Word: lebanon
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...flare-up in violence across Israel's border with Lebanon is a graphic reminder that none of the Middle East's individual conflicts can be isolated from the region's other flashpoints, making episodes like this one much more difficult to manage, let alone resolve. And at a moment where much of the region's traditional architecture of power - from Iraq through Lebanon to the Palestinian territories - has been demolished or critically weakened but not necessarily replaced, the challenge of containing a crisis in the region is even more daunting...
...decade ago, for example, the U.S. together with France was able to act as an honest broker between Israel, Syria and Lebanon to put an end to a similar flare-up. But back then, Syria was in control of Lebanon and participating in U.S.-brokered peace talks with Israel over the fate of the Golan Heights; Iraq was still ruled by Saddam Hussein's tyranny, which also functioned to limit Iran's regional ambitions; and the Oslo peace process offered Israel and the Palestinians the prospect of peace. Today dialogue amongst the various parties is rare, even as the prospects...
...ease the plight of the Palestinians, and Hizballah may be helping its main sponsor, Iran, burnish its claims to be standing up to Israel and the U.S. on behalf of the whole region. The movement gained a kind of pan-Arab hero status in 2000, when Israel quit Lebanon and Hizballah was acclaimed as the only Arab army ever to have forced an Israeli retreat. It had become a role model and tutor to Palestinian radical groups such as Hamas, which sought to emulate not only Hizballah's art of combining welfare work, politics and military activities, but also...
...near civil war that seems to get bloodier by the day. Iran has been intent on filling the regional power vacuum left by the toppling of Saddam. Besides continuing to back Hizballah, which it actually created in 1982 after Israeli forces launched a wide-scale invasion of Lebanon to destroy the PLO, Iran has been extending its influence inside Iraq and could end up the dominant foreign influence there when the U.S. ultimately withdraws. So confident - or reckless - is the new Iran that Tehran seems to be going to the brink with the West in a showdown over its nuclear...
...President Mahmoud Abbas toward starting peace talks, but now that appears off the table. Other moderates, including Egypt's Mubarak and Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, also seem eclipsed. In contrast, it is Khaled Meshal, the militant leader of Hamas in exile, and Hassan Nasrallah, Hizballah's chief in Lebanon, both backed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran and Assad in Syria, who are driving current developments...