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Jerusalem - For Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, the decision to launch Operation Grapes of Wrath was an enormous gamble.
It was only seven weeks before the election. Katyusha rockets were being fired on the villages in the north of Israel, driving residents into bomb shelters day after day. In Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, militant Muslim suicide bombers had blown up more than 50 people. And Peres, in the eyes of many Israelis, had done nothing.
On April 9, Binjamin Netanyahu - running neck and neck with Peres in the race for prime minister - put the challenge in stark terms, traveling to Kiryat Shemona, a village in the north where Katyushas had been falling for weeks.
"There is no way to stop terror other than by fighting it," Netanyahu said bluntly. "You can't attain peace unless you're willing to fight."
Maybe that was what forced him into it; maybe not. And whether the gamble paid off is unclear, but two days later, Peres lashed back, beginning the raids that became Operation Grapes of Wrath. First, surgical raids, taking out Hezbollah guerrilla bases in south Lebanon and infrastructure targets...