The Guardian reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday reached a preliminary election deal with two fringe religious-nationalist parties in a bid to unify his bloc before elections in April. Netanyahu’s Likud party announced it would reserve the 28th spot on its parliamentary list for the Jewish Home party and grant it two cabinet ministries in a future government if it merges with the Jewish Power party.

The Financial Times reports that former UK Labour member Derek Hatton has been suspended by the Labour Party less than two days after he was readmitted. The former Liverpool councillor, who was expelled from Labour in 1986 for belonging to the hard-left group Militant, was told he could return as a member on Monday. But senior Labour figures were quick to raise concerns over comments Hatton made about Israel in 2012. In a tweet, he called on “Jewish people with any sense of humanity” to condemn Israel’s “ruthless murdering”. A Labour Party source said: “Derek Hatton was given provisional membership, pending NEC approval. The party was not aware of this material. Once this was brought to our attention he was suspended pending the NEC’s decision.”

Reuters reports that Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif has accused Israel of engaging in “adventurism” with its bombing campaigns in Syria and said he could not rule out the possibility of a military conflict between the countries. Zarif told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper that Iran was in Syria at the invitation of the Bashar Assad regime, while Israel was violating Lebanese and Syrian air space, as well as international law. “There is adventurism on Israel’s side, and adventurism is always dangerous,” Zarif told the newspaper in an interview to be published on Thursday. Asked if he saw an emerging military conflict between Iran and Israel, Zarif said: “I do not, but we cannot exclude the possibility.”

The Guardian reports that a team of Israeli scientists is to launch this week what will be the first privately funded mission to land on the moon, sending a spacecraft to collect data from the lunar surface. Named Beresheet, the Hebrew word for Genesis, the 585kg (1,290lb) robotic lander will blast off from Florida at 01.45 GMT on Friday, propelled by one of Elon Musk’s SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets. Once it touches down, in several weeks, it will measure the magnetic field of the moon to help understand how it formed.

The BBC and Financial Times report that civilians have been evacuated from the last village in Syria still held by ISIS. The BBC reports that a convoy on Wednesday carried hundreds of men, women and children from Baghuz, near the Iraqi border. The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance have said they are waiting for their removal before launching an offensive against ISIS militants “entrenched inside”. Those removed are being screened then taken to camps, the SDF say. An estimated 300 ISIS fighters are thought to be holed up inside a tiny pocket of land.

The BBC reports that US President Donald Trump has said a woman who left the US to become a propagandist for ISIS will not be allowed to return. On Twitter, he said he had instructed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “not to allow Hoda Muthana back into the country”. Pompeo had earlier stated that the 24-year-old was not a US citizen and would not be admitted. However, her family and her lawyer maintain that she has US citizenship. Muthana, who grew up in Alabama, travelled to Syria to join ISIS when she was 20. She had told her family she was going to a university event in Turkey.

The Financial Times reports that two Conservative MPs have criticised the Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, after he moved to strip a British woman who travelled to Syria of her citizenship. A lawyer for the family of Shamima Begum — a British teenager who joined ISIS fighters aged 15 — said on Tuesday that they had been notified that the Home Office had sought an order “depriving” her of UK citizenship. Ken Clarke, a Conservative MP and former Home Secretary, said that Begum was “obviously British” and Javid’s approach could be “a great boost for jihadism”. “To have every Western country desperately trying to find obscure legal arguments to shove them into some other country and leave them in Syria will be an absolute disaster, a great boost for jihadism,” Clarke said. He said he was “surprised” that Home Office lawyers had apparently advised the Home Secretary that Begum could be stripped of her citizenship. He called instead for sympathisers to be prosecuted. “What you can’t do is leave them in a camp in Syria being even more radicalised and radicalising other people until they disperse themselves through the world,” Clarke said. George Freeman, another Conservative MP, voiced similar sentiments, saying that the decision was “a dangerous precedent” and that Begum was “our responsibility”.

In the Telegraph, Nick Timothy writes that: “Shamima Begum is a traitor to Britain, not to Bangladesh”.

The Times reports that the security orders used to keep the public safe from former jihadists are so expensive that experts fear most of those returning from Syria are being allowed to roam free. The Home Office has spent nearly £5 million keeping 23 suspects under restrictions, The Times can disclose. Annual legal bills have been as high as £1 million while accommodation has cost as much as £70,000 a year per person. That figure excludes the cost of tagging and police work. Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures (Tpims) are a watered-down version of the stricter control orders introduced by Tony Blair. The light-touch reform was made by David Cameron’s coalition government in 2012 to improve civil liberties.

Reuters reports that Turkey criticised on Thursday as “unacceptable” a vote by the European Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee calling for the suspension of EU accession negotiations with it. The Foreign Affairs Committee called on the European Commission and member states on Wednesday to formally suspend EU accession negotiations with Turkey, citing disregard for human rights and civil liberties, influence on the judiciary, and disputes over territory with Cyprus and other neighbours. “It is absolutely unacceptable that the non-binding, advisory draft report is calling for a total suspension of our accession talks to the EU,” Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Hami Aksoy said in a statement.

The BBC reports that Egypt has executed nine men convicted of killing the country’s top public prosecutor, Hisham Barakat, in 2015. The men were among 28 sentenced to death for their alleged involvement in the car bomb attack that targeted Barakat’s convoy in the capital, Cairo. Amnesty International said the men were convicted after a grossly unfair trial marred by allegations of torture. Their executions, the human rights group added, were “a testament to the magnitude of injustice in the country”.

The Independent reports that the UK Foreign Secretary has written to the German Government to ask it to start selling arms to Saudi Arabia again, after the country halted exports due to concerns about human rights. Jeremy Hunt said he was concerned about the impact the recently imposed embargo would have on arms manufacturers’ balance sheets. Germany has joined other EU countries including Denmark and Finland in ending arms sales in the wake of evidence of war crimes being committed by Saudi coalition forces in Yemen. Human rights groups say Saudi warplanes have bombed schools, hospitals, weddings, and food factories – contributing to 13 million civilians facing starvation and “the worst famine in 100 years” according to the UN. In a letter obtained by German newspaper Der Spiegel, Jeremy Hunt wrote to his counterpart Heiko Maas, telling him: “I am very concerned about the impact of the German government’s decision on the British and European defence industry and the consequences for Europe’s ability to fulfil its Nato commitments.”

All the Israeli media report on the latest political developments ahead of tonight’s deadline for party lists for the 9^th April election. Yediot Ahronot calls the merger between the Jewish Home Party and Jewish Power a “controversial merger” while Maariv contrasts Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s choice of Itamar Ben Gvir (one of the Jewish Power candidates) instead of his scheduled meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Netanyahu cancelled his trip to Moscow yesterday to oversee the merger.

Yediot Ahronot reports on the cancellation of the Netanyahu-Putin meeting, which would have been the first meeting since the Russian reconnaissance plane was shot down in Syrian airspace. The leaders were due to discuss security issues, such as the IDF’s freedom of action in Syria and regional stability. All of the preparations for the meeting had been completed: a delegation from the National Security Council went to Moscow to coordinate the details; the Prime Minister’s office had chartered a plane, and everyone was waiting for the departure, which was scheduled for today. Instead of the face-to-face meeting, a telephone conversation between the two leaders was scheduled. Some speculated that Netanyahu wanted to postpone his trip to Moscow by a week to coincide with the anticipated date of the Attorney General’s announcement about Netanyahu’s possible indictment, in an attempt to sabotage that announcement.

Ben Caspit in Maariv, writes: “It isn’t the ‘Land of Israel’ that Benjamin Netanyahu is fighting for. He is fighting for his personal liberty. The effort to insert Rabbi Kahane’s disciples into the Knesset isn’t designed either to save the settlement enterprise or to stop the left. It is designed to serve just one purpose: to ensure that Netanyahu has another two or three people in the Knesset who will be unmoved by the attorney general’s decision to indict the Israeli prime minister on charges of bribery … it’s incredible to see how Netanyahu has succeeded in persuading everyone of the alternative reality that he’s invented, only so as to continue his desperate war to escape his legal problems. It’s sad that there isn’t a single righteous person in the Likud — a formerly glorious party that knew its share of fights, races, rivalries and battles — who is prepared to stand up and speak the truth.” Ben-Dror Yemini writes in Yediot Ahronot that: “Yesterday Netanyahu lowered all of us not only below the bottom red line, but also set a new bar for low … there is only one explanation for Netanyahu’s odd behaviour: he is panicking. The polls give the right-wing block a clear advantage. He should not be feeling pressured. Together with the ultra-Orthodox, his situation has never been better. He also knows that bringing in the Kahanists will be a gift greater than gold to Israel-haters. He knows that this inclusion will only deepen the rift with the American Jewish community. But he was adamant. He is scared. He is scared of the inchoate merger between Gantz and Lapid. He is scared of the attorney general’s decision. And he is therefore willing to trample the national interest for a small gain, very small, in the political field.”

Maariv and Yediot Ahronot report MK Orly Levy-Abekasis’s announcement that her Gesher Party would run alone in the elections, after failing to reach a merger agreement with Benny Gantz’s Israel Resilience Party. The papers suggest negotiations fell apart despite Levy-Abekasis having reached written agreements with Gantz that included his party adopting her socioeconomic platform. She said: “To our amazement, since reaching these agreements … a bizarre scampering around started in Israel Resilience, accompanied by the spreading of disinformation and biased briefings to the media, a sort of game of hide-and-seek as if there hadn’t been discussions between us. It is unfortunate to discover that the man who was expected to manage Israel turns out to be managed by others.” Haaretz reports the introduction of Tal Russo, a former general who was placed number two on the Labor Party list. Russo said: “Our vision and our interest is to part ways with the Palestinians, and the way there is a regional solution of neighbouring countries as well as the two-state solution. We must not allow the Palestinians to lead us to a single state with an Arab majority. That would be going against our grandfathers and grandmothers who came to build a Jewish state.” Kan news reveals that the Labor Party has also recruited MKs Haim Jelin and Yael Cohen Paran. Jelin, who was a Yesh Atid MK in the outgoing Knesset and before that served as the head of the Eshkol Regional Council, will be put in 10^th place on the list. Cohen Paran, who was an MK from Hatnua and who spearheaded environment battles, will be in 16^th place. Kan news also reports that United Arab List Chairman Mansour Abbas has accused the chairman of the Arab Movement for Renewal, Ahmed Tibi, of sabotaging the efforts to re-establish the Joint List ahead of the elections. In a Facebook post, Abbas complained that Tibi preferred to split and to ignore the political and national ramifications of this.

Israel Hayom suggests that as a result of the latest mergers, the Labor Party are considering running on a join ticket with Meretz.