The Times, the Independent and the Daily Mail via Reuters report that Israel destroyed what it claims was an “attack tunnel” excavated by Hamas beneath Israel and Egypt. The tunnel, which was detected by a new Israeli underground warning system, was attacked by fighter jets. According to Israeli military sources, the strike took place within Palestinian territory due to the proximity of gas and diesel pipelines leading from Israel to Gaza. Israeli military spokesman Colonel Jonathan Conricus said: “We understand this was a terror tunnel because it runs underneath strategic facilities,” referring to gas and fuel pipelines, as well as an army position. Conricus said the destroyed tunnel was dug by key operatives of Hamas and was one mile long, penetrating 80 metres under the Kerem Shalom border crossing into Israel and into Egypt. “It is definitely a possibility that an attack was imminent,” Conricus said, but would not elaborate further.

The Daily Mail via AP reports on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to India. On Monday he inspected a ceremonial guard of honour at India’s presidential palace and laid a floral wreath at the memorial of India’s independence leader Mohandas Gandhi during his first visit to the country. Netanyahu is scheduled to meet with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi later on Monday to discuss defence, trade and energy ties. “This is the dawn of a new era in the great friendship between India and Israel,” Netanyahu told reporters at the presidential palace. The BBC News Online reports on the story that Moshe Holtzberg, whose parents were killed in the Mumbai terrorist attacks in 2008, has joined Netanyahu on his delegation. Gunmen carried out a series of coordinated attacks across Mumbai targeting seven different locations, including two luxury hotels, the main railway station and the Jewish centre where the Holtzberg and his parents had been living. Moshe was saved by his nanny, Sandra Samuel, who grabbed him and fled the scene of the attack.

The Daily Mail via AP reports that Palestinians in the West Bank are getting 3G high-speed mobile data services, after a years-long Israeli ban. Palestinian cell phone providers Wataniya and Jawwal are expected to launch the 3G broadband services by the end of this month, Palestinian officials said, after Israel assigned frequencies and allowed the import of equipment. “It’s about time,” Wataniya CEO Durgham Maraee told The Associated Press at the company’s headquarters in the West Bank last week. “It has taken a very, very long time.”

The Independent, Telegraph, ITV News Online and BBC News Online report that Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas described US President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace efforts as the “slap of the century”. At a meeting of Palestinian leaders, he stressed he would not accept any peace plan from the US after it recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. He also accused Israel of ending to the Oslo Accords, which began the peace process in 1993. Palestinian leaders are meeting for two days in Ramallah to come up with a concrete Palestinian response to Mr Trump’s move. Mr Abbas had already rejected Mr Trump’s proposals last month, after the UN General Assembly voted to express regret at US recognition of Jerusalem. Mr Abbas suggested Palestinians were being offered the village of Abu Dis, outside Jerusalem, as the capital of a future Palestinian state.

The Daily Mail via AFP reports that an official of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas was wounded on Sunday in a car bomb in Lebanon’s southern port city of Sidon. Hamas’s Lebanon branch named the wounded man as its “staff member” Mohammed Hamdan. “The blast wounded his leg, destroyed his car and damaged the building. Preliminary evidence points to Zionist (involvement) behind this crime,” it said in a statement. A military source told AFP that a BMW “detonated, wounding Hamas official Mohammed Hamdan”, and Lebanon’s army said a “500-gramme bomb” had been placed in his vehicle.

The Guardian reports that the Trump administration is preparing to withhold tens of millions of dollars from the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees, cutting the year’s first contribution by more than half or perhaps entirely and making additional donations contingent on major changes to the organisation, according to US officials. Mr Trump has not made a final decision but appears more likely to send only $60m of a planned $125m first installment to the UN Relief and Works Agency, said the officials, who were not authorised to publicly discuss the matter. Future contributions would require the agency to demonstrate significant changes in operations, the officials said, adding that one suggestion under consideration would require the Palestinians to re-enter peace talks with Israel.

The Times reports that survivors of a suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria have described a “strong smell” of chlorine and being unable to breathe after three regime missiles struck a rebel enclave near Damascus. The dawn attack occurred on the outskirts of Douma, Eastern Ghouta, according to the Union of Medical Care and Relief Organisations (UOSSM), which supports local hospitals. Six women and a boy were treated for breathing difficulties after being taken to hospital smelling of the gas.

The FT reports that Tunisia has announced plans to provide aid to poor families in a bid to forestall further unrest after protests against austerity measures last week turned violent. Mohamed Trabelsi, minister of social affairs, said an extra $70m would be provided to support thousands of families. “This will concern about 250,000 families,” he said late on Saturday. “It will help the poor and the middle class.”

BBC News Online, the Daily Mail, Independent, Telegraph, the Guardian report on a suicide bomb attack in Baghdad where at least 16 people have been killed and 65 wounded.

All the Israeli media focus on the latest Hamas tunnel discovered under the Kerem Shalom crossing. Maariv emphasise that the tunnel ran underneath the crossing for humanitarian goods as well as the gas and diesel pipelines which supply Gaza with their energy sources. The commentary in Israel Hayom notes, “The exposure of the tunnel got Hamas into trouble on three fronts. It got Hamas into trouble with Israel, since the tunnel proves that Hamas has belligerent intentions towards it; with Egypt, which has now learned that while it was working to advance the intra-Palestinian reconciliation process Hamas was secretly digging terrorist tunnels into its territory; and with the civilians in Gaza, for whom the Kerem Shalom crossing is their only source of oxygen, which Hamas jeopardized for the sake of its military goals.” Haaretz reports on the consensus within the security establishment that the Gaza economy is on the verge of total collapse. “About 95 per cent of Gaza’s water is undrinkable. Hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of sewage flow into the Mediterranean daily, reaching Israel’s shores as well. There’s a bit more electricity available now – up to six or seven hours a day, thanks to a decision by the Palestinian Authority to go back to funding some of the power, which is purchased from Israel. Experts warn of the outbreak of infectious diseases. Unemployment in the Gaza Strip is inching toward 50 per cent and is even higher among young people. The more than two million people now living in Gaza are trapped between the harsh Hamas regime and the almost total impossibility of leaving the Strip because of the closed crossings into Israel and Egypt.”

All the papers report the latest speech by PA Chairman Abbas. In the commentary in Yedioth Ahronoth’s Ben-Dror Yemini writes: “He is the most moderate leader that the Palestinians could elect. And that is their tragedy. This well-known moderate said yesterday that he would not repeat [the mistakes] of 1948 and 1967, since those mistakes produced the Palestinian tragedy. But he repeated precisely the same mistakes. More delusions, more illusions, more rejectionism. Israelis debate whether the problem is 1948 or 1967. Abu Mazen [Abbas] made it clear that the problem is 1917. In other words, the Balfour Declaration that recognizes the Jews’ right to a national home. There is a debate whether there is a line that distinguishes between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Abu Mazen made it clear that there is no such line. Both ideologies are based on lies.”

Haaretz reports the latest Supreme Court deliberations over the rights of non-orthodox streams of Judaism to prayer space at the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem. The impression from yesterday is that the Court would not force the government to implement the full plan for an egalitarian area. However, according the paper, attorneys representing the State notified the Court that the government was determined to expand and upgrade the existing egalitarian plaza at the southern expanse of the Western Wall, and that a detailed plan for the project would be submitted in April. Representatives of the Reform and Conservative movements would be asked to provide their feedback.

Yediot Ahronot reports that the Knesset’s Finance Committee is expected to approve an exceptional increase in the salaries of government ministers, thought to be additional thousands of shekels. This is due to a strange method of indexing the salaries of the elected representatives, which has been criticised for many years.

Yediot Ahronot also reports a special ceremony yesterday at the Knesset with the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the signatories of the 1948 Declaration of Independence. Dozens of excited descendants of the 37 people who signed the original scroll gathered in the Knesset to recreate the historic event.

Over the weekend Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon appeared on Channel 2 News and made it clear that he would not leave the coalition if the police recommend indicting the Prime Minister.

Kahlon said: “Everyone is entitled to the presumption of innocence. Let the recommendations arrive. We won’t dodge making a decision, but I’m telling you now: the law says that there’s no [reason] to deal with that until the attorney general [makes his decision whether to indict or not]. When the attorney general comes and announces an indictment, I have no doubt that Netanyahu will have to go. Until then, it’s all speculation. Let’s see what happens. I didn’t get a budget passed in order to dismantle the government in another month.”