Word: lebanon
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...click of marble pieces on a hundred game boards as men puff on their houkas, finger wooden worry beads and play hours-long backgammon marathons. Now, there's a new addition to that symphony: half a dozen TV monitors tuned to al-Jazeera's coverage of the mayhem in Lebanon...
...weary-looking woman in a black track suit and pink flip-flops said she had made the decision to leave Lebanon early that morning, as Israeli bombers returned to strike her area of Baalbeck. Her fiance was still in Beirut. "I just couldn't handle it anymore. I had to get out." She left behind nearly all her possessions, but managed bring along her wedding dress. "Sometime, we will have the wedding," she said firmly. "If we're both still alive...
Sooner or later, when you're dropping tons of bombs every day, you end up hitting something you didn't mean to. In 1996, during its "Grapes of Wrath" campaign against Hizballah in southern Lebanon, Israel inadvertently shelled a U.N. refugee camp at Qana, killing 106 people, a tragic mishap that brought overwhelming pressure to end the campaign. Israel's strike on a U.N. position in southern Lebanon Tuesday that killed four peacekeepers may not bring a swift end to its offensive against Hizballah, but it highlights the deteriorating prospects for Israel and the U.S. to achieve their optimal outcome...
...There was substantial agreement in Rome, not surprisingly, on the need to send an international force to police southern Lebanon to allow for the Lebanese army to assume control of the border and for Hizballah to be disarmed. But how such that can be achieved remains highly contentious. Even if most of the international community wants an immediate cease-fire, it is powerless to effect one without the support of the U.S. - the only player capable of persuading Israel to call off its assault. Still, the way the military situation is evolving may actually give the Arabs and Europeans greater...
...Israel has therefore committed ground forces that have fought fierce battles (with substantial Israeli casualties) for control of Hizballah positions at Maroun al-Ras, Bint Jebeil and a handful of smaller villages. But Israeli Defense Force officials say there are at least 170 more such Hizballah strongholds throughout southern Lebanon, and they admit that Israel would have to occupy the territory all the way up to the Litani River to have any chance of eliminating the militant group as a fighting force...