Fdd's overnight brief

Israel

Israel’s cabinet on Thursday referred a plan to allocate 1 billion shekels ($339.7 million) for the establishment of new ‌settlements in the occupied West Bank to the security cabinet, deferring a vote on the funds, Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now said. – Reuters

Israeli strikes killed three people in the ​Gaza Strip on Thursday, health officials said, as mediators struggled to make progress in renewed efforts ‌to reinforce a fragile U.S.-brokered truce, sources close to the talks reported. – Reuters

Hassan Yousef, a co-founder of Hamas in the West Bank whose son Mosab became famous for working as an Israeli informant, was on Thursday released from Israeli custody without charge after two and a half years of administrative detention, Palestinian media reported. – Agence France-Presse

Slovenia’s new conservative-led government on Thursday lifted an arms embargo on Israel and entry bans on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and two of his ministers. – Times of Israel

French journalist Alice Froussard was denied entry into Israel on Thursday, in a decision the Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Ministry said was due to statements she made that were hostile to the country. – Times of Israel

The tenure of Gal Hirsch as the government’s hostage pointman has ended without a replacement being appointed, the Prime Minister’s Office confirmed Thursday in a statement, saying it is working to renew its contractual arrangement with him. – Times of  Israel

As the IDF seeks to erect, for the first time, a permanent post in an area meant to be fully controlled by the Palestinian Authority, two soldiers involved in that effort were wounded by an explosive device on Thursday. – Times of Israel

The UK, Australia, and Canada announced Thursday an “International Peace Fund” for Israelis and Palestinians, meant to “support peacebuilding efforts to establish the conditions for a lasting peace.” – Times of Israel

The annual Tel Aviv Pride Parade will take place as planned on Friday, despite recent security concerns surrounding the war with Iran, organizers announced. – Jerusalem Post

The IDF promoted two officers to the General Staff earlier this week, with Guy Markizeno becoming the new prime minister’s military secretary, and Tal Politis becoming the new defense attaché in Washington. – Jerusalem Post

A recent European financial investment in the West Bank may threaten Israeli efforts to see the Palestinian Authority abandon its “pay-for-slay” policy, even if the money has bypassed the PA, an expert told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday. – Jerusalem Post

Over the past year, the IDF has established several security outposts east of the border fence with Jordan, within the security buffer zone between the fence and the Jordan River. – Arutz Sheva

IDF soldiers are continuing efforts to clear the underground tunnel network beneath the Beaufort Ridge. The network was planned and financed by the Iranian terror regime and serves as a significant operational asset for Hezbollah’s military activities. – Arutz Sheva

Russia and Ukraine

Deep in an underground bunker, where walls of screens stream live data from across the battlefield, the commander of Ukraine’s drone forces is poring over terabytes of information to ​map out his next campaign: cutting Crimea off from Russia. – Reuters

The Russian city of Nizhnekamsk in the central ​region of Tatarstan will cancel ‌all public events on Friday, amid a drone attack threat, ​its mayor, Radmir Belyayev, ​said on the Telegram messaging app. – Reuters

Two people were killed and another 10 ​injured in a Ukraine attack ‌on Russia’s border region of Bryansk, Acting Regional Governor Yegor Kovalchuk said in a ​Telegram post late on Thursday. – Reuters

The U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday said ​it voted to extend U.S. security assistance for Ukraine and increase authorized funding to $750 million, the latest ‌pushback from Congress against the Trump administration’s pullback on aid for Kyiv as it fights a Russian invasion. – Reuters

The Kremlin on Thursday shrugged off the prospect ​of new European Union sanctions against its banks, ‌saying they had already been operating under sanctions for a long time and this had not stopped them ​from making a profit. – Reuters

Fuel stations on the ​Russian-held Crimean peninsula were out of petrol on Thursday, Reuters witnesses said, as a Ukrainian campaign against supply lines ‌to the peninsula escalates. – Reuters

Waves of AI-guided drones are hammering Russian supply lines in occupied Ukraine as Kyiv seeks to capitalize on its latest advances in technology and tactics. – Bloomberg

Ukraine wants an additional $20 billion from its allies to cement its temporary battlefield advantage over Russia, a senior Ukrainian defense official told POLITICO. – Politico

David Ignatius writes: But Russia is a boiling pot with a tight lid. Once, Trump might have cut a Ukraine deal that could have rescued Putin from his folly, but Putin was too greedy to accept, and the moment has probably passed. These two leaders both came to power with a vision of making their countries great again. Each now suffers the consequences of launching unnecessary and inconclusive wars that have brought little but pain to all sides. – Washington Post

Hal Brands writes: Putin isn’t preparing for World War III: His military can hardly handle the fight it’s in. But he probably hopes that military intimidation will cause European states to attenuate their support for Ukraine or discourage it from striking Russian cities. Or perhaps he believes that the threat of escalation will bring a favorable diplomatic intervention from US President Donald Trump. Some NATO officials even fear that Putin might stage a minor military conflict — an occupation and then a quick withdrawal from territory in Estonia, for example — as a way of discrediting NATO and showing the Europeans that Trump no longer has their back. That’s still an outlier scenario. But Putin, who has staked everything in Ukraine, won’t easily accept bitter disappointment there. A conflict that is now going better for the good guys could become more dangerous before it ends. – Bloomberg

Or Horvitz writes: The West has real advantages: artificial intelligence, data processing, cyber capabilities and advanced algorithms. These are precisely the tools needed to detect weak signals across vast communications networks. But technological superiority is not the same as operational readiness. That requires doctrine, procurement and partnerships with the private sector, which can often deliver solutions faster than state bureaucracies. Anyone doubting the cost of delay need only look at Russia, a nuclear power that cannot prevent waves of Ukrainian drones from repeatedly striking deep into its strategic rear. Western democracies cannot afford to wait for the first strategic strike before adapting. Cellular drones turn civilian connectivity into a battlespace. The technology is already here. The question is whether the response will be as well. – The Hill

Lev Stesin writes: Ironically, when US President Donald Trump shouted at Zelensky about the absence of cards to be played by Ukraine, he inadvertently forced the guest to create a deck of his own. Ukraine, finally free to conduct the war by the rules of war and according to its own schedule, and fighting Russia the only way the regime in the Kremlin understands – with brutal force hitting where it hurts the most – may actually achieve what no meeting in Alaska could. – Jerusalem Post

Evgeny Roshchin writes: The Kremlin has failed to use these institutions to legitimize its aggression against Ukraine or make them explicitly anti-Western. And their further development is increasingly shaped by Kremlin anxieties about losing influence — visible in its approach to the enlargement of these organizations, consensus decisions, and the slow pace of building shared institutions such as development banks. The alignment between Beijing and Moscow is now a geopolitical reality. But each side’s vision of its own role in advancing multipolarity defines both the internal limits of this new political form and the strategic openings available to its opponents. – Center for European Policy Analysis

David Kirichenko and Douglas Davis write: The consequences are already visible, and the lessons are clear. As casualties move through the military medical role system, from medics at the zero line to definitive care hospitals in the rear, the Lethal Triad leaves a long trail: amputations, tourniquet syndrome, drug-resistant infections, sepsis deaths, and rehabilitation needs that will outlast the war by decades. Care practices, infection control, and antimicrobial stewardship must adapt at every link of that chain. The implications extend beyond military medicine to civilian healthcare preparedness and global biosecurity, because warbugs do not respect borders. The knowledge to prepare exists. The doctrine does not. – The National Interest

Lebanon

After a ceasefire was announced between Lebanese armed group Hezbollah and Israel in April, Darine Al Jouny Safadi ​thought the worst was behind her and returned home to the Christian quarter of southern Lebanon’s port city of Tyre. – Reuters

The Israel Defense Forces is poised to launch an offensive against Hezbollah in the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh, one of the terror group’s strongholds, an IDF official said Thursday. – Agence France-Presse

In the last few weeks, the IDF has advanced past the Litani River in Lebanon and is now approaching the Zaharani River. With the Zaharani River only six kilometers away, and Nabatieh only three kilometers away, Hezbollah has become concerned about a new IDF advance and has reinforced those areas. – Jerusalem Post

In Israel, the commander of the Lebanese army, General Rudolf Heikal, is being accused of cooperating with Hezbollah, Kan News reported Thursday evening. – Arutz Sheva

Korean Peninsula

Former President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea was convicted on Friday of ordering military drones to fly over North Korea in an attempt to escalate tensions on the divided Korean Peninsula and manufacture a pretext for declaring martial law. – New York Times

Arriving to cast her vote in South Korea’s local elections, Yoomi Lee was surprised to find the polling station had run out of ballot papers, turning the quick stop she had planned into an hours-long wait and quarrels with election officials. – Reuters

Industrial action by South Korean truck drivers tasked to transport concrete is raising concerns over possible ​delays to major semiconductor plant expansion projects by ‌Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, South Korean media reported on Friday. – Reuters

U.S. and South Korean officials discussed strengthening nuclear deterrence and readiness against North Korea’s growing ​weapons programme on Thursday, South Korea’s defence ministry said, at talks in Seoul under their ‌Nuclear Consultative Group (NCG). – Reuters

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un sent a congratulatory ​message to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Russia’s ‌National Day, voicing full support for Moscow’s domestic and foreign policies, state media KCNA said on Friday. – Reuters

South Asia

Three Indian sailors were killed in a U.S. operation to enforce its blockade of Iran, an Indian official said Thursday, the first reported deaths from the American effort to starve its foe of petrodollars and force it to make a deal to end the war. – Wall Street Journal

The United Nations said on Thursday that 13 civilians were killed in airstrikes this week in eastern Afghanistan, as Pakistan claims that it was targeting militant camps along the long border between the countries. – New York Times

Pakistan’s government will propose a budget on Friday that hits the middle class and registered businesses as it ​seeks to raise revenue and cut spending while shielding the nation’s poorest. – Reuters

Bangladesh unveiled a 9.38 trillion taka ($77 billion) national budget on Thursday, targeting 6.5% economic growth and 7.5% inflation as the government seeks to revive an ​economy strained by high prices, weak investment and financial sector fragility. – Reuters

India bought oil from Russia 2022 onwards because it was cheap and available, and did so at the request of the US to keep global oil prices low, India’s foreign minister S. Jaishankar said. – Bloomberg

Brahma Chellaney writes: For years, Indian reformers looked to American models such as the Goldwater-Nichols Reorganization Act for inspiration. Today, however, the most relevant example may lie closer to home. Japan has demonstrated that democratic oversight and military professionalism are not competing objectives. Properly structured, they reinforce one another. If India hopes to build genuinely integrated theater commands and prepare for the demands of a future conflict, it must finally move beyond the institutional assumptions that shaped its civil-military system in the late 1940s. The country does not need less civilian control. It needs a more sophisticated understanding of what civilian control actually means. On that question, nuclear India may have something important to learn from pacifist Japan. – The Hill

Europe

This Alpine nation has long relied on its geography to keep the world at bay. But with its valleys filling up, some here are pushing to replace natural barriers with something even more unyielding: a population cap. – Wall Street Journal

The U.K. defense secretary quit Thursday in protest over what he said was the government’s refusal to materially increase military spending, laying bare the challenges that some of Europe’s biggest economies face as they try to give priority to defense. – Wall Street Journal

NATO’s top military commander ​on Thursday highlighted ‌the importance of battlefield data processing ​in modern warfare, ​pointing to conflicts in ⁠Ukraine and ​the Middle East. – Reuters

Wars in the Middle East and Ukraine are set to dominate next week’s Group of Seven summit, as host France crafts an agenda aimed at projecting unity and avoiding confrontation with U.S. President Donald Trump. – Reuters

Greek judges on Thursday ordered the detention pending trial of a Palestinian accused of being part of a Hamas-linked network plotting attacks ​on Israeli targets in Europe and Asia, legal and police sources said. – Reuters

Pope Leo appealed to world leaders ​on Thursday to treat migrants more humanely, warning in a visit to Spain’s Canary Islands, one of Europe’s migration hotspots, that history would condemn those ‌who allowed people fleeing war or poverty to suffer. – Reuters

Two days of anti-immigration violence in Northern Ireland is nothing short of racist thuggery, ‌Britain’s minister for the province said on Thursday, after police deployed water cannon and plastic bullets to tackle rioters for a second night. – Reuters

Despite warnings from the EU, Serbia’s government has granted citizenship to four times as many Russian nationals as to all other foreign citizens combined this year — including individuals under international sanctions, an RFE/RL investigation has found. – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty

German and Spanish companies involved the now-defunct Future Combat Air System program are appealing to their respective governments to keep funding sixth-generation fighter jet expertise gained under the developmental effort. – Defense News

Editorial: The resignations are a jolting repudiation of the government by officials who best understand the threats Britain is facing. Germany’s army chief warned Thursday in an interview with Politico that “all 32 NATO partners agree that Russia might have the capability to invade a NATO partner country in 2029.” Let’s hope the resignations awaken our friends in London about the peril they face, lest they have to write another chapter in “while England slept.” – Wall Street Journal

Martin Ivens writes: Britain’s allies will try to be polite, but Healey’s resignation makes the summit an impending humiliation. The Trump administration, already engaged in a war of words with the UK government over immigration, will not spare his blushes. As for a reset, the European Commission and member states will fail to see the urgency of concluding a deal with a man on his way out. A robust defense and security policy was supposed to be Starmer’s legacy. It looks more like a millstone now. The problem with Healey’s resignation is that it has revealed that even the most stolid colleagues don’t believe the Starmer stump speeches. His word is not his bond and that is fatal. – Bloomberg

Alina Polyakova writes: The upside for the Western alliance is clear: an adaptable, scalable, and conflict ready defense industrial base is within reach, but it will not be seized by spending alone. It requires joint procurement frameworks and common technical standards so that allied platforms can communicate and share data from day one. It requires investment in the interoperable digital infrastructure that makes real-time battlefield awareness possible across borders. And it requires unlocking private capital — venture investment, public-private partnerships, and reformed regulatory frameworks that treat defense tech as the strategic priority it is. Above all, it means integrating defense innovation from Ukraine as the foundation for NATO’s future force. – Center for European Policy Analysis

Sofia Slonovska writes: Russia would understand that certain actions automatically generate specific costs, NATO governments would no longer have to improvise responses on a case-by-case basis, and, most importantly, individual incidents would be viewed as part of a broader campaign rather than disconnected events. The response to incidents like Galați would not focus on whether Russia had intentionally targeted Romania, but on how it fits into a larger pattern of Russian shadow warfare. NATO’s response requires more than expressions of concern but a coherent framework capable of deterring the next violation before it occurs. – Center for European Policy Analysis

The Americas

As a teenager, Keiko Fujimori served as first lady to her father, Alberto, an iron-fisted ruler eventually imprisoned for extrajudicial killings. Now, she is following her father into Peru’s presidency as the latest right-wing leader to win power in Latin America. – Wall Street Journal

Canada heeded a U.S. request to delay the opening of a new multibillion-dollar bridge aimed at alleviating the traffic congestion on North America’s busiest land crossing, in a move that Prime Minister Mark Carney said was largely unrelated to brewing trade tensions between the North American partners. – Wall Street Journal

The Trump administration has put on hold a deal by a Florida energy trading company to send to Cuba one of the largest cargoes of fuel from the United States in decades. – New York Times

An investigation into shots fired at the U.S. consulate in Toronto in March erupted into a shootout in the city early on Thursday, leaving a police officer dead, a suspect wounded and another man being pursued, the authorities said. – New York Times

Hundreds of relatives with loved ones ​among Mexico’s near-135,000 missing people marched in Mexico City on Thursday, using the inauguration of the FIFA World Cup ‌to rally support and call out what they described as a lack of government action. – Reuters

The Canadian minister responsible for Canada-United States ​trade Dominic LeBlanc said ‌on Thursday that there will be bilateral deals with the ​U.S. along with the ​review of the trilateral free ⁠trade pact. – Reuters

Two Guatemalan nationals pleaded guilty in a Texas ​federal court on Thursday to human smuggling charges stemming from the December 2021 crash of ‌a tractor-trailer in Mexico that killed 55 of the 160-plus migrants packed inside. – Reuters

The European Union and Brazil are signing a digital partnership, as the bloc seeks to deepen ties with more countries ​and reduce its reliance on U.S. technology, Henna Virkkunen, the European Commission ‌tech chief, said on Thursday. – Reuters

Gunmen shot and killed a journalist Thursday in Mexico’s eastern state of Veracruz, authorities said. It was the country’s second killing of a media worker this year — both of them in Veracruz, known as exceptionally dangerous for journalists. – Associated Press

A fatal ambush on a Toronto police officer executing a raid on Thursday morning has been directly tied to a national security investigation involving an Iranian-backed terrorist network operating on Canadian soil, Global News reported. – Arutz Sheva

Richard Marceau writes: The Canadian covenant means that all Canadians should be treated by the same rules and standards no matter where they come from. As the Prime Minister rightly said, when the “covenant fails for one of our communities, it fails us all.” For the sake of all Canadians, and especially the Jewish community that is suffering the highest levels of antisemitism since World War II, the covenant must be restored immediately. Not with another committee or another carefully worded statement. But with courage, enforcement, accountability, and the moral clarity this moment demands. – Jerusalem Post

Cybersecurity

South Korean authorities have fined Coupang around $410 million after one of the country’s worst data-breach cases. – Wall Street Journal

When SpaceX starts trading this week, one group will be noticeably absent from the frenzy: investors from China and Hong Kong. They are also likely to miss out on the upcoming initial public offering for OpenAI. – New York Times

Israeli firm BlackCore, suspected of interfering in France’s local elections in March, is also suspected of meddling in elections ‌in New York City and Scotland, and operating in Angola and Togo, France’s disinformation detection service, Viginum, said on Thursday. – Reuters

Vietnamese police have busted a group suspected of trying to establish a large-scale online scam centre in the country, ​authorities said on Friday, as criminal networks spread their operations across ‌Southeast Asia. – Reuters

In Canadian leader Mark Carney’s head-turning speech at Davos in January, he made almost a throwaway call for middle powers to ensure they aren’t “forced to choose between hegemons and hyper-scalers” on AI development. – Bloomberg

OpenAI’s threat intelligence team tracked what it believes are two distinct clusters of activity online from groups with ties to China and posting content seemingly designed to stoke anger around divisive topics like AI and data centers. – Cyberscoop

Federal prosecutors have charged a Russian national with conspiracy to commit unauthorized computer access in connection with a sprawling cyber-espionage campaign linked to the Russia-aligned threat group Void Blizzard, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court this week. – Cyberscoop

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore announced Wednesday that Michael Boyce, a former federal technologist who oversaw the adoption of artificial intelligence at key agencies, will join the state as its new senior advisor for responsible AI. – Statescoop