BBC News reports that the family of Billy Hood, a football coach jailed in the UAE in October, has said that the Foreign Office has done nothing to help free him. Hood had begged politicians to intervene, but no one has offered to help. He was convicted for possession of cannabis oil, but Hood claims it was left in his car by a friend. The Foreign Office has said that Hood is receiving consular support.

BBC News reports that a Syrian refugee who arrived in the UK two years ago is hoping to be a role model for other refugees as she begins her teacher training course. She was previously an English and Maths teacher in Syria for 16 years, before fleeing the civil war. She is now hoping to eventually teach maths to children in Wales.

In the Israeli media, Yediot Ahronot suggests that Russia has changed course vis-à-vis Israel: “It started with a stern rebuke by the Russian Foreign Ministry in reaction to Foreign Minister Yair Lapid’s condemnation of the massacre in Bucha and Israel’s support for removing Russia from the UN Human Rights Council. It continued with Russia’s deputy foreign minister summoning Israel’s ambassador to Moscow for ‘clarifications’ and would appear to have peaked with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s letter to Bennett asking him to act in order to transfer the Alexander’s Courtyard site to Russian control.” Last night the Russian Foreign Ministry further tried to draw a connection between the escalation on the Temple Mount and the war in Ukraine. “We call on both sides to act with restraint and to stop attacks and provocations, including disproportional use of force against the Palestinian civilian population and to avoid actions that destabilise the existing status quo of the holy sites in Jerusalem. A significant portion of the blame for the current situation belongs to the US and European Union, which have used the events in Ukraine as a pretext for avoiding participating in Quartet activities.”

The Jerusalem Post notes that a top aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday the transfer of church property in Jerusalem’s Old City to Moscow’s hands is at the top of the Israeli-Russian diplomatic agenda. Earlier this week, it was reported that Putin had sent a letter to Prime Minister Naftali Bennett demanding that the Alexander’s Courtyard church compound be handed over. Last month, the Jerusalem District Court accepted a petition by the Orthodox Palestine Society of the Holy Land that prevented giving the Russian government control of Alexander’s Courtyard. Former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved giving the site to Russia in 2020. The move was seen as a goodwill gesture following Russia’s release of Naama Issachar.

Commenting in Israel Hayom, Yoav Limor remarks that Israel has “fully assimilated” the “lessons learned from last year’s events” in the run-up to and during Operation Guardian of the Walls. Limor explains: “The main takeaway from last year’s events, which devolved into Operation Guardian of the Walls, is the need to keep the various fronts separate from one another. Israel has succeeded in doing that so far, and that is an effort that will have to be maintained in the weeks ahead — at least until Ramadan ends, if not longer — until Jerusalem Day. That effort may not succeed. If Jerusalem burns, Hamas is liable to be forced to change its policy and, as always, there will be other groups in Gaza that would be pleased to jump on that bandwagon given the opportunity.”

Maariv follows events on the Temple Mount. Yesterday the police and security forces had a fairly quiet day, with Jewish visitors and a larger number of Muslim worshippers, including Sheikh Raed Salah, the leader of the Islamic Movement’s northern chapter, who spent several hours on the site. Police officials said there had been no grounds for denying Salah’s request and he was therefore given permission to enter the site in keeping with the rules and regulations that apply on the site to Muslim and Jewish visitors.

All the papers report thousands of right-wing activists marched yesterday to the West Bank outpost of Homesh demanding the government authorise the yeshiva there and rebuild the settlement that was destroyed in 2005 after the Gaza pullout. The military sealed off the roads to several Palestinian villages in the area as part of security measures reportedly reached between the Defence Ministry and organisers of the event, despite heavy criticisms from the Left for stoking tensions with the Palestinians by allowing the march to go ahead. Among the marchers were senior nationalist politicians, including Religious Zionism party head Bezalel Smotrich and MK Itamar Ben Gvir, as well as Yamina lawmaker Idit Silman.

Haaretz claims that Israeli officials are preparing for significant developments this week in connection with the negotiations between the world powers and Iran on returning to the JCPOA nuclear agreement. US President Joe Biden is expected to announce in the coming days whether he has decided to leave the Iran’s Revolutionary Guards on the US list of terrorist organisations or to accede to Tehran’s demand to remove the group from the list. “In Israel, preparations are now underway for two possible scenarios. One is an Iranian decision to retract its demand from the negotiating table, mainly to benefit from the skyrocketing global price of oil due to the war in Ukraine. In that event, Israel would have a hard time scuttling US plans to sign a new agreement with Iran within days. The second scenario is that Iran insists that the Revolutionary Guards be removed from the terrorist organisation list, which could delay and complicate the signing of a new agreement and lead the parties to further confrontation. In Israel, it is believed that the Biden administration is determined to sign, and that Iran is negotiating better than the American representatives are, and therefore Iranian insistence could bear fruit for Tehran down the road.”

Yediot Ahronot reports that an increasing number of health-care experts are calling on the government to end mandatory Covid tests for passengers arriving in Israel at Ben Gurion Airport and at other border crossings into Israel. A second change that is currently being deliberated is to end mandatory mask-wearing in indoor venues in Israel after Passover. The health-care experts note that Israel is one of the few countries in the world that still obliges everyone entering to be tested for Covid. Proponents of ending mandatory testing cite several reasons: the ongoing recession of the fifth wave of infection; more than four million Israelis have already contracted Covid; vaccines are available to the entire population over the age of five; life-saving medicine is available for people who might otherwise be at risk.