Word: gaza
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...erupted once more--and no one knows how bad and destabilizing it may get. Israel's ferocious response to Hizballah's kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers, which came a little more than two weeks after Palestinian militants from Hamas seized an Israeli corporal and smuggled him into the Gaza Strip, has produced the worst Arab-Israeli cross-border conflict since Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The great bulk of the pain last week was felt in Lebanon, as Israel bombarded the country, including sites in Beirut, killing more than 100 Lebanese by Saturday evening, almost all civilians. Hizballah...
ISRAEL Although he lacks significant military experience, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is fighting a two-front battle: against Hizballah to the north in Lebanon and Hamas to the south in Gaza. Olmert has ruled out a prisoner exchange to win the return of kidnapped Israelis, and says the operations in Lebanon will end when Hizballah is disarmed THE BATTLEGROUND...
...understand why the Arab militants of Hamas and Hizballah are picking a fight with Israel now, you might start with an election. In January, Hamas, which is sworn to Israel's destruction, won the Palestinian general vote. The Hamas political leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniya, who fashions himself a relative moderate, became Prime Minister, and set about trying to prove Hamas could govern. Boycotted financially and politically by the U.S. and the E.U., Haniya in late June hammered out an agreement with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on a unified platform that would implicitly recognize Israel if it would withdraw...
...provoked by the hostage taking, Olmert's government is also trying to settle other scores. Palestinian militants have been regularly firing homemade Qassam rockets, a Hamas specialty, into Israel from Gaza--some 200 in June and 100 so far in July. Hizballah has occasionally also lobbed rockets across the border since the Israeli pullout. And Israel has watched in dismay as Hizballah has built border fortifications, sometimes 30 feet from Israeli outposts and stockpiled with what Israel estimates to be 13,000 rockets, including upgraded ones that can reach at least as far as the cities of Haifa and Tiberias...
...Lebanon is intended to send a broader message too, at a time when Israel has largely given up on trying to negotiate for peace and security and instead is trying to establish them on its own. The strongest argument made by domestic critics of Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip last year was that the country's enemies would think it was weak and frightened and thus would be encouraged to strike out. Olmert's dual counterblasts are aimed at changing that impression--among those who believe it--to make the idea of attacking Israel prohibitively scary...