Gingrich Meets an "Inventor"

I steer pretty clear of US politics here, since MEI is not taking any sides, but given Newt Gingrich's remark that the Palestinians are an "invented" people, it's just irresistible not to reprint this, which is now all over the place:

Where is Muhammad Dahlan? Apparently in Cairo

Last week we discussed "Where is Muhammad Dahlan?" The missing Palestinian figure has turned up in Cairo, downplaying the alleged rift between himself and Mahmoud ‘Abbas, even though the Palestinian Authority has shut down a TV station affiliated with Dahlan.

The mere fact that Dahlan is in Cairo suggests there has been some kind of falling out?

. . . And Abu Daoud 1937-1910

Okay, a second prominent person is sabotaging the Fourth of July weekend by dying and making me post. As I was finishing my obit for Sheikh Fadlallah, I learned that Abu Daoud has died, too. The Guardian here; BBC Arabic here. He actually died yesterday. The man allegedly behind the 1972 massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, and the leader of the shadowy Black September organization, he was the prime target of the Israeli assassination campAign against Black September (on which Steven Spielberg's 2005 film Munich is very loosely based), but died in Damascus of kidney failure at 73.

Unlike many PLO leaders, Abu Daoud (Muhammad Da‘ud ‘Odeh) was not a refugee from 1948, but from 1967, when he left his native Silwan (in East Jerusalem) after the Israeli occupation.