The Daily Mail reports on the extension of UNIFIL’s mandate by the UN Security Council yesterday. UNIFIL’s mandate has been expanded to include more patrols with Lebanese forces and the filing of detailed reports on when and why peacekeepers are blocked from entering areas by Hezbollah.

The Independent reports on the police investigation of an under age wedding in the Israeli city of Lod. The wedding was between a 14-year-old girl and a man in his twenties. Police arrested the groom and the Rabbi officiating the wedding, who was also the girl’s father.

The Daily Mail reports on the Israeli government’s decision not to bar the Al Jazeera journalist Elias Karram from the country. Karram has stated previously that his work as a journalist in the West Bank was inseparable from the “work of resistance”.  Karram clarified that this statement did not support violence or terrorism at a 21 August hearing with the Israeli Government Press Office (GPO). The GPO deemed Karram’s explanation sufficient and has lifted the freeze on his accreditation.

The Independent reports on the recent media sensation in Israel over the misidentification of a souvenir coin as a rare artefact. The coin was found by eight-year-old Hallel Halevy in Halamish and was originally identified as a coin from an ancient Jewish Kingdom dating from 67-70 AD. However, this has since been debunked and the coin has been exposed as a souvenir produced by the Israel Museum. This was not before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been caught up in the phenomenon however, writing on his Facebook page that the coin represented “the deep connection between the people of Israel and its land – to Jerusalem, to our Temple and to the settlements of Judea and Samaria,” and claiming that the coin was evidence of the Jewish right to live in the West Bank.

The Daily Mail details UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres visit to Gaza yesterday and his appeal for an end to the Palestinian political division and the energy crisis in Gaza. During a speech at a UN-run school the Secretary-General stated “Yesterday, I was in (the West Bank city of) Ramallah. Today, I am in Gaza. They are both parts of the same Palestine. So, I appeal for the unity … The division only undermines the cause of the Palestinian people”.

The Israeli media reports on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s speech to a group of 2,000 Likud activists yesterday who gathered for a new year’s toast. Netanyahu spoke about his achievements as Prime Minister, praising the state of the Israeli economy, security and foreign relations and also castigating the media for being “mobilised” against him. Netanyahu also criticised the weekly demonstrations in Petach Tikva against the attorney general, saying they were meant to put undue pressure on law enforcement.

Kan Radio reports on a speech by President Reuven Rivlin at a conference on education in which he called on all sectors of the public to stop incitement in advance of the new year. Rivlin said that while politics is an important part of democracy, not everything is politics and called on the public to understand that Israelis do not live in this land in order to hate each other,

Yediot Ahronot writes about Syrian reports that the Russian military has placed its advanced S-400 defence system close to the new Iranian missile factory that will build long-range precision rockets against Israel. Earlier in the week, Director of Military Intelligence Maj. Gen. Herzi Halevy, stressed that the Iranian attempt to produce precision weaponry for Hezbollah on Lebanese soil and to use the Syrian military industry to do so was a very serious development to which Israel could not remain indifferent.

Haaretz reports that Israel and private donors spent $32m sending goods to Syrian civilians over the past year, with most of the money being spent on medical equipment, food and medicine. Donations have come from organizations such as the Peres Centre for Peace and private citizens including a Syrian living in Chicago.  The numbers do not include the cost of providing medical treatment for Syrian civilians inside Israel, which is estimated in the tens of millions of shekels or higher and is funded by the finance, health and defence ministries.

Channel 2 News reported last night that approximately 3,000 housing units in the West Bank are scheduled to be approved for construction next week, but the scheduled meeting on the issue was delayed until after the UN General Assembly meeting in New York . The report also said that in some cases approval is due to be given for a more advanced stage of planning after previous stages had already been approved.

Haaretz reports that US-led warplanes blocked a convoy of Islamic State fighters and their families from reaching territory the group holds in east Syria. US and Iraqi officials heavily criticised a ceasefire agreement which involved evacuating hundreds of Islamic State fighters and their families from the Lebanon-Syria border to areas close to Iraq in return for information about the fate of nine missing Lebanese soldiers.

The front pages of both Yediot Ahronoth and Maariv discuss the beginning of the school year.