Daybreak: The PM from Hezbollah
Plus the Palestine Papers stir trouble, and more in the news
January 25, 2011
Palestinians in a Nablus refugee camp march against al Jazeera.(Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP/Getty Images)
• What if Hezbollah appointed Lebanon’s next prime minister, and Israel didn’t panic? (They did, and it didn’t.) [NYT]
• Crowds of Palestinians reacted angrily to the Palestine Papers, blaming their leadership for being willing to give so much away (as well as, in some cases, blaming al Jazeera for trying to discredit their leadership. [WP]
• Iran is “no longer interested” in a fuel-swap deal, it said at talks last weekend. [NYT]
• While insisting that they are unverified, the State Department reported that the Palestine Papers makes peace negotiations more difficult. [Haaretz]
• Despite the official Palestinian Authority line that the Papers are a “pack of lies,” a former negotiator admitted to al Jazeera that they are valid. [Ynet]
• In new Papers, President Abbas admits that asking Israel to absorb one million refugees would be “illogical,” and that the leadership would settle for 100,000 under a final deal. This news is likely also not to be received well. [Haaretz]
Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.
