The Independent, Evening Standard, Guardian, Metro, Daily Mail,Telegraph, Express and BBC News Online report that US President Donald Trump has said, while speaking with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the World Economic Forum, that Palestinians must return to peace talks with Israel to receive US aid money. Trump said US aid to the Palestinians is “on the table,” but that they would not get it “unless they sit down and negotiate peace”. Trump accused the Palestinians of “disrespecting” the US as they refused to meet with US Vice President Mike Pence while he was in the region. In the same meeting, Netanyahu praised Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital and to move the US Embassy there from Tel Aviv.

The Mirror, Telegraph, Daily Mail, BBC News Online, Yahoo News UK and the Times report on a dig on Mount Carmel in Israel that unearthed a fragment of bone that closely resembles modern humans and is approximately 175,000 years old. The discovery suggests that our ancestors may have moved out of Africa 250,000 years ago — at least 100,000 years earlier than previous estimates suggested. Other finds in the surrounding Misliya cave indicate that the person the bone belonged to could control fire and had a reasonably sophisticated command of stoneworking technology.

The Guardian reports that former chief rabbi of the UK, Jonathan Sacks, has defended his role in a controversial speech delivered in Israel this week by Mike Pence. Dan Sacker, Lord Sacks’s spokesman, confirmed that the former chief rabbi and the Vice President had met in New York for 90 minutes to discuss the speech. The meeting “centred around how best to frame elements of the speech – in particular, the biblical and historical connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel, and the American and Jewish stories,” Sacker said in a statement.

The Times and the Guardian report on the release of Rise and Kill First: the Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations by Ronen Bergman and his evidence that Israeli agents planted explosives in a sports stadium in a plan to kill Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Palestinian Authority (PA) President Yasser Arafat and had several other opportunities to assassinate him. In one case explosives were planted under the seats in a Beirut sports stadium where the PLO leaders were due to sit. In another supposed opportunity, Mossad, the intelligence agency, reported that Arafat was on a small passenger plane flying to Cairo and fighter planes were scrambled to shoot it down.

The Daily Mail via AP reports Ghassan al-Shakaa, a senior member of the Palestine Liberation Organization and former mayor of the West Bank city of Nablus, has died at age 74. Al-Shakaa served as mayor of Nablus, the West Bank’s second-largest city, from 1994-2004 and from 2012-2015. He also served on the PLO Executive Committee.

The Daily Mail via AP reports that Israel’s UN Ambassador is accusing Iran of attempting to turn Syria into “the largest military base in the world” to destabilise the region, threaten Israel and “terrorize the entire free world”. Danny Danon told the Security Council yesterday that classified information he was releasing showed that 82,000 fighters are currently under Iranian authority in Syria.

The Daily Mail reports that former US President Barack Obama, while speaking at Temple Emanu-El on the Upper East Side, said that he would joke with his staff that he was “basically a liberal Jew”. Obama told the audience in the synagogue that his administration gave Israel more military aid than any other previous administration. Obama also defended his decision not to veto a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement construction just before he left office last year. He said he allowed the resolution to go forward because “the pace of [Israeli] settlement construction skyrocketed making it almost impossible to make any kind of Palestinian state”.

The Times, Evening Standard, Daily Mail via PA and the Sun report on the debate in Parliament yesterday on the proscription of Hezbollah. The Government has resisted calls from a number of its own senior backbenchers to recognise the political wing of Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation. Labour faced accusations it was “in alliance” with ministers over the issue as its own MPs raised concerns over the stance of the party’s frontbench. Security minister Ben Wallace and his shadow counterpart Nick Thomas-Symonds said it was the right thing on balance to only proscribe the military wing of Hezbollah. Backbenchers on both sides of the Commons urged their parties to treat the group as a single entity. The Sun reports that Diane Abbott ordered Labour MPs to oppose a move to ban Hezbollah from Britain, because it wanted to “encourage” the group to become democratic. The Evening Standard reported prior to the debate that American counter-terrorism expert Dr Matthew Levitt accused supporters of Lebanese group Hezbollah of “engaging in criminal conduct” in London. The Telegraph published an article by former Israeli Ambassador to the UK and UN Ron Prosor. In the article, he says that “by declaring the political wing of Hezbollah a terrorist organisation, Parliament will enable law enforcement agencies to act upon intelligence relating to all organs of the organisation, no matter what guise they put on any particular day”.

The Times reports that a militia commander in eastern Libya, who is wanted on suspicion of war crimes for killing prisoners, has staged another public murder of ten people outside a mosque in Benghazi. Photographs and video posted online appeared to show Mahmoud al-Werfalli shooting captives in front of the Bayaat al-Radwan mosque. An arrest warrant for Werfalli has been issued by the International Criminal Court after he was accused of ordering the killing of 33 prisoners in 2016 and 2017. General Haftar won the endorsement of UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who, after meeting him in August, said that he “had a role to play in the political process”.

All the Israeli media report US President Donald Trump meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the World Economic Forum in Davos.  Yediot Ahronot highlights Trump saying the “Palestinians did not show us respect”. Similarly, Maariv leads on “the cost of negotiations” US financial aid would not be extended to the Palestinians unless they sat down and negotiated peace. Israel Hayom emphasises the US president saying “Jerusalem is off the negotiating table”.   Also from Davos, Maariv quotes Jordanian King Abdullah saying “we cannot have a peace process or peace solution without the role of the United States.”

Maariv reveals a new system that monitors real-time displays of antisemitism throughout the Internet.  The system was presented yesterday by Education Minister Naftali Bennett and the Diaspora Affairs Ministry, on the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day that will be marked on Saturday.  The report exposes the three cities from which the most antisemitic content is posted online are: Santiago, Chile; Dnipro, Ukraine; and Bucharest, Romania.   According to the statistics, 409,000 antisemitic posts were monitored this month, written by about 30,000 people. “Sunlight is the best disinfectant,” Bennett said during the presentation of the system, “let every antisemitic activist online know from today that he is exposed, the hatred he spreads is being monitored, and he will be publicly accountable”.

Haaretz highlights the assessment from the IDF that out of all the threats, the Palestinian sphere is the most volatile.  The report based on a recent IDF strategy document also identifies the threat posed by Iran’s Shiite axis, including Hezbollah to be the most significant.  The report also notes the threat from global Jihad organisations, especially Al-Qaeda and ISIS.

Yediot Ahronot suggests the foreign ministry is looking for a new Ambassador to Jordan.  Despite the rapprochement in Israel-Jordan relations, the previous ambassador, Einat Schlein, will not be returning to her post.  The paper suggests it will be a professional appointment from within the foreign ministry and not a political appointment.

Israel Hayom and Haaretz prominently report the archaeological discovery of a jaw bone in a cave in the Carmel that “changes what we know about humans”. The discovery in Israel found that modern man, homo sapiens, left Africa tens of thousands of years earlier than had been thought until now. An international team headed by researchers from Tel Aviv University and the University of Haifa examined an upper jaw bone and concluded it is at least 180,000 years old and that this made it at least 60,000 years older than any other evidence of modern man outside Africa, where he originated.

Maariv includes speculation that former IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz will soon enter politics.  Gantz, now 58, was chief of staff from February 2011 until February 2015.  He is about to complete the three year cooling off period from the army and will be eligible to run for political office.  Speculation has mounted if he will choose the Labour Party or Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid. Last year he set up a social movement, “Pnima” or “Inwards,” alongside another former Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, and a former Yesh Atid education minister, Rabbi Shai Piron. The movement aims to deal with social issues and encourage dialogue between Israelis from different communities. He is quoted saying: “I do not know if I’m joining politics and I do not know when I’m joining politics, but if I do, then it will happen soon.”

Yediot Ahronot covers the ceremony at NASA that honoured the seven astronauts killed aboard the space shuttle Columbia 15 years ago.  The ceremony included a special musical tribute by Tal Ramon, the son of Israel’s first astronaut Ilan Ramon who died on-board.  Ramon performed two of his own songs, singing in Hebrew and playing the keyboard.