The Daily Telegraph and The Independent report on Hezbollah staging a rare public military exercise on Sunday. Ahead of “Liberation Day”, marking the Israeli withdrawal from Southern Lebanon in 2000, “masked fighters jumped through flaming hoops, fired from the backs of motorcycles, and blew up Israeli flags posted in the hills above and a wall simulating the one at the border between Lebanon and Israel.” Hashem Safieddine, a senior Hezbollah official, said in a speech that the manoeuvres were meant to “confirm our complete readiness to confront any aggression” by Israel.

Reuters and The Guardian cover National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s visit to the Temple Mount and his comments that Israel is “in charge” of the holy site. Ahmad Majdalani, a member of the PLO executive committee and Palestinian minister of social development, called Ben-Gvir’s visit “a provocative expression by the Israeli government as a whole, not just an individual expression by Ben-Gvir. It is official policy to harm the feelings of Muslims worldwide, particularly Palestinians. We warn that if this continues, then it changes the situation from a political conflict to a religious one that cannot be controlled. The danger of this to the region cannot be overestimated.” Sinan Majali, a spokesman for Al-Aqsa’s custodian, Jordan, said “The storming of al-Aqsa mosque and the violation of its sanctity by an Israeli cabinet minister are condemned and provocative acts. They represent a blatant violation of international law, as well as the historical and legal status quo in Jerusalem and its holy sites.”

Reuters details the most recent protests against the government’s proposed judicial reforms, held over the weekend. “Protests seemed to have been invigorated with Hebrew media estimating some 90,000-100,000 in attendance,” it said, after “Protests garnered lower attendance last Saturday as a truce between Israel and the militant Islamic Jihad group officially came into effect, ending a five-day escalation which was the worst episode of cross-border fire since a 10-day war in 2021.” The news agency interviewed some of the protesters, 65 year-old biology professor Hava Golan saying “gradually, myself my kids and my grandkids are losing the hope to live here in a democratic state and to have a normal life like every person deserves.”

Reuters also reports the US criticising the decision of the chief of the Israeli military’s Central Command, Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fuchs, to effect the Knesset decision to reverse elements of the 2005 Disengagement Law by allowing Jewish residence in Homesh, in the West Bank. “We are deeply troubled by the Israeli government’s order that allows its citizens to establish a permanent presence in the Homesh outpost in the northern West Bank, which according to Israeli law was illegally built on private Palestinian land,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement.

Maariv’s Anna Barsky and Matan Wasserman cover coalition negotiations on the state budget, now on the “final stretch”. United Torah Judaism’s (UTJ) Agudat Yisrael faction remains the most intransigent, with ministers Yitzchak Goldknopf and Meir Porush “furious” that despite unprecedented funding increases being promised for ultra-Orthodox Yeshivas, the NIS 612 million (£1.35 million) increase promised in the coalition agreement is not being fulfilled. Nonetheless, Channel 12 reports UTJ chair MK Yitzhak Pindrus assuring Israelis this morning that his party will vote in favour and that “the budget will pass.” Jewish Power leader Itamar Ben Gvir is also set to support passage of the budget, despite his anger that the full sum of money promised in the coalition agreement for the Negev, Galilee and National Resilience Ministry, under his fellow party member Yitzhak Wasserlauf, has not been fully transferred. Maariv also reports a letter signed by 280 economists, including the former director general of the Finance Ministry, Avi Ben Bassat, and the former director of the Budgets Department, Udi Nisan, criticising the allocations for the ultra-Orthodox as “likely to cause significant and long-term damage to the Israeli economy and to its future as a prosperous country.”

Remaining on the economic theme, Israel Hayom looks at the cost of living crisis in Israel. According to a poll commissioned by the Israel Democracy Institute, thirty percent of Israelis between the ages of 18 and 44 have been forced to forgo buying food and other staples, while 16 percent of Israelis over the age of 65 have been unable to meet medical expenses. Two thirds of respondents felt that the Israeli economy had either “worsened” or “severely worsened” in the last year. “Unsurprisingly,” said Daphna Aviram-Nitzan, the director of the Centre for Governance and the Economy at the Israel Democracy Institute, “we learned that the thing that worries the Israeli public the most is the cost of living. The thing that was surprising is that the public didn’t turn the spotlight on the cost of housing, but mainly on food products. In other words, in its daily life, the public is worried about grocery shopping, which has become expensive”. The government took the lion’s share of the blame for economic hardship, with 76 percent of respondents calling its economic efforts “insufficient” or “failed”. Maariv, meanwhile, reports the Manufacturers Association of Israel issuing a statement also blaming the government for the cost of living crisis.

Relatedly, Yediot Ahronot details the Bank of Israel’s Monetary Committee’s deliberations on the raising of interest rates. A rise is certain, the only question being whether it is by 0.25 percent, 0.5 percent, or 0.75 percent. Interest rates have already seen a sharp rise in the last year as the bank has sought to reduce demand from borrowers – from 0.35 percent in April 2022 to 4.5 percent in April 2023. Meanwhile, the national inflation rate over the past three months stands at 7 percent, with the bank struggling to maintain its annual target of a 2 percent increase. With most sectors of the economy not yet demonstrably affected by rate hikes, the one sector showing obvious signs of a downturn has been residential construction, as demand for houses and apartments has “cratered”. The paper accuses both Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich of being “AWOL” from the fight against inflation.

Kan Radio reports that “scheduling constraints” mean that the negotiations on judicial reform between the government and the opposition will not be held this week. The station reports that talks have reached a stage where “a decision had to be made on their future and the format that would be used moving forward. Primarily, they must decide which subjects will be put on the negotiating table, whether to continue to discuss issues about which agreements have been reached and to focus on them, or whether to return to the most complicated issue—the Judges Selection Committee.”

Haaretz discusses the lessening in intensity of the weekly protests against judicial reform. “Initially, the movement against the plan to undermine Israel’s judiciary and weaken Israeli democracy was teeming with energy. From road blocks to ‘days of disruption,’ the movement managed to force Netanyahu to temporarily freeze the judicial overhaul legislation. Now, amid ongoing negotiations with the opposition to reach a compromise, when protests end at 9 P.M., instead of heading to the Ayalon Highway to block traffic – demonstrators go home… while the movement’s hold on the public is still strong, some of its vigour has clearly faded.” The paper suggests that protest leaders are considering further expanding the scope of its focus – to include issues such as the cost of living and relations between Israel’s ultra-Orthodox and the rest of its citizens – in a bid to reinvigorate the movement.

Yediot Ahronot claims that Smotrich was recently snubbed in his attempts to arrange a meeting with his French counterpart Bruno Le Maire at the annual OECD meeting for finance ministers in Paris. French Foreign Ministry officials are briefing that Le Maire rejected the proposed meeting, in what the site interprets as a response to Smotrich’s provocative statement that “there is no such thing as a Palestinian people” made in Paris two months ago.