• The NY Times looks at Israel’s go-it-alone options. Would Israel unilaterally annex the West Bank’s Area C or evacuate settlements beyond the security barrier? And what lessons might be applied from the 2005 Gaza withdrawal?
• Canadian authorities raided the offices of an Islamic charity group accused of sending $15 million to Hamas. International Relief Fund for the Afflicted and Needy Canada. As well, Ottawa formally designated IRFAN-Canada as a terror organization. More at the National Post and CBC.
• James Taranto unpacks Kerry’s apart apartheid embroilment, concluding the contentious comments came from candor, not carelessness. See also Danny Danon in Politico and Boaz Bismuth.
• Earlier this week, Time gave op-ed space to Yair Lapid to explain why he voted to suspend peace talks. Today, it gave the soapbox to Saeb Erekat to defend the PLO-Hamas romance and bash Israel.
• John Kerry’s April 29 peace deadline passed, prompting a flurry of peace process post-mortems. See Israel’s ambassador to Ireland, Boaz Modai, Herb Keinon, Ari Shavit, Reuters, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, Neill Lochery, and an LA Times staff-ed.
• For more commentary, see Khaled Abu Toameh (Abbas pumps new life into Hamas) Spengler (why liberals don’t care about consequences), and Zalman Shoval (UN irrelevance).
Rest O’ the Roundup
• Syrian dissident: Israel is our last hope:
It is extremely rare for a Syrian dissident to speak openly with Israeli media, but Labwani, who has sought political asylum in Sweden, believes the Syrian uprising has shattered many Arab taboos, including the cultural Arab taboo on engaging Israel.
• The US is offering a $5 million bounty for a Chinese businessman who helped sell ballistic missile parts to Iran. Li Fangwei has been under investigation for years, but the US and China have no extradition treaty, explains the Wall St. Journal (via Google News).
• Reuters picked up on Iranian reports that nuclear inspectors will visit a uranium mine and milling plant next week.
The planned visits to Saghand and Ardakan are among seven measures the two sides agreed would be carried out by May 15, as part of a step-by-step process by Iran to provide greater access and more information to U.N. inspectors.
Diplomats and experts say the measures announced so far have been relatively easy for Iran to agree to but that it may become increasingly difficult as the U.N. agency presses for answers to sensitive questions on alleged atomic bomb research.
• Is Bashar Assad concealing a residual stockpile of chemical weapons while misleading the world? Haaretz updates what’s known
• Jihadis crucified two people in the northeastern Syrian town of Raqqa.
(Image of Dermer via YouTube/Miami Herald, maple leaf via Wikimedia Commons)
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream.
.
