BBC News Online reports that a judge has freed Lebanese actor Ziad Itani from detention and ordered the arrest of a security officer who built the case against him. Itani was suspected of gathering information on Lebanese politicians with a view to passing it on to Israel. Lebanon technically remains at war with Israel and collaborating with Israel is punishable by death. Itani was detained in November on charges of “collaborating and communicating with the Israeli enemy”. State security officials said his arrest followed “several months of monitoring, follow-up and investigations”. It was alleged that Itani had confessed to being “tasked to monitor a group of high-level political figures”. However, close associates said his “confession” was extracted under duress, a claim denied by the authorities.

BBC News Online, the Telegraph, the Times, the Guardian, the Financial Times and the Independent report on the assassination attempt on Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah. No group has claimed to carry out the attack, which injured several guards. The PA said it was an assassination attempt and holds the militant group Hamas, which dominates Gaza, responsible. Hamas said the attack was an attempt to damage Gaza’s security and “deal a blow to efforts to finalise reconciliation” between the main Palestinian factions. The bomb went off at the side of the road shortly after Hamdallah’s motorcade entered Gaza from Israel. The Prime Minister was accompanied by Majid Faraj, the Palestinian intelligence chief, who was unhurt by the attack. Suspicion for the attack immediately fell on the smaller, more radical Islamist factions which operate in Gaza, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which sometimes cooperates with Hamas and is at other times a rival to them. Hamdallah went ahead with a planned speech at a sewage treatment plant in Gaza, as heavily armed guards surrounded him. He said the attack would not stop him from returning to Gaza and continuing to work towards Palestinian unity. Hamdallah, a former academic, is seen as a political moderate and has maintained cordial relations with the US, EU and even some Israeli officials.

The Times reports that the US has threatened to carry out unilateral attacks on Syria if it continues its bombardment of the besieged rebel enclave of eastern Ghouta. Nikki Haley, the US Ambassador to the UN, said that Russia had not kept the commitment it made when it agreed a ceasefire over Syria last month. She reminded the UN Security Council that President Trump ordered airstrikes last April in response to a chemical weapons attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun by Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime.“The Security Council failed to act,” she said. “The US successfully struck the airbase from which Assad had launched his chemical attack. We repeat this warning today.”

Yahoo News UK via AFP reports that global powers will gather in Rome on Thursday to discuss the future of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, which faces an unprecedented crisis after the US froze tens of millions of dollars in funding. The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) only has enough funds to keep schools and medical services open until May, its commissioner general Pierre Krahenbuhl told AFP. US President Donald Trump’s administration has so far committed only US $60m to the agency this year, down from US $360m in 2017.

Verdict reports that Israel has announced it will broadcast free coverage of the 2018 FIFA World Cup throughout the region. Israel will give soccer fans from Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and the Palestinian West Bank territories a free-pass to watch the FIFA World Cup tournament on Israeli-Arabic channel Makan, meaning Qatar’s subscription broadcast monopoly is likely to suffer. Football fans can now choose between paying for a subscription to watch the tournament on Qatari channel beIN Sports, or catching it for free on Israel’s dime. Israel said they will offer a free Arabic broadcast and commentary of the games, after the Israeli Broadcasting Authority paid £5.6m for the rights to broadcast the tournament.

The Times reports that the Israeli government has agreed to give members a free vote on a bill to exempt ultra-Orthodox Jewish men from military conscription. The agreement was reached by coalition partners in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, ending the threat of early elections.

The Times and the Guardian report on the future of the Iran nuclear deal following the appointment of Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State. The arrival of Pompeo as secretary of state poses yet another challenge for Europe’s relations with the US, this time because of his and President Trump’s determination to “roll back” the Iran nuclear deal. Pompeo will likely approach those talks with a more aggressive posture, if he even believes them to be worthwhile. The report also said that Pompeo may also argue for the US to pull out of the deal. The next major deadline is May, when President Trump is due to sign the next round of “sanctions waivers”. However, even if he does not do so does not mean the Iran deal is necessarily dead.

The Daily Mail reports that more than half a million people have died in Syria’s civil war over seven years with the majority of civilians killed by Bashar Assad or his Russian and Iranian allies, according to British observers. The British monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said it had identified more than 350,000 of those killed, and the remainder were cases where it knew deaths had occurred but did not know the victims’ names.

All the Israeli media focus on the coalition crisis which was resolved last night. Haaretz headlines “Pressured by coalition leaders, Netanyahu backs down from plan to move up elections,” with Maariv’s front page reading, “Coalition enlists against elections” and Israel Hayom, “Agreement instead of elections”.

Israel Radio News reports that the Knesset passed the conscription law last night in a preliminary reading based on the compromise that had been reached to resolve the coalition crisis. When the Knesset resumes for its summer session, the Defence Ministry will submit a governmental bill on the issue and it will be merged with the private member’s bill ahead of its second and third readings with the consent of all the coalition factions and in coordination with the attorney general. Last night, the plenum began to debate the 2019 budget bill prior to its second and third readings, which is scheduled for this evening.

Writing in Maariv, Udi Segal argues that “Netanyahu blinked first. He let an unnecessary political crisis take shape under his nose, he was not careful enough to stop it in time, he was perceived as wanting elections for his own personal sake”. In Maariv, Ben Caspit opines that “Benjamin Netanyahu learned, on his own skin, the limits of power. Even when the polls smile, the coalition members know how to whip out the knives and to fight. Avigdor Lieberman emerges stronger from this crisis: he didn’t fold, he stuck to his positions throughout and chose a winning agenda. In addition, he remains defence minister (with his five seats) and avoided elections that could have crushed him. Not bad for a week’s work. Another winner is Moshe Kahlon, who made a dramatic announcement (there would either be a budget or there would be no finance minister on Seder night), and survived. And of course, Ayelet Shaked and Naftali Bennett defeated their former boss, and Aryeh Deri, all but politically dead,  also scored a victory (a Pyrrhic victory), who managed to avoid what appears to be Shas’s apocalyptic demise.” In Haaretz Anshel Pfeffer explains that “even as they stand now, there is a fly in the ointment. In the two polls on television Monday night, Likud was doing well and Netanyahu’s right wing-religious coalition had a small but stable majority if elections were held this week. But two key allies – Shas and Yisrael Beiteinu – were down to five seats each, and on that sinking trajectory they are hovering perilously near the electoral threshold of 3.25 per cent. If either dips beneath that on Election Day, they won’t be in the next Knesset and the political arithmetic changes – jeopardising Netanyahu’s majority.” He adds that “the most damaging vulnerability is that Netanyahu has now lost control of the political timetable. Without an election campaign this year, his nemeses – Police Commissioner Roni Alsheich and Attorney General Mendelblit – will now be the ones calling the shots”.

Haaretz reports that the PA Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah survived an assassination attempt in Gaza. The Jerusalem Post quotes Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum who condemned “the crime of targeting Dr. Rami Hamdallah’s motorcade,” saying it is “part in parcel of attempts to undermine the Gaza Strip’s security and a blow to efforts to achieve unity and reconciliation”.

Maariv and Haaretz both headline that and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was fired last night, with Israel Hayom suggesting it was due to Tillerson’s position on Iran.

Yediot Ahronot, Maariv and Israel Hayom all report that the father of a children’s star is suspected of sexually harassing 20 minors.