The BBC and The Times reports that the Jordanian army claimed to have killed 27 drug smugglers who attempted to cross into the kingdom from Syria under the cover of heavy snow. The smugglers were backed by “armed groups”, a statement by the army said, adding that some fled back to Syrian territory. Troops “found large quantities of narcotics” where clashes happened in the southern countryside of Suweida province, near the border villages of Khirbet Awad and al-Mughayir.

The Guardian publishes a letter from Ohad Zemet, spokesperson from the Israeli embassy, who criticises a Guardian article about Israel using sport as a “tool of repression”. Ohad writes: “I wonder what Bibars Natcho, the Muslim captain of the Israeli football team, would think about this statement; or the Sports in Service of Peace programme which enables Israeli and Palestinian children to play together to promote coexistence, and who participated in the Argentina-Uruguay match. While Israel may not be renowned as a sporting powerhouse, on a human level, sport is clearly an invaluable tool for promoting cooperation between peoples.”
 
The Times writes about Afghanistan’s ‘disappeared’ women. The Taliban have banned women from government jobs and many schools have closed to girls. Now a more sinister picture is emerging, writes Charlie Faulkner.
 
Heavy snowfall causes major disruption in Israel, Turkey and Greece, halting flights, blocking roads and causing power outages, The Times writes.
 
The Independent and Reuters report on a new report by Israel’s diaspora affairs ministry has warned has that demonstrators who liken Covid-19 restrictions to the Holocaust are guilty of fuelling anti-semitism. The report, published on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, said that such comparisons were a leading driver of anti-Jewish hate crimes in Europe and North America in 2021.
 
Reuters report that at least five people were killed and 34 injured in what Yemeni-government media said was a Houthi missile strike on Marib city on Wednesday night.
 
In the Financial Times, David Gardner writes that the retreat from politics of three-term premier of Lebanon Saad Hariri will leave a vacuum. “This is not because he is a heavyweight; while always charming, he has been a weak and ineffective politician. It is because Lebanon since independence in 1943 has always needed a Sunni pillar to keep it aloft. That has never been more so than now, with Christians divided between Sunni and Shia, and Lebanon in thrall to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed, Syria-aligned Shia paramilitary power that operates as a state-above-the-state. Saad Hariri’s withdrawal also highlights a deadly symptom of the present crisis across the Middle East: the near absence of mainstream and moderate Sunni Arab leaders, as Iran uses militias with missiles to power its Shia Arab allies across the Levant and the Gulf.”
 
In the Israeli media, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett gave a series of interviews to leading newspapers. Speaking to Haaretz, Bennett recalled a meeting he held with Benjamin Netanyahu last May, a month before the current coalition took office, saying the former prime minister began issuing wild threats against him once it became clear that Bennett would be joining his rivals in forming a government. Bennett also commented about the rise of settler violence, saying: “The vast majority of the settlers are normative, law-abiding people. Any violence by those people is despicable and it is necessary to act against it with all our might. I recently met with the IDF chief of staff and the head of the Shin Bet, and I said to them: Deal with that! We came to this country not in order to be Phalangists. There is a police force and there is an army, and there is also terrible Palestinian violence that has led to acts of murder, including recently.” When asked about his abstention in the vote on the establishment of a state commission of inquiry into the affair of the procurement of submarines and naval vessels, Bennett said: “I am not keen on an excess of commissions of inquiry. Certainly not when it’s about something that happened years ago, in a different government … [but] it’s also a topic that was very close to their hearts and at the core of the campaign of my colleagues in the government. I thought it wasn’t right to vote against something that was such a burning issue for them. That’s how this government works, with goodwill.”
 
In Walla and Yediot Ahronot interviews, Prime Minister Bennett talks about his handling of the Omicron wave and called decision to form his coalition government the “hardest and bravest decision I had to make in my life”. On COVID, Bennett said: “I decided against enacting lockdowns, going against pressure from the Health Ministry and against the policies of the previous government. The decision to close the skies after the emergence of Omicron was very significant. I was the first world leader to do so. We’ve identified an unusual phenomenon even before the country where the phenomenon first appeared did. I was the first leader to bring Omicron to the public’s attention. At the time, the virus did not even have a name.” On his government, Bennett said: “There is a coalition here with eight parties. You know what it is like to have such a plurality of opinions in one government? How do you run a state, a government, a coalition like that? I learn to do it on my own, but the business works. In the Knesset it is difficult, but the government is doing great. The ministers come to work. We inherited an economy with minus 2 per cent growth, an unprecedented contraction of the economy, and we are already at 7 per cent growth. We lowered unemployment; we insisted on not closing the economy. We have a finance minister here who does the right things, even when it is unpopular.”
 
Kan Radio reports that health officials believe they have detected the start of a decrease in the number of daily infections, although they noted that serious infection had not yet peaked. On Wednesday 67,000 people were diagnosed with COVID, but the real number could be twice as high. The rate of serious infection has not yet peaked, and 950 patients are hospitalised in serious condition. It is believed that more than 2.5 million Israelis have been infected in the Omicron wave, most of whom probably do not realise it. 221 Covid patients have died since the wave began.
 
Maariv says that for the first time in the Omicron wave, the number of people testing positive daily (in a weekly average) dropped yesterday. Prof. Eran Segal of the Weizmann Institute is quoted saying that if this continues, the peak would have been on January 25. A report by the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate’s Information Center yesterday noted that the number of confirmed COVID cases in the month of January was higher than all of last year and warned about an alarming rise in the number of PIMS cases in the US and the start of this diagnosis in Israel.
 
Maariv follows the violent disturbances in East Jerusalem this week. A police patrol in East Jerusalem was attacked by dozens of residents and fled as stones and chairs from a café were thrown at it two nights ago. A few hours later, police and Border Police entered the a-Tur neighbourhood and arrested 22 suspects after identifying some of those who had been involved. Some were released after questioning and the others were remanded yesterday in the Jerusalem Magistrates Court. The riots continued yesterday. Many young people threw stones covered in snow at Jews who passed by and at vehicles belonging to the police. Only three people were arrested, even though dozens had taken part. There were dozens of incidents of stone-throwing at Damascus Gate, as well as in Shuafat, Sheikh Jarrah, Issawiyeh, and Beit Safafa neighbourhoods.
 
Kan Radio reports that right-wing activists tried to block the road at the entrance to Jerusalem last night in protest of the attorney general’s decision to close the investigation into the police officers who were involved in the car chase in Binyamin in which the teenager Ahuvia Sandak was killed approximately 18 months ago. Some of the demonstrators threw snowballs at police officers and at cars. A police cruiser was damaged and two rioters were arrested. Attorney General Mandelblit decided to close the case yesterday for lack of guilt, reasoning that the pursuit of the car with Sandak and four of his friends was justified and that the allegation that the police had deliberately rammed the getaway car was unsubstantiated.