The Telegraph reports that Israeli politicians have clashed over comments made last week by US Secretary of State John Kerry, who told a State Department gathering marking Eid al-Adha that the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a “cause of recruitment” for ISIS. Kerry’s comments were sharply criticised by Economy Minister and Jewish Home leader Naftali Bennett and Likud’s Communications Minister GIlad Erdan. However, Foreign Minister and Yisrael Beitenu leader Avigdor Lieberman accused Bennett of attempting to make political gain through damaging comments, while Defence Minister Moshe Ya’alon also strongly emphasised the importance of the US-Israel relationship.

The Times says that Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are despairing of the Palestinian unity government. Despite the creation of the unitary authority in April, backed by both Hamas and the Fatah faction of Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, the report says that there is little sign yet of reconstruction in Gaza while many civil servants have not been paid since April.

The online edition of the Guardian reports that the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claims that recent US-led air strikes in Syria have killed ten civilians, an accusation denied by American officials.

Meanwhile, the Financial Times online says that due to the recent thaw in diplomatic relations between Britain and Iran,  BP is set to recommence production from an oil field 250 miles off the Scottish coast, 50 per cent of which is owned by Iran.

In the Israeli media, the ongoing operation to locate survivors or bodies from last week’s avalanche in the Nepalese Himalayas is a major item in Israel Hayom. An Israeli rescue team has been sent to the scene to aid the search. The tragedy which killed 27 tourists including three Israeli hikers is also a top story in Yediot Ahronot, which highlights that the bodies of the three Israeli victims are being flown home for burial yesterday and today.

The top story in Maariv, which is also a major story in Israel Hayom is the revelation that a 23-year-old Israeli Bedouin man has been killed fighting for ISIS in Syria. The man was a medical intern at Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon. Writing in Maariv, Alon Ben-David says that the case says much about ISIS’s recruitment strategy, as the man was a qualified professional, another “member of the middle class, many of whom are second and third generation immigrants to the West, to whom ISIS offers an exhilarating way out of the bourgeois life afforded them in their own countries.”

Meanwhile, in Yediot Ahronot, military affairs correspondent Alex Fishman criticises comments made by Prime Minister Netanyahu yesterday, who warned about the imminent danger of Iran becoming a threshold nuclear state in a deal with the international community. Fishman says that on this occasion, the comments were politically motivated, exhibiting “the tried-and-true strategy of diverting attention by means of the Iranian threat. That always works, after all.”