Word: shields
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...Even if Arafat is prepared to call for a cease-fire, however, he may lack the means, now, to enforce one. "Operation Defensive Shield" has systematically targeted Palestinian Authority security structures, and left them badly degraded. And it is on those very structures that a cease-fire agreement would depend for policing Palestinian militants. Not surprisingly, the White House has been working to diminish expectations of Powell's trip achieving a truce...
...week's end the Bush administration was urging Sharon to withdraw, and the absence of a clear endgame in "Operation Defensive Shield" caused considerable consternation in the Israeli media. But Ariel Sharon is a practical man, a field commander more comfortable with tactical improvisation than grand strategic visions. His preferred method is to change the "facts on the ground," creating new faits accompli that develop a life of their own and change the terms of grand strategic debate. That's the rationale for the settlement movement - to stake an Israeli claim on the lands captured in 1967 by simply seizing...
...Sharon won on promises of security, but the unending wave of attacks on Israelis has seen his popularity tumble - and amplified the challenge of the resurgent Netanyahu. "Operation Defensive Shield" has been Sharon's response, an attempt to transform the situation on the ground through a massive military strike he hopes will hobble Palestinian terror cells and militias, and also eliminate his nemesis, Arafat, as a factor in Israeli political life...
...week's end, the Bush administration was clearly worried that the facts on the ground created by "Defensive Shield" may close the road back to peace, and began to urgently call a halt. But next week's headlines may be determined in large part by how Sharon chooses to respond...
Like Mackey, The Shield is a self-consciously different animal. Its envelope-pushing nudity and obscenity--it makes NYPD Blue look like Barney Miller--can be too showy, its sicko criminals too baroquely quirky. But it's already the most riveting player in the tapped-out field of cop dramas, a moral no-man's-land where crime fighting is tough, but justice is the hard part...