Word: gaza
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Hamas, through its Damascus-based leader Khaled Meshal, has indicated acceptance of Israel's basic requirement for a truce - an end to rocket fire - but only if the truce, along with ending Israeli military strikes, also opens the border crossings that would allow normalization of economic life in Gaza. Hamas insists that it ended the cease-fire precisely because the truce had failed to lift the economic siege of Gaza...
While some Israeli political leaders have spun this episode as a decisive showdown, Israel knows that its military offensive is unlikely to end Hamas' political control of Gaza or even to eliminate the movement's capacity to fire rockets into Israel. Israel's objective is to force Hamas to stop all attacks on Israel from Gaza. Or, to put it another way, to restore the cease-fire Hamas abandoned on Dec. 19, on terms more acceptable to Israel. Polls taken on the first day of the bombing showed that while 81% of Israelis supported the military campaign, only 6% believed...
Despite the heavy casualties inflicted by days of bombing, Israel believes it has not seriously impaired Hamas' ability to fire rockets at Israel. But by targeting the basic infrastructure of Hamas governance in Gaza - everything from police posts, a government building and a university to the private homes of Hamas leaders - Israel is trying to set a crippling price for continued rocket attacks...
Still, Israel's next step remains unclear: its armored units, poised to drive into Gaza, have not yet been ordered to advance, and the Israeli offensive remains confined to air strikes. U.S. Defense officials have told TIME that the chances of a successful ground assault would have been higher if it had been launched earlier in the bombing campaign, not several days into it. But Israel is well aware that a ground assault is precisely what Hamas wants. There is little the militants can do against Israeli air power, but they believe they can bloody Israel's armored columns...
Hamas' demand on the border crossings, though, is directed as much at Egypt as it is at Israel. Hamas' primary objective, in fact, is to open the border gate between Egypt and Gaza at Rafah, which was closed by Cairo at the request of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas when his forces were driven out of Gaza by Hamas 18 months ago. Rafah, as the Palestinians' only entry point to the outside world not controlled by Israel, represents the closest thing to a symbol of Palestinian sovereignty, which is precisely why Hamas is so keen to control...