Word: truceful
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...Halutz's two superiors, Prime Minster Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz, are also in dismal shape with Israelis. A Haaretz newpaper poll on the eve of the U.N.sponsored truce with Hizballah showed Olmert's approval rating dropping from 75% at the start of the Lebanon campaign to 48%. Peretz fell even lower, from 65% to 37%. After the cease-fire, opposed by many Israelis who thought that Olmert buckled to international pressure and gave up the fight against Hizballah too soon, the Prime Minister's popularity may well have fallen even further...
...Scoring the Truce...
...appears unlikely, however, to hold up the cease-fire. Within days, Lebanese Army troops (eventually numbering 15,000) will begin moving into southern Lebanon, later supported by a beefed-up U.N. peacekeeping force (which will also number 15,000), as Israel vacates the area. Hizballah has agreed to the truce in which it ends attacks on Israel and refrains from bearing arms south of the Litani River. Issues ranging from the fate of the prisoners to the disputed Sheba Farms area and the question of disarming Hizballah in line with previous U.N. resolutions are left to future discussions...
...While the truce certainly restricts Hizballah's military activities in southern Lebanon, it falls substantially short of the initial Israeli goal of crushing Hizballah as a military entity and prompting the rest of Lebanese society to turn against the organization because of the destruction by Israel that its actions provoked. Hizballah defined success as its forces simply surviving the Israeli onslaught intact, and exacting a substantial price from the Israelis for their offensive. The U.S. endorsed Israel's objectives - viewing Hizballah as nothing more than a proxy for Iran and Syria - and sought diplomatic cover for Israel by rallying Arab...
...Shavit, writing in the left-of-center daily Haaretz on Friday, offered a savage critique of Olmert accepting a truce while failing to finish off Hizballah: "If Olmert runs away now from the war he initiated, he will not be able to remain prime minister for even one more day," wrote Shavit. "You cannot lead an entire nation to war promising victory, produce humiliating defeat and remain in power. You cannot bury 120 Israelis in cemeteries, keep a million Israelis in shelters for a month, wear down deterrent power, bring the next war very close, and then say - oops...