Over the weekend, the Independent and its sister publication the Independent i published articles analysing the agreement reached by the Likud Party headed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu to run a joint list of candidates for January’s general election. Both articles claim that the deal may not increase the combined vote of the two parties. This morning, the Daily Mail includes two items of interest. One article speculates that Israel may have carried out the attack on an arms factory in Sudan last week, claiming that the facility may have been producing rockets and ballistic missiles for Iran. The Daily Mail also publishes an article claiming that funds from the Department for International Development are being used by the Palestinian Authority to subsidise the families of Palestinian prisoners, including those of convicted terrorists. The article quotes a report by the watchdog Palestinian Media Watch and includes a response by International Development Minister Alan Duncan.

Meanwhile, the Lex column in the Financial Times offers an analysis of Israel’s high-performance economy, commenting that the country’s impressive financial strength is based on the technology and industrial sectors. The online edition of the Independent reports on the steadily receding Dead Sea, which is reportedly shrinking largely due to evaporation and industrial use by both Israeli and Jordanian companies. The article quotes the Israeli director of Friends of the Earth Middle East.

Elsewhere in the region, the online editions of the Times, Telegraph and Independent all report an abrupt end to a four-day truce to the fighting in Syria. Yesterday Syrian air force jets bombed parts of Damascus, reportedly killing 16 people, while opposition forces apparently fought troops loyal to President Assad in the capital and along the country’s main highway.Meanwhile, the Independent online also reports that Iranian authorities have launched a concerted effort to encourage domestic production with foreign imports becoming increasingly unaffordable.

This evening’s Likud Central Committee convention is the headline news in Israel. The body will vote to approve the agreement between Likud and Yisrael Beitenu to run a joint list of electoral candidates. Although the committee is expected to approve the deal, Yediot Ahronot, Haaretz and Israel Hayom predict that there is likely to be some dissent from within the Likud Party ranks. Meanwhile, Maariv publishes a poll which predicts that the joint Likud-Yisrael Beitenu list would win 43 Knesset seats were elections held today, while the Labour Party would accumulate 20 seats with 15 for Yesh Atid. A similar poll commissioned by Channel Two predicts that the joint Likud-Yisrael Beitenu ticket would yield 42 seats, while a Channel Ten survey projects just 35 seats for the unified list.

In other news, both Yediot Ahronot and Makor Rishon report on yesterday’s special Knesset session marking the seventeenth anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. During the session, Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin claimed that Rabin’s formula for peace had failed, while Labour’s Shelly Yachimovich and Kadima’s Shaul Mofaz defended the need to negotiate a two-state solution. This morning, Israel Radio News reports that fifteen rockets were fired into southern Israel from the Gaza Strip overnight. Nobody was injured and no damage was caused. The Israel Air Force attacked a number of rocket-launching sites and training bases in response. Palestinian sources said that the air strikes killed one person.