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Media Summary

US to merge diplomatic posts in Jerusalem

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Reutersthe Daily Mail and the BBCreport that the U.S. is to merge its Jerusalem consulate with the new embassy in Jerusalem. Reuters reports that the United States will merge the two posts into a single diplomatic mission in Jerusalem, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Thursday, drawing a quick rebuke from Palestinians. “This decision is driven by our global efforts to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our operations,” Pompeo said in a statement. “It does not signal a change of U.S. policy on Jerusalem, the West Bank or the Gaza Strip.” The Daily Mail reports that The United States downgraded its main diplomatic mission to the Palestinians on Thursday, placing it under the authority of the US embassy to Israel. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the consulate general, a separate office which handled dealings with the Palestinians, would be replaced by a new Palestinian Affairs Unit inside the controversial new US embassy in Jerusalem. The decision has “a lot to do with pleasing an ideological US team that is willing to disband the foundations of American foreign policy, and of the international system, in order to reward Israeli violations and crimes,” the Palestinians’ chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said. “The Trump administration is part of the problem, not part of the solution,” he added. The BBC reports that The closure of the consulate general means that Palestinian affairs will now come under the direction of the US ambassador to Israel, the BBC’s James Reynolds in Jerusalem says. The Palestinians see this as yet another move by the Trump administration to isolate and downgrade them, our correspondent adds.

The Daily Mail via AP reports that, President Donald Trump’s pro-Israel positions have not garnered him support from American Jewish voters, according to a new survey. The poll found that 74 percent of Jews planned to vote for Democratic candidates in November’s midterm elections. The figure corresponds with similar voting patterns in past elections. Overall, 75 percent of American Jews disapproved of the president’s policies, particularly on domestic issues such as immigration, taxes and health care.

The BBCIndependentand Reutersreport that many important high profile individuals will not attend the conference in Saudi Arabia after the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi. The BBC reports that US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and UK International Trade Secretary Liam Fox have pulled out of an investment conference in Saudi Arabia. The Independent reports that British officials said Liam Fox had decided it was not “the right time” and urged Saudi leaders to conduct a “credible” investigation into Mr Khashoggi’s apparent death. Reuters reports that Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) will not send any of its executives to a Saudi investment conference next week, Chief Executive Officer David Solomon said in an interview with CNBC on Thursday.

The Express reports that one of the suspects allegedly involved in the torture, killing and dismembering of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi has mysteriously died in a car crash in the Saudi capital of Riyadh according to a pro-Turkish government newspaper

The BBC reports that, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the Saudi Crown Prince has given President Trump a personal commitment that its report will be transparent and fair. Saudi Arabia, a key US ally, is under pressure to come up with answers after accusations that Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi was killed by their officials.

The Telegraph, reports that Turkey is using Saudi’s downfall to extrapolate political expediency within the Middle East. Jamal Khashoggi’s murderers did not botch their job when they butchered him still breathing, but they carried out orders which have tarnished their royal masters’ reputation beyond repair. The chief beneficiary of the Saudis’ grotesque miscalculation is Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The Daily Mail and Reuters report that, the conflict between Israel and Gaza has escalated.The Daily Mail reports that with its economy in freefall and tensions rising with Israel, the Hamas-ruled enclave of Gaza is imploding, the UN envoy for the Middle East warned Thursday. Nickolay Mladenov delivered the warning to the UN Security Council a day after Israeli warplanes struck the Gaza Strip in retaliation at rocket firings from the Palestinian territory. “Gaza is imploding. This is not hyperbole. This is not alarmism. It is a reality,” Mladenov told the council. He cited World Bank figures showing official unemployment at 53 percent, with more than 70 percent of Palestinian youths jobless. Every second person in Gaza now lives below the poverty line, he said. Hamas, which has ruled Gaza for a decade, on Thursday pledged to launch an investigation into the rocket fire after denying any involvement in the attack, but Israel rejected the denials. “We remain on the brink of another potentially devastating conflict, a conflict that nobody claims to want, but a conflict that needs much more than just words to prevent,” said Mladenov. Reuters reports that, Israel ramped up its armoured forces along the Gaza border on Thursday in a daylight show of force, a day after a Palestinian rocket destroyed a home in southern Israel. With the deployment clearly visible from main Israeli roads near the Gaza Strip, senior Egyptian security officials met leaders of the enclave’s ruling Hamas to try to calm tensions. Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad militant group quickly denied firing the rockets. Much may depend on the scope and intensity of a planned Palestinian protest at the border with Israel on Friday, where often violent demonstrations have been held over the past six months. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who convened his security cabinet on Wednesday after the rocket wrecked a home in the city of Beersheba, pledged to take “very strong action” if Palestinian attacks continued.

The BBCGuardianand Reutersreport that the American student who was barred entry into Israel under a law against foreign activists who support boycotts of the state because of its policies towards the Palestinians has been given permission to stay in the country by the supreme court. In its ruling on Thursday, the court criticised Israeli authorities for denying entry to Lara Alqasem, 22, and said their decision gave “the unavoidable impression” that she was barred for her political opinions. If so, the justices said, it represented “a radical and dangerous step that could lead to the crumbling of the foundations upon which Israel’s democracy is built”.

The Express reports that ISIS has taken 700 people hostage in an area in Syria controlled by US-backed forces, Russian President Vladimir Putin has revealed.

Reuters reports that Russia and Turkey plan to give more time for the implementation of their de-escalation deal in the Syrian province of Idlib, a “great relief” for 3 million civilians in the area, U.N. humanitarian adviser Jan Egeland told reporters on Thursday. But there were still “a million unanswered questions” about how the deal would work, and what would happen if groups designated as terrorists refused to lay down their weapons. Speaking after a regular Syria humanitarian meeting in Geneva, Egeland said Syria’s ally Russia had confirmed that Damascus had scrapped a “very concerning” law allowing the expropriation of land and property from refugees.

The Independent reports that Syria will reopen its borders with Iraq “soon”, the country’s representative to the United Nations has said. Earlier this week, the government of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, received a major boost as the country’s commercial gateway with Jordan plus a crossing to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights were reopened.

The Israeli media focus on the tension in southern Israel and Gaza today. They report on the security cabinet’s instructions to the army which were to ‘change the rules of the game without starting a war.’ Security cabinet ministers are quoted as saying “Starting a war is easy, getting out of war is difficult. The other side doesn’t want war either, and so we can step up our response without dragging the region into war.”

Yediot Ahronot reports that after a long security cabinet meeting that discussed the tension on the Gaza border, a decision was made to wait and see. Israeli sources said that if there were violent clashes similar to those that took place last Friday, the IDF would “retaliate powerfully.” Kan Radio News reports that Hamas has given its men instructions to take action to tone down the demonstrations today. However, they will not be cancelled and will take place like every Friday. A Palestinian official said that he believed that Hamas would give a chance for Egypt’s efforts at mediation to succeed and would soon review the nature of the relief measures to be given to the Gaza Strip.

Haaretz, Israel Hayom, and Yediot Ahronot report that Supreme Court Justices have permitted American student Lara Alqasem to enter Israel despite the opposition of the government. Justices Hendel, Vogelman and Baron ruled that the decision to revoke her student visa was unreasonable. Justice Anat Baron stated that the unavoidable impression was that the visa had been denied because of Alqasem’s political opinions.

Writing in Yediot Ahronoth, Ben-Dror Yemini points out that the law explicitly states that entry visas not be given to people “‘if they or the organization for which they act knowingly issued a public call to boycott the State of Israel.’ Alqasem chaired a chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, the organization that has been leading the boycott of Israel and whose leaders deny Israel’s right to exist.” He takes particular issue with the court’s explanation that the decision to bar her entry was “unreasonable:” “Reasonability is supposed to be broad, very broad. If not, the discretion of the executive branch should be revoked and transferred to the jurists. Just because someone thinks something makes sense, the public does not have to like it. But if everything that citizens don’t like, particularly if they belong to the media and academic elite, is made out to be unreasonable, then you can declare the end of democracy.” In the Jerusalem Post Lahav Harkov argues that “The court disregarded constitutional arguments against the boycott ban, upholding the law but saying the government was exercising it in the wrong way. Here we see how the Knesset passed a law, but the court determined that the government and lower courts had interpreted it too broadly, and overruled them. That is exactly the role of judicial oversight in a democracy: to make sure that those with the power to implement and enforce the law do so, without crossing into authoritarianism. Israeli democracy passed that test.”

Haaretz reports that Jacob Weinroth, the lawyer who died this week, had created a plan to end the investigations into Prime Minister Netanyahu. In an apparent effort to mitigate the public backlash from admitting to some of the charges, Weinroth told friends he’d even scripted a phased plan for Netanyahu’s potential departure. According to his plan, Netanyahu would win the next elections in a sweeping victory. Then, he would announce a “historic” political achievement — Weinroth suggested signing a peace agreement with an Arab country — before quietly retiring and securing a relatively lenient arrangement with law enforcement.

Israel Hayom, Times of Israel, Jerusalem Post and YNET report that the head of B’tselem, Hagai El-Ad, addressed the UN Security Council yesterday. Elad discussed what he calls Israel’s attempts to forcibly remove thousands of Palestinians from their agricultural land in the West Bank, as well as the anticipated demolition of Khan al-Ahmar. Danny Danon, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN said that the “This is not only a shame and a disgrace for the organisation, but it also crosses red lines for those foreign countries with an anti-Israel agenda that finance and then invite [B’Tselem] to give testimony again us.”