Word: southernization
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...primary work Hizballah does these days is not in office buildings but on the battlefield, and despite an Israeli onslaught that has targeted the group's top brass and top guns, the organization has proved more resilient than many expected. Across southern Lebanon, Hizballah fighters have manned batteries firing as many as 350 rockets a day at Israeli cities and towns, from an arsenal estimated at 13,000 projectiles. At least 100 of the more than 900 missiles fired at Israel have hit Haifa, the nation's third-largest city, while one radar-guided antiship missile...
...conflict continues, however, that support will be tested. Having found air raids insufficient, the military has begun sending ground troops on limited incursions into southern Lebanon. Israel has called up three battalions of reservists in addition to three that had been called to duty earlier. As tanks and armored personnel carriers massed on the border, the Israelis insisted they had no intention of reoccupying Lebanon, but many feared they could wind up there again. "This is how it starts," said a former government official, referring to the in-and-out raids authorized...
...minister. "Then he makes decisions quickly. He's a fast thinker and not hesitant--for better and worse." When Hizballah took the soldiers hostage, Olmert faced a challenge. He could have opted for a limited response: in 2000, after all, five months after Israel pulled its troops out of southern Lebanon following an 18-year occupation, Hizballah kidnapped three Israeli soldiers, and Israel declined to retaliate, choosing calm over escalation and, eventually, opting for negotiations that resulted in an exchange of the three soldiers' bodies for prisoners held by Israel. Yet this time Olmert reacted by declaring the hostage taking...
...Israel the latest hostage taking also represented an opportunity. For almost six years since Israel had quit southern Lebanon, the Israelis watched Hizballah build fortifications along the border and stockpile rockets and missiles. Of late, Hizballah's charismatic leader, Hasan Nasrallah, had explicitly threatened to kidnap Israeli soldiers, and Jerusalem believes it thwarted at least two attempts by his fighters to do just that. Army brass had urged the political leadership to respond with precisely the kind of campaign Olmert has initiated, and Israeli forces practiced just such an operation in a tabletop exercise as recently as two months...
...Lebanese government and army, however, are too weak to take on Hizballah and its patrons, including Syria, a country that long dominated and still influences Lebanon. Israel hopes third parties--the U.S., European powers, Turkey, perhaps Egypt--will help Lebanon defang Hizballah by sending peacekeeping troops to the southern part of the country...