Daily Discussion - November 27, 2024

Did Russia Use a Chinese Ship to Sabotage Europe’s Data Lines?

Many factors fed into Benjamin Netanyahu’s eventual decision to take up a US-brokered ceasefire and stop Israel’s offensive in Lebanon. His war aims against Hizbollah were also always more modest than the “total victory” he has sought against Hamas in Gaza.But in confronting the many domestic critics of the deal — including far-right government ministers, northern Israeli mayors and opposition figures — Netanyahu calculated that his goals had been largely met, while the risks of pushing on were mounting.“Hizbollah is not Hamas. We cannot totally destr…  Read moreoy it. It was not on the cards,” said Yaakov Amidror, a former national security adviser to Netanyahu who now works at Washington think-tank Jinsa. “Lebanon is too big. Hizbollah is too strong.”This ceasefire deal “is not the dream that many Israelis had”, he said. But Amidror highlighted Israel’s dwindling munition stockpiles and the “pressure” on military reservists who had been fighting for months. “Israel cannot afford another year of war” at its current scale in the north, he said.Israeli officials consistently said their goal was the safe return to their homes of the tens of thousands of northern residents evacuated after Hizbollah began firing on Israel following Hamas’s October 7 attack last year.Officials said this would require pushing Hizbollah fighters back from the Israel-Lebanon frontier and changing the “security reality” along the border.After months of relatively limited exchanges of cross-border fire with Hizbollah, Israel escalated in September, setting off thousands of explosive pagers and walkie-talkies in an audacious covert operation, launching waves of air strikes across Lebanon, and initiating a punishing land invasion of its northern neighbour for the first time in almost two decades.In the span of a few weeks, most of Hizbollah’s leaders, including chief Hassan Nasrallah, were killed, and much of the group’s vast missile and rocket arsenal was destroyed. Israeli warplanes struck Beirut at will, and ground troops ranged across southern Lebanon.

France on the Brink: Budget Battle Threatens Government

French sovereign bonds and stocks fell on Wednesday as concerns intensified among investors that a dispute over a belt-tightening draft budget could bring down Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s government.

The sell-off pushed the gap between 10-year French borrowing costs and those of Germany to as high as 0.9 percentage points, a level not reached since the Eurozone crisis in 2012. It later fell back to 0.86 points.

The benchmark Cac 40 stock index was down 0.7 per cent, the worst performer among major European markets, having earlier dropped more than 1 per cent.

Jefferies’ chief…  Read more European strategist Mohit Kumar said the sell-off was due to “concerns that the current government may not survive the budget”.