Israeli Press
Israel's Sunday papers lead with Rafah groundwork and Ra'am's Jewish candidate
Graphic: Times of Palestine
Original Reporting
The Israeli press opened the week on two stories that begin inside Israeli politics and land on Palestinians. Here is how each outlet plays it.
The day's scoop belonged to neither newspaper. Army Radio, the military's own station, reported that Netanyahu and Israel Katz approved infrastructure work two weeks ago at "Green Rafah", a housing site east of the yellow line inside the zone the army holds. The Prime Minister's Office called the report distorted and described the work as a long-running Emirati pilot.
Ynet led with Yoav Segalovitz's resignation from the Knesset and his expected move to Ra'am, and followed it with recordings of the former Shin Bet chief Yoram Cohen telling supporters a Palestinian state is not relevant. Michael Milstein used its opinion pages to take apart the doctrine that settlement prevents attacks.
Further down the same front: a long feature on Israelis recruited by Iranian intelligence, and a report from the Syrian Golan, where the army is digging trenches and earth ramparts along the line.
Maariv gave the morning almost entirely to the campaign. Matti Tuchfeld put the coalition's odds of 61 seats at 11 percent, an exclusive poll found a Smotrich-Zehut merger worth ten seats, and Mohammad Majadleh reported that Jewish security figures are approaching Mansour Abbas as Ra'am rebuilds its list.
Walla ran the region: Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, saying there will be no talks with Washington while it breaches the memorandum of understanding, and the Houthis claiming a strike on Aramco refineries at Jizan.
The English editions carried Gaza outward. The Jerusalem Post and the Times of Israel both led their defence files with Green Rafah, and the foreign ministry told Israelis in Greece to keep a low profile before pro-Palestinian protests announced at 36 locations.
Gaza appears across every front page today, and in every one of them the actors are Israeli.
