side and the Arab states defending Iraq's Sunnis. In the bitter Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88, more than a million people were killed or wounded--and any repeat of that carnage would take place in the context of a region where at least one power...
...analyst Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies sees Rice's late entrance into the diplomatic fray as prudent: "At this point, both Hizballah and the Israelis feel they can advance their cause by turning the screw a few more times," he says. "That's not where you want to start a negotiation. You want to start when both sides are starting to look around and say, where's this really going...
...against Lebanon have provoked Shi'ite radicals in Iraq, who are threatening to attack U.S. troops in retaliation. The most chilling scenario is that the Israeli-Lebanese dispute could grow into a wider war, if Hizballah's backers in Iran or Syria decide or are provoked to join the fray--a possibility that grew when Israeli intelligence claimed on Saturday that Iranian forces helped Hizballah fighters hit an Israeli ship off the coast of Beirut, killing one sailor. (Iran denies the charge.) "It will never completely cool down," says Edward Luttwak, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International...
...there is no doubt that the event has had unmistakable and immediate consequences, most notably the subsequent announcement by Hamas that its military wing was abandoning a cease-fire it had largely held to since early 2005. Since then, it has re-entered the fray with a volley of rockets, raising the frightening prospect that sustained violence could start anew - the kind of violence that has already irrevocably marked the lives of the Ragolskys and the Ghabens, along with many others...