The FT, Daily Mail via Australian Associated Press, the BBC and Reuters report that Australia is considering moving its Israeli embassy to Jerusalem. The  FT reports that Australia is considering whether to follow the US and move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and withdraw support for the Iran nuclear deal as part of a review of its Middle East policy. Australia Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the review had not been prompted by representations from Washington, which moved its embassy to Jerusalem and exited the Iran nuclear deal in May. The Daily Mail reports that Prime Minister Morrison is expected to make an announcement on Tuesday as part of a foreign policy statement on Israel, in Canberra. The Prime Minister credited the Liberal Party’s Wentworth by-election candidate Dave Sharma, a former Australian ambassador to Israel, with raising the issue. The BBC reports that Morrison told reporters on Tuesday: “We are committed to a two-state solution, but frankly, it hasn’t been going that well – not a lot of progress has been made.” He said it may be possible for his nation to support a two-state solution and recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital – something that Australia had “to date assumed” was unfeasible.

The Daily Mail, Reuters and the Independent report that violence has escalated between Gaza and Israel. The Daily Mail reports that Gaza’s Health Ministry says 32 Palestinians have been wounded by Israeli fire during a mass protest along the beach near the Israeli frontier. Protesters threw flaming tyres over the fence on Monday, while fishing boats hoisted Palestinian flags. Israeli forces responded with tear gas and live fire. The ruling Hamas has been staging border protests for the past six months in hopes of easing a crippling Israeli-Egyptian blockade. It has intensified the protests in recent weeks as Egyptian-mediated cease-fire efforts have faltered. Over the weekend Israel halted Qatari-donated fuel shipments to Gaza’s power plant in response to the escalated protests. Reuters reports that the Israeli military said Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian who tried to stab one of them in the occupied West Bank on Monday. “A Palestinian attempted to stab a soldier at the site. Our troops fired at him and he was killed. There were no casualties among our forces,” the military said in a statement. The Independent reports that Aisha Rabi, 48, was travelling with her husband and two daughters to their home in Bidya in the northern West Bank early on Saturday night when their vehicle was pelted with stones, a relative said. Her cousin, Isam Rabi, said she was struck in the head and rushed to hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

The BBC report Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s unexpected trip to Saudi Arabia to meet King Salman amid controversy over the fate of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The report notes that Turkish police left the Saudi consulate, where Khashoggi was last seen, after an overnight search. It was the first time they had been allowed to enter the building since the journalist disappeared on 2 October. It followed disagreements between the two sides over the terms of any search.

The Telegraph, Independent and The Times write that Saudi Arabia is ready to admit Khashoggi was killed in its consulate in Istanbul in a botched interrogation, according to reports on Monday night. It says that officials from the Kingdom were expected to lay out a series of events which blamed intelligence operatives, and shield Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, from responsibility over the journalist’s death. Dr Neil Quilliam, senior research fellow at Chatham House, told the paper it was “highly unlikely” that US senators would be convinced by President Donald Trump’s rogue killer theory, but it was still Riyadh’s best chance to avoid sanctions. The FT says the Khashoggi disappearance puts investment opportunities in Saudi Arabia on hold. As recently as last month, more than a dozen global banks teamed up to provide $11bn in loans to Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund at terms normally reserved for the country itself in hopes of positioning themselves for future opportunities. Now, the disappearance of Khashoggi has turned the spirited pursuit of trophy deals in the kingdom into an exercise in crisis management for some of the world’s most influential financiers.

The Independent report on the passed deadline to withdraw radical Islamist groups from the front lines in Idlib province by midnight on Sunday. As part of the Idlib agreement brokered between Moscow and Ankara, the radical fighters supposed to withdraw to create a demilitarised zone that would be patrolled by Russian and Turkish forces. The paper writes that the missed deadline threatens to undermine a deal that was widely credited with averting a humanitarian disaster for the estimated three million civilians of Idlib.

In the Israeli media all the newspapers focus on the opening of the Knesset’s winter session. Haaretz surmise from the Prime Minister’s speech that he is already in campaigning mode for the next election. Israel Hayom leads with a quote from the Prime Minister, “I don’t need an excuse to call elections.”  Maariv refers to the “battle of the chamber” but assess that “Netanyahu ignored the question of early elections, which has preoccupied the political establishment lately, and instead used his speech to talk about the accomplishments that have been made by his governments in the past decade, which he called ‘an amazing decade'”. Netanyahu also criticised the opposition and the media. Netanyahu devoted a considerable portion of his speech to the opposition, saying: “You have the complete right to criticise, but you get caught up making extreme exaggerations, defamations that are out of touch with reality—as if we were on the way to becoming a fascist state, a benighted apartheid state. Because Israel is a true democratic state, because there is complete freedom of speech here, nothing will happen to you when you spout that nonsense, except for one thing: our people, which loves our country and knows the truth about it, our people will not entrust you, the sourpusses who defame the country, with leading the country.”

Yediot Ahronot leads on the opening of the winter session of the 20th Knesset. It say: “The Knesset’s winter session, which began yesterday, will be its last. It will be held under the sign of looming elections: the coalition factions intend to focus their activity on satisfying the needs and desires of their different bases.  That’s why they see no urgency in calling early elections. The Jewish Home intends to promote a few more bills to seize a few more positions of power within the government, a few more outposts in the West Bank, a few more nationalistic slogans; the Likud is happy to join in on all of that, and they include eliminating the institutions that have still not been completely taken over—the courts, the IDF, the media; the ultra-orthodox are joining forces to rob the public purse. Kahlon is part of that too, in his way, too.”

Maariv reports on a speech by Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who spoke about the situation on the border with the Gaza Strip and said Israel should “deliver the harshest blow we can to Hamas even if that means we’re heading into an all-out conflict”. He was sceptical about the possibility of a truce arrangement, saying: “We’re facing a lot of challenges simultaneously. All forms of global terrorism—Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, al-Qaida in Syria, and Iran behind them all—must be handled simultaneously. As far as I am concerned at this point, if I want to meet all these challenges, it clearly means that Gaza is first, but as opposed to all the people who have believed that a truce arrangement could be reached with Hamas, I said that there is no chance of one with them.” Minister Yoav Gallant, from Kulanu, who previously served as OC Southern Command, spoke more cautiously: “I think that we have to think things through ten times over before we go to any wars. Someone who doesn’t have experience in using force may have a mistaken understanding of its limits. The option of war with Gaza is only the last one, but if we do fight, then we mustn’t fight cautiously but should strike the enemy. However, all the other options have to be exhausted first.”

Yediot Ahronot continues to follow the ongoing violence on the Gaza border. According to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, 32 Palestinians were wounded by Israeli fire yesterday during a mass protest along the beach near the Israeli border. Protesters threw flaming tyres over the fence, while fishing boats hoisted Palestinian flags. Israeli forces responded with tear gas and live fire. In a separate incident an Israeli aircraft fired at a Hamas position in the southern Gaza Strip after two terrorists planted an explosive device near the border fence.

Haaretz leads with a study by the RAND Corporation that reveals that sickness caused by water pollution is the leading cause of child mortality in the Gaza strip. “The study shows that water pollution accounts for more than a quarter of illnesses in Gaza and that more than 12 per cent of child deaths up until four years ago was linked to gastrointestinal disorders due to water pollution. Since that time these numbers have continued to grow.  The collapse of water infrastructure has led to a sharp rise in germs and viruses such as rotavirus, cholera and salmonella,” the report says.

Israel Hayom reports that Australia is considering relocating its embassy to Jerusalem. However, this morning Kan radio news reports that Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said that no decision has yet been made either to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel or to move his country’s embassy to the city. Nevertheless, he added that Australia should be open-minded to new ideas and should reevaluate the issue of recognising Jerusalem, which he said has become something of a taboo. Morrison denied that his statement regarding Jerusalem was meant to help his associate and former Australian Ambassador to Israel, Dave Sharma, get elected to the parliament in the by-election on Saturday in a suburb of Sydney that has a high percentage of Jewish voters. The Leader of the Opposition in the Senate in Canberra, Penny Wong, attacked Morrison by accusing that he was willing to do anything and say anything to win a few more votes and stay in office even at the cost of Australia’s national interests.