The Independent, The Telegraph and The Guardian report that the former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett has said in an interview that Vladimir Putin told him he would not try to kill Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a promise made during a trip to Moscow shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine last year. Speaking on a podcast with the Israeli journalist Hanoch Daum, published on Sunday, Bennett said he received assurance from Putin that the Ukrainian president’s life was not at risk during a secretive visit to the Russian capital last March aimed at mediation during the war’s early days.

The BBC reports that The UN envoy in Jerusalem has warned that surging violence in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories has brought the situation to “the brink”. In a BBC interview, Tor Wennesland called for “firm” diplomatic intervention to stem the bloodshed. He also warned of further deterioration due to declining international support for the Palestinian Authority (PA). “The UN cannot take over this responsibility, we cannot govern Palestine,” he said.

The BBC reports on our story from Friday, that Israel and Sudan will sign an “historic peace agreement” in Washington in a few months’ time, Israel’s foreign minister announced following talks in Khartoum. Eli Cohen said the text of the agreement was finalised during his one-day visit to see Sudanese leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. Sudan agreed two years ago to normalise relations with Israel but a deal has never been implemented. It would become the latest Arab League country to establish such ties.

The Financial Times reports that Israel’s attorney-general has ordered Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to get involved in a controversial overhaul of the country’s judiciary due to a conflict of interest stemming from the veteran leader’s ongoing corruption trial. Since taking power in December, Netanyahu’s coalition with ultra-religious and ultra-nationalist parties, widely regarded as the most rightwing in Israel’s history, has made curbing the power of the judiciary a priority.

The Guardian also reports that thousands of Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv for the fifth consecutive week to demonstrate against controversial legal reforms touted by Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government. Crowds carrying blue and white Israeli flags filled the city’s central Kaplan Street on Saturday, with signs labelling the new government a “threat to world peace”.

The Guardian also publishes a piece by Jonathan Freedland: “He’s not a usual suspect. He’s known for having won a Nobel prize for economics, and for writing the international bestseller Thinking, Fast and Slow, rather than for manning the barricades or wielding a placard. But this week, I spoke to Daniel Kahneman, who soon turns 89, and was shocked to hear the despair in his voice. “It’s just a horror,” the Israeli-born professor told me. “This is the worst threat to Israel since 1948,” the year of the state’s founding, he said – worse even than the Yom Kippur war of 1973, when Israel’s survival seemed to hang in the balance – because this time the damage may be ‘impossible’ to repair.”

The Guardian also publishes a piece suggesting that Ilhan Omar’s removal from the Congressional Foreign Affairs Committee was based on her views on Israel. “The resolution that set-in motion the removal of the only African immigrant, Muslim and former resident of a refugee camp on the congressional committee overseeing US foreign policy paid scant attention to Ilhan Omar’s views on anything but a single issue: Israel. The Democratic leadership accused Republicans of a vendetta. Omar said she was targeted as a Muslim immigrant who “needs to be silenced”, and that “when you push power, power pushes back”.

The Times reports on the rise of TikTok, which has caused “a generation of lone-wolf Palestinians prepared to sacrifice themselves in a conflict zone where no-one talks of peace”. These young people are not acting in concert with terrorist organisations such as Hamas or Islamic Jihad. They are freelancing, lone wolves, taking it upon themselves to seek murder and martyrdom. Or they are part of splinter groups, such as the Lions’ Den organisation in Nablus, a radical new young faction giving Israeli generals sleepless nights. They are difficult to control and difficult to stop.

The Economist reports on clashes between Netanyahu and the Israeli business community, saying that: “despite wars, political instability and global financial turmoil, Israel’s economy has been a steady success. Bar a blip in 2020, it has grown by almost 4% a year since 1996. Netanyahu, the country’s longest-serving prime minister, has been in charge for much of this. He likes to take credit for the boom. Israel’s business bosses have allowed him to do so. No longer”.

There is wide Israeli media coverage of last night’s IDF raid on the Aqbat Jabr refugee camp, near Jericho in the West Bank. Acting on intelligence, troops entered the camp in pursuit of two terrorists responsible for a failed shooting attack at the Almog junction in the Jordan Valley last week. A gun battle ensued, in the course of which the two suspects were killed. Walla News reports five other terrorists also killed, while Palestinian media outlets have reported that senior Hamas official Shaker Amara was also arrested during the raid. Yesterday’s mission follows previous attempts to apprehend the two suspects, who had pledged to carry out further attacks. On Saturday, troops surrounded a building in the camp in which the suspects were believed to be hiding, having first distributed flyers reading “Residents of Aqbat Jabr camp—we are operating against terrorists. Refrain from clashing with the security forces and keep your children at home.” Exchanges of fire followed, during which seven Palestinians sustained serious injuries. On Friday, meanwhile, as Haaretz details, Israeli forces shot and killed Abdullah Qalalweh, from the village of al-Judeida near Jenin, after he ran (it later turned out, unarmed) at troops who issued orders for him to stop at the Hawara checkpoint.

Ynet discloses, meanwhile, that the Palestinian Authority (PA) is at present declining to bow to American pressure and formally resume its security cooperation with Israel. The PA announced its decision to suspend cooperation in the wake of the recent raid on Jenin, in which nine Palestinians were killed. In remarks delivered at his meeting with PA chief Mahmoud Abbas, visiting US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken criticised the move, but the PA is as yet unmoved.

Maariv reports that detectives from the Israeli Police’s Lahav 433 Unit yesterday summoned the lawyer David Hodek for questioning on suspicion of incitement to violence. In remarks to the Israeli Bar Association delivered in Eilat last Wednesday, Hodek said, in the context of judicial reform: “If anyone forces me to live in a dictatorship and I have no choice, I won’t hesitate to use live fire.” Following up his comments in an interview with Radio 103 FM, Hodek said, “If I’m come at with armed force to impose a dictatorship on me and they open fire on me, I’ll return fire—that’s what I said. I’m not in favour of war and I certainly am not in favour of civil war.” In another incident, retired IAF pilot Colonel (res.) Zeev Raz was also summoned for questioning for saying, in a Facebook post, that were Prime Minister Netanyahu “to lead Israel into dictatorship he should be put to death”. Raz later claimed not to be the author, but to have shared the post of a “non-Ashkenazi professor.” Commenting on both incidents, Netanyahu condemned “an explicit threat to murder an Israeli prime minister. I expect the law enforcement agencies and the security forces, which spoke out clearly and unequivocally during the previous government’s tenure against far less severe phenomena, to speak out with at least the same severity and the same clarity against this appalling phenomenon.”

Haaretz describes last week’s meeting between leaders of the settler Yesha Council and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. Smotrich, who also holds a deputy brief in the Defence Ministry giving him, on paper, authority over civilian administration in the West Bank, reportedly told settler leaders that they should, for now, refrain from establishing new outposts and that “all such activity should be coordinated with… Netanyahu”. Smotrich has vied with Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud, for influence over settlement policy. In January, Gallant ordered that Or Hahayim, a settlement constructed on privately owned Palestinian land, be dismantled. Netanyahu backed Gallant, causing Smotrich and other Religious Zionism ministers to boycott a meeting of the cabinet. Reports from the meeting also indicate that, in an effort to wrest control over settlement and other West Bank policy from the defence establishment, Smotrich promised to transfer leadership of both the Civil Administration and the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories offices from army officials to civilians. The paper speculates that the former will likely be headed by Yehuda Eliyahu who, along with Smotrich, cofounded the far-right settlement activist organisation Regavim. On Sunday, the cabinet authorised the creation of a “young settlement department”, using the language setters deploy to refer to illegal outposts.

Ynet reports the announcement of Supreme Court Chief Justice Esther Hayut, that she will shun the festive session of the Knesset Constitution, Law, Justice Committee marking the parliament’s anniversary. While the session is traditionally attended by Israel’s president, prime minister, opposition leader, Supreme Court chief justice, and Knesset speaker, Hayut – embroiled in dispute with the government over its proposed legal reforms – will this time stay away.

Israel Hayom covers Israel’s defence and foreign ministries pledging assistance to Turkey following yesterday’s 7.8/7.9 magnitude earthquake which has already claimed the lives of 300 people in both Turkey and Syria.