Word: hezbollah
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...surprised if they find themselves spending more time with their units in the near future. Three Syrian soldiers were reported killed and a number were injured in the air strike on a Syrian radar facility near Beirut, bombed in retribution for a Saturday rocket attack by Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas that killed an Israeli soldier in the Shebaa Farms district that abuts Lebanon, Syria and Israel. And the Syrians condemned the move as a "dangerous escalation...
...purpose of the Israeli raid, said Sharon spokesman Raanan Gishin, was to signal the Syrians that "there's a new government in Israel and the rules of the game have changed." The Israelis insist that reining in Hezbollah is the responsibility of the Syrian army, which dominates Lebanon and has over the years assisted and encouraged the Shiite guerrilla movement in its war with Israel. But the "rules have changed" in the sense that the latest air strike reproduces Sharon's strategy in response to the Palestinian uprising - harshly punishing the Palestinian Authority for strikes against Israelis launched from areas...
...that Syria has any appetite for a direct confrontation with Israel's vastly superior military. The response from across Israel's northern border is far more likely to come in the form of escalated Hezbollah strikes. The guerrilla movement uses a Lebanese claim to the Shebaa Farms district (not recognized by the United Nations) as a pretext to persist with attacks on Israeli forces there. In reality, however, Hezbollah's actions are more of an expression of solidarity with the Palestinians - on its own part as well as on the part of Iran, Hezbollah's primary backer - and their ability...
...Despite Israel's tough talk and actions, though, Damascus is unlikely to rein in Hezbollah. Syria's position has always been that it would ensure Israeli security in Lebanon only as part of a comprehensive peace plan that included Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, captured from Syria in 1967. Negotiations to that end were begun by the late Yitzhak Rabin, more tentatively pursued through back channels by Benjamin Netanyahu and taken almost to the point of conclusion by Ehud Barak. But Sharon made clear in an interview published over the weekend that he believes Israeli withdrawal from the Golan...
...grown at Arafat's expense amid the rage and despair in the embattled Palestinian territories. The attacks that have prompted the heavy Israeli response of the past week were authored by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and a group identifying itself as a Palestinian chapter of the Lebanese Islamist guerrilla movement Hezbollah. None of them have any interest in agreements reached between Arafat and the Israelis, and the Palestinian leader may be reluctant to take them on unless he's getting something in return. Then again, by remaining politically paralyzed in the face of an increasingly violent impasse, the Palestinian leader...