BBC News and The Telegraph report that Israel will implement even tougher lockdown restrictions after the number of daily coronavirus infections exceeded 7,000. New restrictions would force the closure of more workplaces, restrict movement even further and limit the size of group prayer at synagogues and protests.

Reuters reports that the US State Department announced yesterday it would provide more than $720 million in humanitarian assistance to the Syrian crisis. Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun said the money would go “both for Syrians inside the country and for those in desperate need across the region”.

BBC News reports that an ex-British soldier was cleared over the death of Iraqi teenager Saeed Shabram after a 17-year investigation. Shabram’s family said the teen drowned after being forced into a diver by UK soldiers, but a report published yesterday said there was no reliable evidence that the soldier was responsible.

The Guardian reports on how Lebanon’s economic crisis prompted multiple farming initiatives across the country. In a country where food prices increased 367 per cent in the last year, municipalities across the country began handing out seeds and encouraging people the plant abandoned land. In populated cities, where most of the population lives, people have taken to plating vegetables on roofs and balconies.

The Telegraph reports that human rights group Amnesty International urged the European Union to halt cooperation with Libya on the migration crisis following a report detailing rape and torture of refugees sent back to Libya after attempting to reach Europe.

The Times and The Independent report that court records and official sources in Washington have revealed accusations against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for ‘smuggling’ large quantities of laundry on visits to the US. Sources quoted in The Washington Post say that Netanyahu and his wife “are the only ones who bring actual suitcases of dirty laundry to clean…. After multiple trips, it became clear this was intentional.”

Alona Farber writes for the New Statesman about how Israel’s new lockdown measures are exacerbating the religious-secular divide. Farber says that further restrictions on prayer and protests “points to the long-running tensions between secular and religious Israel… [and] ‘magnifies’ the already fraught relationship between the ultra-Orthodox minority and the secular majority over issues such as education, women’s rights, and the Israeli army draft.”

The Economist reports on the suffering of the Syrian people after President Bashar al-Assad’s victory in the decade long civil war. While Assad has all but defeated the rebels, who tried to unseat him, he is facing a dire financial situation and the coronavirus outbreak has only exacerbated the economic situation. According to the UN, “humanitarian conditions in regime-held territories are worse now than at the height of the war”.

The Spectator writes that the Iranian arms embargo should be extended until the country “has done a lot more to prove it is a peaceful nation.” In the last year alone, Iran interfered with international oil tankers in the Gulf and fired missiles at airbases in Iraq where US forces were stationed. The paper argues that Iran has not demonstrated its peaceful intentions to allow it to be released from the arms embargo.

Haaretz and Yediot Ahronot report that the head of Israel’s National Cyber Directorate, Yigal Unna participated yesterday in an online conference with his counterpart from the UAE, Mohamed al-Kuwaiti. Unna is quoted saying, “We are threatened by the same threats … because of the nature of the region, because of the nature of our new, ‘outed’ relations and because of who we are – strong economically and technologically… We see already things in fast progress and I am very optimistic that we have a lot in common and a lot to share.” Kuwaiti described the UAE as potentially at risk of online sabotage including ransomware attacks as it develops its digital sphere. He promoted the idea of international cooperation – including in joint exercises – in cyber defence. “Israel is very well-known on the technological part and that will really help,” Kuwaiti said. Kuwaiti described normalisation with Israel as a “step forward” for the UAE government as it pursued things like smart government and artificial intelligence technologies.

Kan Radio News reports that according to sources in the Persian Gulf the United States has recently been pressuring Qatar to officially normalise ties with Israel. In exchange, the US would make certain that the Persian Gulf states and Egypt end the boycott of Qatar that began over three years ago in protest at its intervention in those countries’ internal affairs and what they called its support for terrorism. A Qatari official said that his country had rejected the proposal and wanted to distinguish between the two issues.

I24News cover a report from the London based The New Arab – Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, that Arab funding for Palestinian Authority (PA) has been cut by 85 per cent in 2020. According to the report, while in the first seven months of 2019, the PA received $267 million from Arab states, this year’s figure was a mere $38 million. Combined with a loss in other foreign funding, this has resulted in PA’s funds shrinking by some 70 percent. While the decline comes amid the coronavirus pandemic, The New Arab reports that PA officials suspect it could be linked with the recent normalisation accords between Israel and two Arab states. The report cites PA Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki as saying that Arab states have failed to live up to the decision to provide Ramallah with a financial safety net of some $100 million reached at various summits.

Israel Hayom and Ynet report that Fatah and Hamas say they have reached a deal on new Palestinian elections. This would be the first elections in almost 15 years. They are aiming to hold the voting within six months under a deal reached between PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh. According to Jibril Rajub, a senior Fatah official, “We have agreed to first hold legislative elections, then presidential elections of the Palestinian Authority, and finally the central council of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.” Saleh al-Arouri, a senior Hamas official, said the deal was reached during meetings held in Turkey.  “This time we reached a real consensus,” he said, speaking by phone from Istanbul.  “Divisions have damaged our national cause and we are working to end that,” Arouri added.

In the commentary in Yediot Ahronot, health correspondent Sarit Rosenblum, pleads with the authorities to “Stop Lying”.  She writes, “For weeks, the economic leaders and the health system have been whitewashing the situation… unclear explanations and questionable data have been contributing to an entire country’s festival of repression…. If the public has lost confidence in the government at this time, it is because it truly cannot understand—and rightly so—what on earth is being said to it… It is difficult to explain this peculiar behaviour, which presents to the public a touched-up and unreliable picture of the harsh reality in which the coronavirus departments are already functioning today. A picture that erodes, regrettably, the ability of the public and the decision-makers to understand the severity of the situation that we are facing and to respond accordingly. This has cost us dearly, and will yet cost us dearly. The whitewashing and the euphemisms will not alter the situation, and the public has to know the truth. A department manager in one of the large hospitals told me despairingly yesterday: We have already reached a situation where we are fighting for every available ventilator and for every bed in intensive care. The teams caring for the serious coronavirus patients in the internal medicine departments are not skilled enough, and generally speaking the shortage of working hands is already felt strongly in the field. Due to the ceaseless battle over missing resources—urgent incidents, such as road accidents, are not handled well enough. People are dying, he said, and it is not only because of the coronavirus anymore.  Concealing this harsh truth from the public is neither moral nor ethical. So here is the actual truth: Our hospitals are not “liable to collapse”—they are already collapsing. The catastrophe is not looming over us in the future. The future is already here. Such tragedies are already taking place every day, in every department. In every hospital.  The time has come for soul-searching, and not only for the coming Yom Kippur. We have to stop painting a pretty picture of the situation and look reality in the eye. Only in that way we will be able–perhaps–to defeat the coronavirus.”