The Times, the Guardian, the Financial Times, the Daily Mail, the Telegraph, and BBC News Online report on the events taking place in Afrin in north-western Syria. Turkish forces shelled pro-Assad regime fighters as they tried to join with Kurdish forces resisting the Turkish military incursion into Afrin. It was reported on Monday that the regime would dispatch fighters to support the Kurds as they battle to keep Turkey from taking control of the Kurdish-held pocket of Afrin. The confrontation pits the Turkish army and allied Syrian rebel groups directly against the military alliance backing the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. President Erdogan described the convoy as being made up of “terrorists” acting independently. He said Turkish artillery fire had forced it to turn back, although the Kurdish militia denied this.

BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme, the Telegraph, the Guardian, the Financial Times, the Times, the Independent and BBC News Online report on the current situation in Eastern Ghouta, where pro-government forces – backed by Russia – intensified their efforts to retake the last major rebel stronghold through the use of air strikes. The UN said six hospitals in the district had been hit in airstrikes by the Assad regime, with three of them put out of service altogether. At least three doctors had been killed. It issued desperate statements calling for political intervention to stop the carnage. Doctors said that at least 225 people had been killed, 54 of them children. One doctor said that he had treated pregnant women and babies who had lost limbs. “We have many, many wounded and dead in the hospital. Whole families are being brought here, either all killed or with just one or two surviving.”

The Independent reports on the latest test of the Israeli Arrow-3 defence system. The Israeli Ministry of Defence said the development of the Arrow-3 interceptor is “a major milestone” in Israel’s ability to defend itself “against current and future threats in the region”. One expert said the system was designed predominantly as a defence against Iran. Arrow-3 is part of the multi-layered system to defend against both short and mid-range rockets fired from the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, as well as Iran’s long-range missiles. In development for a decade, it is designed to intercept ballistic missiles while they are still outside the earth’s atmosphere and is considered one of the most powerful weapons of its kind. According to Yiftah Shapir, head of the Middle East Military Balance Project at the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies, it would likely be “a few years” before the system becomes fully operational.

The Times and the Guardian report on developments in the investigation into Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Former senior advisor to Netanyahu, Nir Hefetz, tried to bribe a leading judge with the job of Attorney General in return for her dropping an investigation into the Prime Minister’s wife, Sara, police alleged yesterday. Hefetz, who is Netanyahu’s former communications chief and now unofficial family spokesman, has been accused of using an intermediary to approach Hila Gerstel, a former judge, with the illegal suggestion in 2015. At the time of the alleged approach, Gerstel, the former president of Israel’s central district court, was in the running to become the Attorney General. Police sources, quoted in the Israeli media yesterday, maintained that the judge was told that she would become the frontrunner if she agreed to close an investigation into Sara Netanyahu’s alleged misuse of public funds. Gerstel apparently refused the offer. A spokesman for the Prime Minister and his family said that no such attempt to bribe the judge had taken place. Last year Sara Netanyahu was charged with fraud over claims that she billed the Prime Minister’s office for the services of celebrity chefs who cooked private meals at the official residence. It was also claimed last night that Shlomi Filber, a former chief of staff for Netanyahu, has agreed to testify against the Prime Minister.

The Financial Times has published a column by David Gardner on the current state of the Middle East, claiming that “Middle East tensions are greater than at any time since the end of the Cold War”. The column discusses regional issues, such as the Israel-Iran standoff, the conflict in Syria and the role of the US as a mediator in the Middle East. He cites Wolfgang Ischinger, chairman of the Munich Security Conference who said that “at no time since the collapse of the Soviet Union has the risk of armed conflict between major powers been as high as it is today”.

BBC News Online, BT News via PA and the Daily Mail via AP report that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called for an international peace conference by mid-2018 and a time-frame for a two-state solution. Abbas spoke as the Trump administration’s two key Mideast negotiators who are working on a US peace proposal — the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and special representative Jason Greenblatt — sat in the Security Council chamber. Abbas presented the Palestinians “peace plan” to the council, which calls for mutual recognition by the states of Israel and Palestine based on 1967 borders, and formation of “an international multilateral mechanism” to assist the two parties in resolving all final-status issues and implementing them “within a set time frame”. He said the peace conference should include the Israelis and Palestinians, the five permanent Security Council members and key regional and international governments, noting that 74 countries attended a Mideast peace conference in Paris in January 2017.

The Israeli media is dominated by developments in the investigations into the Prime Minister.

Yedioth Ahronoth, Maariv, Haaretz and Israel Hayom all lead with two stories; one that the former Director General of the Communications Ministry, and close associate of Prime Minister Netanyahu, Shlomo Filber has become a state witness and is to testify against the Prime Minister; the other that in 2015 the Prime Ministers’s media advisor Nir Hefetz allegedly offered Judge Hila Gerstel the job of Attorney General if she agreed to close a case related to Sara Netanyahu.

Israel Hayom quotes Netanyahu saying the events are ‘insanity and a persecution campaign’.

Writing in Maariv, Ben Caspit argues: “If Shlomo Filber [Momo] is a state’s witness, Netanyahu may soon part not only from the residence on Balfour Street, but also from the villa in Caesarea in favour of a much less comfortable bed … Shlomo Filber to Netanyahu is much more than Shula Zaken to Olmert [Zaken was former Prime Minister Olmert’s personal secretary whose testimony helped convict him] … Filber is the closest and most intimate covert operations officer that Netanyahu has had in generations. As early as the 1990s he was the secret researcher that was deployed by the campaign for all tasks that were best kept under wraps. Always in the shadows, always loyal, efficient, secretive and ideological; Bibi knew that he could count on Momo. Until yesterday.”

In Yediot Ahronoth, Sima Kadmon writes that “yesterday was a day that won’t be forgotten. It was the day on which the walls of denial fell, like a curtain rising before the last scene of a play. It was like watching a police car-chase in pursuit of a robber on one of America’s endless highways. Riveting hours of dramatic and fateful revelations that are going to change not only the life of the man behind the wheel, but the face of our country”. Adding “after a state’s witness agreement was signed with [Filber] yesterday, we now find ourselves in a completely different place, a place that is miles away from the place that Netanyahu had aimed to lead things. Filber is the deal-breaker. He is the golden evidence”.

In other news, Kan Radio reports that the US has stated that it is weighing the idea of involving, in the future, additional countries in the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, if it believes that this would be helpful. The State Department spokesperson said that as of now, the administration was not convinced that this was the right time to do so.

The Jerusalem Post reports that Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Abbas called to convene an international peace conference in the summer during a speech to the UN Security Council. Prime Minister Netanyahu said in response that Abbas had not said anything new in his speech, and that the PA chairman was continuing to evade peace and to make payments to terrorists and their families.

Kan Radio reports that a Hamas delegation is in Cairo discussing a prisoner exchange deal with Egyptian intelligence. The delegation includes senior members of the organisation’s military wing, including Marwan Issa. Hamas in Gaza holds two Israeli civilians who crossed the border and the bodies of the soldiers Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul.

Kan Radio also reports that 750 inmates at the Holot detention facility have launched an open-ended hunger strike in protest of the detention of infiltrators who are slated for expulsion.