BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme, BBC News Online, the Financial Times, the Guardian, the Times and the Telegraph all report on the Turkish Army’s incursion into Northern Syria to repel US-backed Kurdish fighters. The Prime Minister of Turkey, Binali Yildirim, announced “that a four-phase plan was underway to create a secure zone 30km deep into Syrian territory”. The offensive seeks to clear the Kurdish enclave on Turkey’s border of fighters who Ankara regards as terrorists posing a threat to its own territorial integrity, but risks inflaming tensions within Syria and with the West.

City AM has published an article by the Lord Mayor of the City of London, Charles Bowman, who is visiting Israel on his first overseas trip of the year. He sees Israel as “a trusted friend in the region and a natural partner for British companies”.

The Guardian, Daily Mail via AP and the Times report on the visit of US Vice President Mike Pence to the Middle East and his arrival in Israel. Pence was welcomed at Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion airport by Israel’s Tourism Minister Yariv Levin. He made no statement to reporters before travelling on to Jerusalem, having arrived from Jordan on a US military plane after visiting American troops on the Syrian border. In Jordan, Pence tried to reassure Abdullah the US was committed to restarting peace talks and to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, if both sides agreed. The Times reports that Arab leaders have declared that they will boycott a speech in front of the Knesset by Pence, saying that he is a “dangerous and messianic” envoy of US President Donald Trump. The decision means that Pence will see no Palestinian or Israeli Arab representatives on his one-and-a-half day visit to Israel. BT News, Yahoo News via AP and Daily Mail via AFP report on Pence’s previous stop in Jordan where he met with King Abdullah. The King appealed to Pence to “rebuild trust and confidence” in the possibility of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Yahoo News UK via AFP reports that Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmud Abbas will seek EU support in Brussels today to recognise the state of Palestine “as a way to respond” to US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. Abbas will meet EU diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini and the bloc’s 28 foreign ministers on the sidelines of their monthly meeting.

All the Israeli media report the visit of US Vice President Pence to Israel. Yediot Ahronot includes a detailed account of his arrival including the “modest” ceremony at Ben Gurion Airport last night. Today he will meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Prime Minister’s Office, after which he will address the Knesset plenum. Maariv reports that Knesset officials are worried that the Joint List MKs, who have announced their intention to boycott Pence’s Knesset address, might stage a noisy departure from the plenum that would be broadcast around the world. The paper quotes Joint List Chairman Ayman Odeh, who has said his party would boycott Pence’s plenary address “both because of the positions of President Trump, who has proven that his presidency will only distance Israel and Palestine from the possibility of reaching a just and historic compromise, but also because of the positions of Pence himself, who is coming to the region to promote a messianic and dangerous agenda that everyone who supports peace should oppose”.

Israel Hayom highlights the role of Evangelical Christians in the Trump administration’s policies on Israel and Jerusalem, writing that their beliefs were behind “their tireless push to recognise Jerusalem as our capital and to relocate the US Embassy there. From their standpoint, Donald Trump’s election to the Presidency was blessed by heaven when he publicly declared that he would move the Embassy to Jerusalem in his term. The Arab MKs in the Joint List and the Islamic countries have been employing inflammatory rhetoric against Pence for good reason. They realise the political implications that this theology has on the future of the Land of Israel in general, and on Jerusalem in particular”.  YediotAhronot refers to it as a “Seinfeld Visit… A visit about nothing. A visit without objectives, without achievements, without a next link in a chain of clear political objectives. It’s just a visit. Nice, but nothing more”.  It also has a less complimentary view of the Evangelical outlook, saying: “He loves the Jewish people because it has a purpose in history, and he loves Israel because it serves temporarily as the home of the Jewish people before they convert to Christianity after Armageddon. This is the man who is a ‘heartbeat away’ from the American presidency.”

According to Kan Radio News, a senior Palestinian source said that PA President Mahmoud Abbas had told Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi last week that the US could mediate between Israel and the Palestinians again, even without repudiating its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, only if it would consent to relinquish its monopoly on mediation.  There would need to be an international framework that would sponsor the negotiations along with Egypt and Jordan and the recent American recognition of Jerusalem not form part of the basis for the negotiations.

Maariv highlights President Rivlin’s visit to the Gaza border area yesterday and his concern that “Gaza is on the verge of collapse”. According to the President, “the time is coming near when the infrastructure in Gaza will collapse, leaving many civilians in distress, with no sanitary conditions, exposed to pollution, impure water, and epidemics. The entire world must know and understand that the ones who are preventing rehabilitation are Hamas. Israel is the only one in the region that, whatever the situation, transfers basic essentials to the residents of Gaza, so that they can sustain the body and mind. We will not tolerate accusations of blame. I call on all world nations, to all who are able, and have the influence, to pressure those ruling Gaza, to pressure Hamas, to accept responsibility for their actions and the lives of their people”.

Israel Hayom reports that the IDF is considering taking part in what it calls a “radical left wing” organisation’s course on “the occupation”.  The newspaper refers to legal seminars run by ACRI, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. The seminars include subjects such as  “Human Rights in Occupied Territory” and lectures by leading academics, government officials and international organisations in the field of human rights and international humanitarian law.

Both Haaretz and Yediot Ahronot report that the Ministerial Committee for Legislation yesterday approved 12 government-sponsored bills that explicitly impact on the settlements.   This follows Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit’s approval of the “Judea and Samaria protocol,” stipulating that any new bill needs to explicitly address the questions of its applicability in the West Bank. According to the new protocol, the Justice Ministry will be responsible for deciding whether the new legislation can be applied in the territories, when the principal question that will be reviewed is whether that application conforms to international law. According to international law, Israeli laws cannot be applied to occupied territories except in cases of security considerations or in the event of special needs of the population.

Israel Hayom reports a 25-year-old man, apparently an Israeli drug smuggler, was killed in a shootout with Border Police near the Israeli-Egyptian border. The man was brought to Route 222 near Tzeelim and pronounced dead.