US Press
Washington reads Turkey, Lebanon and an Iran war it cannot end
Graphic: Times of Palestine
Original Reporting
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What the American papers and Washington's research institutions put in front of policymakers this weekend, and where Palestine sits in it.
The papers#
The New York Times gave its Middle East file to two neighbours of the occupation. One report follows Turkey's request for an Interpol red notice against Benjamin Netanyahu over the treatment of the flotilla activists, filed as relations between Ankara and Tel Aviv keep worsening.
The second finds President Joseph Aoun's attempt to bring Hezbollah's weapons under Lebanese state control stalled while the war with Israel continues — the file that decides whether the question of the Palestinian factions' weapons in the refugee camps ever moves.
The Washington Post reported that Israel's fact-finding mechanism is examining the killing of Hind Rajab, the six-year-old who called for help from a car in Gaza City, while declining to send other cases it had itself marked exceptional, among them the killing of the World Central Kitchen aid workers, to military prosecutors.
The Hill carried Iran's president, Masoud Pezeshkian, saying the war should end because the world has accepted Tehran's victory, days before a new round of American sanctions.
The think tanks#
The Arab Center Washington DC, which argues for Arab perspectives in American policymaking, published the sharpest Palestine-relevant paper of the week: Mtanes Shihadeh's reading of Israeli survey data, in which 33 percent approve annexing Gaza and the occupied West Bank and 22 percent support two states.
The same institution's earlier analysis by Mohammed Samhouri asks whether the Board of Peace's Gaza roadmap can survive the disarmament deadlock, and a paper of 19 August weighs what the Mecca joint defence agreement actually commits Saudi Arabia to.
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish Washington institute close to sanctions policy, spent the week on Iran enforcement and on Turkey as a rising threat — the same Turkey now pressing Netanyahu's case at Interpol.
What is missing#
Gaza reconstruction is still absent as a policy file with money and a timetable attached. The fund pledges, the disarmament mechanics and the West Bank's fiscal collapse went unmentioned in the outlets swept for this roundup, a gap this desk has now recorded three weekends running.
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