The Times reports on Sudan becoming the latest Arab country to say it will normalise relations with Israel. The paper notes that Sudan had already in recent years switched sides in the great Middle East divide between supporters of the Iran-led “resistance” to Israel and pro-western Arab states led by Saudi Arabia.

In The Guardian, Nesrine Malik argues that the US decided to blackmail the Sudan by forcing it to normalise relations with Israel in return for taking it off the state sponsors of terror list, reintegrating it into the international financial and trade system, and providing aid.

The BBC reports about how victims of sexual abuse in Egypt are “fighting back like never before”. Over the years, a culture of patriarchy, religion and conservatism has meant women often stay silent when sexual abuse happens because victim-blaming is all too common. Now though, women and girls are finally breaking decades of silence, taking to social media to share their stories of assault, empowering one another to call for justice.

The Telegraph leads this morning on the work being carried out by the UK-based NGO Mines Advisory Group, who are working to find and destroy an estimated 400,000 landmines and unexploded ordnances along the Lebanon-Israel border. The mines are part of a deadly legacy, which stems from two Israeli invasions and occupations of southern Lebanon (in 1978 and 1982, ending in 2000).

Kylie Moore-Gilbert, the British-Australian academic who has been detained in Iran for the past two years, has been moved from the notorious desert prison of Qarchak to an unknown location according to The Guardian and The Telegraph. Her move was first reported by the Iranian Association of Human Rights Activists, who said that she was moved, along with all her belongings, on Saturday.

Meanwhile in The Times, Middle East correspondent Richard Spencer writes that Iran’s best-known political prisoner has been transferred to a tough jail for female criminals, despite suffering heart problems following a hunger strike. Nasrin Sotoudeh, a human rights lawyer, is serving a 33-year sentence for her activism, most recently taking up the cases of women who staged a campaign against wearing the compulsory hijab or head-scarf.

Also in The Times, an Iranian businessman shot dead near Rome last week supposedly in a dispute over money was an international arms dealer with ties to the Calabrian mafia, Russian arms traffickers and the regime in Tehran, Italian police said yesterday.

The Financial Times leads with a new report on how the regional battle between the UAE and Turkey is driving new conflicts in the Middle East from Libya to the Gulf.

The Financial Times also notes that a boycott of French goods in Kuwait and Qatar is gathering momentum in reaction to popular disquiet at President Emmanuel Macron’s crackdown on radical Islamism.

All of the Israeli newspapers concentrate this morning on the coronavirus cabinet’s decision yesterday to reopen the school system for the lower grades next Sunday. Children in the first through fourth grades will tentatively be allowed to return to classes under severe restrictions, providing no significant spikes are recorded in the infection and morbidity rates. The coronavirus cabinet will meet again this afternoon to discuss after-school frameworks, busing, and reopening the commercial sector. Kan Radio News reports that the National Parents Leadership criticised the decision to have first and second graders attend school for half a week. It described the solution as a “pathetic joke that would make consecutive and real learning impossible”.

In Yediot Ahronot, Chen Artzi-Sror also condemns the cabinet’s decision for “young first and second graders, who have not spent a single straight month in school, to learn only half the week”. He adds: “this is blindness reserved only for those who are deeply disconnected from the vanities of this world. If anyone thinks that the peace that broke out causes our hearts to flutter and that the war against the State Attorney’s Office is enlisting the ranks, they must have never visited a single home in Israel in the last while. Utter disregard for small children only out of laziness marks a new nadir.”

Maariv reports about a new initiative by Likud officials to offer Benny Gantz the presidency next year on condition that he agrees to revise the coalition agreement to remove the alternating premiership clause from it. The paper also notes that Yesh Atid-Telem MK Moshe Yaalon has been tasked by the opposition to persuade Gantz and his party to vote in favour of a constructive no-confidence motion that would oust Netanyahu from power without forcing early elections. A Yesh Atid-Telem official said that the party would continue to introduce a constructive no-confidence motion every week. The official added: “Gantz is still hesitating and deliberating. Pressure is being applied on him from different directions, including from within his own party.”

Amos Gilead, a retired Maj.Gen. and current head of the Institute for Policy and Strategy (IPS) at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, gives a critical interview about the government in Yediot Ahronot. He told Yuval Kanri: “I took part in a demonstration for the first time in my life on Saturday night. I’m neither a leftist nor an anarchist. I never believed that I would ever participate in a demonstration. And I saw an excellent crowd, concerned people who have a creeping sense of despair. Left wingers have been turned into traitors if they don’t agree with this regime. Most of the people who went to the square are simply worried about the country’s future and their own future. I looked at them, a lot of younger [Israelis]. They moved me powerfully.” He also spoke about the future of Blue and White: “The government is dysfunctional. It’s made the public despair. But I don’t know what alternative is going to present itself. Gantz broke the alternative to Netanyahu. He joined the government based on the mistaken intelligence assessment that he received. He can’t be the alternative to Netanyahu anymore, and I’m really sad about that.”

All the Israeli papers report that the Israel Institute for Biological Research will begin clinical trials for its COVID-19 vaccine this Sunday. The trial will last a few months and have three stages. In the first stage, safety tests will be carried out on 80 healthy volunteers aged 18 to 55 in Sheba Hospital and Hadassah Hospital. In the second stage, these tests will be carried out on 960 healthy volunteers aged over 18. That stage is scheduled to begin in December, in several medical centres throughout Israel. The third stage will be a large-scale trial to examine the efficacy of the vaccine in which 30,000 volunteers will take part. It will begin in April-May 2021 (contingent on the success of the first two stages). If this stage ends successfully, it will be possible to approve the vaccine and inoculate the entire population.