Word: truce
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...always going to be the most fragile of cease-fires - after all, Israel and the Palestinian militants of Hamas are sworn enemies. And on Tuesday night, the truce brokered by Egypt last June that has largely stamped out violence across the boundary between Israel and Gaza, appeared in danger of collapse: Israeli troops, backed by helicopter gunships and tanks, crossed into Gaza to destroy a tunnel being dug by militants, supposedly to launch a raid inside Israel...
...much as the exchange of fire rattled the truce, it may have been ritual bloodletting. Neither Hamas nor Israel wants the cease-fire to end yet. The Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak wants to prolong it because his Labor Party, according to polls, stands to lose more legislative seats in this February's general elections, and a prolonged, bloody assault on Gaza - which would probably fail to crush Hamas - could further jeopardize his chances. (See pictures of 60 years of Israel...
...that Hamas has taken a page from Hizballah's playbook during the 2006 Lebanon war with Israel, and that Gaza is now riddled with tunnels and underground bunkers. Hamas is also believed to have smuggled in longer-range, Iranian-made rockets through smugglers' tunnels leading from Egypt. Reviving the truce has a political advantages for Hamas, too: It makes it easier for them to renegotiate a national unity government with President Mahmoud Abbas, whose Fatah movement controls the West Bank. Also, with a new Administration on its way into the White House, Hamas may want to make the case that...
...regional capital of Goma and routed government troops in embarrassing fashion, that the western world finally started paying attention. Jolted by the rebels' stunning march and the threat it poses to Congolese President Laurent Kabila, western diplomats have descended on the DRC this weekend to push for a lasting truce...
...fact, while the parties may be jointly lifting the national mood, the bipartisan spirit burns no brighter in Westminster than in Washington. Even as they declared a truce over the financial meltdown, British pols were trading blows. "We meet at a time of national anxiety," Osborne told delegates at the Conservative party conference on Sept. 29. He asserted that his party was determined to make rich bankers pay for the mess they had helped to create. "Unlike New Labour we are not bedazzled by big money," he said...