The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, The Independent, The Sun, The Mirror and The Daily Mail all report on the ceasefire coming to an end, and on Israel accusing Hamas of violating a ceasefire with a rocket fired an hour before the latest truce deadline. Air raid sirens were sounded twice in an hour in southern Israel following the interception of a rocket fired from Gaza, a first since the start of the ceasefire last week.

The BBC and The Guardian both report on yesterday’s terrorist attack in Jerusalem. Three Israelis were killed, and several others injured when two Palestinian gunmen opened fire at a bus stop in West Jerusalem, Israeli police say. Video showed the gunmen getting out of a car on a highway and shooting at people – in an attack claimed by Hamas.

Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian writes on rape denialism: “collectively, our international institutions must be capable of keeping more than one wrong in mind at once. And individually, we should expect of ourselves what we ask of juries, judges and police every time they hear a rape case, which is not to unquestioningly believe every word, but to listen with compassion and an open mind. A war crime is a war crime, regardless of who committed it. And rape is rape, even when perpetrated against someone you secretly don’t want to think of as a victim.” Naomi Greenway in The Telegraph writes that “The UN’s silence on the rape of Israeli women makes a mockery of its campaign against violence.”

Sky News reports on who all of the 71 Israeli hostages released by Hamas are, as eight more Israeli hostages were freed by Hamas on Thursday as part of a string of releases under a temporary ceasefire deal.

Sky News reports that Hamas has claimed its youngest hostage – a 10-month-old boy – has been killed along with his four-year-old brother and their mother. Shiri Bibas and Kfir and Ariel Bibas were taken during the terror attack on Israel in October and were the highest-profile civilian hostages yet to be freed. The group’s armed wing, al Qassam Brigades, said on social media that Mrs Bibas, 32, and her sons died in an Israeli airstrike before the current ceasefire.

The BBC, The Guardian and The Daily Mail all report that Mia Schem, a French-Israeli woman who was abducted from the Supernova music festival in Israel and shown in the first Hamas video of a hostage speaking from captivity, has been released. She was one of eight hostages released in two tranches on Thursday.

Jake Wallis Simons writes for The Telegraph, saying that The Red Cross has “turned its back on Israel” and that the organisation “failed to make the hostages a priority”.

Sky News reports that The UK is sending one of its most lethal warships to the Gulf to deter growing threats to shipping from Iran and Iranian-backed groups in the wake of Israel’s war against Hamas. The deployment of HMS Diamond, a Type 45 destroyer, with the ability to shoot missiles out of the sky, comes after Houthi rebels in Yemen hijacked an Israeli-linked cargo ship in the Red Sea last week and the US military had to rescue another vessel on Sunday. Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, said he was beefing-up a long-standing Royal Navy maritime security operation in the Gulf to reduce the risk of the current crisis between Israel and Tehran-backed Hamas escalating into a regional conflict.

The BBC reports that the Israel Prison Service has released a video of a Palestinain teenager who had been examined by a medic before leaving prison, with no medical problem diagnosed, but had appeared in Ramallah with broken hands. The video shows the teenagers’ hands unbandaged – but they are out of shot for most of the video. The prison service claims the footage proves his allegations are false. X-Rays taken from Palestinian doctors in Ramallah were shown to two doctors in the UK, who confirmed that they showed fractures in both of Mohammed’s hands.

The BBC and Reuters both report that Activist Ahed Tamimi was one of 30 Palestinian prisoners released by Israel on Wednesday, as part of the truce deal with Hamas. Israel’s prison service said a mixture of men and women had been freed “from a number of [its] facilities”. Ms Tamimi, 22, was arrested earlier this month over an Instagram post, which her family say she did not write.

The Economist asks whether Hamas wants to stop fighting at all, saying that “when Hamas smashed across the Gaza border on October 7th, killing some 1,200 Israelis and abducting around 250 more, it thrust itself into the very centre of international attention. The issue of Palestinian statehood, which had been forgotten as Arab countries established diplomatic relations with Israel under the Abraham accords, is once again seen as the key to stability across the region. Yet it seems increasingly clear that Hamas, which planned its assault down to the smallest detail, failed to anticipate Israel’s military response and had no greater goal for the following days than to barter hostages for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Almost two months into the war it started, does it have a plan?”

Looking to the next stage of the war, The Telegraph reports on the US and Israel discussing whether they can create ‘Hamas-Free Zones’ in the Gaza Strip or look at whether it is possible to exile Hamas militants. The Telegraph also gives its view on the war as it stands, saying Israel now faces a “dreadful dilemma”. Sky News adds whether it is possible for the fighting to continue in such a way without killing thousands more people, and The Guardian looks to the next stage of the war, saying an operation in Khan Younis would be damaging.

The Telegraph reports that Netanyahu warned the United States on Thursday that “nothing will stop” Israel’s army from “eradicating” Hamas as he faced mounting diplomatic pressure to scale back the operation in the Gaza Strip. As he left a meeting in Jerusalem with Antony Blinken, Netanyahu vowed to continue the war until all hostages were freed and Hamas destroyed. “I told him we have sworn, and I have sworn, to eradicate Hamas. Nothing will stop us” said the prime minister, who faces growing demands from Washington to adopt a more restrained stance once the ceasefire in Gaza ends.

The Telegraph also reports that Netanyahu is facing his biggest ever political challenge: “If you take Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, at his word, there can be little doubt what will happen next in Gaza: just as Jews around the world prepare to light the first candle of Hanukkah next week, he will launch a new blitz on Gaza in a bid to finish off Hamas.”

The Telegraph reports on Penny Mourdant’s comments that The BBC “should consider further training for staff over Israel-Hamas coverage”, and The Telegraph also reports that multiple BBC presenters are facing complaints over posts featuring anti-Israel content.

The BBC reports on the release of 17 Thai nationals, which is separate to an agreement that has so far seen Hamas free 70 Israeli women and children. Six Thai nationals who Hamas released in the last two days are still in Israel undergoing medical examinations. Nine remain in Hamas’ custody.

The Financial Times reports that Labour is risking losing some of its support from Muslims, with a report particularly concentrating on protests in Tower Hamlets, which Labour lost control of to Lutfur Rahman’s Aspire Party in 2022.

Channel 12 reports details of physical abuse of child hostages by Hamas. The uncle of brothers Yagil, 12, and Or Yaakov, 16, said “each child that was taken by Hamas was taken on a motorbike and they took every child, took his leg and put it on the exhaust of that motorbike, so they have a burn so they will be marked if they run, if they escape, so [Hamas] can find them. They were drugged, they were treated so badly, but at least they are with us.” Ynet adds that “the captured children were also forbidden at gunpoint to cry and some were forced to view the filmed horrors of the October 7 massacre, [such] as 12-year old Eitan Yahalomi who was kept in seclusion for 16 days before being moved to where others were being held. The young boy also said he was beaten by Gazan civilians as he was taken into the Strip.”

Yediot Ahronot’s Yossi Yehoshua fears that the US is pressing Israel to conduct its Gaza operation in a way which will mean it falls short of its objective of destroying Hamas. “Without a massive manoeuvre in Khan Yunis (a Hamas stronghold) and in the Rafah area (the tunnel infrastructure for smuggling weapons from Egypt),” he says, “the only thing that will remain of the objectives will be the return of the hostages—and not even 100 percent of them.” Yehoshua criticises the operation’s decision not to attack southern Gaza in parallel to the north. Doing so, he argues, would have meant that the Biden Administration would have been less able to pressure Israel into altering its tactics as it now prepares its push into the south. The mood within the IDF, he says, is such that if the operation is now abandoned “reservists will leave, standing army troops will rebel, and commanders in active service will remove their rank insignias and go home. If you thought that the uproar over the judicial reform sowed chaos in the IDF, pausing the fighting now is liable to cause the army to unravel.”

Israel Hayom’s Jonathan Tobin considers the apparent shift in Biden Administration thinking, in the light of a Biden tweet on Tuesday seeming to favour an end to the war. “With polls showing Biden currently trailing Trump,” he writes, “the generational divide among Democrats about Israel is causing Biden real problems.” In this context, Tobin concludes, “the pressure on Israel to continue the ceasefire from Washington as Hamas shamelessly barters the hostages in an inhuman fashion is growing. Though the administration insists that it still wants Hamas defeated, it is also declaring that it opposes any real effort to clear the terrorists out of southern Gaza as Israel has begun to do so in the northern part of the Strip.”

Yediot Ahronot’s Sima Kadmon – a staunch advocate of the hostage release deal – criticises its management. “We let Hamas take over the deal,” she writes, “creating unacceptable categories for the released hostages, deciding who lives and—God forbid—who dies, tearing families apart, forsaking fathers. So what are all Netanyahu and Gallant’s pledges to topple, smash, oust, and destroy worth when we have given up on even the most fundamental, justified demand of having the Red Cross visit the hostages?”

Haaretz profiles Cochav Elkayam-Levy, a Hebrew University academic who founded the Civil Commission on October 7 Crimes by Hamas against Women and Children. This body has been investigating Hamas’s systematic rape of women and has found that “under cover of the massacre, Hamas carried out a campaign of rape and sexual abuse at many of the communities adjacent to the Gaza Strip that it attacked.” “The torture of women,” Elkayam-Levy finds, “was weaponised in the destruction of communities, in sowing general horror and in breaking the spirit of the Israelis.” In light of the total failure of many international women’s organisations (including those at the UN) to stand with these Israeli victims, Elkayam-Levy  says that “the terrible betrayal we have felt has developed into a feeling that we are now the victims of wild incitement directed at us. At very early stages of the war, those organisations began running campaigns about the genocide Israel is carrying out in Gaza. I am very uncomfortable saying this, but those organisations have shown themselves to be antisemitic bodies.”

I24 News reports on the discovery of a Hamas tunnel shaft in a kindergarten in the Neve Said area of the northern Gaza Strip. Troops uncovered the tunnel network also ran beneath a local mosque and adjacent houses, and conatined anti-tank missile launch posts, sniper positions, and a weapons cache. An IDF Lieutenant said the discovery revealed Hamas as “the epitome of evil, we are fighting against evil. This location, a kindergarten, a Hamas operational shaft under the slides in a children’s playground, in a mosque where people pray. They exploit everything to attack us. We are fighting against evil.”

Maariv features reports from the US that Israel plans to assassinate Hamas’s overseas leadership. “At the behest of Prime Minister Netanyahu,” it writes, “Israel’s top spy agencies are working on plans to hunt down Hamas leaders living in Lebanon, Turkey and Qatar, which has allowed Hamas to run a political office in Doha for a decade.”