Word: olmert
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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ISRAEL Although he lacks significant military experience, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is fighting a two-front battle: against Hizballah to the north in Lebanon and Hamas to the south in Gaza. Olmert has ruled out a prisoner exchange to win the return of kidnapped Israelis, and says the operations in Lebanon will end when Hizballah is disarmed THE BATTLEGROUND...
...Israelis are determined to show their adversaries that they aren't cowed. That has become clear in Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's announcements that Israel will not negotiate for the return of its soldiers. Israeli officials have long talked of "changing the rules of the game," and Olmert unleashed the military to do just that, setting the price for aggression against Israel so high that its enemies would be deterred from acting up in the future...
...Olmert may have been influenced by President Bush, both in his stance of "no negotiations with terrorists" and in his decision to retaliate harshly for the Hamas and Hizballah actions. The post-9/11 era has marked a new high in Israeli-U.S. relations, with Washington abandoning its past practice of criticizing Israel when it acts severely toward the Palestinians or other Arab parties. Starting with former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Israeli officials have taken to adopting Bush's war-on-terrorism rhetoric. Justice Minister Haim Ramon last week said Israel would treat Nasrallah as the U.S. treats Osama...
...provoked by the hostage taking, Olmert's government is also trying to settle other scores. Palestinian militants have been regularly firing homemade Qassam rockets, a Hamas specialty, into Israel from Gaza--some 200 in June and 100 so far in July. Hizballah has occasionally also lobbed rockets across the border since the Israeli pullout. And Israel has watched in dismay as Hizballah has built border fortifications, sometimes 30 feet from Israeli outposts and stockpiled with what Israel estimates to be 13,000 rockets, including upgraded ones that can reach at least as far as the cities of Haifa and Tiberias...
...security and instead is trying to establish them on its own. The strongest argument made by domestic critics of Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip last year was that the country's enemies would think it was weak and frightened and thus would be encouraged to strike out. Olmert's dual counterblasts are aimed at changing that impression--among those who believe it--to make the idea of attacking Israel prohibitively scary to the other side or, as the Israelis put it, to re-establish deterrence...