Crunch talks in Lebanon: Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Saad Al Hariri yesterday handed President Michel Aoun a new list of names for his proposed cabinet, in a meeting that reports have suggested is Hariri’s last-ditch attempt to form a government. For the past nine months, Hariri and Aoun have been unable to agree on a cabinet, leaving the country without a government as its economy slips deeper into crisis.

Egypt doesn’t want Hariri to give up: During talks in Cairo yesterday, President Abdel Fattah El Sisi told Hariri that the Egyptian government will give him its full support to form a government, Ittihadiya said in a statement following the meeting. A report on Al Hadath TV channel claimed that Egypt has explicitly urged the PM-designate not to give up, and that it will soon send a delegation to Beirut (watch, runtime: 1:53:20).

Also worth knowing this morning:

• Abu Dhabi now has an embassy in Tel Aviv: The UAE has become the first Gulf country to establish an embassy in Israel, yesterday opening its diplomatic HQ in the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. This comes almost a year after Israel, the UAE and Bahrain signed the Abraham Accords, which established formal diplomatic relations between the Gulf countries and Israel for the first time.
• Now it’s Turkey’s turn to make overtures to Israel: Turkey and Israel agreed to work on mending relations after a phone call between President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Israel counterpart Isaac Herzog. Both countries expelled each other’s ambassadors in 2018 over killing dozens of Palestinians in clashes on the Gaza border.