Word: mortar
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This is not the way the Bush administration wanted it, but the Middle East has a way of confounding the best-laid plans. Israeli tanks and troops rolled into Gaza Tuesday in response to a Palestinian mortar attack on an Israeli town, with some of their commanders vowing that they could stay for months. Then Colin Powell spoke, condemning the Israeli reaction to a Palestinian provocation as "excessive and disproportionate" - and within hours the Israelis had retreated. Asked whether the U.S. criticism has influenced the decision, Dore Gold, an adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, told CNN, "We pay very...
...will Palestinians read Tuesday's intervention by Secretary of State Colin Powell that appears to have prompted Israel to withdraw after reoccupying a piece of Gaza in the wake of a mortar attack on Israel...
...Despite what it looks like on TV, it's not quite as dramatic as that. Sharon sent his forces into Gaza last night, in response to mortar shells falling inside Israel. But provided he doesn't make a mistake and end up with a large number of Palestinian deaths, he can do that with impunity, at least domestically, anyway. It may cost him some diplomatic pressure, but not much. The international media certainly tires of it pretty quickly. Actions that a couple of weeks ago looked like a dramatic escalation now look commonplace. And that's part of the strategy...
...down in the West Bank and Gaza. Right now, it appears as though they don't. Israel had achieved a measure of success with Arafat in calming things down a little, and then there was suddenly the Hezbollah attack on the northern border over the weekend. Israelis believe the mortar attack on Sdarot inside Israel came from Arafat's people, as an expression of solidarity following the air strike in Lebanon, ahead of Arafat's visit to Syria next week. So you have a sequence of events that starts with a demonstration in Beirut against Syria's presence in Lebanon...
...lost children. Like 10-month-old Shalhevet Pass, the daughter of Jewish settlers in the mostly Palestinian city of Hebron, who died last month when a sniper put a bullet, apparently intentionally, through her head. Last week, one-year-old Ariel Yered was critically wounded in a Palestinian mortar attack on the Atzmona settlement in the Gaza Strip. Almost 400 Palestinians and 65 Israelis have died since last fall, when peace negotiations imploded over the question of Jerusalem's status...