Daybreak: Will Mitchell’s Israel Trip Mean Progress?
Plus cruise control, building battle, and more in the news
April 23, 2010
George Mitchell at a meeting with Shimon Peres in Jerusalem today.(Jim Hollander-Pool/Getty Images)
• U.S. envoy George Mitchell has arrived in Israel and met with Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and is also set to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. “We don’t go to meet just to meet,” says a U.S. rep. “We go there because we have some indication that both sides are willing to engage seriously on the issues.” [Reuters]
• Netanyahu, for his part, has indicated that he is open to an interim agreement establishing a Palestinian state with temporarily assigned borders. [Haaretz]
• Club Med has canceled a planned stop in Lebanon on its Mediterranean cruise after the Simon Wiesenthal Center protested the fact that passengers with Israeli stamps in their passports would not be allowed to participate. [WJC]
• The president of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Spain has protested the demolition of a historic Jewish community-owned former hospital in Tangiers, Morocco, despite the fact that the locals had consented to the razing. [JTA]
Hadara Graubart was formerly a writer and editor for Tablet Magazine.
