GlobalBeat.org
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THE GLOBAL BEAT-RESOURCES FOR THE GLOBAL JOURNALIST
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- Israeli troops and tanks have pushed back into northern and southern Gaza, and their air force has knocked out electrical power to half of the territory's residents. Elsewhere, in the West Bank, Israeli forces have snatched some 64 members of Hamas, including a number of cabinet ministers and legislators of the elected government of the Palestinian Authority. The purpose of these operations is ostensibly to put pressure on the Palestinians for the release of an Israeli corporal captured by fighters from a Hamas cell, and to put an end to rocket fire by Palestinian militants into Israel from Gaza. Israeli officials insist -- perhaps to avoid being seen to take hostages of their own -- that the roundup of Hamas legislators in the West Bank was planned long before the capture of Corporal Shalit. If that is the case, of course, it would mean the action is part of a strategy to topple the Hamas-led government, and the likelihood is that the Palestinian Authority would fall along with it. No wonder, then, that Israeli commentators are worried that the return to Gaza less than a year after Ariel Sharon withdrew soldiers and settlers from the territory carried an echo of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. That too was ostensibly a short-term operation to stop rocket fire, which quickly evolved into an all-out assault aimed at destroying the PLO -- and ultimately left Israel mired in southern Lebanon for 18 years.
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