Word: palestinians
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...game of brinkmanship across the Gaza front lines has entered a new and more dangerous phase following a Palestinian raid inside Israel that killed two soldiers and saw a third kidnapped. Already under strong public pressure to maintain a tough response to Palestinian rocket fire from Gaza, Israeli leaders now face the challenge of answering a Palestinian attack that has been deeply troubling to the Israeli psyche. In the early hours of Sunday, seven or eight Palestinian gunmen emerged from a tunnel dug some 500 feet into Israeli territory at Kerem Shalom and, with supporting fire from inside Gaza, attacked...
...Israel immediately sent tanks and soldiers a short distance into Gaza to locate the tunnel and destroy it. Though the target at Kerem Shalom had been a military one, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and other officials labeled it a "terrorist" attack that demanded the sternest of responses. All Palestinian leaders would be held accountable, he declared, and no distinction would be made between military and political wings of parties such as Hamas. "Let it be clear," said Olmert, "We will reach everyone, no matter where they are, and they know...
...several possible military actions, including air strikes against militant targets, assassinations of Hamas political leaders - up to and including Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh - and the reoccupation of Gaza. While troops and tanks are massed at the edge of territory, however, the plans are on hold while intermediaries, including Palestinian and Egyptian officials, try to negotiate the release of Cpl. Shalit...
...infighting between Hamas and Fatah was made worse by a peace plan crafted, with the best of intentions, by Palestinian prisoners inside Israeli jails. In essence, the prisoners recommend that the Palestinians offer peace to Israel if it withdraws from all of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, occupied since the 1967 war. This proposal, according to one Israeli penitentiary official, began as a whispered idea in the prison showers and as notes slipped between inmates during jail yard exercises. The creators of the plan are all convicted terrorists, but their years spent in Israeli custody, and the yawning stretch...
...Once it was smuggled out, the plan found a champion in Abbas, who wants the Palestinians to vote on it in a late July referendum. Hamas, along with four other Palestinian groups, opposes the referendum. Hamas Prime Minister Ismael Haniyah warned that his government "will not make political concessions" to Israel and opposes the vote as a waste of money. If Hamas and Abbas can indeed now come to an agreement on the prisoners' proposal, that would end the need for a referendum - and the dispute over it. Until then, however, the political showdown is fanning the anger...