The Telegraph, Times and Independent i all report on the Likud primaries results which were announced yesterday. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu retained the party leadership with ease, securing 75 per cent of the vote to convincingly defeat the sole challenger MK Danny Danon. In addition, those considered allies of Netanyahu fared well in a separate poll to select the Likud Knesset candidates, defying speculation that Likud could end up with an electoral list dominated by the party’s right-wing.

In the Guardian, Julian Borger provides analysis of Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas’s decision to sign the Rome Statues and other international treaties, paving the way for Palestinian membership of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Borger calls it a “double-edged sword” for Abbas, as ICC membership will also leave Palestinian leaders and individuals open to prosecution. In the Financial Times, John Reed provides a Q&A on the issue which confers that Palestinians could also be prosecuted and speculates that Israel’s government will take some form of retaliatory action in response to Abbas’s move to join the ICC.

The Guardian online includes a profile update on nine-year-old Gazan girl Najia Warshaga whose blood-stained face following an Israeli strike on a United Nations school in Gaza became a symbolic and evocative image in the media during Operation Protective Edge. The article outlines Warshaga’s ongoing trauma and her family’s financial and material difficulties.

The Guardian online also says that the Ma’an Network, a Palestinian non-profit media organisation, will use UK government funding to broadcast programming on issues to prevent violence towards Palestinian women and girls over the coming three years.

In Egypt, the Guardian, Times, Telegraph and Financial Times all report that a court has ordered the re-trial of three Al-Jazeera journalists, who had been found guilty of aiding terrorists, undermining national security and spreading false information. Many in the international community have accused the Egyptian authorities of persecuting journalists critical of their rule.

The Guardian online says that US-led coalition forces carried out 29 air strikes against ISIS on New Year’s Eve, including 17 in Syria. Both the Times and Telegraph report that Syria’s President Assad yesterday made a rare public appearance, visiting troops on the frontline in a Damascus suburb. Meanwhile, the Guardian online covers a report which says that more than 76,000 people were killed in Syria last year, the largest annual figure since the Syrian Civil War began.

In the Israeli media, the Likud primaries results are the main story. It is the top item in Yediot Ahronot, Maariv, Haaretz and Israel Hayom which emphasises that the list of Knesset candidates places the likes of Tzipi Hotovely and Moshe Feiglin, current MKs considered on the right-wing of the party in unrealistic slots for election. In Yediot Ahronot, Yuval Karmi says it is a slate “in which the people considered extreme were pushed out,” although Miri Regev, a critic of Prime Minister Netanyahu was “crowned as the ‘first lady of the Likud’” in fifth place. Israel Radio news reports that Regev has said she wants to be Housing Minister in the next government.

Meanwhile, both Yediot Ahronot and Maariv report prominently on Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid’s opening campaign speech last night in which he heavily criticised his opponents for corruption. He said “I am fed up with their stealing the country from us” and took aim specifically at Likud, Labour, Yisrael Beitenu and Jewish Home.

In the wake of PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s decision to sign the Rome Statutes, Haaretz and Israel Radio news both say that he has asked for complaints to be submitted to the ICC over Operation Protective Edge. Israel Radio news says that the decision was taken with approval from Hamas, which could find itself prosecuted over its actions during the summer conflict.