Word: hizballah
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...been vacant since November 23 when parliament failed to elect a successor to Emile Lahoud, the pro-Syrian head of state whose term ended the same day. The recent decision by March 14 to opt for Suleiman - who is seen as having close ties to the militant Shi'ite Hizballah, which spearheads the pro-Syrian opposition to the Western-backed government in Beirut - apparently caught the opposition by surprise, not having expected the general's candidacy to be promoted by its political foes...
...Israeli counterattack. But the peace process was effectively derailed three years earlier by Iran and two groups to which it supplies political, diplomatic, financial and military support. In 1996, Hamas launched its first major wave of suicide bombings in Israel. At the same time, the Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hizballah escalated attacks on Israel. The violence helped defeat then Prime Minister Shimon Peres, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his part in the Oslo Accords, giving victory to hard-liner Benjamin Netanyhu, a staunch opponent, like Iran and Hamas, of that peace deal...
...Since then, Iran, Hamas and Hizballah have grown even stronger. Iran's strategic position became stronger with the fall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the toppling of Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq, and its pursuit of a nuclear program that has the potential of being diverted into building an atomic weapon. Capitalizing on the failure of the Fatah party of Yasser Arafat to deliver a Palestinian state in negotiations, Hamas triumphed in parliamentary elections last year. Despite being under severe pressure from Israel, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the international community, Hamas recently seized military control of Gaza...
...perilous and unprecedented constitutional vacuum following the departure midnight Friday of the pro-Syrian president, Emile Lahoud, with no elected successor. The two rival factions - the Western-backed March 14 block, which holds a thin parliamentary majority, and the pro-Syrian opposition, spearheaded by the militant Shi'ite Hizballah - are locked in a tense standoff, both waiting for the other to make the first move...
...ranks if no consensus candidate was found. The opposition has warned that it would not recognize a March 14 president and would consider such a move a "coup." Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Endowment's Middle East Center, said that if March 14 tried to elect a president, Hizballah would try to stop them physically from meeting. "That means road blocks and men with guns and that means other men with guns and that's very dangerous," he said...