Word: lebanonization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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This time, however, the rocket attack showed a greater level of proficiency. Larger-caliber 122-mm rockets, with a range of 12 miles, were employed and carefully aimed at Nahariyah, a coastal town six miles south of the Lebanon border with a population of 50,000. Two Israeli civilians were slightly hurt when one of the rockets struck the roof of a nursing home. (See pictures of Heartbreak in the Middle East...
...intention appears to be to keep Israel on edge along its 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...
...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...
...PFLP-GC, however, maintained a deliberately ambiguous stance. "It is not the time to say who is responsible; it is time to be united to confront the Israelis," Anwar Raja, PFLP-GC spokesman in Lebanon, told TIME. "We support the launching of rockets on Israel because of the massacre that is occurring in Gaza...
...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...