Daily News Brief — August 2, 2010

Rockets hit Jordan, Israel killing one man
Five rockets that were likely intended to hit the southern Israeli city of Eilat fired into Jordan and Israel today, killing one person and injuring four others. One rocket hit an open area near Eilat, two fell into the Red Sea, and two hit the Jordanian city of Aqaba. Jordan’s information minister says it’s “premature to make any conclusions at the moment about where it came from because it’s under investigation.”

An Israeli police official said it was “reasonable to assume” that the rockets were fired from the Sinai; an Egyptian security source says the rockets were fired from Jordan; Jordan’s interior minister says it was fired from outside Jordanian territory.

• Israel to deport children of migrant workers to preserve its Jewish identity.
• President Obama’s plans to reduce troops in Iraq is ‘on schedule.’
• U.S. has a plan to attack Iran.
• Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood will boycott Jordan’s election in November.
• UAE will ban Internet services on BlackBerry’s starting in October.

Iraqi police stand guard over handcuffed and blindfolded men in the mainly Sunni Muslim western city of Fallujah on August 01, 2010, after being arrested for allegedly taking part in attacks on Shiite Muslims in northern and southern areas of Iraq (Azhar Shallal/AFP/Getty Images).

Arguments & Analysis
‘A benchmark of progress, electrical bid fails Iraqis’ (Steven Lee Myers, New York Times)
Seven years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, electricity production remains wholly insufficient for meeting public demands. Though $5 billion has been spent on electrical infrastructure by the U.S., the sector remains barely more functional than it was before the war (last month saw an average of 5 hours of electricity a day in Baghdad).

‘Ramon was right’ (Gideon Levy, Haaretz)
Despite the media furor over a case of eavesdropping on former Knesset member Haim Ramon, the episode was revealing because of the wisdom of Ramon’s remarks, not that he said them. At this stage, direct negotiations would be a recipe for disaster; they would succeed only in encouraging Prime Minister Netanyahu’s goal of kicking the can of peace even further down the road–and discrediting the legitimacy of Abu Mazen to an event greater extent.

‘Saving Lebanon’ (Omayam Abdel-Latif, Al-Ahram)
Political tensions in both Lebanon and the broader region are growing over the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), pitting internal Lebanese factions against each other under continued allegations of foreign interference.

‘Immigrant maids flee lives of abuse in Kuwait’ (Kareem Fahim, New York Times)
The continued growth of a servant class in Kuwait has been met by a concurrent crisis of mistreatment and neglect. Scores of people from countries like Nepal are finding Kuwait to have insufficient legal recourse to their degraded situations, and many have had to resort to living in shelters in the absence of other options.

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