Today’s Top Stories:
1. Ahmadinejad wants to raise Iran’s profile in Egypt.
2. Is a new pan-Arab satellite channel just a Syrian/Iranian mouthpiece?
3. UN condemns Syria for using kids as human shields.
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Israel and the Palestinians
• Haaretz (paywall) obtained previously undisclosed numbers of Palestinians who lost their residency rights between the Six Day War and the creation of the Palestinian Authority. We’re talking about nearly 250,000 Palestinians who lost their residency after being away from the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem for prolonged periods of time. The PA’s denunciation will be two-faced because they don’t really want Palestinians coming back to Palestine. I call this phenomenon The Fright of Return.
• Maan News: Mahmoud Abbas’s sons are considering legal action against Foreign Policy over Jonathan Schanzer’s article on their business interests.
• Asharq al-Awsat: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wants to raise Iran’s profile in Egypt with a post-election visit:
The Iranian President is trying to exploit Egypt’s rejection of its former regime in the interests of his own country, in a populist manner, whereby he wants to say to the Egyptians that Iran was wronged by Mubarak, just like you.
This is not all, of course. According to what was reported by the Egyptian delegates, Ahmadinejad spoke about what he called a Western conspiracy aiming to break up the Arab and Muslim world, striking its military and strategic strength. Ahmadinejad claimed that: “the solidarity of Egypt and Iran would be guaranteed to dispel the arrogance of the Zionist enemy, and limit America”, and that “the resilience of the people, with the Egyptians at the forefront, would crystalize a new Middle East without America and Israel”.
