Word: truce
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Israel and Hamas agreed to a cease-fire in June. Israel wants the release of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, and is extremely wary of becoming embroiled in a military operation in Gaza with no clear exit strategy. Hamas needed the truce to relieve the catastrophic economic strain on Palestinians imposed by the Israeli siege and to consolidate its control over Gaza. And so, for very different reasons, the two sides found themselves negotiating - not directly, because neither side recognizes the other - but through an Egyptian mediator. But in the past few weeks, the cease-fire has all but broken...
...Darfur be saved? We already know what needs to be done. The immediate priority is to end the fighting by brokering a truce and sending in peacekeepers. In the longer term, Darfur needs sensible land-use policies and careful water management, while the rest of the world has to cut emissions. But at the Security Council, Beckett faced opposition from China, the U.S. and the two main groups representing developing countries. They complained that the forum was an inappropriate place to discuss climate change. That is, they disputed that climate change leads...
...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...
...Israeli officials were predicting that unless a Hamas rocket causes major casualties, the cease-fire would likely resume within 48 hours - even as the fighting raged, the Israelis and Hamas were frantically passing messages to one another through Egyptians middlemen, urging a restoration of the truce. As Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai explained, "We are not headed to an escalation. The lull brings peace and quiet to the southern communities, and we have an interest to maintain it." Given Hamas' arms build-up in Gaza, however, a showdown with the Israeli army is inevitable, say officials in Tel Aviv...