Financial Times - Mai Khaled and Heba Saleh / Gazans vent anger against Hamas
 

• Palestinians in Gaza are increasingly willing to voice their anger against Hamas, accusing the militant group of failing to anticipate Israel’s ferocious retaliation for its October 7 attack that sparked the devastating six-month war. 

• Hamas rules Gaza with a tight grip, but as Israel’s offensive has reduced the enclave to rubble, killed tens of thousands and brought the population close to famine, residents such as Nassim — a retired civil servant — have begun speaking out against the Islamist group. 

• “They should have predicted Israel’s response and thought of what would happen to the 2.3mn Gazans who have nowhere safe to go,” Nassim told the Financial Times from the southern city of Rafah, which teems with internally displaced families from across the shattered territory. “They [Hamas] should have restricted themselves to military targets.” 

• Mohammed, another Gazan, went further by directly blaming Yahya Sinwar — the leader of Hamas in Gaza and the mastermind of October 7 — for the devastation that Israel’s offensive has wrought in the strip.

   

The Washington Post - Rebecca Tan, Regine Cabato and Laris Karklis / Asia’s next war could be triggered by a rusting warship on a disputed reef

• In the most hotly contested waterway in the world, the risk of Asia’s next war hinges increasingly on a ramshackle ship past her time, pockmarked with holes, streaked with rust and beached on a reef. 

• To buttress its claims in the South China Sea, the Philippines in 1999 deliberately ran aground a World War II-era landing ship on a half-submerged shoal, establishing the vessel as an outpost of the Philippine navy. 

• The BRP Sierra Madre, which has remained on Second Thomas Shoal ever since, has now become the epicenter of escalating tensions between the Philippines and China — and a singular trip wire that could draw the United States into an armed conflict in the Pacific, say officials and security analysts. 

• China claims the vast majority of the South China Sea and, in recent months, has ramped up efforts to prevent the Philippines from providing supplies to personnel aboard the Sierra Madre.

   

Politico - Stuart Lau, Camille Gijs and Coen Verhelst / EU pulls its gun on China
 

• Europe's phoney war with China is at an end. After years of building up an improved arsenal for a trade war, Europe is now showing it is willing to get tough on Beijing. On Tuesday, EU investigators swooped on the Dutch and Polish offices of Nuctech, a maker of security scanners, in a case that hinges on one of Europe's longest running grievances with China — lavish state subsidies that help Chinese firms undercut European rivals.
  Nuctech was once run by Hu Haifeng, son of President Xi Jinping's predecessor, Hu Jintao, and China's reaction was predictably seething. 

• The raid "highlights the further deterioration of the EU's business environment and sends an extremely negative signal to all foreign companies," China's mission to the EU fumed.
  Related article: Financial Times - Christian Davies and Song Jung-a / China’s EV supply chain dominance risks ‘collapse’ of US subsidies, warns South Korea
  China’s control over a crucial battery material will make it nearly impossible for any electric-vehicle makers to qualify for the subsidy scheme at the heart of President Joe Biden’s flagship green tech legislation, South Korea has warned.  Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act seeks to eliminate “foreign entities of concern” — which include companies with close ties to Beijing — from the US EV supply chain, with restrictions due to come into force on January 1 2025.

• But Chinese companies control more than 99 per of the global market for battery-grade graphite and 69 per cent of the market for synthetic graphite used in battery anodes, according to consultancy Benchmark Minerals Intelligence. 

• Without an exemption to the FEOC rules for battery makers to secure graphite from Chinese suppliers, it is possible that no vehicles will qualify for the generous tax credits that the Biden administration is offering EV buyers, Ahn Duk-geun, South Korea’s minister of trade, industry and energy, told the Financial Times.

   

Bloomberg - Ellen Milligan / Britons Finally Taste Full Brexit as Costly Border Checks Begin
 

• Ministers have delayed the change multiple times, wary of stoking inflation in a cost-of-living crisis and knowing that any repeat of empty supermarket shelves — caused in recent times by everything from climate change to a shortage of truck drivers — would be politically toxic. 

• But almost eight years after the 2016 Brexit referendum, companies and consumers are about to experience close to the end result. 

• Danish Crown, which exports 1,000 tons of bacon a week to the UK, said it has been preparing for the checks for a long time. With no prospect of walking away from its most important bacon market, the company is confident of making it work, Lars Albertsen, the company’s UK managing director, told Bloomberg. “We’ve exported bacon to the UK for 130 years, it’s part of our DNA,” he said. 

• Virtually all pork imported by the UK comes from the EU, much of it from Denmark and farms like Allan Gammelgaard’s. On his 1,730 acres (700 hectares) in Odder, about two hours’ drive north of the abattoir in Blans, the 43-year-old rears about 43,000 pigs a year for Danish Crown.

Our opinion reads for today:

• Al-Jazeera - Doudou Pierre Festile and Micherline Islanda Aduel / Another foreign intervention will not solve the crisis in Haiti 

• Foreign Affairs - Sheri Berman / Tyrants of Industry 

• Project Syndicate - Carl Bildt / Trump Is Putin’s Only Hope Now 

• Financial Times - Paul Tucker / A message to economists: geopolitics matters too