When the U.S. and its allies overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003, they seized control of his government’s vast archives. Samuel Helfont describes the “tortured journey” that these troves of documents have taken since then, as well as some of the noteworthy things they contain:

Saddam and the Baathists had an anti-Semitic obsession with Jews. They not only tracked the dwindling population of Iraqi Jews, including those who had converted, but the Iraqi Intelligence Service also maintained an archive that included the personal property of Jews who had fled Iraq during their mass exodus in the 1950s. Apparently, Iraqi intelligence officers thought things such as medieval religious texts and modern school notebooks could provide some insight into the Jewish cabal that secretly ran the world through shadowy conspiracies.

The Americans found the Jewish records in the flooded basement of the Iraqi Intelligence Service. They took the waterlogged documents and artifacts outside into the arid desert air; they rolled Torah scrolls out in the sun in an attempt to dry them. It soon became evident, however, that these records and artifacts risked being eaten away by mold. They needed professional attention from a conservationist. So, these archives . . . were removed from Iraq.

When he called upon Hamas to end the war and release the hostages last week, the Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas was also getting ready for a reshuffle within his regime. On Saturday, he appointed Hussein al-Sheikh deputy president of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which is intimately tied to the PA itself. Al-Sheikh would therefore succeed Abbas—who is eighty-nine and reportedly in ill health—as head of the PLO if he should die or become incapacitated, and be positioned to succeed him as head of the PA as well.

Al-Sheikh spent eleven years in an Israeli prison and, writes Maurice Hirsch, was involved in planning a 2002 Jerusalem suicide bombing that killed three. Moreover, Hirsch writes, he “does not enjoy broad Palestinian popularity or support.”

Still, by appointing Al-Sheikh, Abbas has taken a step in the internal reforms he inaugurated last year in the hope that he could prove to the Biden administration and other relevant players that the PA was up to the task of governing the Gaza Strip. Neomi Neumann writes:

Abbas’s motivation for reform also appears rooted in the need to meet the expectations of Arab and European donors without compromising his authority. On April 14, the EU foreign-policy chief Kaja Kallas approved a three-year aid package worth 1.6 billion euros, including 620 million euros in direct budget support tied to reforms. Meanwhile, the French president Emmanuel Macron held a call with Abbas [earlier this month] and noted afterward that reforms are essential for the PA to be seen as a viable governing authority for Gaza—a telling remark given reports that Paris may soon recognize “the state of Palestine.”

In some cases, reforms appear targeted at specific regional partners. The idea of appointing a vice-president originated with Saudi Arabia.

In the near term, Abbas’s main goal appears to be preserving Arab and European support ahead of a major international conference in New York this June.