Word: rafah
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...million will mostly be devoted to training and equipping Abbas's 4,000-strong Presidential Guard, whose primary responsibilities are to protect the president and visiting dignitaries - such as Secretary Rice herself - and to guard the crossings into the Palestinian territory of Gaza at Rafah and Karni. But some Western envoys fear that strengthening Abbas' forces could help unravel the unity government. International observers and Palestinians claim that Abbas' Praetorian guard was hardly neutral during the recent civil conflict that wracked the Palestinian territories as gunmen from Fatah and Hamas traded fire for days on end: The president's forces...
...often those warnings aren't enough to save the innocent. One day last month, the Israelis dropped two enormous charges on a house in the southern Gaza town of Rafah, where smugglers were trying to tunnel into Egypt under a 25-ft.-high concrete wall built by the Israelis. There had been the usual telephone heads-up, but the blasts were so fierce that flying debris injured 50 neighbors. A spear of shrapnel flew more than 500 yds. away and killed a 14-year-old girl, Damilaz Hamad. According to the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights, Damilaz...
According to an Israeli military-intelligence officer, the June 25 assault on the Kerem Shalom army post was weeks in the planning. Two days before the raid, Israeli special forces kidnapped two Hamas militants in Rafah, Gaza. After interrogating the detainees, the troops alerted military commanders that an attack was imminent. "The alert didn't include the color of the underwear of the militants," says the officer. "But it was very specific." It wasn't enough. At 5:30 a.m. on June 25, six Palestinian militants emerged from a tunnel dug 10 yds. deep and stretching from a private house...
...Israelis believe Shalit was taken to a hiding place that had been prepared in advance, probably a cellar or cave under a house in the area surrounding Rafah, a teeming city of refugee camps of some 250,000 people. Three separate groups claimed responsibility for the abduction, including the military wing of Hamas, which Israel charged was acting on the directions of Khaled Mashaal, the Hamas supremo in Damascus (see box). Two days into the Gaza incursion, Olmert ordered Israeli forces to halt their advance to allow for a mediation push by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. On Friday, Mubarak claimed...
Whether Israel can succeed in bringing down Hamas is also questionable. In Gaza there are signs that the Israeli offensive has bolstered support for the beleaguered Hamas leadership. In Rafah and other Gaza cities, Hamas' resistance to the pressure is being seen as almost heroic. Even if the government falls, Hamas won't go away. Indeed, a collapse could boost the group's more militant factions, which would prefer to abandon the political process and return to armed struggle. "This will help Hamas because they have been saying they do not trust the Israelis," says Saied Zourob, an official...