Word: settlements
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...take a more stand-off approach to the region, but violence has escalated despite its calls for calm. In order to make a cease-fire possible, Washington has been leaning on the Palestinians to halt attacks on Israelis, and is growing more vocal in urging Israel to freeze settlement activity and ease the burden of daily life in the West Bank and Gaza. But thus far, there?s been little progress on either front...
...have organized and won something tremendous in Harvard Yard these past three weeks. Since I entered Massachusetts Hall on April 18, workers at Harvard have seen countless victories. As part of the sit-in settlement, our janitors will begin negotiating a new contract more than a year early—and any future pay increases will be retroactive to last week. The University committed to a good contract for our dining hall workers. The administration completely backed off from its threat to reclassify more than 100 of our dining hall workers at the Business School. They agreed to increase access...
...while his predecessor was prepared to negotiate away many of the settlements, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has historically been a fierce advocate of the settlement movement for both security and ideological reasons. And on Tuesday he flatly rejected Washington's call to freeze settlement activity as one of the requirements for a cease-fire with Palestinians. Sharon built his political career in large part as a champion of the settlers, and although he accepted a freeze on building new settlements as a condition for getting the Labor Party into his unity government, he is committed to an aggressive expansion...
...Conflict between a Bush administration and a Likud Party-led government over settlements certainly has a familiar ring - the same issue provoked a public fallout between the first Bush administration and the government of Yitzhak Shamir, in which Washington threatened to withhold financial aid if Israel went ahead with settlement construction. This time around, both sides will be inclined to fight shy of a public confrontation, but there will inevitably be some tough diplomatic bargaining behind closed doors...
...This week's killings, though, are a reminder that resolving the settlement standoff may be getting harder all the time - the more settlers are killed and maimed, the more difficult it becomes for Sharon to sell any compromise on settlement activity to his own supporters. And in the absence of any resumption of political negotiations, Arafat may have a hard time finding the will or the political authority to curb attacks on the settlers. Then again, the settlements are only one of a number of issues on which the gulf between the two sides has grown considerably since last year...