A native of Buffalo, New York who became the world’s leading expert on Bedouin society, Clinton Bailey died in Jerusalem on January 5 at the age of eighty-eight. Bailey, known in Israel as Itzik, first came to the country in 1957 to study at Hebrew University. He later made aliyah and served in the IDF. But he spent countless days and months with Bedouin and believed that understanding their culture was the key to understanding much of the Hebrew Bible. (You can read about his work here and listen to an interview here.) Zack Rothbart offers a personal reflection on Bailey and his legacy:

[Bailey could recall] conversations he had with elder Bedouin tribesmen in the deserts of the Negev or the Sinai decades ago. Many of the contexts and phrases he’d still remember sharply were remembered only by him, with his interlocutors long passed and their descendants no longer familiar with much of their own culture’s oral tradition.

Besides simply preserving their ancient oral tradition—which Clinton saw as closely linked with the most ancient Jewish traditions—he also truly did care about contemporary Bedouin life. He worked diligently to preserve Bedouin history as well as to promote their civil rights in Israel.

As a senior adviser to notable military and government officials, Clinton surely had some great stories with prominent people stowed away in that remarkable memory of his, yet he was not one particularly to enjoy name-dropping. He was, nonetheless, certainly proud of his personal friendship with Paula and David Ben-Gurion, a relationship documented in a now-legendary interview he conducted with Israel’s first prime minister shortly before Ben-Gurion passed away.

Yesterday, the Iranian foreign minister flew to Geneva to meet with European diplomats. President Trump, meanwhile, indicated that cease-fire negotiations might soon begin with Iran, which would presumably involve Tehran agreeing to make concessions regarding its nuclear program, while Washington pressures Israel to halt its military activities. According to Israeli media, Iran already began putting out feelers to the U.S. earlier this week. Aviram Bellaishe considers the purpose of these overtures:

The regime’s request to return to negotiations stems from the principle of deception and delay that has guided it for decades. Iran wants to extricate itself from a situation of total destruction of its nuclear facilities. It understands that to save the nuclear program, it must stop at a point that would allow it to return to it in the shortest possible time. So long as the negotiation process leads to halting strikes on its military capabilities and preventing the destruction of the nuclear program, and enables the transfer of enriched uranium to a safe location, it can simultaneously create the two tracks in which it specializes—a false facade of negotiations alongside a hidden nuclear race.