US Press

Washington reads Netanyahu's refusal and argues about Arab peace terms

Times of PalestineNEW1h ago

Published Tuesday, August 11, 2026 · 05:35 Jerusalem time

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Original Reporting

By the Times of Palestine Newsdesk · 2 min read

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What Washington is reading this morning, from the American front pages and the think tanks that brief them.

The New York Times runs two Middle East pieces at the top of its file. One reports Israel's rejection of the fifteen-point plan the Board of Peace announced last month. The other, by its Jerusalem staff, reads Netanyahu as walking a tightrope: a prime minister eleven weeks from an election trying to satisfy a right-wing base and a US president who want different things from Gaza.

Its politics desk adds the sentence the administration would rather not see printed — that Trump wants to move on from the Middle East and neither Iran nor Gaza will let him.

The Washington Post led its world file with Netanyahu's own words: "Israel does not accept the 15-point document."

Foreign Policy's morning brief filed the same rejection under a blunter headline, "Netanyahu Nixes Trump's Gaza Deal," and paired it with Colombia's earthquake — the day the country's new government also recognised Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan.

At the think tanks the argument is louder than the reporting. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the hawkish Washington shop closest to sanctions policy, ran an essay titled "Arabs Must Make Peace with Zionism" and a set of analyst notes reading the Netanyahu-Trump daylight as diverging interests under election pressure.

The Quincy Institute, which argues the opposite case for American restraint, published Israel's campaign against Turkey's return to the F-35 programme, and an argument that Washington will have to accept a toll for passage through Hormuz.

Foreign Policy also carried an essay against the administration's campaign to dismantle the International Criminal Court, the court holding the arrest warrant for Netanyahu.

The Hill's international page ran the Iran file all day, and one senator: Chris Murphy saying Israel's government is not aligned with American national security objectives.