The BBC, Independent, the Times, Telegraph, Guardian and Financial Times report that Israel’s Attorney General intends to indict Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on corruption charges. The BBC reports that Netanyahu faces possible charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust in connection with three cases. The Prime Minister is alleged to have accepted gifts from wealthy businessmen and dispensed favours to try to get more positive press coverage. Netanyahu, who faces an election, said in a TV address that the case would “collapse like a house of cards”. In a defiant broadcast, he repeated his assertion that he is the victim of a left-wing “witch-hunt” intended to topple him ahead of the closely contested election on 9 April. A final hearing, probably after the election, will determine whether the charges go forward. The Prime Minister will have an opportunity to make his case then.

BICOM CEO James Sorene was interviewed on LBC Radio with Iain Dale last night to talk about the Attorney General’s decision to indict PM Benjamin Netanyahu on corruption charges.

In the Financial Times, Mehul Srivastava asks what happens next after the Attorney General’s decision to indict Israel’s Prime Minister. Srivastava looks at how the decision will affect the April elections, Netanyahu’s next steps in a legal case and what happens after an indictment.

In the Times, Anshel Pfeffer argues that Netanyahu’s indictment throws Israel’s upcoming elections into turmoil. Pfeffer concludes: “In more than 30 years in politics Mr Netanyahu has been the great survivor, coming back from the brink many times. But this time he is facing not only election defeat, but a ruinously expensive court case that will take years and could lead him, like the prime minister before him, to prison.”

Anshel Pfeffer was also interviewed on Radio 4’s Today Programme to discuss the indictment of the Israeli PM.

The BBC, Guardian, Independent and Telegraph report that UN human rights experts have said Israeli soldiers may have committed war crimes while responding to Palestinian protests on the Gaza border last year. The BBC reports that a commission of inquiry investigated the killing of 189 Palestinians between 30 March and 31 December 2018. It found reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli snipers shot at children, medics and journalists, even though they were clearly recognisable as such. Israel’s acting Foreign Minister said it rejected the findings outright. “The Human Rights Council’s theatre of the absurd has once again produced a report that is hostile, mendacious and biased against Israel,” Yisrael Katz said. “No-one can deny Israel the right to self-defence and the obligation to protect its citizens and its borders against violent attacks.”

The Guardian reports that the UK’s Prime Minister, Theresa May has backed Jordan by underwriting a $250m World Bank loan. Britain launched an economic and diplomatic push to protect Jordan as an oasis of political stability in the Middle East by staging a conference designed to rescue the debt-ridden country, and help its leader, mainly by an injection of private sector investment. The crowded London conference was attended by Jordan’s King Abdullah II, the British Prime Minister, Theresa May, the bulk of the Jordanian cabinet, the US Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, and a host of economic experts. Jordan has faced summer street protests directed at the severity of its six-year economic consolidation programme. Sporadic protests over tax rises are continuing, showing the government’s limited room for manoeuvre. The International Monetary Fund (IMF)-backed programme has been described as the most draconian anywhere in the world since the financial crash, dwarfing the cutbacks in public spending seen even in Portugal, and broadly matching those in Greece. The aim of the conference was to showcase Jordan’s potential as a country in which to invest rather than raise aid.

In the Guardian, Natalie Nougayrede writes that: “Assad can still be brought to justice – and Europe’s role is crucial”.

The Independent reports that the UK’s Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt is on his way to the Middle East to hold talks on trying to end the four year-long war in Yemen. The Foreign Secretary is due to arrive in Oman on Friday and will then travel on to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. He has meetings lined up with key figures on both sides of the seemingly intractable conflict. Hunt will speak to senior members of the Yemeni government, which is backed by Saudi Arabia, and the Houthi rebel group which has been trying to overthrow them since 2015. He said he would urge all parties to resume diplomacy and take steps to ease the humanitarian crisis in the war-torn nation. A key aim will be ensuring aid can be brought in, including through the crucial Red Sea port Hodeidah.

The Financial Times reports that US President Donald Trump has said that “100 per cent” of the territory held by ISIS in Syria has been recaptured, claiming a military victory as he returned from a failed attempt to secure a denuclearisation deal with North Korea. While making his way back from Hanoi, Vietnam, where talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had been cut short, Trump told troops at an air base in Alaska that ISIS had been defeated. “We now have the whole thing,” he said of the land held by ISIS. Asked whether 100 per cent of the territory had been reclaimed, the Pentagon said it had no comment on the matter beyond Trump’s remarks.

The Telegraph reports that a new UN report has warned that women who return home after joining terrorist groups are at risk of re-radicalisation because they are treated too leniently. Seen as passive onlookers to terrorism, the popular image of the coerced ‘jihadi bride’ leads authorities to treat them less harshly, according to the report released this week by the United Nation’s Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED). Sentences handed down to men and women charged with terrorist offences shows relative leniency towards females, according to the report’s findings. “Women… tend to receive more limited rehabilitation and reintegration support, thus putting them at potentially greater risk of recidivism and re-radicalization and potentially undermining their successful reintegration into society,” CTED warns. Despite the majority of women linked to terrorist groups not joining front-line fighting, researchers warn they often play a major role in spreading ideology and encouraging attacks.

The Independent reports that Yazidi tribal leaders and organisations have called on the international community to do more to investigate the fate of thousands of women and children still missing after being kidnapped by ISIS. Dozens from the small religious minority have been rescued over the last few months as the Isis caliphate has been reduced to a small patch of land in the eastern Syrian village of Baghouz. But more than 3,000 are still unaccounted for, and with the battle nearly over, time is running out to find answers.

Reuters reports that a US-led coalition strike against Islamic State’s last territorial stronghold in eastern Syria killed veteran French jihadist Fabien Clain, who voiced a recording claiming responsibility for the November 2015 attacks in Paris, the coalition has said. Clain became known as the French voice of Islamic State after he read out the six-minute statement claiming the worst attack in France since World War Two. In the recording, a man, believed to be his brother, gave a rallying cry to music for Muslims to fight the infidels “without ever capitulating”. “A coalition strike killed an active Daesh (Islamic State) media official named Abu Anas al Faransi, also known as Fabien Clain, in Baghouz,” the coalition said in a statement posted on its Twitter feed late on Thursday.

The BBC reports that the United States is offering a reward of up to $1m (£750,000) for information about one of the sons of the late al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden. Hamza Bin Laden is emerging as a leader of the Islamist militant group, officials say. He is thought to be based near the Afghan-Pakistani border. In recent years, he has released audio and video messages calling on followers to attack the US and its Western allies in revenge for his father’s killing.

In the Financial Times, Michael Wahid Hanna writes that: “Egypt has a last chance to preserve its republican character”. He argues that a vote on a plan to extend Sisi’s presidency is a chance to voice dissent. After winning re-election in 2018 under less than fully free and fair conditions, says Hanna, Sisi’s outlook has predictably changed. There is now a legislative effort under way to amend those term limits, dramatically increase the powers of the presidency, further erode judicial independence, and formally establish guardianship. Egypt now finds itself at a potential point of no foreseeable return. With Sisi set to remain in office until 2034, political change will once again be forestalled for a generation or will only be possible through the destabilising possibilities of assassination, coup, or uprising. Needless to say, none of those represents a productive path for the future.

In the Guardian, Kaveh Madani writes: “The environment was once a safe space for activism in Iran. No longer”.  Madani argues that hard-line forces increasingly view environmentalism as a threat to national security, and are throwing innocent experts in jail.

The Independent reports that at least half a dozen European journalists were barred from a press conference and signing ceremony on Thursday announcing €275 million in European Union money for Turkish rail projects. The grant will help fund the construction of a railway line between the southeast edge of the EU border in Bulgaria and the Turkish commercial capital, Istanbul. EU Commission Vice President Jyrki Katainen told reporters at the televised appearance in Istanbul that he deeply “regretted” that journalists were refused access, and insisted that the EU was working with Turkish authorities to make sure “freedom of the press is respected.”

The Israeli media is dominated by the news of the Attorney General’s announcement to indict Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Yediot Ahronoth leads with: “The Charge: Bribery” and the paper quotes Netanyahu’s argument that there is an “an unprecedented witch hunt” against him, as does Maariv, which also features Benny Gantz’s call on Netanyahu to resign. Haaretz quotes from the AG’s announcement in which he said that Netanyahu had “used his powers out of self-interest and corrupted civil servants”.

Moran Azoulay in Yediot Ahronot writes that: “Political sources believe that due to the legal complications he now faces, Netanyahu will find the task of forming a government more onerous, and it is possible that in view of his demands of loyalty, he will be expected to pay a higher price next time, if he does indeed find himself in that position.”

Anshel Pfeffer in Haaretz argues that: “The decision to Indict Netanyahu a month before the election changes everything. The decision to indict Netanyahu for bribery and breach of trust in Case 4000 and fraud and breach of trust in cases 1000 and 2000 was more lenient than the opinion of many of the attorneys, including State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan…. But it is a new millstone hung around Netanyahu’s neck, a weight no previous Israeli prime minister has ever experienced. He will now have to carry it around wherever he goes, and it will drag him down.”

Chemi Shalev writes in Haaretz: “The question is whether the scores of damning pages that purport to back up Attorney General Avihai Mendelblit’s long awaited decision to charge Netanyahu with one count of bribery and two of fraud and breach of trust will help or hinder Netanyahu’s revolution. The answer hinges on whether Likud voters are a uniform bloc whose backing for their beleaguered leader increases in direct proportion to his legal travails or if the official publication of the indictments and minute details of Netanyahu’s sordid behavior will suffice to sway at least some to defect. Even the movement of 4-5 seats from right to left will change the balance of power and bring Netanyahu’s political career to an ignominious end.”

In ‘Dr Bibi and Mr Netanyahu’ Ben Caspit writes in Maariv that the details in the AG’s document “evoke a severe sense of nausea, utter disgust. Mr Prime Minister, the time has come for you to realise: The person who is persecuting Binyamin Netanyahu is Bibi. Or the other way around. The person who has lost all restraint, who fell victim to his own swinish hedonism, his pathological tightfistedness, his infinite aspiration for more power, another democratic stronghold to be trampled, another red line to be crossed, another journalist to be defeated. This person overcame the other Netanyahu, the talented, knowledgeable, charismatic and responsible leader. In the war between these two figures within you, the dark figure gained the upper hand. The person to blame for your disaster, Mr Netanyahu, is you.”

In the Times of Israel, David Horowitz believes that “the protracted legal battle at the heart of this affair is not the prime minister’s urgent priority. First, there is the political battle — to see off opposition calls for his resignation and to persuade his colleagues, many of them potential rivals, that he remains an asset, a vote-winner, the leader who will secure their political good fortune. To persuade them, in short, that despite the announcement or even because of it, he will secure re-election.”

Chaim Levinson in Haaretz discusses how the Likud party aims to fight against the shadow of the AG’s announcement during the elections. “Because of its size, Likud has a larger campaign budget than other parties – around 45 million shekels (10 million pounds). The party has been saving every shekel in anticipation of Mendelblit’s announcement; it hasn’t even rented offices for its campaign staff. Instead, the money will be used to fight the charges via advertisements, text messages and social media campaigns.” Levinson adds that “Mendelblit is expected to figure in Likud’s campaign not as someone actively participating in a judicial coup, but as the victim of others who conspired against him until he collapsed under the pressure.”