Word: hizballah
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...blood red of vengeance. The escalation of violence began Feb. 14 when Arab guerrillas infiltrated an Israeli army camp and hacked three soldiers to death. Two days later in southern Lebanon, Israeli Apache helicopters fired three missiles on the motorcade of Sheik Abbas Musawi, leader of the Iranian- backed Hizballah. The long-planned strike killed not only Musawi but also his wife and six-year-old son. From there, hostilities spiraled rapidly. Hizballah launched scores of Katyusha rockets into Israel's self-declared security zone in southern Lebanon and into the Galilee panhandle of Israel proper. The Jewish state fired...
...circumstances, more than people, made the difference. Hizballah began to run into trouble in 1989. Iran was in terrible straits after eight years of war with Iraq. The fiercely anti-American Khomeini died and his successor, President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, decided it was necessary to cool revolutionary rhetoric in order to woo desperately needed trade and investment from the West. The slow shift in Iran toward more pragmatic policies to end the country's pariah status was the biggest single reason the last U.S. hostages in Lebanon were finally released...
Iraq's invasion of Kuwait marked the beginning of the end of the hostage drama. First, 15 pro-Iranian terrorists were released from prison in Kuwait, eliminating one of the Hizballah factions' principal demands. Then Assad weighed the odds and joined Saudi Arabia and Egypt in the international coalition arrayed against his archenemy Saddam Hussein. When Iraq's army was destroyed, Arab extremism and rejectionism suffered a devastating blow. The U.S. emerged as the only superpower with influence in the region and was actively trying to restart the Middle East peace process...
...hostages were now a hindrance to both Iran and Syria in their hopes to improve relations with the West, so they decided to end the stalemate by pressing the Hizballah factions to release them. Once the main players had a real interest in seeking a solution, the pieces began into fall in place. Three Western hostages were released last August, and the kidnappers invited U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar to step...
Israel is worried that it has not completed the deal yet, but is willing to trade almost 300 Lebanese prisoners, along with kidnapped Sheik Abdul Karim Obeid, a Hizballah cleric, for one possible Israeli survivor, air force Captain Ron Arad, and the remains of five other servicemen...