US Press
Washington reads a thirty-day clock and a president threatening Oman
Graphic: Times of Palestine
Original Reporting
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The American papers spent Tuesday morning on two clocks: the one Jared Kushner started over Hamas's weapons, and the one that ran out on the president's own Iran deal.
Axios had the Gaza meeting first. Barak Ravid, citing an American official, reported that Kushner told Netanyahu the United States wants Israel to take "small steps" in Gaza to test whether Hamas's commitment to disarm is genuine, and described a four-hour conversation held in deep scepticism on the Israeli side.
The Washington Post headlined the same meeting as a failure to move: Kushner and Netanyahu made little progress on the stalled fifteen-point plan, days after Kushner's rare talks with Hamas's new leader in Egypt.
The New York Times framed the visit as an effort to break a logjam, and put the Israeli position plainly — the prime minister will not pull the army back until Hamas fully disarms — while noting an administration under pressure to show something.
The Hill reported the meeting lasted four hours, and separately carried Hakeem Jeffries's demand that the administration compel Israel to protect Palestinians from what he called violent, lawbreaking settlers in the West Bank.
The Iran file the same papers cannot close#
The Post counted the days: sixty after the June interim deal, the negotiating window has closed and the broader talks are at a standstill.
The Times went further, reporting that Washington and Tehran blew through their own deadline and that Trump has taken aim at Oman, the ally mediating between them. Both papers then carried what he said next.
"If Oman gets in the way, we'll bomb the s--- out of them," the president told Fox News's Trey Yingst, according to The Hill's account.
Axios reported the consequence inside Congress: Democrats are preparing a fresh war-powers push to constrain him, a tool that is largely symbolic and has become the party's standard answer to this administration's use of force.
What the numbers say underneath#
The Hill carried the Reuters/Ipsos survey taken Friday through Monday: 33 percent of 1,166 respondents approve of the president's performance and 64 percent disapprove, a two-point fall in a fortnight.
Axios reported that the USS George Washington's move from Japan to the Middle East, relieving the Lincoln, leaves the United States without an aircraft carrier in the western Pacific.
For Palestinian readers the two files converge in one place. The same administration that is asking Israel for small steps in Gaza is bogged down in a war it began with Iran, losing domestic support for it, and threatening the mediator it needs. Nothing about that combination makes an American guarantee at Qusra, or on the yellow line, easier to obtain.
