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Daybreak: Bibi Offers Prisoners for Talks

Plus political battle looms in Egypt, and more in the news

by
Marc Tracy
July 09, 2012
President Abbas in Paris Friday, where he met with Secretary of State Clinton.(Bertrand Guay/AFP/GettyImages)
President Abbas in Paris Friday, where he met with Secretary of State Clinton.(Bertrand Guay/AFP/GettyImages)

• Pre-talk talks are underway (although President Abbas may have already said no): Israel and the Palestinian Authority are negotiating Israel’s release of 25 Palestinians convicted of murdering Israelis in exchange for the beginning of peace negotiations. [Haaretz]

• Mohammed Morsi, the new Muslim Brotherhood president of Egypt, reconvened the parliament, which had been dissolved by the military council and courts. It’s honestly not clear who is ultimately in charge. [NYT]

• Even as Israel seeks to deport illegal African immigrants, it pledged to expedite bringing the remaining 2200 Falash Mura—Ethiopian Jews whose ancestors converted to Christianity—into the land. [JTA]

• A panel appointed by Prime Minister Netanyahu recommends legalizing all West Bank settlements and outposts. “They [the settlers] had an administrative assurance to settle in a place, an assurance that cannot be violated,” it argues. [Haaretz]

• MoveOn.org has apologized for its “offensive and inflammatory” email blast endorsing the opponent of Charles Barron, who says offensive and inflammatory things about Israel. [JTA]

• Libya may have just witnessed a rare triumph for the good guys, with the non-Muslim Brotherhood bloc led by a University of Pittsburgh-educated political scientist winning the parliamentary elections. [NYT]

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.