Word: hezbollah
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Assad's dilemma is complicated by the fact that the Hezbollah guerrillas who have made occupation of south Lebanon untenable for Israel, far from content to be seen as pawns of Damascus, have their own agenda at odds with Syria's. "While Syria wants to negotiate Israeli withdrawal as part of a package that includes the Golan Heights, Hezbollah would prefer a unilateral withdrawal that would allow them to proclaim themselves the first army ever to have liberated Arab territory from Israeli control," says MacLeod. "But despite a potential conflict with Syria, Hezbollah's enjoying a surge of support throughout...
...election. "Barak came in promising peace with the Syrians, but that's broken down," says Beyer. "He promised to produce a final agreement with the Palestinians, but instead those talks are absolutely frozen." And his promise of unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon by July looks more than shaky as Hezbollah guerrillas fight on unrelentingly. The consequence of breakdowns on the Syrian and Palestinian front, and Israel's bombing of Lebanon in response to Hezbollah attacks, has seen Barak's store of goodwill among his neighbors dramatically depleted. "The atmosphere of the peace process has soured once again," says Beyer. "And that...
...least one foreign power is shedding no tears over the faltering Middle East peace process. Last fall, administration sources tell TIME, Iran called leaders of the terrorist groups Hezbollah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad to Tehran and urged them to coordinate their attacks against Israel in the hope of derailing then promising peace overtures. "They were pulling together their terrorist friends to try to destroy the process," says an administration official...
...Lebanon-based Hezbollah, a long-time Iranian ally, is believed to be acting as intermediary to the Palestinian groups Hamas and PIJ, which have traditionally had little contact with either Hezbollah or Tehran. In recent weeks fighting has flared in southern Lebanon between Israeli forces and Hezbollah guerrillas. Administration hawks say the attacks show that Iran remains committed to state-sponsored terrorism despite progress by reformers aligned with President Mohammed Khatami. Sources say the Iranian intelligence service, MOIS, which had stepped away from involvement with terrorists, has re-entered the fray by allowing its elite KUDZ force - special teams that...
...Syrians may actually have restrained Hezbollah up to a point - the guerrilla movement pointedly refrained from delivering its expected salvo of Katyushka rockets into northern Israeli towns following the air raids, concentrating their fire exclusively on Israeli troops occupying Lebanese territory - but they're plainly in no hurry to relieve the mounting domestic political pressure on Barak to withdraw from Lebanon. The Israeli prime minister set himself a July deadline for withdrawing his forces, unilaterally if necessary. Barak would prefer, of course, to have negotiated security guarantees with Syria to cover that retreat. Despite ratcheting up the pressure, though, Damascus...