Israel has defended the three power-plant raids, two on Monday and one on Sunday, as a tit-for-tat response to Hezbollah's Katyusha rocket attacks against similar targets in northern Israel.

When enacted, such restrictions are generally quite generous so as to avoid tit-for-tat responses.

Last month it warned that it would from now on demand more than a tit-for-tat response if the Bosnian Serbs attacked Sarajevo or other United Nations-protected cities in Bosnia.

Most of the provisions of the new Cuban law appear to be tit-for-tat responses to American efforts to weaken the struggling Cuban economy.

"This is not a tit-for-tat response that we tried and did not successfully deter in the past."

Sometimes an immediate tit-for-tat response seems inappropriate, and at other times it is the only thing that will do.

A British diplomat was expelled from Moscow in the now customary tit-for-tat response.

The tit-for-tat responses of other countries were understood to have contributed to a sharp reduction of trade in the 1930s.

Exchanges with the President, between the President and Tenet, and between herself and Powell and Rumsfeld had produced a consensus that "tit-for-tat" responses were likely to be counterproductive.

And with the political power that southern Florida exerts, the tit-for-tat response of the Cuban exiles spills over into American policy.