Word: fire
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...ground offensive is still likely. For the past two days, Israeli leaders have said they will not agree to an early cease-fire and instead want to cripple Hamas permanently. Sources in Israel's Defense Ministry said Defense Minister Ehud Barak gave France's Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, a polite "no" to his request for a 48-hour cease-fire. But today, as the voices of well-known Israeli writers joined the call for an immediate end to hostilities, the idea of a cease-fire was still being debated, according to the Defense Ministry sources. It's probably no coincidence...
Yusuf had opposed Prime Minister Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein's bid to sign a peace deal with some moderate Islamists in June. The President then tried to fire the Prime Minister, a move that was rejected by parliament. Pressure had been building for months for Yusuf to step down, and the infighting between government officials (whose power extends to one town - Baidoa - and a few square feet of Mogadishu) looked like the last straw. "President Abdullahi Yusuf has marginalized large parts of the population and exacerbated divisions," think tank International Crisis Group wrote in a recent report. "The latest...
...cease-fire proved to be untenable. "Calm for calm" - as Israelis call the agreement to simply refrain from military strikes and rocket fire - didn't work for Hamas, since it was unable to deliver economic relief to the long-suffering Palestinian civilian population. Indeed, the renewed campaign of rocket fire by Hamas was widely interpreted as a bargaining tactic aimed at securing more favorable truce terms, particularly lifting the economic siege. Israel, in the meantime, suffered from confusion in its goals. On the one hand, it wanted to destroy the Hamas government; on the other hand, it sought to coexist...
Israel continued to pound targets in Gaza from the air on Monday even as it made final preparations for a ground assault. The Israeli military offensive began on Dec. 27, after the lapse of a six-month-long de facto cease-fire between Israel and the government of the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Israel says its operation will continue until Hamas stops firing rockets at Israeli towns along the border with Gaza. Hamas wants an end to the economic chokehold Israel has applied to the crowded Mediterranean territory...
Though the rocket count was down from previous days (and well short of the 200 that Israeli officials believe Hamas is able to fire), Israeli military sources tell TIME that they believe Hamas' military capabilities have hardly been dented. And while Israeli strikes killed a senior Hamas police official on the first morning of the assault and an Islamic Jihad military commander in Khan Younis on the third day, those same Israeli military officials believe that most of Hamas' military commanders have survived the first 60 hours or so and are in hiding...