The Guardian, The BBC, The Daily Telegraph, all report on our main story, that three IDF combat soldiers were killed on Saturday in the Negev by an Egyptian border policeman. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, called the killings a terrorist attack. “Israel relayed a clear message to the Egyptian government. We expect that the joint investigation will be exhaustive and thorough,” he said in televised remarks. “We will refresh procedures and methods of operations and also the measures to reduce to a minimum the smuggling and to ensure tragic terrorist attacks like this do not happen again.”

Reuters covers Netanyahu’s response to the IAEA’s decision to end two investigations into Iranian nuclear activity. “Iran is continuing to lie to the International Atomic Energy Agency,” he said. “The agency’s capitulation to Iranian pressure is a black stain on its record.”

The Times runs a feature on the ongoing anti-judicial reform protests, focussing on 70-year-old Eyall Yaffe, who each week “transports a huge model tank into the heart of cosmopolitan Tel Aviv, parks it on the same street as Israel’s military nerve centre, and climbs on top of the vehicle to defend democracy.” Yaffe is part of a group made up of tank corps veterans of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, all opposed to the reforms. Another member, Gal Maimon, told the paper that “Twice a week I go to Jerusalem to protest outside the house of Netanyahu. Twice a week I protest outside the house of the agriculture minister Avi Dichter, once a week I’m in Herzliya outside [the home of the boss of] Channel 14… I’ve come out of retirement and become a full-time protester. Why? Because I have seven grandkids and I cannot let them live in an anti-democratic country.”

The Daily Mail also focusses on the ongoing protests, now in their 22^nd consecutive week. Citing Israeli media reports that at least 100,000 attended the latest demonstrations, the paper talks to 55-year-old dentist Ilit Fayn in Tel Aviv, who says: “We will keep demonstrating to show them that even if they have paused in the reform plan we will stay mobilised – they will not be able to pass laws on the sly.” Arnon Oshri, a 66-year-old farmer, meanwhile, says “It’s important for us to eliminate the possibility of Israel becoming a dictatorship.”

Channel 12 reports the Israeli Security Cabinet meeting last night in the context of an ongoing military exercise. The drill simulates a scenario in which Israel is forced to confront a simultaneous multi-theatre engagement. Prime Minister Netanyahu told the cabinet: “We are committed to acting against the Iranian nuclear [programme], against missile attacks on the State of Israel and against the possibility of theatres’[of operations] convergence, which we call a multiple-theatre war. That obliges us to consider, if one can consider in advance, several of the central decisions that the security cabinet and the Israeli government will have to make, along with the security establishment, the IDF and the other security officials.” Of the IAEA developments, Netanyahu said: “We are confident and sure that we can deal with any threat by ourselves.”

Israel Hayom covers a senior Saudi official’s assurances that a potential normalisation deal with Israel is not affected by the Gulf state’s recent Chinese-brokered agreement with Iran. The official also suggested that Riyadh fully expects that Iran will renege on the agreement at the first opportunity. “We haven’t any doubts about the Iranians,” the official told the paper, “and it’s hard to believe the agreement will hold water. It needs to be seen for what it is, without any extravagant analyses. Iran hasn’t turned into an innocent lamb or into Saudi Arabia’s twin sister. The regime in Tehran has remained hostile towards Saudi Arabia. It aspires to seize control of Mecca and Medina and to impose Shiite hegemony in the Gulf and the Middle East.” The official alleged that the main Saudi motivation in signing the agreement with Iran was satisfying China, who demanded both conciliation with Tehran and the restoration of relations with Syria. Trilateral talks on normalisation are ongoing between Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the US, with Riyadh insisting that the terms for improved relations remain unchanged: Israel must resolve the conflict with the Palestinians.

Maariv reports that judicial reform negotiations have not resumed this week, as both sides await an update from President Herzog regarding the timetable for further talks. It is thought that Herzog is awaiting the outcome of Wednesday’s election of two MKs to the hotly contested Judicial Selection Committee. The immediate future of the committee remains uncertain regardless of the results of the election, with hard-line Justice Minister Yariv Levin threatening not to convene the committee until its structure is reformed. Levin seeks a restructuring of the committee – amounting to de facto government control – as the most important element of his package of wide-ranging judicial reforms, and shows no signs of being amenable to compromise. A Likud insider told the paper: “Everything is leading to an explosion. There’s no agreement on the horizon, and Levin has not conceded and will not concede on such an important issue as the Judges Selection Committee.” Levin’s intransigence has caused tension with Netanyahu, who is believed to be seeking a genuine compromise with the opposition. The Prime Minister, however, is loth to provoke a situation in which Levin might resign, causing chaos within the coalition and the alienation of Levin’s allies within the party.

Channel 13’s Raviv Drucker details what he claims is the negotiation process’s most viable compromise proposal to date. It would see the opposition agree to have the bill limiting the authority of government legal advisers passed into legislation and to assent to limits on the Supreme Court’s ability to invoke the grounds of reasonability in striking down administrative decisions of the government. In return, the coalition would pledge to shelve the other, more controversial elements of its proposed reforms, including both a Knesset override of court decisions and the restructuring of the Selection Committee. Drucker argues that while such a deal would have the support of both the opposition and the prime minister, reform diehards such as Levin and David Amsalem would be unlikely to assent.

Maariv also features Constitution, Law and Justice Committee Chairman Simcha Rothman’s account of the incident in New York on Friday evening, in which he was filmed snatching a megaphone from one of a group of demonstrators protesting the reforms. “A small group of violent demonstrators attacked my wife and me as we were walking in New York late at night,” said Rothman. “Both I and my bodyguards told them repeatedly to stop and back away, but they persisted. After all the warnings, I took the megaphone away that she had been shoving at my ear away from the woman demonstrator, without, of course, touching her.” Yediot Ahronot‘s Nahum Barnea writes of the incident: “The protest movement is fighting against a government that has lost all restraint. It has no choice but to wage an aggressive, decisive and decidedly impolite fight. But it mustn’t abandon the values in whose name it was formed. Even the families of even the most reviled politicians deserve a modicum of privacy; even anti-democratic politicians have the right to free speech.”

Ynet reports a West Bank military court giving Hamas terrorist Maad Hamed two life sentences for the 2015 murder of Malachi Rosenfeld, a university student who died when Hamed’s group shot at his car while he was driving home to Kochav Hashachar.

Haaretz details Israel’s men’s under-20s football team’s extraordinary World Cup quarter final victory over football giant Brazil on Saturday evening. The result sends Israel through to the semi-finals and continues the team’s unprecedented run through the competition. Israel won the game 3-2 despite missing two penalties and will next face Brazil’s South American rival Uruguay on Thursday. Prime Minister Netanyahu paid tribute to the team, saying that their victory, occurring on the same day as the tragic deaths of the three IDF soldiers, “brought joy and pride that is hard to describe. We were simply full of admiration and pride in our boys, in our team, our coaches.”