Word: gaza
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...Aviv park last Thursday, more than 40,000 people gathered to remind Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that the fierce 34-day attack on Lebanon failed to achieve one crucial goal: to free two Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hizballah militants. And a smaller but no less lethal military operation in Gaza - in which more than 200 Palestinians were killed - has yet to rescue a third Israeli soldier who was grabbed in June by Palestinian militants...
...parliamentarians belonging to the Hamas-led government, who were arrested after Shalit's capture, presumably to be used as bargaining chips. A cell of the military wing of Hamas, along with other Palestinian militant groups, is thought to have carried out the raid on an Israeli army post near Gaza in which Shalit was captured. The Israelis are also holding thousands of Palestinians for alleged terrorist crimes, and some of these may also be thrown into the swap...
...Hamas sources in Gaza tell TIME that talks over Shalit's release could lay the groundwork for a wider truce between Israel and the Palestinian authorities. Hamas sources say their militant leaders are offering a cease-fire and will stop lobbing rockets into Israel from Gaza if Israel lifts its blockade on the Palestinian coastal strip. Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres also made clear Tuesday that the return of Shalit would likely be followed by talks between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Olmert - a significant development since Abbas looks set to work together with Hamas in a national unity...
...Israeli military officials say they haven't given up on the possibility of staging a rescue operation to free the hostages. Palestinians in Gaza say that Israeli intelligence officers are squeezing their informers for any scrap of evidence that might lead them to Shalit's captors. In Lebanon, the task is more daunting; the last war exposed that Israeli intelligence lacks the contacts to penetrate Hizballah as deeply as they have the Palestinian militant outfits. During the campaign in Lebanon, according to various Israeli news reports, Israeli commandos raided a hospital in Baalbek, where an Iranian doctor had supposedly treated...
...would be a mistake to become overly dismissive of the long-term prospects for democracy in the Middle East. That would be like writing off democracy in Europe because of the failure of the revolutions of 1848. It's true that the governments that purport to rule in Baghdad, Gaza City and Beirut cannot control the unelected militias that rampage through the streets. But that should be a sign that five years after 9/11, the problem in the Arab world today remains not too much democracy but too little...