Word: hizballah
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...other words, the escalating war is a result of two sets of miscalculations. Each side underestimated the other's fierceness and willingness to fight. So now the Israelis are stuck with a war on a scale they didn't plan for, and without an exit strategy. Hizballah is in a similar bind. At first, the Israelis spoke vaguely about the need to degrade Hizballah before ending their campaign. But as the battle escalated, so did Israel's expressed goals. Officials last week were demanding implementation of U.N. Resolution 1559, passed after Israel's 2000 pullout, which calls for disarming Hizballah...
...rule that anyone in Lebanon within a kilometer of the border will be considered an enemy. They have sent bulldozers across the border to clear away trees, boulders, bunkers and other structures that impede their view into this swath of territory. Maintaining such a buffer zone will theoretically prevent Hizballah from returning to its positions along the frontier, shooting small arms across it, kidnapping more soldiers and easily gathering intelligence on Israeli army movements. But it won't stop the militia from firing rockets from deeper inside Lebanon. Israeli forces have concentrated on tracking and eliminating Hizballah's rocket launchers...
...sending Rice to the region, the White House is gambling that Arab governments fear the Hizballah militants more than they resent the Israelis. This may help the Secretary of State create what she envisions as an "umbrella"--the word coalition having been spoiled by Iraq--of Arab allies willing to condemn terrorism. Some specialists call the goal naive, feeling that it overestimates the willingness of Israel's Arab neighbors to risk being seen as taking Israel's side and that it discounts the fact that even if the U.S. could get these governments on board, their people would be unlikely...
Alexandra Avakian made three trips to Lebanon in 2005, with the daunting ambition of getting closer to Hizballah than any Western photojournalist before her. She expected to be assigned an escort, but none was necessary. "Party discipline is so tight, no one was going to reveal any secrets," says Avakian. "Members have to report on all the contacts they have with outsiders." She was allowed to see each of her subjects only once, and she was stopped a few times. "Out of nowhere a security agent appeared on a motorcycle," she recalls. "One time my digital camera was taken...
Ever since hostilities between Israel and Hizballah ignited July 12, President Bush and his advisors have refused to consider growing international pressure to back an immediate ceasefire. They painted the word ceasefire as defeatist and short-sighted, and they coined their own term of art, "cessation of violence," to mean a future without an armed Hizballah entrenched in southern Lebanon...