Fdd's overnight brief

Israel

The six Israeli hostages recently slain by Hamas spent their final weeks in a narrow tunnel with a ceiling too low for standing, raising concerns about the remaining captives’ chances of survival. – Wall Street Journal

Israel acknowledged Tuesday that its forces had likely shot dead an American citizen near a demonstration last week in the occupied West Bank, leading Secretary of State Antony Blinken to call for “fundamental changes” in the way the Israel Defense Forces operates there, “including changes to their rules of engagement.” – Washington Post

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, called this week for a swift decision on issuing arrest warrants for a top Hamas official in connection with the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel and the Israeli prime minister and defense minister over Israel’s response and conduct of the war in Gaza. – New York Times

Israeli forces are near to fulfilling their mission in Gaza and their focus will turn to the country’s northern border with Lebanon as daily exchanges of fire with Hezbollah take place, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on Tuesday – Reuters

The Israeli military said on Tuesday that it struck senior Hamas commanders who were operating in a command centre embedded inside a designated humanitarian area in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis. – Reuters

Israel proposed giving Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar safe passage out of Gaza in exchange for the group freeing the hostages it holds and giving up control of the strip, a senior official said, even as doubts deepen about the two sides’ ability to reach any cease-fire accord. – Bloomberg

Israel is still interested in normalizing diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, Economy Minister Nir Barkat said, even after plans were derailed by the Oct. 7 assault and the war with Hamas. – Bloomberg

Palestinians took a seat among member states at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, a new right accorded to the Palestinian Authority’s delegation despite not being a full member of the body. – Agence France-Presse

Knesset members Dan Illouz and Zvi Sukkot sent a letter on Tuesday to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, urging him to cancel the gas agreement signed between Israel and Lebanon by the previous government. – Jerusalem Post

President Isaac Herzog will start on state visits to Serbia and Albania on Wednesday, September 11. Although the war and the hostage situation have impacted Herzog’s travel plans over the past year, some state visits have been postponed due to the escalation of hostages being murdered or dying in captivity and the number of fallen soldiers since the start of the war, exceeding 700. – Jerusalem Post

Standing alongside his British counterpart David Lammy in London, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken indicated that a new formula for a hostage deal would be presented to Israel and Hamas in the near future. – Times of Israel

The Israel Defense Forces on Tuesday said it killed a commander in Lebanese terror group Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force with a drone strike deep in Lebanon. – Times of Israel

Salem Alketbi writes: As for Hezbollah, it will most likely settle for skirmishes and propaganda operations at the cost of the blood of its top figures in order to claim that it has made good on its threats against Israel, which no longer feels alarmed by such threats. Instead, the Jewish state has moved to implement another plan to neutralize the terrorist threat from the West Bank after it became convinced of the weakness of the northern menace. – Jerusalem Post

Marc Belzberg writes: Before the Disengagement, Israel controlled Gaza’s borders, ensuring no weapons entered the Strip. However, with the pullout of Israeli troops, the Philadelphi Corridor became exactly what Sharon said it would become: an underground smuggling highway of weapons and bombs from Egypt to Gaza that led to years of bombardment of Sderot and, ultimately, to the invasion and massacre on October 7, 2023. We can’t repeat the same mistake of abandoning the Philadelphi Corridor. – Jerusalem Post

Russia & Ukraine

As the West considers allowing Ukraine to use missiles to strike deeper into Russia, U.S. and European countries are pushing Kyiv to formulate a credible plan for what it can achieve in the next year of the war, officials say. – Wall Street Journal

Russian and Chinese navy ships met in the Sea of Japan on Tuesday to take part in joint drills, the RIA news agency quoted Russia’s defence ministry as saying. – Reuters

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to arrive in Ukraine on Wednesday, where he will meet with senior government officials at what he said was a critical moment for supporting the country in its fight against Russia’s invasion. – Reuters

The head of Norway’s foreign intelligence service believes Russia has become more likely to try and sabotage its infrastructure, such as oil and gas, than a year ago as it becomes bolder in countering Western support for Ukraine. – Reuters

Ukraine’s prosecutor general said on Tuesday that Kyiv suspected a senior Russian air force commander of ordering a missile strike on a children’s hospital in central Kyiv in July that killed two people and caused extensive damage. – Reuters

Ukraine’s top energy official warned that further Russian airstrikes against the country’s energy grid could trigger an emergency at one of the three operating nuclear power plants still under Kyiv’s control. – Bloomberg

The Ukrainian military has begun utilizing first-person-view drones with a thermite spray capability over forested areas where Russian troops and equipment are hiding, a tactic that experts say can be a legitimate weapon of war, but only under strict circumstances. – Defense News

Marc Champion writes: What’s certain is that Putin believes himself to be in a zero-sum conflict with the West, and sees both free-speech protections and the democratic process of choosing leaders as vulnerabilities he can exploit. But let’s not make the same mistake as an aging Cold War spy, believing our chaos and dysfunction are in any significant respect the work of the Kremlin. He’s just egging us on and enjoying the show. – Bloomberg

Korean Peninsula

South Korea’s household borrowing rose in August by the biggest amount in more than three years, led by a record jump in mortgage demand, central bank data showed on Wednesday. – Reuters

French rescue officials said Tuesday they found the bodies of two Italian and two South Korean climbers close to the peak of Mont Blanc on the French side after they went missing over the weekend in bad weather. – Associated Press

Pressure for South Korea to “go nuclear” — to develop its own warheads — is rising here in the face of shrill new challenges from North Korea and grave doubts about Washington’s commitment to defend the South under the next administration. – New York Sun

South Asia

Internet and mobile data services were suspended for five days and an indefinite curfew imposed in some parts of India’s northeastern state of Manipur on Tuesday after student protests over continuing ethnic strife turned violent. – Reuters

India is not “closed to business from China”, but the issue is in which sectors the country does business with Beijing and on what terms, foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said in Berlin on Tuesday. – Reuters

India said on Tuesday it was working to create a nationwide registry of suspected cyber criminals, and that it would crack down on them by deploying about 5,000 “cyber commandos” over the next five years. – Reuters

Pakistani police on Tuesday freed the president of the opposition party of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, a day after he was detained outside parliament on a charge of allegedly inciting violence, his party said. – Associated Press

Christina Lu writes: Still, many challenges loom. No matter how much Beijing and the Taliban expand their economic ties, any efforts to advance the Mes Aynak copper project will still come up against the threat of Islamic State-Khorasan attacks and other security concerns, along with enormous financial risks and legal and regulatory uncertainty—all of which could prove to be too difficult to overcome. Copper prices have also whipsawed in recent months, offering yet another indicator of how difficult the project will be to get off the ground.  – Foreign Policy

Europe

Nine weeks into his new job as Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer suffered his first big parliamentary rebellion on Tuesday, in a vote that exposed unease about his center-left government’s austere tone and focus on belt-tightening. – New York Times

Tariq Ramadan, a prominent Swiss-born scholar of Islam, was found guilty on appeal of raping and sexually coercing a woman in Geneva in 2008, reversing a previous acquittal, the Swiss authorities said on Tuesday. – New York Times

The governments of France, Germany and Britain condemned the transfer of Iranian ballistic missiles to Russia, said they would cancel bilateral air services agreements with Iran and work towards sanctioning airline Iran Air. – Reuters

The transfer of Iranian ballistic missiles to Russia represents a further military escalation and will be met with a “strong response” from the European Union, EU foreign affairs spokesperson Peter Stano said on Tuesday. – Reuters

Germany’s government presented a plan on Tuesday to implement more rigorously European rules on asylum that would see more people turned away at its borders, a day after it announced it would start carrying out controls on all its land borders. – Reuters

Poland will extend the implementation of a buffer zone on its border with Belarus for 90 days, the interior ministry said on Tuesday, adding that the measure had been effective in reducing illegal migration. – Reuters

Sweden appointed Maria Malmer Stenergard as foreign minister on Tuesday, choosing the former migration chief to lead policy on Ukraine just six months after her predecessor helped secure traditionally non-aligned Sweden’s accession to NATO. – Reuters

Italy’s foreign minister Tuesday voiced strong support for Western Balkan countries’ European Union accession bids, saying that otherwise the region could swing towards Russia or China. – Associated Press

The European Union’s top diplomat Josep Borrell warned on Tuesday that increased violence in the occupied West Bank since the Israel-Hamas war erupted meant it risked becoming “a new Gaza.” – Agence France-Presse

The Swiss National Council passed a motion to halt funds for UNRWA, citing its reported incitement to terror and glorification of violence. The motion, passed by a small majority of 99 against 88, was filed already in March, and will have to pass in the confederation’s upper house , the Council of States, to enter into force. – Jerusalem Post

Editorial: The unfortunate truth for Europe is that little of Mr. Draghi’s report is a surprise, even if he’s performed a valuable public service by putting it all in one place. Few of his suggestions will come to fruition until Europe’s politicians—and its voters—decide that gradual economic decline is unacceptable. Europe needs a supply-side growth and economic revival strategy. Reading all of Mr. Draghi’s report, and not only the politically convenient parts, would be a start. – Wall Street Journal

Tom Rogan writes: Starmer is new to his office and still finding his feet. […] In that regard, while maintaining the special relationship might seem easy on paper, with the U.S. heavily focused on China, Trump utterly unpredictable, and the U.K. in need of much improved economic growth, Starmer has his work cut out for him. – Washington Examiner

The Americas

After unveiling plans to slap tariffs on China-made electric vehicles, steel and aluminum, Canada said it is mulling surtaxes on additional Chinese goods such as critical minerals, batteries and semiconductors. – Wall Street Journal

Mexico’s ruling bloc appeared to secure the necessary votes to pass a judicial reform bill on Tuesday evening after an opposition senator dramatically broke party ranks to say he would favor the overhaul, which critics fear threatens the rule of law. – Reuters

Venezuelan presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez will remain a “very clear voice” pushing for change in his country despite fleeing to seek asylum in Spain, exiled opposition members Antonio Ledezma and Leopoldo Lopez told Reuters on Tuesday. – Reuters

A Pakistani man accused of plotting to attack a New York City Jewish center in support of Islamic State was in Canada on a student visa, Canada’s immigration minister said on Tuesday. – Reuters

Nicaragua’s government said on Tuesday it had stripped the nationality of 135 Nicaraguans who were released from prison last week and then deported to Guatemala, and ordered the confiscation of their property. – Reuters

Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness announced on Tuesday that his government will send an initial deployment of 24 military and police personnel to Haiti to support an international security mission aimed at helping it fight powerful gangs. – Reuters

Canada has suspended some 30 permits for arms shipments to Israel, including a rare move against a US company’s Canadian subsidiary’s deal with the US government, the foreign minister said Tuesday. – Agence France-Presse

Editorial: Mr. Biden has declared that the world is locked in a contest between democracy and autocracy, and it is. The Venezuelan strongman, apparently seeing the same high stakes, has been unrelenting in stamping out Venezuela’s courageous democrats. Mr. Biden cannot be any less relentless in defending them. – Washington Post

Eduardo Porter writes: Despite Bukele’s widespread appeal (he won reelection in a landslide in February), Sweden’s V-Dem Institute, which tracks the evolution of democracy around the world, downgraded El Salvador to the status of “electoral autocracy.” Mexico is not quite there, but it has been downgraded to a gray zone on the verge of that class. Maybe once Plan C is firmly in place — the legislation passed the lower house of Congress last week and will now be taken up by the Senate — Mexico will complete its transformation. – Washington Post

Cybersecurity

The European Union’s top court ruled Tuesday that Apple and Google must pay billions in back taxes and antitrust fines, respectively, in two landmark cases that delivered a major win for the bloc’s efforts to regulate U.S. tech giants. – Washington Post

Ukraine’s security service (SBU) has detained a local citizen suspected of setting up surveillance cameras near critical infrastructure facilities, allegedly allowing Russian intelligence to monitor these sites. – The Record

The U.S.-based Free Russia Foundation nonprofit said it is investigating a data breach after thousands of emails and documents supposedly related to its work were published online. – The Record

A high-stakes cat and mouse game between defenders and a sophisticated trio of Chinese cyberespionage groups has continued this year, with the hackers launching a string of attacks on government organizations in Southeast Asia despite attempts to disrupt their activity. – The Record