Word: hizballah
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Throughout the crisis, Olmert has displayed a characteristic decisiveness. "In his meetings, everyone has a limited time to talk," says a senior aide to an Israeli government minister. "Then he makes decisions quickly. He's a fast thinker and not hesitant--for better and worse." When Hizballah took the soldiers hostage, Olmert faced a challenge. He could have opted for a limited response: in 2000, after all, five months after Israel pulled its troops out of southern Lebanon following an 18-year occupation, Hizballah kidnapped three Israeli soldiers, and Israel declined to retaliate, choosing calm over escalation and, eventually, opting...
...Israel the latest hostage taking also represented an opportunity. For almost six years since Israel had quit southern Lebanon, the Israelis watched Hizballah build fortifications along the border and stockpile rockets and missiles. Of late, Hizballah's charismatic leader, Hasan Nasrallah, had explicitly threatened to kidnap Israeli soldiers, and Jerusalem believes it thwarted at least two attempts by his fighters to do just that. Army brass had urged the political leadership to respond with precisely the kind of campaign Olmert has initiated, and Israeli forces practiced just such an operation in a tabletop exercise as recently as two months...
That Israel no longer occupied any part of Lebanon gave Olmert's government credibility with much of the world as it responded to Hizballah's incursion, at least in the beginning. Israel's withdrawal of the last of its settlers and soldiers from the Gaza Strip a year ago added to the store of global goodwill that Israel started out with. Plus Olmert calculated that he could count on the support, if not the applause, of President Bush, who since 9/11 has strongly backed Israel. Some Arab countries--Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan--even took the unusual step of criticizing Hizballah...
Olmert's fall is certainly steeper than he anticipated when he took the dive. The Israelis calculated that their campaign, which has included strikes on not just Hizballah targets but also Lebanese roads, bridges and runways as well as a naval blockade--plus the explicit threat of worse to come--would cow Hizballah. In addition to maintaining a militia, the group functions as a political party and has a representative in the Lebanese Cabinet. Hizballah represents the traditionally downtrodden Shi'ites of Lebanon, who live mostly in the south and the Dahiya suburb of Beirut, areas Israel has hit hard...
...Israel's surprise, instead of looking for a way out, Hizballah launched an escalation of its own, shooting longer-range missiles than it had ever used, forcing the 1 million Israelis in the north of the country--a sixth of the nation's population--into bomb shelters and paralyzing that region's economy. Jerusalem believes Hizballah is serving Iran's interests, perhaps to detract attention from Tehran's controversial nuclear program. Says Avi Dichter, Israel's Minister of Public Security: "We thought Hizballah would not sacrifice Lebanon on the Iranian altar. They did it very clearly, and it was contrary...