The Rest of the World Report | September 29, 2026 — Morning Edition

Weekday morning and evening editions. Saturdays once. Good news on Sundays. All sources labeled. *I will never put the news behind a paywall. If you want to support keeping it free for everyone else, there’s a paid option. That’s all it is.* SMOTRICH’S ANNEXATION CALL Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Sunday that Israel should “go to war in Judea and Samaria, to do there what we did in Gaza.” He made the comment in a podcast interview with Ynet. He called the Palestinian Authority a terror authority that should be dismantled, and said no terrorist infrastructure, weapons, or tunnels should remain in the West Bank. Smotrich also called for annexing Gaza up to the Yellow Line, the line marking the roughly 60 percent of the Strip currently under Israeli control. He called for annexing Lebanon up to the Litani River, the unofficial line marking Israel’s southern buffer zone. His reasoning: wars that end where they started leave enemies free to restart them. Annexation, he argued, would force adversaries to pay a price. The remarks came about a month before Israel’s general election. Smotrich made a nearly identical call to annex southern Lebanon in March. Two days later, before dawn Tuesday, more than 100 Israeli settlers rioted in Jalud, a West Bank village near Nablus. The riot followed a High Court order returning a Palestinian family evicted from the village in July. Settlers blocked the family from reaching their home and set fire to Palestinian houses and vehicles. One homeowner said his house “burned to the ground.” Three Border Police officers were lightly injured. Police arrested three people, two of them minors, and said balaclavas and clubs were found in their vehicles. Separately, 11 people were arrested after Israeli youths attacked Arab men at Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate during Sukkot celebrations. Israeli President Isaac Herzog called the Jalud violence “a moral stain.” He said it amounted to an attack on the rule of law. Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar called it “serious and abhorrent.” He said the perpetrators were harming Israel’s own values and its settlement project. The Palestinian Authority’s Foreign Ministry said Monday that Smotrich’s remarks amount to “a call for further military escalation in the West Bank.” It said the comments reflect efforts to advance annexation and displacement. It urged the UN Security Council and the United States to take immediate, concrete measures. Qatar’s Foreign Ministry followed Tuesday, rejecting the annexation remarks as “a flagrant challenge to international law and legitimate international resolutions.” It called on the international community to compel Israel to halt its expansionist plans. It reaffirmed support for a Palestinian state on 1967 borders and for Lebanese sovereignty over its entire territory. 🌍 **TRANSLATOR’S NOTE:** Gulf and Palestinian sources are not treating Smotrich’s remarks as campaign rhetoric to be weighed against denials. Qatar’s Foreign Ministry and the Palestinian Authority’s Foreign Ministry both characterized the comments as a declared intention, not a negotiating position. Both called on outside powers, the international community broadly and the UN Security Council and United States specifically, to force a stop rather than simply condemn. Al Jazeera’s own analysis reached a similar place from a different angle. A legal director quoted by the outlet described the statement as “a public declaration of intent to commit war crimes.” Analyst Mairav Zonszein told Al Jazeera that Smotrich has been enacting the substance of the threat for four years, through settlement expansion and settler violence, not merely proposing it now. Reading Tuesday’s rioting in Jalud as a second expression of the same policy, rather than a separate story, is ROTWR’s own editorial judgment. No outlet found for the edition drew that connection explicitly. 🇺🇸 **WHAT AMERICAN READERS NEED TO KNOW:** Washington has not commented on this week’s remarks. The State Department said in April, after an earlier Smotrich annexation call, that Trump “does not support the annexation of the West Bank.” It pointedly declined at the time to address his broader ambitions in Gaza and Lebanon, the same ambitions he is now naming outright. **Sources:** The Times of Israel (Israel, right-centre — Smotrich quotes); The Times of Israel liveblog (Jalud riot details, Herzog and Sa’ar quotes); Al Jazeera (Qatar, state-funded/editorially independent — legal analysis); The Peninsula Qatar (Qatar Foreign Ministry statement); Middle East Monitor (UK-based, pro-Palestinian editorial lean — Palestinian Foreign Ministry statement); Ynetnews (Israel — State Department background) THE CORNELL 7 Winston Lee is one of seven Chi Phi fraternity members a former Cornell University student sued September 14, alleging she was drugged with ketamine and marijuana and gang-raped at a fraternity house party in October 2024. The lawsuit was filed under the pseudonym Jane Doe. Lee is the only one of the seven whose case has become its own story overseas. The Korea Herald reported it has “sent shockwaves through the Korean American community.” Korean and Korean-American coverage of the case has centered on Lee individually, not on Cornell’s institutional response, the frame that dominates US reporting. The Korea Times reported an active online search for Lee’s current whereabouts, with conflicting claims circulating. Some posts say he has joined the South Korean military. Others claim he has returned to Cornell and is attending classes. One Korean-American outlet, K News LA, reported finding a LinkedIn profile showing Lee served in the Republic of Korea Army, according to the Korea Times. Unverified posts cited by the outlet, from users claiming to be former classmates, say Lee attended Seoul Foreign School and UWC Atlantic, a boarding school in the UK, before enrolling at Cornell. Korea Daily reported that Lee’s name and photo, along with the other six defendants’, are circulating on TheCornell7.org. The site was built by former South Park writer Toby Morton and publicly identifies all seven by name and photo. Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten declined to prosecute in 2024, after Doe’s initial statement to campus police did not allege gang rape or drugging. He reopened the investigation this week, citing new evidence. Cornell vice president for university relations Kyle Kimball disputed claims that essay-writing was the university’s only discipline. “Any suggestion that the university did not impose consequential punishments for those involved is false,” he said. The university closed the Chi Phi chapter and confirmed expulsions and suspensions were issued, without saying how many. 🌍 **TRANSLATOR’S NOTE:** Korean and Korean-American coverage of this case is doing something American coverage isn’t: treating Winston Lee’s own exposure, not Cornell’s institutional response, as the story. The Korea Herald led with his nationality and the community reaction it described. The Korea Times went further, tracking an active public search for his current whereabouts, including unverified claims that he has entered South Korean military service. Korea Daily reported his name and photo circulating publicly alongside the other six defendants’ on a dedicated website. None of the three outlets reported an organized South Korean government or diaspora response. The coverage is individual: one defendant’s identity and location, not Cornell’s institutional failures. 🇺🇸 **WHAT AMERICAN READERS NEED TO KNOW:** This is a domestic campus story for six of the seven defendants. For the seventh, it is something else: a Korean American student individually identified, tracked, and speculated about online, with an intensity that has no real counterpart in US coverage of the same case. **Sources:** The Korea Times (online hunt, education background, K News LA finding); The Korea Herald (Lee identification, “shockwaves” quote, filing date); Korea Daily (names and photos circulating, TheCornell7.org); The Cornell Daily Sun (filing date, Kimball quote, expulsions); PBS NewsHour (US confirmation — DA reopening) MACHADO’S SEVENTH ATTEMPT Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado failed three separate attempts to return home from exile in Panama within about 24 hours last week. That brings her total to seven failed attempts in 2026. A sea crossing was called off Monday, September 21, over what the accompanying journalist called “strange” mechanical problems, after her passport had already been stamped for departure. A flight to Aruba never left the ground the next morning. A charter to Curaçao was blocked that same afternoon. The Netherlands controls foreign policy for Aruba and Curaçao as parts of the Dutch Kingdom. It refused landing permission for the Curaçao charter. The company running the flight said it never received the necessary permission to fly to either island, citing paperwork issues. Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten declined to comment. The Dutch foreign ministry said only that the Netherlands has “for years been unflagging” in its support for the opposition, while declining to discuss her travel plans. Journalists traveling with Machado called the explanation implausible. The US position is similarly murky. According to MercoPress, citing the Spanish newspaper El País, Deputy Secretary of State Chris Landau approved an earlier return attempt. Assistant Secretary Mike Kozak separately signaled that US policy actually opposes facilitating her return. Machado herself has offered a third explanation, saying Venezuela closed its commercial airspace to keep her out. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and President Trump both deny obstructing her return. Machado’s own communications chief took a very different path home. Claudia Macero had taken refuge in Argentina’s embassy residence in Caracas since March 2024, on conspiracy and treason accusations. She flew into Simón Bolívar International Airport outside Caracas on September 27 without incident, and was met by hundreds of supporters singing the national anthem. “It is time to come home,” she said. Asked when Machado might follow, Macero said only that her boss was trying every day to return. Machado won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize. Two opposition members were briefly detained during concurrent protests demanding her safe return. 🌍 **TRANSLATOR’S NOTE:** Dutch and Latin American coverage is asking a sharper question than US coverage has. It is asking why a NATO ally’s own territories are the ones physically stopping a Nobel laureate’s return, not why the US isn’t helping her. NL Times documented Aruba and Curaçao’s landing refusals in detail that did not surface in the edition’s US search results. MercoPress’s reporting on a split between two named State Department officials, one who approved an earlier attempt and one who signaled the opposite, is the most specific account found for the edition of Washington’s own internal contradiction. Together, the Dutch and Latin American reporting documents active, multi-front obstruction in more specific terms than surfaced anywhere else in the edition’s search. 🇺🇸 **WHAT AMERICAN READERS NEED TO KNOW:** A Nobel Peace Prize laureate has been physically blocked from going home seven times, twice this week by the territory of a NATO ally, while Washington denies any role. Her own aide reached Caracas without trouble the same week the Curaçao flight was refused. **Sources:** MercoPress (Uruguay — three-attempts timeline, State Department split); NL Times (Netherlands — landing refusals, Jetten and foreign ministry statements); Rio Times (Macero’s return, quote) HAITI’S GANG RETALIATION Gang members killed at least 11 civilians in Haiti’s Artibonite region Monday. The attack was retaliation after a UN-backed security force dismantled illegal gang toll points nearby. Mayor Hubert Ceneac said the death toll may reach 12. “The bandits in retaliation attacked... they killed and burned homes,” he said. Kokorat San Ras, the gang responsible, struck after a Sri Lankan unit of the UN-backed Gang Suppression Force moved to dismantle the toll points. The unit is based in nearby Gonaïves. Three gang members were killed in the initial operation. Rosy Ducena is with Haiti’s National Human Rights Defense Network. Her organization has already received a report of “a single family that lost several members,” she said. Haiti’s gang violence has been expanding beyond Port-au-Prince into rural areas, an escalating pattern noted in Monday’s reporting. The Gang Suppression Force was deployed to reinforce Haitian police against that expansion. The UN Security Council is scheduled to vote today on whether to renew the Gang Suppression Force’s mandate, which expires this week. 🇺🇸 **WHAT AMERICAN READERS NEED TO KNOW:** This is what Haitians are being deported back into. The Trump administration ended Temporary Protected Status for Haiti in July, and deportation flights have since risen from about one a month to one a week. Human Rights Watch reported this month that more than 450 people have been deported since late July, many arriving to one meal, about $77 in cash, and no sustained shelter. **Sources:** Business Recorder (Reuters wire — Artibonite attack, Ceneac and Ducena quotes, UN vote); Human Rights Watch (TPS termination, deportation flight data, reception conditions) BRIEFS **Iran/Hormuz:** Iran says it expects a “definitive” US response today on its plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Foreign Minister Araghchi met Qatari mediators as talks entered what Tehran calls a key stage. Trump rejected an earlier version of the proposal last week. France 24 | Al Jazeera **Marines wounded, updated:** The Pentagon’s Defense Casualty Analysis System now shows 29 sailors and 9 Marines wounded in the Middle East this month, one more Marine than the 8 reported in last night’s edition. A Navy official attributed the change to “standard verification protocols.” Military Times NUMBERS AT PUBLICATION 🇮🇷 Iran: 3,684 killed 🇱🇧 Lebanon: 8,953 killed, 30,643 wounded 🇮🇱 Israel: 1,200+ killed, ~5,400 wounded 🇺🇸 US military: 23 killed, 861 wounded 🇵🇸 Gaza: 74,105+ killed, 4,916 wounded (since ceasefire) 🇵🇸 West Bank: 322 killed (incl. 74 children), 5,927 wounded (incl. 946 children) since January 2025 Brent crude: $105.30 | Gas (US avg): $4.46 Sources: HRANA (Iran); Lebanon MOPH; INSS (Israel); DCAS (US); OCHA (West Bank); gazacasualties.org (Gaza total); Al Jazeera (Gaza since ceasefire); OilPrice.com (Brent); AAA (US gas) “Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1789 Get full access to The Rest of the World Report at www.restoftheworldreport.com/subscribe