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Daybreak: Bibi and Dmitry

Plus skirmish over Lebanon, Palestinian sex scandal, and more in the news

by
Marc Tracy
February 16, 2010

• Prime Minister Netanyahu met Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow to push for further Iran sanctions. [WP]
• Netanyahu also asked Medvedev to tell Hamas that his previous offer for kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit—a deal Hamas did not accept, leaving talks at an impasse—would not be improved upon. [Haaretz]
• Lebanese soldiers fired anti-aircraft guns at Israeli Air Force planes flying over central Lebanon. There were no casualties, but the incident exacerbated already high tensions on that border. [AP/Ynet]
• While calling for further sanctions against the Revolutionary Guard, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that Iran’s religious rulers were in danger of being replaced by a Guard-led “military dictatorship.” [LAT]
• A strange case gets stranger: the 11 suspects in the Dubai killing of Hamas’s chief weapons procurer held various European passports, and were likely not acting under Israeli orders (or at least direct Israeli orders), according to the police chief there. [WSJ]
• On Valentine’s Day, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas suspended his chief-of-staff; the aide was caught on video allegedly accepting sex for political favors. [NYT]

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