Fdd's overnight brief

Israel

The first Israeli military commission into the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks found that military officials were blindsided by the Hamas-led assault after badly misinterpreting the militant group’s intentions and vastly underestimating its capabilities—right up to the attack. – Wall Street Journal

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday there were “pretty good talks going on” regarding Gaza, when asked about the future of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas militants, but he offered little detail at a White House press conference. – Reuters

The International Criminal Court will urgently continue its investigation into crimes committed in Palestinian territories, or by Palestinians, the prosecutor’s office said on Thursday, despite the withdrawal of an arrest warrant for a Hamas leader. – Reuters

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a right-winger kept at arms length by Washington under former President Joe Biden, will meet U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in Washington next Wednesday, Smotrich’s spokesman said on Thursday. – Reuters

Three developing nations’ leaders issued a rebuke of Israel’s execution of its war on Hamas in Gaza, and said US President Donald Trump’s proposal to annex the territory and deport all its citizens would be illegal and amount to “ethnic cleansing.” – Bloomberg

In the wake of a terror strike Thursday, Israel is bracing for more violence during the month-long marking of Ramadan. Israelis, meanwhile, are increasingly contemplating a return to Gaza fighting in an effort to eradicate Hamas. The fate of 58 hostages, including 24 presumed living, is in the balance. – New York Sun

Talks resume in Cairo Friday on a second phase of an Israel-Hamas ceasefire that mediators hope will bring a lasting end to the Gaza conflict, a day after Israel’s military acknowledged its “complete failure” to prevent the 2023 Hamas attack that sparked the war. – Agence France Presse

Israel said Thursday that it will implement what it called “safety restrictions” at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins over the weekend. – Agence France Presse

The BBC apologized on Thursday for “serious flaws” in the making of a Gaza documentary after it emerged that the child narrator was the son of Hamas’s former deputy minister of agriculture. – Agence France Presse

A polio vaccination drive in Gaza reached more than 600,000 children, the head of the World Health Organization announced Thursday, saying a ceasefire allowed previously-missed children to receive a dose. – Agence France Presse

Hamas’s tunnels were so well fortified that military operations to get hostages out the tunnels alive would have been nearly impossible, recently released hostage Eli Sharabi told Channel 12’s “Uvda” program on Thursday evening. – Jerusalem Post

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be scheduled for two corruption trial testimonies a week instead of three, the Jerusalem District Court ruled on Thursday night, in light of the complex political and state security situations that the Israeli leader faced. – Jerusalem Post

During a joint overnight counterterrorism operation in the West Bank, security forces comprised of the IDF, Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), and Israel Police arrested 75 wanted terrorists and confiscated 17 weapons, the military said on Thursday. – Jerusalem Post

Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara on Thursday ordered a criminal investigation be opened into the alleged ties between officials working in the Prime Minister’s Office and Qatar. – Times of Israel

Editorial: The Democrats’ ditching of Israel is about more than just the Jewish state. The party is increasingly committed to a worldview for which hostility toward Israel follows as day succeeds night. It is no coincidence that the pandering of the party to anti-Israel voices was prelude to defeat at the polls. Every organization that embraced a politics organized against the Jews has eventually capsized. – New York Sun

Editorial: The government should create an independent, nonpartisan investigative body with the authority to thoroughly examine the security, intelligence, and political failures that occurred on October 7. This commission must include credible legal, military, and intelligence experts who are not influenced by political agendas. Their mission should be to uncover the truth, determine accountability, and suggest practical reforms. – Jerusalem Post

Gol Kalev writes: In this realm, there is a golden opportunity to shift away from frameworks based on a zero-sum game, such as “land for peace” and the two-state solution, toward frameworks that are based on a win-win, such as the Abraham Accords and President Trump’s Gaza relocation plan. – Jerusalem Post

John Hannah writes: Rather than divide America’s friends, Trump’s 2020 proposal provides a modicum of common ground that can bring them together – to rid Gaza of Hamas, create hope for Palestinians and security for Israel, and, most importantly, unlock an historic Israel-Saudi peace deal that would strike a crushing blow against the Iranian threat. That’s a deal that would genuinely advance vital US national interests and, perhaps, even win Trump the Nobel Peace Prize. – Times of Israel

Russia & Ukraine

President Trump struck a more supportive tone on Ukraine during his meetings with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Thursday, but stopped short of promising the security guarantees for Kyiv that European allies want. – Wall Street Journal

A suggestion by the Trump administration’s top negotiator that a Ukraine peace deal would be based on talks conducted in Istanbul nearly three years ago has buoyed Russian officials and spooked Ukraine and its backers. – Wall Street Journal

Russian and U.S. teams held six hours of talks in Turkey on Thursday to try to restore normal functioning of their embassies, and Vladimir Putin said initial contacts with Donald Trump’s new administration had inspired hope. – Reuters

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is set to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump and sign a critical minerals deal on Friday as Kyiv works to regain U.S. support to fight off the Russian invasion as Washington reverses its punitive policy towards Moscow. – Reuters

President Vladimir Putin on Thursday warned “Western elites” against trying to sabotage a potential rapprochement between Russia and the United States, saying Moscow would use its diplomats and intelligence services to thwart such efforts. – Reuters

Ukraine’s top commander said on Thursday he had visited brigades defending the Novopavlivka front in the eastern Donetsk region where Russia has stepped up its assaults. – Reuters

The Kremlin said on Thursday that it believed dialogue with the United States should move forward as long as there is political will on both sides and a readiness to listen to each other, but said nobody expected quick and easy solutions. – Reuters

EU Council President Antonio Costa on Thursday said he had invited Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to the special summit of EU leaders on March 6, to discuss future support to Ukraine. – Reuters

Editorial: That welcome, if head-spinning, reversal is more proof that what matters isn’t what Mr. Trump says but what he does. That is especially true as the war negotiations begin in earnest between the U.S. and Russia. French and British leaders traveled to Washington this week to lobby Mr. Trump to provide a U.S. backstop for any European troops that deploy to Ukraine after a deal is struck. If the mineral deal makes Mr. Trump more inclined to provide that guarantee, so much the better for Ukraine, Europe and the U.S. – Wall Street Journal

Editorial: Back on Feb. 22, 2022, he bet he could win fast and cheap; ever since, he’s been piling more chips on Plan B: winning the hard way. Yet he hasn’t broken Ukraine’s will. He may hope he can win before he runs out of chips, but his risk of losing them all is now growing fast. Trump is offering him an off-ramp, but it shouldn’t be a free one: He must push hard for Putin to truly read the table, and pay the necessary price for peace. – New York Post

Marc A. Thiessen writes: This does not require a new agreement or action by Congress; the mechanisms for such sales exist under existing law. But this deal is a critical step forward. Russia wanted to diminish Ukraine economically, politically and militarily. With this deal, Trump has enhanced Ukraine economically and politically. Now, to secure our new investments, the United States must enhance Ukraine militarily as well. – Washington Post

Douglas Murray writes: To say that these are all war crimes is to state the obvious. To say that these are crimes against humanity is to use a phrase totally unfit for the task. What they are is a tiny sample from the vast population of children to whom Vladimir Putin brought terror and war since 2022. In a war of his choosing. A war he could have ended on a day of his choosing. If he had wanted to. – New York Post

Turkey

An imprisoned Kurdish militant leader urged his followers on Thursday to give up their weapons, opening an opportunity to defuse a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people in recent decades, and destabilized Turkey and the wider Middle East. – Wall Street Journal

The commander of the Kurdish-led forces that control northeastern Syria said that a call by the leader of the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Turkey for the PKK to dissolve did not apply to the group he leads. – Reuters

Turkey, which has the second largest army in NATO after the US, is open to providing troops for a peacekeeping force in Ukraine, according to people familiar with the matter. – Bloomberg

Korean Peninsula

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un supervised a test-launch of strategic cruise missiles and ordered full readiness to use nuclear attack capability, which would ensure the most effective defence for the country, state media said on Friday. – Reuters

South Korea’s acting President and Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok and U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent discussed tariffs, investment and forex policy in a video call, South Korea’s finance ministry said on Friday. – Reuters

The number of babies born in South Korea rebounded for the first time in nine years in 2024, welcome news for a country grappling with one of the the world’s most serious demographic crises. – Associated Press

South Asia

A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck north of Nepal’s Kathmandu on Friday, according to the National Earthquake Monitoring and Research Centre. – Reuters

India is exploring mining of critical minerals in Zambia, Congo and Australia, Mines Secretary V.L. Kantha Rao said on Thursday, as the world’s fastest-growing major economy aims to secure raw materials such as lithium. – Reuters

Eighty-four Indonesians freed from scam centers in Myanmar were set to return home Friday as the repatriation of thousands of such workers after a crackdown strains regional resources. – Associated Press

A nearly weeklong closure of a key crossing on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border has disrupted bilateral trade and the movement of people, causing financial losses to traders and leaving people stranded in harsh winter conditions, officials said Thursday. – Associated Press

Robert A. Manning writes: But its plans for a new multipolar order are Sino-centric overreach, discounting the interests of emerging powers such as Brazil, India, and Turkey as well as the West. Neither ambitions of perpetual primacy nor China’s dreams of a post-American world are realistic or achievable. Myanmar’s fate and that of the world order writ large may hinge on the ability to realize a new balance of power that can give ballast to regional and global problem-solving. – Foreign Policy

Europe

Three Austrian mainstream parties said they would form a government, elbowing aside the far-right group that had won the country’s election in the latest sign of the political center pushing back against a right-wing surge in Europe. – Wall Street Journal

President Donald Trump accepted a “really special” invitation from King Charles III to visit Britain for a state visit — the first U.S. president to receive such a diplomatic gesture twice. – Washington Post

Hungary’s government said Thursday that it would ban a Pride march through central Budapest this summer, as Viktor Orban and his ruling Fidesz party escalate their long-standing push to enact anti-LGBTQ+ policies ahead of elections next year. – Washington Post

Prosecutors in Romania have opened a criminal case against Calin Georgescu, an ultranationalist politician who in November won the first round of a presidential election only to have his victory annulled when the Constitutional Court ordered a redo of the vote. – New York Times

Senior figures from Germany’s conservatives and the Social Democrats will begin exploratory talks on forming a coalition government on Friday, sources at the parties told Reuters. – Reuters

Bosnia’s Serb Republic is expected to bar the state police and judiciary from operating on its territory on Thursday, a day after a state court ordered the Russian-backed separatist Serb president to step down for defying an international peace envoy. – Reuters

Czech and Slovak farmers parked dozens of tractors and disrupted operations at a border crossing on Thursday to protest against cheaper imports coming from non-EU markets like Ukraine and South America. – Reuters

Two Afghan nationals, aged 30 and 24, have been handed prison sentences in Germany for planning an attack on the Swedish parliament and for supporting the Islamic State militant organisation, a regional court said on Thursday. – Reuters

French President Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s conservative chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz agreed during a meeting in Paris to open a new chapter in Franco-German relations, a source close to Merz told Reuters. – Reuters

The European Union on Thursday pushed back hard against allegations by U.S. President Donald Trump that the 27-nation bloc was out to get the United States, and warned that it would vigorously fight any wholesale tariff of 25% on all EU products. – Associated Press

Germany’s top prosecutor has charged a suspected Islamic extremist with murder, attempted murder and membership in a terrorist organization abroad in connection with a deadly knife attack last year at a festival in the western German city of Solingen. – Associated Press

France is also seeking access to Ukraine ‘s deposits of critical minerals, with negotiations already underway for months, the French defense minister said Thursday, indicating that the United States isn’t the only player. – Associated Press

Leaders of the European Union will call for increased flexibility in their funding rules to boost defense spending in the short term as the challenges posed by US President Donald Trump and Russia’s threat to the security of the continent are forcing a “once-in-a-generation” military build-up. – Bloomberg

Lee Hockstader writes: That’s a sweet deal for a country whose stumbling economy, half the size of Germany’s, is racked by inflation and straining to finance its war. Both men cynically regard the norms of international relations — respect for human rights, the inviolability of borders — as empty pieties. Europe, the odd man out, is clinging to principles in a world that recognizes only power. – Washington Post

Colby Badhwar writes: If the EU follows Germany in affording members more flexibility in financing their national defenses, there will be sufficient money available to meet the new spending targets for NATO that will be set this year. Sufficient funds to increase Europe’s defense industrial strength would fund both sovereign programs and cooperative deals with the United States. This is the model the alliance needs to endure for another 75 years. Europe and the US still need each other, even if it’s uncomfortable to admit it. – Centre for European Policy Analysis

The Americas

Mexican authorities extradited to the U.S. drug boss Rafael Caro Quintero who is wanted for the 1985 killing of a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent, delivering on a longstanding demand by the U.S. amid rising pressure from the Trump administration. – Wall Street Journal

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday said his proposed 25% tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods will take effect on March 4 along with an extra 10% duty on Chinese imports because deadly drugs are still pouring into the U.S. from those countries. – Reuters

Nicaragua announced on Thursday it would withdraw from the United Nations Human Rights Council, following a UN report that urged the international community to address human rights violations by President Daniel Ortega’s government. – Reuters

The progress Canada has made on tightening security along the border with the United States and combating drug smuggling should satisfy the Trump administration, Public Safety Minister David McGuinty said on Thursday. – Reuters

Mexico’s foreign ministry said on Thursday its top security officials had a cordial, productive meeting with U.S. counterparts in Washington, and agreed to take joint actions to fight organized crime in both countries. – Reuters

Officials in Costa Rica and Panama are confiscating migrants’ passports and cellphones, denying them access to legal services and moving them between remote outposts as they wrestle with the logistics of a suddenly reversed migration flow. – Associated Press

The Dominican Republic is designating more than a dozen Haitian gangs “terrorist organizations,” giving the Caribbean nation additional tools to stave off the chaos that’s plaguing its troubled neighbor. – Bloomberg

Cybersecurity

Chinese technology startups are racing for fresh fundraising to capitalise on the DeepSeek-induced fervor towards artificial intelligence, as well as President Xi Jinping’s recent show of support to the country’s private enterprises. – Reuters

Four members of an online neo-Nazi Group were arrested at the end of January on federal charges of exploiting minors and producing child sexual abuse material. – Jerusalem Post

Microsoft has identified individuals from Iran, China, Vietnam and the United Kingdom as primary players in an alleged international scheme to hijack and sell Microsoft accounts that could bypass safety guidelines for generative AI tools. – CyberScoop

Jared Dunnmon writes: As Microsoft vice chair and president Brad Smith argued in January, open-source AI offers the country a chance to demonstrate the special strengths of the U.S. tech ecosystem. The United States should reestablish its historical leadership in developing open models while keeping the ecosystem competitive and continuing to invest in critical resources—whether they are chips or human talent. Given the stakes, second place is not an option. – Foreign Affairs