Word: settlements
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Your report "Arafat's Dance of Death" graphically portrayed the horrors of the escalation of terrorist violence in Israel. However, it was quite unfair to mention Arafat's rejection of Israel's offer for a final settlement at Camp David without explaining Israel's demand to annex occupied territory where it has bulldozed Palestinian houses and brought in settlers. The placement of settlers in isolated communities in view of those whose land was taken is a prescription for unending conflict. Years ago Israel obtained a lasting peace with Egypt by returning all captured land and removing its settlers...
Until the money is made available, some states are taking matters into their own hands. Nebraska passed legislation last September to improve its public-health system, earmarking $6 million from its share of the national tobacco settlement to establish five new health departments that cover 19 of the state's 93 counties. Texas is relying on revenue from the state's telecommunications fund to wire itself for the Health Alert Network. Georgia, which had been given CDC grants to fight such problems as West Nile virus and emerging infections, decided that the best way to do that was to hire...
...have been more opportune for Sharon. With even the Israeli military reporting a sharp decline in violent incidents since Arafat's speech three weeks ago calling on Palestinians to cease firing, pressure had begun to mount on the Israeli leader to lift his siege of Palestinian areas, freeze settlement activities and move towards renewed negotiations - a scenario anathema to Sharon and his own political base. Now, with the help of some Palestinian arms smugglers and Hamas insurgents, he has managed to nimbly shift the onus back on to Arafat...
...Ohio is only giving up two years of settlement money, but plenty of other states are cashing in their entire shares to solve one year's budget problems. Wisconsin will sell its portion of the next 25 years of payments to investors as bonds. The state hopes to raise more than $1.3 billion from the sale...
...course, with the election season looming, no one wants to run as the guy who spent the rainy day savings account. But at least that would be spending money for its original purpose. Blowing 25 years of tobacco money on the first recession that comes along makes the entire settlement a lie. Tobacco companies misled smokers for years about the consequences of their products. The settlement freed them from the threat of devastating lawsuits, but with the understanding that their own money would be used to keep the next generation away from cigarettes. Now that's being abandoned in statehouses...