Word: hizballah
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...Meanwhile, Israel got a brief scare on its northern border early on Thursday, when three rockets fired from Lebanon landed in an Israeli town. Although the rockets did little damage, they raised fears that the Lebanese militant group Hizballah might be opening up a second front. But Hizballah denied firing the rockets, and most observers concur that the Shi'ite group was unlikely to have been responsible. Hizballah would probably have fired a much larger fusillade were it looking to join the fight, and it would be unlikely to risk its considerable political gains in Lebanon since...
...northern border without eliciting a disproportionate reaction. Indeed, Israel's response to the Katyusha attack - firing a few artillery shells into a deserted valley in southern Lebanon - neatly fits within the finely calibrated rules that define violence and retaliation along the border, rules tacitly observed by both Israel and Hizballah, the radical Shi'ite group that dominates much of Lebanon. Israel's artillery shelling was a step up from no response at all - which was how Israel greeted the two earlier rocket attacks. But it was sufficiently limited to deny Hizballah a pretext to respond in kind...
...Israel's offensive against Hamas. There was no claim of responsibility for the attack, although suspicion has fallen on militant Palestinian groups such as the Damascus-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), which may have acted with a nudge and a wink from Hizballah. Hizballah, Hamas and other Palestinian groups denied responsibility. "When Hizballah does something, it announces it and has no problem doing so," says Mohammed Fneish, minister of labor in Lebanon's national unity government and also a Hizballah lawmaker. (See pictures from inside Hizballah...
Israel has been wary of Hizballah coming to the aid of its Palestinian ally Hamas by opening up a fresh front. The Shi'ite group has done so in the past. In April 2002, during Israel's Defensive Shield operation to reoccupy the West Bank, Hizballah militants staged nearly daily assaults against Israeli military outposts in the Shebaa Farms, a strip of mountainside running along Lebanon's southeast border. This time around, however, Hizballah has confined its actions to fiery statements, speeches and demonstrations of support for the beleaguered Palestinians in Gaza. (See pictures of the heartbreak in Gaza...
...powerful organization has little to gain from triggering a new conflict with Israel at this time, despite having given the Israeli military a bloody nose during the monthlong war in 2006. Lebanon heads to the polls in June for knife-edge parliamentary elections. If Hizballah and its allies in the opposition win and form the new parliamentary majority, it will greatly strengthen the organization's ability to deflect domestic and foreign demands that it dismantle its military wing. But with Lebanon still recovering from the 2006 conflict, few Lebanese, including its core Shi'ite support base, will thank Hizballah...