The BBC reports that four more women’s rights activists have been temporarily freed in Saudi Arabia, bringing the total to seven in two months. UK-based Saudi rights organisation ALQST said Hatoon Al-Fassi, Amal Al-Harbi, Maysaa al-Manea, and Abeer Namankani were all released, with reports a fifth had also been let out. They are among 11 women held for about a year on charges related to the country’s cyber-crimes law. Saudi officials are yet to comment. The terms of their release and when they will return to jail are unclear.

The Guardian and Reuters report that Jared Kushner has revealed aspects of the US peace plan for the Middle East, indicating it would pull back from longstanding mentions of a two-state solution with the Palestinians and accept Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The Guardian reports that Kushner, the son-in-law and senior adviser to President Donald Trump, is expected to present a long-awaited deal next month on behalf of the US administration, which has closely aligned itself with Israel’s rightwing. “If you say ‘two-state’, it means one thing to the Israelis, it means one thing to the Palestinians,” Kushner said on Thursday at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “We said, ‘you know, let’s just not say it. Let’s just say, let’s work on the details of what this means’,” he said. Kushner declined to give extensive details about the plan before its release but, asked if it would cover the final status between Israelis and Palestinians, he said: “That’s correct, we will.”

Reuters reports that as ‘Eurovision Song Contest 2019’ banners go up across Tel Aviv, behind the glitz of the songfest is the latest manifestation of a bitter row between Israel and an international pro-Palestinian boycott movement. Even as Israeli workers erect stages and lighting rigs along Tel Aviv’s Mediterranean sea front, some fear that the live broadcasts of the May 14-18 event may be used by boycott activists to mount protests in front of millions watching live. BDS has called on artists and broadcasters to withdraw from the event, arguing that holding it in Tel Aviv amounts to “artwashing – whitewashing through arts” Israel’s policies towards Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. The event’s local television hosts, Israel’s public broadcaster Kan, said it does not know what to expect. But Israeli media reports have raised concerns that activists might try to disrupt the contest from the audience, or that a performer may mount a protest on-stage.

The Guardian reports that, according to a report commissioned by the British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, pervasive persecution of Christians, sometimes amounting to genocide, is ongoing in parts of the Middle East, and has prompted an exodus in the past two decades. Millions of Christians in the region have been uprooted from their homes, and many have been killed, kidnapped, imprisoned and discriminated against, the report finds. “The inconvenient truth,” the report finds, is “that the overwhelming majority (80%) of persecuted religious believers are Christians”. Some of the report’s findings will make difficult reading for leaders across the Middle East who are accused of either tolerating or instigating persecution. The Justice and Development (AK) party of the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, for instance, is highlighted for denigrating Christians. Hunt described the interim report – published on Thursday, based on a review led by the Bishop of Truro, the Rt Rev Philip Mounstephen – as “truly sobering.”

The Financial Times reports that Turkish prosecutors have opened dozens of criminal investigations into alleged irregularities in Istanbul’s mayoral election as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling party fights to regain control of a city it lost in a humiliating defeat. The opposition candidate Ekrem Imamoglu was sworn in for a five-year term last month after a series of official recounts sought by the ruling party failed to erase his narrow winning margin in the March 31 poll. But Erdogan, head of the Justice and Development party (AKP), is refusing to accept defeat in the city where he once made his first big step on to the political stage by becoming mayor. The authorities now want to question more than 100 polling officials who are seen as suspects in 32 separate Istanbul investigations, following complaints filed by the AKP and its ultra nationalist allies, as well as some electoral officials, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported on Thursday. Imamoglu’s Republican People’s party (CHP) accused prosecutors of acting at the behest of the ruling party, saying they were seeking to put pressure on Turkey’s election board as it prepares to rule on an AKP petition to hold a new vote.

Reuters reports that the US Senate on Thursday sustained President Donald Trump’s veto of a resolution demanding an end to military support for the Saudi-led coalition waging war in Yemen, in a victory for the White House’s policy of continued backing for the kingdom. The vote was 53 to 45, falling short of the two-thirds majority needed to override a veto, despite a handful of Trump’s fellow Republicans joining Democrats in backing the war powers resolution. It was only the second veto of Trump’s presidency. Neither has garnered the two-thirds support in both the Senate and the House of Representatives needed to override.

Yediot Ahronoth and Maariv report that Israel will hold its national memorial day next Wednesday and notes that 23,741 Israelis have died in Israel’s wars. The front pages also note that 3,146 civilians have been killed in hostile acts since 1948.

Israel Hayom and Maariv report the ‘March of the Living’ from Auschwitz to Birkenau as part of Holocaust Memorial Day. Participants in the march included Jewish Agency Chairman Isaac Herzog, US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, and an international delegation of ambassadors led by Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon.  The papers quote Friedman saying: “Israel is the victory of the Jewish People.”

Kan news reveals that yesterday, Israel attempted yet again to send the money, minus deducted funds, that the Palestinian Authority has refused to accept. The Palestinians refused to accept it this time either, because it was short NIS 40 million, the sum that the PA pays to prisoners convicted of terrorist offences and their families.

Both Yediot Ahronoth and Maariv report that Palestinians in Gaza are expected to continue the march of return today, and it is believed that they will continue to sabotage the border fence, throwing stones, flying incendiary balloons and throwing bombs.  They also note Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, led a delegation to Cairo at the invitation of Egyptian Intelligence Director Abbas Kamel in order to discuss bilateral relations. A delegation from Islamic Jihad had been invited to Cairo earlier. Islamic Jihad’s leader, Ziyad al-Nakhalah, said that Islamic Jihad would retaliate forcefully if Israel resumed its policy of targeted killings. “Any attack on the Palestinian resistance will be met with full force. We will attack large cities, regardless of the understandings that have been or will be attained. We will have no red lines.”

Maariv reports comments from Hezbollah  Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah who continues to threaten Israel from the north. In a speech that he gave yesterday in a live broadcast, he said that Israeli infantry units that enter Lebanon would be destroyed and said that Hezbollah had the ability to infiltrate the Galilee. He said that Hezbollah was stronger than ever, and that the intimidating messages that Israel was going to go to war in Lebanon were intended to compel Hezbollah to relinquish its missiles and strength.

Yediot Ahronoth reports that Prime Minister Netanyahu offered Shas leader Arye Deri the Finance Ministry, which he refused. This is interpreted as an attempt to put pressure on Moshe Kahlon who wants to remain as Finance Minister. Maariv highlights Avigdor Lieberman’s objections to three pieces of legislation that the Ultra-orthodox parties support. The first is a basic law on Torah study, which reads: “A person who wishes to devote himself to Torah study for a prolonged period will receive recognition of this in terms of his rights and obligations.” This is a bill aimed to bypass the conscription law, which will require the state to enable Torah learners to study. The second issue addresses public works on the Sabbath. The UTJ party will demand new laws to prohibit work on the Sabbath by public and government companies. In other words, stopping work on railway infrastructure repairs on the Sabbath. The third bill deals with conversion to Judaism, and it will determine that the Chief Rabbinate holds sole authority to perform conversions, according to the Orthodox version of Jewish Law.

Haaretz and Kan news reports that media consultant Ronen Moshe, one of the defendants in the Yisrael Beitenu affair, motioned for the Tel Aviv District Court to reveal all of the correspondence between IDF Spokesperson-designate Gil Messing and state’s witness Amnon Lieberman, as well as all of Messing’s correspondence with representatives of the investigative unit or the prosecution.   The prosecution had previously stated that Messing had been acting commendably and like a good citizen when he recorded Moshe at the police’s behest. The prosecution also said that it would take action to reduce as soon as possible the confidentiality about the manner in which Messing had assisted the police.  In response, Moshe asked the Tel Aviv District Court to order the prosecution not to contact Messing because he was scheduled to serve as a witness in his defence.  Commenting on the affair in Yediot Ahronoth,  Nahum Barnea writes: “As far as we know, Messing had no ulterior motives. He thought that this was how a law-abiding citizen should behave. Nevertheless, there are people who think that the assistance that he provided to the investigation disqualifies him from serving as the IDF spokesperson.” Barnea concludes, “A society in which a person who assists the police is considered a ‘rat,’ or a informer, is an unhealthy society, a society that has become fed up with state values and seeks to return to the values of the Diaspora. This is a society that devours its own servants, its own values. This should worry us more than the question of who will serve as the IDF spokesperson.”