The Guardian reports that Palestinian activists in the city of Hebron have started patrols to prevent attacks by settlers after Israel’s widely criticised expulsion of an international observer mission. The Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH) was first established more than two decades ago. TIPH has since monitored and documented altercations in the West Bank city, in particular between Palestinians, the Israeli army and members of a several hundred-strong ultranationalist settler movement who live in heavily fortified districts. The body’s forces, a team of 64 observers from Italy, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey, had escorted Palestinian children who needed to walk past settler areas to get to school. “Their absence is a big gap,” said Issa Amro, a local activist leader who set up the civilian patrol of 18 volunteers, all wearing blue uniforms with the word “observer” written in English, Arabic and Hebrew.

Writing in the Telegraph today, Fathom Journal Editor Professor Alan Johnson argues that the Labour Party “has a problem, mostly, with modern anti-Zionism which has co-mingled in an internet age with an older set of classical tropes to create a form of anti-Semitic anti-Zionism that needs to be understood and rooted out”.

Reuters reports that on Tuesday, a US official said that the Consulate General in Jerusalem, which serves Palestinians, will be absorbed into the new US Embassy to Israel in March, a date for a merger that has been condemned by Palestinians. The decision to create a single diplomatic mission was announced last October by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who did not say at the time when this would take place. “The merger of the consulate and the embassy will take place on March 4th or 5th, at which point the position of the consul-general will end,” said the US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the date has not been announced yet by Washington.

The BBC, Financial Times and the Times report that according to a new congressional report, the US is rushing to transfer sensitive nuclear power technology to Saudi Arabia. The BBC reports that a Democratic-led House panel has launched an inquiry over concerns about the White House plan to build nuclear reactors across the Kingdom. Whistleblowers told the panel it could destabilise the Middle East by boosting nuclear weapons proliferation. Firms linked to the President have reportedly pushed for these transfers. The House of Representatives’ Oversight Committee report notes that an inquiry into the matter is “particularly critical because the Administration’s efforts to transfer sensitive US nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia appear to be ongoing”. President Donald Trump met nuclear power developers at the White House on 12 February to discuss building plants in Middle Eastern nations, including Saudi Arabia.

The Times and BBC report that Shamima Begum, who joined ISIS in Syria when she was 15, has been stripped of her British citizenship. The Times reports that Begum’s mother received a letter from Sajid Javid, the home secretary, yesterday afternoon stating that the teenager was being stripped of her citizenship and urging the family to inform her. Javid has been vocal in his opposition to Begum’s return but legal experts have argued that because individuals cannot be left stateless he does not have the power to stop her unless she has dual citizenship. The BBC reports that the family of Shamima Begum say they plan to challenge the move to strip her of UK citizenship. Her family’s lawyer, Tasnime Akunjee, said they were considering “all legal avenues” to contest the decision. Government sources said it was possible to strip the 19-year-old of British nationality as she was eligible for citizenship of another country. Begum, who left east London in 2015, had said she wanted to return home. She was found in a Syrian refugee camp last week after reportedly leaving Baghuz – ISIS’s last stronghold – and gave birth to a son at the weekend.

The Times and BBC report on the battle against the last fragments of ISIS territory in Syria. The BBC reports that the UN has expressed concern about the fate of some 200 families reportedly trapped in the last tiny area of Syria still held by the terrorist group. Human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said they were apparently being prevented from leaving by ISIS militants. They were also being subjected to intense bombardment by US-led coalition and allied Syrian forces, she added. On Tuesday evening, dozens of lorries reportedly arrived on the outskirts of the ISIS enclave to evacuate civilians. The Times reports that Western-backed forces are preparing to evacuate civilians from the area as it nears collapse. Dozens of lorries have entered Foqani Baghuz, where ISIS fighters are staging a final stand close to the Iraqi border. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have surrounded their territory of a few hundred square metres as airstrikes targeted the ISIS pocket yesterday. ISIS claims that it is holding hostages including John Cantlie, the British journalist kidnapped in northern Syria in 2012. The UN estimates that 2,000 civilians are in the area. “We understand that Isis appears to be preventing some of them, if not all of them, from leaving. So that’s potentially a war crime,” Rupert Colville, spokesman for Michelle Bachelet, said.

In the Guardian, Simon Tisdall writes that the collapse of ISIS’s last stronghold is sending shockwaves across the Middle East, “changing the calculations of the major powers as they jockey for advantage”. From Russia to Turkey and Iraq, Tisdall argues that the rout of the so-called caliphate brings new political considerations and shifting alliances. Triumphalism in Washington, Moscow and Damascus, he says, “risks obscuring the human cost of a ‘victory’ that may quickly prove transitory”.

In the Telegraph, Con Coughlin argues that: “Defeat of ISIL wasn’t the West’s original war aim.” Coughlin writes that at the start of the conflict, Britain and its allies had tried to convince themselves that the overthrow of Bashar Assad in Syria would result in its replacement by a more secular-oriented, Western-style democracy. However, Coughlin adds: “Given that Islamist extremists have been Assad’s most committed opponents since the early 1980s, this was wishful thinking in the extreme, and the reason why, when considering any future military interventions in the Middle East, or elsewhere for that matter, it is vital that our politicians properly examine the likely consequences of their actions. All too often in the recent past we have got ourselves involved in conflicts without fully grasping the possible outcomes. A good benchmark would be to give priority to those threats that directly impinge on our own national security.”

The Guardian reports that the UN special envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, has said a breakthrough agreement on the pullback of forces around the Red Sea port of Hodeidah may open the way for a large increase in the flow of aid into Yemen and prevent the country turning into a “bloody slaughterhouse”. The breakthrough was made at the weekend between military officials from the Yemen Government and Houthi fighters controlling the port and city, and the redeployment of forces by the warring parties could start “possibly even today or tomorrow”. Assessing the broader progress since an outline UN-sponsored agreement was reached between the parties in Stockholm in December, Griffiths said a “bloody slaughterhouse” has been avoided, but he also warned “famine still stalks this land”.

The Telegraph reports that Iranian “morality police” were forced to fire warning shots when a crowd intervened to prevent them from arresting two women for not wearing a hijab. The incident occurred in Tehran’s northeastern Narmak neighbourhood on Friday night, and ended with a mob tearing the door off a police vehicle, Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency reported. “Morality patrol police members had warned two young women who did not have proper hijab. Within a few minutes, a group of citizens gathered around to prevent the transfer of the two women [into custody],” a police official told the agency. Video of the incident posted on social media shows a large crowd shouting and cars using their horns before a series of shots are heard. A picture of the dismembered car door later circulated on Twitter. The morality police – officially known as the Gasht-e Ershad, or guidance patrol – will stop and sometimes detain women, and occasionally men, they consider to be violating the Islamic Republic’s strict dress codes.

In the Financial Times, David Gardner writes that: “Iran has been lucky in its enemies.” Forty years after the Islamic Revolution, he says: “Tehran’s Shia axis is all but complete”. From Tehran’s vantage point, adds Gardner, the balance of Iranian regional adventurism looks positive. It used to be said that Iran needed to choose the face it wished to show the world — between Qassem Soleimani, the battle-hardened commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ expeditionary forces, or Mohammad Javad Zarif, the silky foreign minister who negotiated the 2015 nuclear deal. Gardner concludes that, to Iran’s rulers, this is a false dichotomy, and never more so than in the Trump era. He argues that Iran wishes to display both faces. There is precious little in Western policy towards the Islamic Republic that is likely to dissuade them.

The Israeli media report the attack by Benny Gantz on Benjamin Netanyahu and continued speculation over last minute mergers. Yediot Ahronot leads on Gantz and Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid’s meeting this morning. Maariv includes the assessment that: “Gantz appeared more self-confident yesterday than he did in his inaugural speech, but he still came across as being out of his natural element … after all the people on the party’s list were called up to the stage, one by one, Gantz also went to the stage and was received with embraces and backslaps, perhaps in another allusion to the days in which he lay in the mud with his troops.” Noting Gantz’s attack on Netanyahu, Nahum Barnea writes in Yediot Ahronot: “Netanyahu’s record as a soldier and a junior officer was good, perhaps even excellent. That is something that his former commanders, including people who can’t exactly be suspected of sympathising with Netanyahu the politician, have vouched for.” However: “Whatever Netanyahu did 40 years ago and more, for better and for worse, can be set aside. The central issue of the elections isn’t about that younger Netanyahu, but about the Netanyahu of the past ten years, the Prime Minister. During that period he has shown himself to be impressively adept at handling foreign policy, economic policy and politics. Those skills that he accrued also had large disadvantages. He exploited them in order to divide Israelis, to sow conflict between them, to damage the democratic tradition and to undermine the law enforcement agencies. Along the way, he became a corrupt hedonist. The criticism that Gantz and [Moshe] Yaalon levelled against him on that issue last night in their speeches was completely justified.”

In Maariv, Ben Caspit writes: “With all due respect to the mudslinging between the two Benjamins, Netanyahu and Gantz, the more important battle of the last few days has been between Gantz and Yair Lapid. This is a battle over the narrative: who is to blame for the anti-Bibi block failing to merge before the elections …. the prevailing assessment is that the centre-left block will take revenge on whichever one of them is perceived as having sabotaged the efforts to merge. Neither of them wants to be held responsible for that fiasco.” He suggests Gantz’s attack on Netanyahu was calculated, for two reasons. “Netanyahu and the Likud’s negative campaign against Gantz with its hefty quantities of fake news (mainly the groundless accusation about Gantz having conspired with [Barack] Obama to establish a Palestinian state) and the below-the-belt insults (his bad English, etc.). Gantz signalled yesterday to Netanyahu that if he wants mudslinging battles, he’s got a partner. One or two sentences were left out of the speech at the last moment that went below Netanyahu’s belt. In the end it was decided not to escalate the situation and to keep family matters out. For the time being. The second reason, say sources close to Gantz, is that right-wing voters like strong leaders who are unflinching, who don’t come off as suckers. That was what Gantz was trying to be yesterday. Did it work? We’ll find out on April 9.”

Yediot Ahronot reports that Tal Russo, another retired general, has entered politics. Russo, a former head of Southern Command, was given the number two reserved slot on the Labor Party’s list. The paper also reports that talks are continuing between Gantz and Orly Levy-Abekasis, but as of last night no breakthrough had been achieved. Those talks are expected to continue today as well. Meanwhile on the right, despite the intense pressure and the efforts that have been made by Prime Minister Netanyahu, no progress has been recorded in the talks of a merger between the Jewish Home and the National Union Party, on the one hand, and far right Jewish Power. The Jewish Home has offered Jewish Power the fifth and eighth slots on the list. However, many members of the Jewish Home do not want to run jointly as they see them as too extremist. Kan news reports that Yisrael Beiteinu leader Avigdor Lieberman has presented his party’s Knesset list. It is headed by MK Oded Forer, journalist Evgeny Sova, businessman Eli Avidar, former MK Yulia Malinovsky, MK Hamad Amar, and the former director general of the Immigration and Absorption Ministry, Alex Kushnir.

Haaretz reports on the latest tactics being employed by Hamas on the Gaza border, namely night time violence: “These protests are led by a Hamas special night forces unit and are aimed at harassing Israeli soldiers and residents of Israeli border communities near the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. The night time unit is comprised of older, more experienced operatives, in contrast to the young men who are prominent at the Friday protests, and the level of violence is much higher at the night time demonstrations. On Monday, dozens of Palestinians began arriving at the border fence shortly before dark, at around 17:00, equipped with tyres to burn and other gear. As soon as darkness fell, they began burning the tyres and tried to roll them as close as possible to the fence to make it harder for Israeli snipers to spot and to target key operatives on the Gaza side. About an hour later, the demonstrators began throwing homemade explosives at the Israeli soldiers from behind a screen of black smoke produced by the burning tyres. Most of the dozens of explosive charges were fairly small and landed on the Gaza side of the border, but some were powerful and set off explosions that could be clearly heard in Israeli border communities. Most of the more powerful bombs were deployed far from the fence. They were apparently intended mainly to sow fear among Israeli soldiers and civilians nearby. In the course of the demonstration, the Palestinians also blasted the sound of prayers and music through loudspeakers to harass Israelis living near the border. The IDF is handling the night time demonstrations differently from the weekly Friday protests, which take place during the day. The combination of the darkness, the extreme violence, the fear of Palestinian infiltrations and the bombs thrown at soldiers have all led officers to order increased use of live fire. This increases the risk of Palestinian casualties, which in turn could elicit a violent response from Hamas or Islamic Jihad in Gaza. And that point, the path to broader escalation is short.”

All the Israeli media report the rallies against antisemitism across France. Haaretz notes the 90 Jewish graves that were vandalised and the response: “In the French capital, former presidents Francois Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy joined a rally led by Prime Minister Edouard Philippe on Republic Plaza. Political parties from across the spectrum participated in the nationwide rallies with the theme ‘That’s enough’.” Israel Hayom declares “France says no antisemitism,” while Maariv quotes President Macron saying: “We will fight antisemitism in all its forms.”