Gregg Carlstrom

Does the US have leverage over the PLO?

The Palestine Liberation Organisation seems to have passed the point of no return in its bid for full membership at the United Nations. Mahmoud Abbas could still abandon the bid - he will not formally submit the PLO's request until later this week - but that would be a politically ruinous move after his speech on Friday night.

Nonetheless, the United States and the European Union are still trying to convince Abbas to back down. There will be a few frantic meetings in New York this week ahead of Abbas' speech to the UN General Assembly on Friday.

The carrot they are offering him is the prospect of renewed negotiations with Israel, possibly with a timer attached: If talks do not go anywhere after, say, six months, the so-called Quartet would then endorse the PLO's bid for UN membership.

Irregularities in Egyptian vote?

Three hours into Egypt's constitutional referendum, we're hearing reports of high turnout - and potential irregularities.

Voters have reported long lines (see the photos below), with some predicting an hours-long wait to cast their votes. That's mostly been viewed as a positive development, a sign of high voter enthusiasm - a major change from last year's fraudulent parliamentary election, which saw turnout as low as 10 per cent in some parts of the country.

But some voters are reporting a more serious problem: unstamped ballot papers.

The Yemeni president's playbook

What's behind the recent wave of popular protests sweeping the Arab world? Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, says... Barack Obama.

"There is a control room in Tel Aviv, it's the cause of all of these problems sweeping the Arab world," Saleh said at the University of Sanaa. "These events are managed by the White House. We hear statements from president Obama asking the Egyptians to do this, telling the Tunisians to do that... this is none of your business, Mr. President."

"Yemen is not Tunisia or Egypt, and the Yemeni people are different," Saleh continued (sound familiar?).

In a separate statement, at a meeting with religious leaders, Saleh said Yemen would split into four parts if his government fell.

Lieberman sees common ground with Livni

Here's an unintended consequence of Al Jazeera's release of The Palestine Papers: Israeli media are reporting today (in Hebrew) that Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman has invited Tzipi Livni, the head of the Kadima party, to a coalition meeting.

The invitation came in response to our story yesterday about Livni's proposal (made while she was foreign minister) to "transfer" Arab Israeli villages into a future Palestinian state. It's reminiscent of a similar plan proposed by Lieberman several years back.

So Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party invited Livni to present her views at a meeting.