Word: hizballah
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Having triggered the conflict by capturing two soldiers inside Israel, Hizballah is functioning not just as a state within a state but almost as the state itself. Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah initially held a press conference to outline his terms for a prisoner swap: the soldiers would be returned for Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners in Israel. But Israel answered by bombing the runways at Beirut's international airport. Hizballah then began raining rockets on northern Israel. Although Nasrallah went into hiding along with other Hizballah leaders, he continues to issue statements, telling al-Jazeera TV, for example, that...
Despite its record of violence, Hizballah enjoys broad appeal among Lebanese. It has morphed into a political party--winning 14 seats in Lebanon's 128-member Parliament in May 2005--and operates an effective social-welfare organization. Hizballah runs hospitals and schools throughout downtrodden Shi'ite districts. In the kidnapping gambit, however, Hizballah's normally cautious leaders may have overreached. Some Lebanese political insiders speculate that either the group misjudged the probable Israeli response or Iran or Syria ordered Hizballah to deliberately provoke Israel. "They are a tool in the hands of the Syrian regime and for Iran's regional...
Lebanon's various factions have united against Israel's onslaught, and Hizballah can still count on broad support. But many citizens are angry at Hizballah for taking it upon itself to initiate a new conflict with Israel. Some politicians say privately that when the dust settles from the fighting, Hizballah should be held to account and disarmed. That's assuming Hizballah continues to survive Israel's blitz in some recognizable form. As Naboulsi, the spokesman, made his way through the rubble of Harat Hreik, a security man with a walkie-talkie suddenly shouted, "Evacuate! Evacuate!" Naboulsi started running down...
...clear. Israel's untested Prime Minister was dealt a formidable challenge two weeks ago when fighters for Hizballah, the Lebanese Islamist group, crossed the border and kidnapped two Israeli soldiers. Olmert responded ferociously, authorizing air attacks and limited ground incursions aimed not just at punishing Hizballah but also at reshaping Israel's neighborhood. It's an enormous gamble and one that could well determine Olmert's political fate and the peace prospects of the area. If he succeeds, by neutralizing Hizballah and convincing Israel's enemies, at least for a while, that it's not worth picking a fight, Israel...
...border Arab-Israeli violence since the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Voters brought him to power not as the man best equipped to fight Israel's enemies but as one explicitly committed to disengaging from Israel's foes, to walling them off by establishing borders demarcated by an imposing fence. Hizballah's incursion into Israel two weeks ago, in which eight soldiers were killed in addition to the two taken hostage, on the heels of the kidnapping of an Israeli corporal by the Palestinian militant group Hamas, reset Olmert's agenda. "If the Bush presidency was defined by 9/11, for Olmert...