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Daybreak: Bibi Concedes, Gets Meeting

Plus deadly clashes, habemus health care, and more in the news

by
Marc Tracy
March 22, 2010
President Obama and Vice President Biden, late last night.(Alex Wong/Getty Images)
President Obama and Vice President Biden, late last night.(Alex Wong/Getty Images)

• It’s officially on: Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Obama will meet Tuesday at the White House. It’s going down because Bibi agreed that forthcoming proximity talks can address substantive, in addition to procedural, issues. [WSJ]

• Clashes with the IDF resulted in four Palestinian deaths over the weekend, raising tension in the West Bank. [LAT]

• Lee “Rosy” Rosenberg, the new AIPAC president, kicked off the group’s annual conference with a call for “allies” to “work out their differences privately.” Much more on the conference at 10 am. [Capital J]

• As the diplomatic spat begins to fade, both the U.S. and Israel, unsurprisingly perhaps, think they won. [NYT]

• Visiting Ramallah, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for a total settlement freeze. [NYT]

• The House of Representatives passed the Senate’s health-care reform bill, meaning it will become law. [WP]

Said the National Jewish Democratic Council:

This action culminates a 100-year effort to ensure that the people of the United States have the same type of access to health care as citizens of nearly every other industrialized nation. We are confident that when historians look back on this day, they will equate the passage of this bill with such monumental legislative achievements as the passage of Social Security in the 1930’s. This bill also reflects the clear groundswell of support in the American Jewish community—both among individuals and organizations—for the change in our health care system that’s so desperately needed today.

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