The BBC, Guardian, Independent and Financial Times report that there has been a lull in hostilities in the Gaza Strip after Palestinian militants said that a ceasefire with Israel had been agreed. The BBC reports that this comes after a weekend during which Palestinian militants launched hundreds of rockets into Israel prompting retaliatory air and artillery strikes. At least four Israelis and 25 Palestinians were killed. Israel has not confirmed the truce, but its military has lifted emergency measures in place in southern Israel. The violence flared up on Friday during a protest against the blockade of Gaza. A TV station run by Hamas – the militant movement which controls Gaza – announced that both sides had agreed the ceasefire, beginning at 04:30 local time (01:30 GMT) on Monday. Egypt is said to have brokered it – assisted by the United Nations and Qatar. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) has not mentioned the truce, though the military said it had lifted protective restrictions imposed on residents in southern Israel since the flare up began, including schools close to the strip reopening.

The Times reports that yesterday, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that his campaign against Gaza was not over, despite a ceasefire that ended a weekend of hostilities. Netanyahu said the IDF had struck 360 targets in Gaza. Last night he said: “The campaign is not over and it demands patience and good judgment. We are preparing to continue.”

The BBC, Times, Guardian, Telegraph and Financial Times report that the US has deployed an aircraft carrier to the Middle East to send a “clear and unmistakable message” to Iran. The BBC reports that National Security Adviser John Bolton said the administration was acting “in response to a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings”. The deployment of the warship was based on claims of a possible attack on US forces stationed in the region, unnamed US officials are quoted as saying. Bolton added that they would counter any attack with “unrelenting force”. In a statement, Bolton said: “The United States is deploying the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group and a bomber task force to the US Central Command region to send a clear and unmistakeable message to the Iranian regime that any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force.”

In the Times, Richard Spencer writes on: “Why [the] US hopes Iran will heed carrier threat”. It is not the deployment of the aircraft carrier that is important: it is the announcement, with its accompanying threat. The target of this aircraft carrier group, the US said, was Iran. That directness represents a major change of strategy — one that will be easily understood in Tehran, argues Spencer.

Reuters reports that according to the state-run IRIB news agency on Monday, Iran will restart part of its halted nuclear programme in response to the US withdrawal from a landmark 2015 nuclear deal but does not itself plan to pull out of the agreement. Citing a source close to an official commission which oversees the nuclear deal, IRIB reported that President Hassan Rouhani would announce that Iran would reduce some of its “minor and general” commitments under the deal on May 8- exactly one year after US President Donald Trump announced the US pullout. Similarly, the semi-official Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA) reported that Iran on Wednesday will announce “reciprocal actions” to the US withdrawal from the nuclear deal, quoting “knowledgeable sources”. Some European Union leaders had been unofficially told of Iran’s decision, the report said.

The BBC reports that people around the world are marking the beginning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which is determined by the lunar cycle and this year will run from 6 May. Ramadan takes place during the ninth month of the Islamic calendar.

The Financial Times, Guardian, Independent,  Telegraph and Times report that Turkey’s election board on Monday cancelled the results of Istanbul’s mayoral election and ordered a rerun of the race, raising the prospect of renewed political and economic turmoil. Ekrem Imamoglu, the main opposition Republican People’s party (CHP) candidate, won the March 31 election by 13,000 or so votes and began what would have been a five-year term last month after a series of recounts failed to overturn his winning margin. But President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) lodged several challenges, claiming voter fraud and other irregularities. By a vote of seven to four, the Supreme Electoral Council, which is dominated by the AKP, said it was revoking Imamoglu’s mandate after determining some ballot box committees were improperly appointed and said it would file a criminal complaint against those district electoral officials who were responsible, according to a copy of its ruling. It set a date of June 23 to rerun the poll.

In the Guardian, Nicolas Henin writes: “The caliphate is gone, but Islamic State has a new plan”, arguing that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has made clear ISIS is ramping up its international strategy and Algeria and Sudan will be decisive.

The Financial Times reports that Syria’s worst violence in more than a year is shaking a fragile truce brokered by Russia and Turkey, as Damascus and Moscow step up a bombing campaign against the country’s last opposition-held bastion. Syrian army troops on Monday entered at least one village inside the “de-escalation zone” agreed between its backer Russia and opposition-supporting Turkey, according to two opposition sources, in an area that has been strafed by renewed air strikes.

In the Independent, Borzou Daragah writes: “US vows to fight ISIS’s global ambitions, but the jihadists are adapting”.

The Guardian reports that Matthew Hedges, the British academic held in the United Arab Emirates for six months on spying charges, is taking legal action against the Foreign Office (FCO) over allegations that it failed in its duty of care to negotiate his release and help him clear his name. Hedges and his wife, Daniela Tejada, are demanding that his conviction be quashed and an independent inquiry be held into the case. If it is not, he says, they will sue the FCO. It was a year ago this Sunday that the Durham University PhD candidate, who had been in the UAE to research his thesis, was arrested at Dubai airport as he left the country. He was accused of spying and went on to spend six months in solitary confinement in a windowless state security office, where he was regularly threatened with torture and interrogated for up to 15 hours a day.

Reuters reports that US President Donald Trump on Monday, pardoned former US Army Lieutenant Michael Behenna, who was imprisoned for five years for killing an Iraqi prisoner in 2008. Behenna, a platoon leader in the 101st Airborne Division, was convicted of unpremeditated murder and sentenced to 25 years after killing Ali Mansur Mohamed, a suspected al-Qaeda member. Behenna, who stripped Mansur naked for questioning and then shot him twice, claimed he was acting in self-defence. His sentence was subsequently reduced to 15 years and he was paroled in 2014, five years into his term. “Behenna’s case has attracted broad support from the military, Oklahoma elected officials, and the public,” the White House said in a statement.

The Israeli newspapers focus on stories about fallen soldiers ahead of Israeli remembrance day. They report that 23,741 people have died in the line of duty and Kan Radio reports that since Israel was founded, 3,150 civilians were killed in acts of hostility.

Haaretz reports on a ruling by the Supreme Court that the government must allow Palestinians into the country to participate in a joint Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day ceremony, despite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opposition. Supreme Court Justices Isaac Amit, Daphne Barak-Erez, and Anat Baron discussed the petition, filed by Israeli NGO Combatants for Peace. “It is not for the Defence Minister to intervene in how a family chooses to express their private bereavement, the sadness and grief that is present with the loss of a loved one,” Amit said. He added: “The petitioners before us have gathered bereaved families who have chosen to express their pain and commemorate their dear ones in a joint ceremony, it isn’t for us to intervene in that decision. The defence minister is responsible for the security of Israel’s residents, and it is up to him to defend them from all danger. We struggled to see the danger that this ceremony poses to the Israeli public. We decided to make this ruling on condition, and to instruct the defence minister to issue entry permits for the sole purpose of participating in the ceremony to 100 Palestinians.”

Maariv and Haaretz report that the IDF believes that the quiet in the south will last for only a few weeks unless there is a breakthrough or progress is made in negotiations for a truce arrangement with Hamas. Its analysis of the latest fighting found that Hamas and Islamic Jihad tried to challenge the Iron Dome system by firing a large number of missiles at the same time.

Amos Harel in Haaretz writes that: “The problem lies in the Israeli fear over how larger concessions [to Hamas in the framework on an agreement] would be perceived politically – without which the chances of achieving relatively long-term stability appear small. With the direction things are headed, particularly as the violence escalates from round to round, another clash with Hamas and Islamic Jihad is a matter of time. In the Israeli army, they are already beginning to discuss the prospects of a broad military campaign in Gaza in the coming months as rather reasonable.”

Tal Lev Ram in Maariv argues that while the most recent round of fighting did serve to strengthen Israel’s power of deterrence against the terror organisations in Gaza, IDF officials believe that it is going to be difficult to keep the security situation in the south stable in the absence of a complementary political initiative. Among the array of positions that were presented in meetings were assessments that in the absence of significant progress on civilian issues, the situation in the Gaza Strip was liable to deteriorate once again within a matter of weeks, mainly because of Islamic Jihad. He also argues that intelligence has identified a real change in the Iranians’ attitude towards the nuclear agreement due to the severe economic pressure on Tehran and officials believe that the Iranians are contemplating revisiting the nuclear agreement with the other signatories of the agreement, allowing them to violate it – as Israel has claimed Iran has been doing for the past year.

Discussing the ceasefire in Gaza, Amos Yadlin in Yediot Ahronoth argues that: “The results of the recent fighting between Israel and Hamas were mixed, since the root problem was not addressed and the wrong strategic objectives were chosen. Instead of citing the restoration of deterrence and dealing with Hamas’s increased military strength as mid-range objectives, and citing weakening Hamas and replacing it as a long-term objective, Israel has sanctified the strategy of ‘money in exchange for quiet,’ which has entrenched Hamas and ensures that additional rounds of violence will soon follow, if not a full-scale war.”

Also in Yediot Ahronoth Alex Fishman writes that: “The political echelon, which currently is essentially comprised of just one person, committed a cowardly act yesterday: instead of coping with criticism from the right and the left… he opted to hide behind the army and sent the generals to talk about the IDF’s prowess, which nobody doubted to begin with… Of all the rounds of fighting in the last year in Gaza, there is no question that the tenth, the last, was the most surreal and superfluous of them all. The political echelon’s calculations need to be explained, and the immediate lesson is that Israel urgently needs a serious security cabinet and a full-time defence minister.”