Bloomberg - Galit Altstein, Fares Alghoul, and Kateryna Kadabashy / Israel Tells People to Leave Rafah as It Weighs Timing of Attack
 

• Israel’s military has begun moving civilians out of Rafah, a possible prelude to a long-expected attack on the Gazan city. 

• The Israel Defense Forces “will act with extreme force against terrorist organizations in your areas of residence,” a spokesman said on X on Monday morning. He urged residents of eastern Rafah to go north to an “expanded humanitarian area” near Khan Younis, another city in Gaza. 

• The move comes after cease-fire talks between Hamas and Israel in Cairo over the weekend seemingly stalled, the main sticking point being the Iran-backed militant group’s insistence that any truce is permanent. Hamas also killed three Israeli soldiers with a rocket barrage on Sunday on the border crossing of Kerem Shalom, one of its worst missile attacks in weeks. 

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has for months said civilians in Rafah would be moved out before any attack. There are more than one million in the city, most of whom fled there after the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in October.
  Related article: The Washington Post - Kareem Fahim and Adela Suliman / Israel shuts down Al Jazeera’s operations, raids Jerusalem office

The New York Times - Roger Cohen / Just How Dangerous Is Europe’s Rising Far Right?
 

• Jordan Bardella, 28, is the new face of the far right in France. Measured, clean-cut and raised in the hardscrabble northern suburbs of Paris, he laces his speeches with references to Victor Hugo and believes that “no country succeeds by denying or being ashamed of itself.” 

• Across Europe, the far right is becoming the right, absent any compelling message from traditional conservative parties. If “far” suggests outlier, it has become a misnomer. Not only have the parties of an anti-immigrant right surged, they have seen the barriers that once kept them out crumble as they are absorbed into the arc of Western democracies. 

• In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who has political roots in a neo-fascist party, now leads Italy’s most right-wing government since Mussolini. In Sweden, the center-right government depends on the fast-growing Sweden Democrats, another party with neo-Nazi origins, for its parliamentary majority. 

• In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders, who has called Moroccan immigrants “scum,” won national elections in November at the head of his Party for Freedom, and center-right parties there have agreed to negotiate with him to form a governing coalition.

   

Politico - Stuart Lau and Clea Caulcutt / Macron meets Xi: Two emperors on the edge of two wars
 

• When Xi Jinping sits down for a state banquet with Emmanuel Macron on Monday, the flowing champagne and glittering chandeliers at the Elysée Palace won't be able to outshine one glaring truth: These two emperors are shaping up to fight. 

• First, Xi — the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong — stands accused by Western governments of helping Vladimir Putin wage war in Ukraine by supplying technology and equipment for the Russian military. 

• Second, the European Union and Beijing are on the brink of a full-blown trade war. Macron has been pushing Brussels to get tough with China over flooding the market with cheap electric vehicles. In return, Xi is threatening to slap tariffs on cognac, a painful gesture that’s left the French president and his homegrown liquor industry with a nasty headache.  

• The Chinese are masters in the art of the diplomatic snub. It’s hard to miss the message to Europe in Xi’s decision to go on from Paris to Serbia later in the week, and then to Hungary to meet Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Both central European countries are sympathetic to Moscow and sources of irritation to the West, especially Brussels (which Xi isn't due to visit at all).

   

Financial Times - Max Seddon, Chris Cook and Anastasia Stognei / Russian finance flows slump after US targets Vladimir Putin’s war machine
 

• A US crackdown on banks financing trade in goods for Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has made it much more difficult to move money in and out of Russia, according to senior western officials and Russian financiers. 

• Moscow’s trade volumes with key partners such as Turkey and China have slumped in the first quarter of this year after the US targeted international banks helping Russia acquire critical products to aid its war effort. 

• A US executive order, implemented late last year, prompted lenders to drop Russian counterparties and avoid transactions in a range of currencies, said western officials and three senior Russian financiers. 

• “It has become harder for Russia to access the financial services that it needs to get these goods,” said Anna Morris, deputy assistant secretary for global affairs at the US Treasury.

Our opinion reads for today:

The Guardian - Jon Henley / Fix Europe’s housing crisis or risk fuelling the far-right, UN expert warns
Financial Times - Martin Sandbu / Authoritarians fear transparency — liberal democracies should embrace it