The Times, BBC, ITV News, the Sun, and the Express report on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s wreath laying trip to Tunisia. The Times reports that Corbyn is facing a parliamentary inquiry into claims that he failed to declare who paid for the trip as it was not registered in the House of Commons register of members’ interests. Labour said yesterday that Corbyn had not registered the trip because it fell below the £660 registration limit at the time. Stephen Silverman, Director of Investigations at the Campaign against Antisemitism said: “The public needs to know who paid for Jeremy Corbyn’s trip to honour the antisemitic Black September terrorists.” The BBC reports that Corbyn has refused to apologise for being present at the ceremony saying that “I’m not apologising for being there at all”. He said he had been present in Tunis at a conference “to try and promote peace in the Middle East”. Labour MP Luciana Berger criticised Corbyn saying that “being ‘present’ is the same as being involved”. ITV News reports that Corbyn was left visibly frustrated after being quizzed about his involvement at the ceremony. When asked in an interview if he would apologise, Corbyn tells the journalist “you seem not to understand.” Corbyn maintains that he attended the event to remember victims of a 1985 Israeli air strike on Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) offices in Tunis. BICOM CEO James was interview about the issue on LBC yesterday evening.

The Sun reports that Corbyn also attacked the “media glitterati” for its coverage of his controversial trip during a private campaign event. Corbyn also attended a controversial “peace conference” during the trip with a string of anti-Israel extremists, including a senior Hamas leader who called violence “magnificent”. The Express reports that a day after being ridiculed for claiming “I don’t think I was involved,” Corbyn admitted for the first time that he did lay a wreath at the Palestinian Martyrs Cemetery in Tunisia saying “I laid one wreath along with many other people.”

The Telegraph reports that Corbyn has been condemned for making the salute of an Islamist organisation which was described by a Government inquiry as “counter to British values and democracy”. Corbyn was pictured making the four-fingered Rabbi’ah sign, a symbol of the Muslim Brotherhood, during a visit to Finsbury Park mosque in his Islington North constituency, after he became Labour leader. In 2015 David Cameron warned that membership of the Muslim Brotherhood was a “possible indicator of extremism” following a Government investigation into its activities in the UK”.

The BBC, Daily Mail and Reuters report that Israel will reopen the main cargo crossing with Gaza if calm is maintained. The BBC reports that Israel shut the Kerem Shalom crossing for all but humanitarian deliveries five weeks ago in response to attacks by Palestinians along the border. Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said: “It was decided that if the relative quiet along the Gaza border that began this week continues until tomorrow morning, the Kerem Shalom Crossing will reopen at 09:00 (06:00 GMT) tomorrow and the fishing zone will be extended back to 9 nautical miles from the coast.” The Daily Mail reports that Lieberman wrote in a Facebook post Wednesday that the reopening of the Kerem Shalom crossing after nearly two weeks was “a clear message to residents of the Strip: quiet pays and violence doesn’t pay”. Reuters reports that Palestinian officials who coordinate with Israel on supplies to the Gaza Strip said all commercial goods that had been allowed through Kerem Shalom prior to the July 9 ban could again be brought into the territory of two million people.

The Times, Telegraph, and the Business Insider report on the numbers of ISIS fighters left in Iraq and Syria. The Times reports that a study by a UN panel of experts concluded that between 20,000 and 30,000 fighters remained in the two countries, including “active foreign terrorist fighters”. Until recently US generals estimated that barely 3,000 Isis combatants were operating in each country. The Telegraph reports that the UN experts said “Despite the damage to bureaucratic structures of the so-called ‘caliphate,’ the collective discipline of Isil is intact,” it continued. “Although he is reported to have been injured, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi remains in authority.” Business Insider reports that Thomas Joscelyn, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, argues that ISIS appears to have successfully replaced its entire force structure. Speaking to VOA Joscelyn said that “Taken at face value, the US government is saying ISIS has the same number of fighters in Iraq and Syria today as when the [coalition] bombing campaign began.”

The FT, Telegraph, BBC and Reuters report on Turkey’s retaliatory tariffs on American products. The FT reports that Turkey has raised tariffs on a series of imported American goods. They raised tax on US alcohol to 140 per cent, cars to 120 per cent and leaf tobacco to 60 per cent. Tariffs were also doubled on cosmetics, rice and coal. Fuat Oktay, the country’s vice-president, announced the tit-for-tat measures on Twitter in what he said was retaliation for “deliberate attacks” on the Turkish economy by the US administration. The Telegraph reports that Despite Ankara ratcheting up tensions with the Trump administration, the crisis-hit lira continued to rally following its collapse to record lows. After a brief dip in Asian trading, the lira rallied strongly for a second consecutive day, climbing a further 7.1pc. The BBC reports that Turkey’s weakened currency, the lira, plunged by more than 20% in response to those US sanctions. Reuters reports that Erdogan has said Turkey is the target of an economic war, and has made repeated calls for Turks to sell their dollars and euros to shore up the currency. On Tuesday, Erdogan said Turkey would boycott U.S. electronic products.

The Israeli media is dominated by updates about Gaza. Kan Radio News reports that Lieberman said that opening the Kerem Shalom crossing this morning was a clear message to the Gaza residents that if the people in Israel were to enjoy quiet and security, they too would enjoy it. Commenting on the possibility of a long-term truce arrangement, Lieberman said that he was attentive to all proposals but that it was the reality on the ground that would determine if an agreement would be reached.

Kan Radio News reports that the Kerem Shalom crossing opened today at 9am and the fishing zone in the Gaza Strip was expanded to nine nautical miles. The Security Cabinet will again meet to discuss a long term cease-fire in the Gaza Strip. It is believed that the opening of the Kerem Shalom crossing is part of the understandings reached with the mediation of Egypt and UN envoy Nikolay Mladenov. Naftali Bennett announced that the Jewish Home party would oppose an agreement with Hamas that would only produce temporary quiet.  Haaretz reports that a Gaza delegation is in Cairo for talks but that a deal without the Palestinian Authority (PA) would be fragile.

Amos Harel writes in Haaretz that the understandings “will also be a victory from Hamas’ point of view. The organisation began escalating the tensions along the border with mass protests on 30 March, from a position of deep distress. The understandings are expected to ease the Israeli pressure on the Gaza Strip and give Hamas breathing room. At the same time, the understandings promise Hamas another achievement: being identified as an important and legitimate partner for regional agreements. And Hamas achieved all this through military resistance, in complete opposition to the line taken by its rival Palestinian camp, Fatah and the Palestinian Authority.”

In Yediot Ahronot Elior Levy writes: “The truce arrangement worked out by Egypt and by and Nikolay Mladenov is exceptionally ambitious. The plan’s success depends on multiple players, and this is also the reason why there is a chance that it will fail. There are too many interests and egos at play and there is too much bad blood. It will be enough for Abu Mazen – whose grumpiness and inflexible positions have become his dominant character traits – to decide that he is continuing his sanctions on the Gaza Strip to put the entire plan in jeopardy.”

Alex Fishman in Yediot Ahronot writes: “The centrepiece of the Egyptian plan is to restore the Palestinian Authority to power in the Gaza Strip, which is a precondition for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement in the more distant future. Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar changed his strategy two weeks ago: he no longer wants the PA brought back into the Gaza Strip and is no longer enthused by the Egyptian proposal. He is now talking about reaching an independent truce arrangement with Israel but is demanding terms that Israel isn’t willing to even contemplate, such as a seaport in Gaza. That hasn’t stopped the Egyptians and Mladenov from believing that the cease-fire that was secured in Gaza is a good and optimistic start for a truce arrangement that will include Gaza’s rehabilitation.”

Haaretz and Yediot Ahronoth report that Israel Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit will look into the incidents in which human rights activists were detained by the Shin Bet intelligence agency (GSS) for questioning at Ben Gurion airport. The cases to be reviewed by the attorney general will include Peter Beinart and Reza Aslan. The Attorney General’s review was partially prompted by the public outrage over the GSS’s conduct and in response to a request by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.  Attorney Liron Liebman, a retired IDF colonel who is a fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, said yesterday: “A distinction needs to be drawn between interviews that are conducted to foil terrorism and to ensure security, and questioning people who are opposed to the Israeli government’s policies. The GSS’s powers and resources must not be used to deal with issues that do not pose a palpable security threat.”