Word: gaza
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...have no intention of drowning in the Gaza swamp." --AMIR PERETZ, Israeli Defense Minister, saying his country does not plan to fully reoccupy Gaza. Israel seized three small sectors of the territory last week as a buffer against Palestinian missile fire, which has showered southern Israel since hostilities escalated two weeks ago following the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier by Palestinian militants...
Ghalia Baroud's every emotion is on display when she speaks of her son, Ibrahim. Sitting in her tidy home in Gaza's Jabaliya refugee camp, surrounded by pictures of Ibrahim - jailed since 1986, at the age of 21, for taking part in attacks on Israeli troops - she is by turns furious and woeful. She doesn't deny her son's actions; what almost all Israelis see as terrorism, she sees as justified resistance. But when asked about the parents of Corporal Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held [an error occurred while processing this directive] captive by Palestinian militants since...
...Security Minister Avi Dichter indicated Friday that Israel may be moving toward a prisoner swap - as demanded by Shalit's captors - in order to get its soldier home. That would be a massive victory for the hard-liners in Hamas - in the same way that Israel's withdrawal from Gaza without negotiating any agreements with the Palestinian leadership was taken on the street as vindication of the violent strategy of Hamas, which had not yet entered politics...
...Abbas and Haniyeh won't be the only losers if the crisis ends with a prisoner exchange. Israel, for all the violence it unleashed on Gaza in the wake of Shalit's capture, will have been seen in Palestinian eyes to have been humbled. And U.S. influence in the region is unlikely to be boosted...
...above the realpolitik needed to manage a volatile region. Nor is it inclined to restrain Israel from actions that may have irreversible negative consequences. It has, in other words, left itself little scope to orchestrate a calming of the situation through pressure both on Israel and key Arab players. Gaza therefore reveals a certain paradox in the U.S.-Israel relationship: the closer the Bush administration has positioned itself alongside Israel, the less valuable its friendship may have become. After all, the best kind of friend for Israel is one capable of helping it and its neighbors carve out a path...