Word: plo
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Twenty seven years ago, Smadar Haran suffocated her two-year-old daughter. She was trying to quiet the whimpering child as the two of them hid in the family's attic while PLO terrorists searched for them in their apartment in the coastal Israeli town of Nahariya. The terrorists didn't find them but took Smadar's husband and their four-year-old daughter hostage. When the cell, retreating as security forces pursued them, found the rubber boat they'd arrived in disabled by gunfire, one of the members shot Smadar's husband Danny in the back and drowned...
...side of steep hills that look down into valleys that then spill out into Beirut. During the 1975-90 Civil War, residents of the city would flee into these hill towns and watch the artillery duels between the various militias, between the Israelis and the PLO, between the PLO and the militias, between the Israelis and the militias... Well, you get the idea...
...despite the exit of the PLO in 1982, of Israeli occupation forces in 2000 and of Syrian troops last year, Lebanon is divided between Hizballah and its allies on one hand, and an alliance of Christians and non-Shi'ite Muslims that wants Hizballah disarmed on the other. Lebanese have tried hard to escape the ghosts and hardship of the civil war years, and the reconstruction led by the late Prime Minister Rafic Hariri has reinvigorated the tourist industry. Hizballah's move and Israel's response to it, however, is likely to send thousands of foreign visitors - and their much...
...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 ambitions, risking...
...President Abbas, meanwhile, appears to be flailing. After Hamas presented its nominees, Abbas said he would respond within 48 hours, but first planned to discuss the matter with the PLO Executive Committee. Abbas' unspoken message appeared to be that the PLO's legitimacy trumps that of the Palestinian Authority, the democratically elected body it helped to create with the Oslo Accords. But that is, at best, a dubious proposition, since the PLO actually has no formal constitutional role to play in approving the cabinet. Hamas, which is not part of the PLO and is not likely to take orders from...