The Times reports that the Israeli Prime Minister will try to persuade his new Gulf allies to back the threat of military action against Iran as he embarks on a historic visit to the UAE. However, the article quotes Professor Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, an Emirati analyst, who said the UAE is opposed to military action and even to harsher sanctions on Iran, a volte-face from the Trump years. “If Bennett is coming here to ask the UAE to join them in military action then he is in the wrong place,” Professor Abdulla said.

The Telegraph reports that Israel has completed a high-tech fence around Gaza Strip that can detect Hamas tunnel squads. While the fence was hailed by Israeli officials as a symbol of security and stability, for Palestinians it is an oppressive reminder of the blockade imposed by Israel in 2007, when the Islamist group Hamas took power in the Gaza strip.

The Guardian looks at life in Tel Aviv, recently named by the Economist Intelligence Unit as the world’s most expensive city to live. Tel Aviv’s new status is in large part a result of global inflation and supply chain issues caused by COVID-19 shutdowns, the paper writes.

The Independent notes that Palestinians held municipal elections in the West Bank on Saturday in a rare democratic exercise and amid rising anger with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas after he cancelled planned legislative and presidential votes earlier this year. More than 400,000 Palestinians were eligible to cast ballots for representatives in 154 village councils in the West Bank, where Abbas’ Fatah party has limited self-rule.

The Financial Times writes that an EU official has warned Qatar it has not gone far enough in improving the working conditions for migrant workers in the country ahead of next year’s FIFA World Cup. Qatar has been criticised by Amnesty International and other campaign organisations over the working conditions of the mainly south Asian construction workers in the gas-rich state. Their criticisms focus on conditions at construction sites including the Khalifa stadium in Doha, and on Doha’s response, including how the authorities investigate deaths.

In the Israeli media, Kan Radio reports that as of Wednesday midnight, the UK and Denmark will be put on the list of “red countries”, pending final cabinet approval. The Health Ministry is considering whether to include Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Holland, Austria and Finland on the list and, for the first time, Canada. Health Ministry officials are also considering whether to extend mandatory quarantine to a full week for anyone returning from a number of countries, instead of the current three-day quarantine. Sixty-seven people have tested positive for the Omicron variant in Israel so far. Thirteen of them are people whose vaccinations either had expired or who had recovered more than six months ago from COVID-19. There is a strong suspicion that another 80 people are also infected with the Omicron variant. Over the weekend, Bennett lamented Israel’s “horrible” immunisation rate for children between the ages of 5-12, as the government pushed for higher vaccine numbers, particularly of the booster shot, to curb the spread of Omicron.

In Yediot Ahronot, military affairs corresponded Yossi Yehoshua writes that the US recently rejected an Israeli request to move up the delivery date for two of the four KC-46 refuelling planes that Israel is contracted to buy from the US. No explanation for the reported American refusal was provided, even as Yehoshua describes the refuelling planes as critical for any successful IAF air strike against the Iranian nuclear programme. They are scheduled to arrive in another four years despite the agreement to buy the planes was approved two years ago while Gadi Eisenkot was chief of staff and Avigdor Liberman was defence minister. However, as a result of the political crisis in Israel, the ministerial committee for acquisitions only reconvened recently to approve the budget for the purchase.

Maariv notes that Justice Minister Gideon Saar has submitted his candidates to replace Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, who is due to step down after being in office since February 2016. Saar’s list includes former Tel Aviv District Attorney Adv. Gali Bahrav-Myara, Deputy Attorney General for Management and Special Positions and Public-Constitutional Law Raz Nazri, and Deputy Attorney General for Public International Legal Affairs, Roi Sheindorf.

Also in Yediot Ahronot, Sima Kadmon comments on the decision made yesterday by a ministerial committee not to extend the security detail that had been assigned to protect Benjamin Netanyahu’s wife and two sons, despite the media campaign that was waged by the Netanyahu family and several politicians and pundits to extend that protection. Kadmon writes: “If Netanyahu truly were worried, he would never have publicly flaunted the fact that they were about to lose their security detail. To the contrary, he would have concealed that for as long as possible and would have taken other means to cope. But the opposition chairman is far less worried about the possibility of his family being murdered than he is about another possibility, one that he himself raised in the video: that an attempt is being made to sabotage his candidacy for prime minister. Or, in other words: he views all of those status symbols — the bodyguards, the drivers, the posh cars — as an inseparable part of his future election campaign, and stripping him of those resources is damaging to his plans for the future.”

Israel Hayom reports that Iran is making preparations to fire a ballistic missile into space. The likely test at Iran’s Imam Khomeini Spaceport comes as Iranian state media has offered a list of upcoming planned satellite launches in the works for the country’s civilian space programme, which has been beset by a series of failed launches. Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard runs its own parallel programme that successfully put a satellite into orbit last year. Many officials in the West suspect that Iran’s space programme is a disguise for its ballistic missile programme capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. Meanwhile, Iran claimed on Sunday that European countries had failed to offer constructive proposals at the nuclear talks in Vienna. British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said on Sunday: “This is the last chance for Iran to come to the negotiating table with a serious resolution to this issue, which has to be agreeing the terms of the JCPOA [nuclear accord].”