Besides avenging the Ashdod bombing, the assassination of Mr Yassin may have been a show of strength by Israel, ahead of its proposed pull-out from most of the Gaza strip.

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She became a close adviser to Mr Sharon and in 2005 helped to broker his controversial pull-out of Israeli troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip.

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For example, a peaceful Israeli pull-out depends on Egypt's efforts to persuade the strip's militants to stay quiescent and to stop their weapons-smuggling and its goodwill seems bound to be diminished by Israeli forces' accidental killing of three Egyptian policemen on the Gaza border on Thursday.

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Any day now the vice president will pull out a harmonica and strip off his dress shirt to reveal the tie-dye beneath, ready to roam and ramble across this nation of subdivisions.

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Second, we wanted him to pull out of Gaza totally -- including every single settlement and the "Philadelphi Strip" separating Gaza from Egypt, even though holding on to this strip would have prevented the smuggling of weapons to Hamas that was feared and has now come to pass.

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