Word: splinters
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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While the struggle within the P.L.O. was being played out in Tripoli, a long-awaited act of revenge was taking place in the Bekaa Valley. On Wednesday, the Israelis staged a reprisal raid against the pro-Iranian Shi'ite Muslim splinter group, known as Islamic Amal, which is believed responsible for the suicide attacks that killed 28 Israeli soldiers on Nov. 4, as well as 239 American servicemen and 58 French paratroopers on Oct. 23. Four Israeli warplanes, ejecting thermal balloons in their wake in order to confound heat-seeking surface-to-air missiles, attacked a training camp...
...retribution carries risks. Although the evidence points to a pair of fanatical Shi'ite Muslim splinter groups with ties to Syria and Iran, the U.S. is not certain exactly who gave the orders. Even if the culprits were known, Washington would not be sure how to strike back. A commando raid or air strike against their headquarters in the Lebanese city of Baalbek, for example, could mushroom into a battle with the Syrians, who control that part of the country...
When Jewish Nationalist Avraham Stern formed an even more bellicose splinter group, the Lohamei Herut Israel (Israel Freedom Fighters) in 1940, Shamir promptly enlisted and began acting on Stern's assumption that Zionism's principal foe was not Germany but Britain. He soon became a leader of the notorious, sometimes ruthless "Stern Gang," which in 1944 assassinated the British resident minister in Cairo, and is believed to have committed the 1948 murder of Swedish U.N. Mediator Folke Bernadotte. Twice Shamir was imprisoned by the British, and twice he escaped. In 1941 he stole out of detention, grew...
...Italian newspapers called a political "earthquake." The Christian Democrats suffered an unprecedented loss of more than 5%, dropping from 38% to 33% of the popular vote. What shook the political establishment even more was a wave of protest votes, estimated at 18% to 20% of the electorate, squandered on splinter parties or simply thrown away in blank or spoiled ballots. Such gestures of contempt for the major parties were taken as a public warning against politics-as-usual while the nation's worsening economic ills went unattended...
...signing, the Syrians expressed their displeasure by closing highways in the Syrian-controlled areas of northern and eastern Lebanon. The Syrians have hinted that they might close the Syrian-Lebanese border indefinitely. The newspaper of the ruling Baath Party spoke of "a crushing civil war that would splinter Lebanon's unity and cancel its existence as a country...