Word: lebanon
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...Yoshua is venturing back into Lebanon, and, judging from the difficulty facing the United Nations in brokering a truce acceptable to both sides, he and his tank battalion could be parked there for months...
...Just how far into Lebanon the Israelis should advance - and how long they should stay - is the subject of rancorous debates in Israeli cabinet meetings and war rooms. Israeli leaders are haunted by the specter of the last Israeli invasion of Lebanon to root out a terror threat, in 1982. That operation had also been intended to be a quick and surgical operation, but it dragged on for 18 years and cost the lives of close to 2,000 Israeli soldiers before Israel withdrew and left the border area to Hizballah...
...that even if Hizballah agrees to stop pelting Israel with hundreds of rockets every day, calling off the Israeli offensive right now would mean admitting failure. Gerald Steinberg, a political science professor at Bar-Ilan University in Jerusalem, summed up the opinion of many Israelis: "If Israel withdraws from Lebanon without striking harder at Hizballah, we will have accomplished nothing for all our suffering...
...leaders scale back their definition of success, from crushing Hizballah as a fighting force to a more limited set of goals. Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter told TIME that Israel now seeks the release of two Israeli soldiers held by Hizballah, the cessation of all attacks on Israel from Lebanon, and the creation of a "fire zone" along the southern Lebanese border. This swath will be taken over, he says, by a brawny multi-national force, and when that happens, Israel will withdraw. "We want combatants who are allowed to open fire - not just write letters of complaint," Dichter says...
...until the foreign force arrives - and the delay lies not simply in assembling volunteers, but in getting Hizballah to agree to a truce, which many prospective troop contributors insist is a precondition for deployment - Israel's leaders must decide just how far into Lebanon Sgt. Yoshua's tank should roll...