• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set the stage for unconditional peace talks with Syria, telling the Knesset that he has approached France about serving as mediator. [JPost]
• In fact, an Egyptian-news report said that Israel would even settle for Turkish (rather than French) mediation. [Ynet]
• The town of Ramapo in Rockland County, N.Y., has become a bitter battleground between Orthodox Jews who control a majority of the school board (but send their kids to yeshivot) and the parents of public school students. [NYT]
• For the first time, rockets launched from Gaza into Israel (they landed, unexploded, in the Negev) have been identified as an advanced class of Russian weapon. [JTA]
Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.