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Media Summary

Kuwait to begin succession process after death of Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Sabah

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The BBC, The Guardian, Independent, Financial Times and The Telegraph report on the death of Kuwait Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Sabah yesterday, aged 91. His 83-year-old half-brother, Crown Prince Sheikh Nawaf al-Ahmed, has been named by the cabinet as his successor. The emir often acted as a mediator in regional disputes, including the ongoing diplomatic stand-off between Saudi Arabia, its allies and Qatar.

BBC security corresponded Frank Gardner writes: “Despite being ruled by ageing men from the long-standing Al-Sabah dynasty, Kuwait has one of the more lively political scenes in the Arab world, with elected MPs able to call government ministers to account. This has sometimes led to political paralysis. The ruling family also took on conservative religious opinion by pushing for women to be allowed to vote and run for political office.”

Amed al-Omran writes an obituary for the Sheik in the Financial Times in which he says the ruler protected the nation by staying neutral in regional disputes but failed to rise to challenge of post-oil future.

The Times reports on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the UN General Assembly in which he accused Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese militia, of operating missile factories in the heart of Beirut.

The BBC reports that five Iraqi civilians have been killed after a rocket hit a house near Baghdad airport. No group has taken responsibility for the rocket, but the airport, which includes a US military base, is often the target of attacks from Iran-backed militias opposed to the American presence. This was the first time in months that one has caused civilian casualties.

Saudi activists in exile have founded two new opposition groups as they mark the second anniversary of the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, says The Telegraph and The Times. The launch in Washington yesterday of Democracy in the Arab World Now (Dawn) as a pan-Arab human rights group follows the announcement last week of an opposition National Assembly Party for Saudi Arabia.

The Independent notes that the UAE is planning to send an unmanned spacecraft to the moon in 2024 in a project which would make it the fourth nation to reach Earth’s lunar satellite. An Emirati space probe is already on its way to Mars, having been launched from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Centre in July. Last year, the UAE also sent its first astronaut to the International Space Station.

The Financial Times’s Chloe Cornish investigates Lebanon’s banking system, in which she argues that a visit to Paris by representatives of the country’s powerful banking lobby shows how far financiers have fallen.

All the Israeli media focus on the Knesset passing an amendment to the so-called “big coronavirus law” that empowers the government to declare a state of emergency and restrict demonstrations by only permitting people to protest within 1,000 meters of their homes and in pods consisting of up to 20 people. The amendment passed 46 to 38, after two Blue and White MKs — Miki Haimovich and Ram Shefa — defied party and coalition discipline by voting against. The vote and the restrictions drew fiery criticism from the opposition, with Opposition Chairman Yair Lapid saying ahead of the vote: “It’s important for me to come here and to utilize every opportunity to speak in the plenum as long as you still permit me to do so, because that’s the next stage.” Maariv quotes Justice Minister Avi Nissenkorn who defended his party’s decision to vote in favour of the amendment, saying: “We’re protecting the balance between the fight for public health and civil rights. The dangerous attempt by the Likud to prohibit the right to demonstrate throughout the entire length of the crisis has failed. Restrictions on movement for demonstrations will apply only during a full lockdown. The moment the restrictions on the economy are softened, the restrictions on movement for demonstrations and prayer services will immediately be cancelled.”

Channel 12 News reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned the lockdown may continue much longer than three weeks. Responding  to questions on Facebook yesterday about the duration of the lockdown, Netanyahu said: “I want to say honestly — it isn’t going to be less than a month. It may end up taking much longer.” Netanyahu also commented on reopening schools, saying, “We want to allow pods for preschools and the first and second grades,” but he refrained from saying when he expected schools to be reopened even partially. Netanyahu cited various parts of the lockdown that might be eased, such as reopening schools, renewing commerce and reopening hotels, but he said that criteria would have to be met before any such action would be taken.

Kan Radio News reports that the IDF Home Front Command’s epidemiological investigations chief, Col. Reli Margalit, said that the testing unit was working to increase the number of quarantined people and break the chains of infection. He said that the number of contact tracers serving in the testing unit had been doubled since it was established. Margalit’s comments come after requests by more than 1,500 carriers of the coronavirus to move into the hotels that the Home Front Command is running were denied on the eve of Yom Kippur.

Israel Hayom leads this morning with a report by Yehuda Schlesinger that most if not all of the Hasidic courts in Israel have made a strategic decision to defy coronavirus-related restrictions so as to achieve “herd immunity” within their communities. Schlesinger reports that the Hasidic community concluded that the communal price of compliance with the coronavirus-related restrictions is too high to bear, while also arguing that widespread infection is inevitable in any event. Ma’ariv notes that Yisrael Beiteinu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman has criticised the ultra-Orthodox parties who press to “receive irrelevant considerations like authorisation for transportation at the end of Yom Kippur and flights to Uman, and simultaneously demanding budgets for yeshivas instead of promoting the healthcare system and rebuilding the economy”.

Yediot Ahronot runs excerpts from Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit’s interview to the weekly magazine Mishpacha that were aired last night on Hahadashot. Mandelblit comments on Netanyahu’s potential incapacitation, saying: “You have a defendant, Mr. Netanyahu, and you have Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who are not the same. If you scramble them and exercise your governmental power as prime minister to influence yourself criminally, it starts being a serious problem. How do you deal with this problem? If it really is impossible to deal with it, it’s possible that we will come around to [declaring] incapacitation.”

Maariv notes that the Knesset voted yesterday to pass the economic aid plan for businesses [that have suffered] in wake of the coronavirus crisis. The bill was introduced in view of the severe restrictions on the economy and it features amendments which are intended to alleviate the conditions for receiving the grants paid to businesses, includuing advances for the months when businesses were harmed and are anticipated to take a hit due to the additional restrictions that have been imposed because of the coronavirus crisis. The law also includes a postponement of the mechanism to reduce unemployment benefits.