Peru recognizes “a sovereign Palestine,” but says the borders must be agreed with Israel. (JP 2/5)
In Gaza, 1,000s of Hamas supporters burn effigies of Abbas and other PA officials, calling them traitors in light of al-Jazeera’s leak of the Palestine Papers. In the West Bank, shortly after al-Najah University prof. ‘Abdul Sattar Qassem is interviewed by al-Jazeera in the Palmedia offices in Nablus regarding the Palestine Papers leak, 5 plain-clothes men (1 armed, 4 unarmed) believed to be PA General Intelligence units raid the office looking for Qassem; informed he has already left, the men vandalize the office and damage video equipment. Also in the West Bank, the IDF conducts late-night patrols in Kharabatha al-Misbah and arrest raids and house searches in Nabi Salih, both nr. Ramallah. Israeli authorities say they have arrested 4 West Bank Palestinians for the murder of an American tourist on 12/19, alleging the murder was in revenge for Israel’s assassination of Hamas’s Mahmud Mabhuh in 1/2010. (NYT, PCHR 1/27; PCHR 2/3; OCHA 2/4)