Like many Israelis, Bronx-born Eli Knoller, who has dual citizenship and lives in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank, hopes the next American president allows Israel to “finish the job” against Hamas in Gaza, where his son was killed in battle.

Abduljabbar Alqam, a Palestinian American who lives just a few miles away, is horrified by what he calls U.S. complicity in the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza.

But they have at least one thing in common: Neither planned to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris. Mr. Alqam believes the Biden administration has been too supportive of Israel and the war in Gaza; Mr. Knoller believes it has not been supportive enough.

In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, tens of thousands of U.S. citizens live on opposing sides of one of the world’s most entrenched conflicts, and many are bitterly disappointed with the Biden administration’s approach to Israel’s war in Gaza, triggered by the deadly Hamas-led attack on Israel last October.

Opinion polls show that Israelis largely support former President Donald J. Trump, fondly recalling his near-unreserved support for a country now facing increasing international isolation, while many Palestinians are frustrated with President Biden’s backing for Israel and see little difference between the two candidates. Their frustrations reflect the wider discontent over the war in Gaza across the American political spectrum.

“The Democrats need to lose, and they need to know that one of the biggest reasons they lost is their stance on Israel,” said Mr. Alqam, 37, who planned to vote for the Green Party candidate, Jill Stein. “It’s about making a statement.”

The war in Gaza has confounded the final year of Mr. Biden’s presidency, creating a rift inside his party and exposing American weakness in the Middle East. His envoys have shuttled around the region for months trying in vain to clinch a cease-fire deal.

How his successor will affect the conflict is far from clear. Mr. Trump took staunch pro-Israel stances during his term, including a proposed peace plan that strongly favored Israeli demands over Palestinian ones. But he has also called on Israel to wind down the war.

Ms. Harris has mostly stuck to President Biden’s views: backing Israel’s right to self-defense while pressing for a deal to end the war and release the hostages held in Gaza. She has taken a stronger tone on Palestinian suffering, but has not signaled a markedly different approach if elected.

Estimates vary widely, but at least 150,000 Americans live in Israel, which has a population of roughly 10 million, according to the U.S. government. Roughly 60,000 live in Israeli settlements in the West Bank — which much of the international community deems illegal — making them roughly 15 percent of the settler population, according to Sara Yael Hirschhorn, a lecturer at Haifa University.

Thousands of Palestinian Americans also live in the West Bank, though there are no official statistics.

Generations of Palestinians have ferried back and forth between the United States, where they are equal citizens under the law, and the West Bank, where they are subject to Israel’s two-tiered system. Israeli law gives settlers all the rights of their neighbors in Israel proper, while Palestinians in the West Bank — U.S. citizens or not — live under Israeli military occupation, with far fewer rights.

Kory Bardash, the co-chairman of Republicans Overseas Israel, lives in Efrat, a settlement with many Americans, where he coached Little League baseball. Over the past year, the United States has projected impotence rather than decisiveness in the Middle East, which is bad for Israel, he said.

“Under the current administration, the players in this neighborhood sense weakness,” said Mr. Bardash, who canvassed for Mr. Trump.

A handful of settlers, pointing to Mr. Trump’s often unpredictable political zigzags, still support Ms. Harris, including Herzl Hefter, an American-born Orthodox rabbi who lives in Efrat. He said at least some of his neighbors shared his misgivings over what he called Mr. Trump’s “moral rot” but had nonetheless decided to “hold their nose and vote for Trump.”

“But it doesn’t mean that in this policy or that policy, maybe Trump would be better,” said Mr. Hefter, 67. “It’s really impossible to know, because he’s totally unreliable and crazy.”

A few miles north of Jerusalem, thousands of Palestinian Americans live in towns where many split their time between the Middle East and the United States. In Turmus Aya, a quiet, relatively prosperous village close to Ramallah, Americans make up a large part of the population, particularly in the summer, when expatriates pack into the town, towing their children for monthslong visits.

Mr. Alqam, who was born in New Jersey, spent several childhood years living in Turmus Aya. In 2023, he and his wife moved back from Louisiana so his three children would connect with their roots and learn Arabic — although many children in Turmus Aya prefer to chatter together in English.

Returning from abroad brought Mr. Alqam again face-to-face with the maze of Israeli restrictions on Palestinians across the West Bank, which Israel says are necessary to prevent further militant attacks. He sought to reassure his children that their U.S. passports might protect them regardless.

“In America, we would have equal rights. But in this country, they have superiority, more rights, more protection, more safety,” said Mr. Alqam, referring to Jewish Israelis.

Two weeks after their arrival, Jewish extremists stormed into their hometown, torching homes in retaliation for a Palestinian attack earlier that day that had killed four Israelis. One of the town’s residents was fatally shot during the clashes.

Mr. Alqam conceded that Israeli hard-liners might be further emboldened if Mr. Trump was elected, potentially moving to annex the West Bank. But he said the situation was rapidly getting worse either way — making it important to first change attitudes in the United States.

“I’m willing to take four years of a little bit more suffering in order to hopefully change something bigger,” Mr. Alqam said, referring to a potential Trump victory.

Some Palestinians do support Ms. Harris, while acknowledging frustration with her on Gaza. Hakeem Asheh, a Palestinian American living in the West Bank city of Nablus, said he was willing to “give Harris a chance.”

“The Democratic Party is changing its views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There’s a new vision,” said Mr. Asheh, who worked as a drugstore manager in Connecticut before returning to Nablus a decade ago. “I doubt Harris will implement it — but over time, that might change.”

But it is unclear how much either candidate would influence Israel, where many view the ongoing wars as existential conflicts.

Mr. Knoller, 60, moved to Karnei Shomron, a settlement in the northern West Bank which, like Efrat, was built up in part by American immigrants. In July, his son Nadav, 30, was killed while on a third tour of reserve duty in Gaza, leaving behind a wife and 18-month-old son.

For Mr. Knoller, the decision to vote for Mr. Trump was simple.

If Ms. Harris is elected, the United States will probably “pressure Israel to possibly reach a cease-fire and release thousands of Hamas terrorists” in exchange for Israeli hostages held in Gaza, he said. “That’s something I can’t support.”

As she surveyed her home in Hong Kong, Liu Lanhua tried not to be bothered that her narrow kitchen doubled as the family’s only bathroom.

Colanders, pans and hairbrushes dangled above the toilet. Jars of chili oil were precariously balanced on water pipes. A stew of chicken wings and chestnuts warmed on an electric stove a few feet from the shower faucet.

She and her 12-year-old daughter are among 220,000 people in Hong Kong living in subdivided homes, which have long been among the starkest examples of the city’s vast income inequality.

Now her home is under threat. Hong Kong’s leader, John Lee, last month announced that the city would impose minimum standards on the size and fixtures of such apartments. The policy is expected to phase out more than 30,000 of the smallest subdivided homes.

In Ms. Liu’s home, there was no space for a sink; the only spot for two pet turtles was in a basin under the fridge. “If we had money, these would be in separate rooms,” she said, looking at the cluttered kitchen and toilet.

Beijing has urged the Hong Kong government to get rid of subdivided units and other tiny homes by 2049, because it regards the city’s housing shortage as one cause of the antigovernment unrest of 2019.

But Mr. Lee’s plan has raised concerns among experts and advocates of more public housing, who say it would raise already high rents for the poor and evict a number of people without clear plans for their resettlement. It also doesn’t address the worst types of housing in the city: rental bed spaces so small they are known as coffin, or cage, homes.

Of Slums and Slumlords

Hong Kong’s subdivided homes, created when apartments are carved into two or more units, are usually in old tenement buildings in densely packed, working-class neighborhoods. Despite their often dilapidated conditions, the units are in high demand because affordable housing is in short supply.

Hong Kong has among the world’s most expensive homes, and highest rents. The average living space per person is 64.6 square feet — less than half the size of a New York City parking space. Owners of tenement apartments partition the units into smaller ones to rent them to more people.

“These are effectively slums and the landlords are slumlords,” said Brian Wong, a researcher at the Liber Research Community, an independent group in Hong Kong focused on land use and urban issues.

He added that the landlords who rent out subdivided units are often upper-middle-class residents looking to maximize profits. Paradoxically, the rent price of such units, on a per-square-foot basis, is usually higher than that of larger private apartments.

Ms. Liu pays $500 a month for her home of about 80 square feet, about a quarter of what she earns working at a construction site. Her unit is in a 60-year-old tenement building with peeling pink and yellow paint in Kwun Tong, a district in east Kowloon that was once an industrial heartland, with cotton mills and a soy sauce factory.

“I will live where it’s cheap,” she said, adding that she wanted to pay for after-school classes for her daughter. She has been waiting for six years to move into public housing but has no idea when that might happen.

Ms. Liu and her daughter sleep on bunk beds in the 60-square-foot main room, pushed against windows that are covered with paper for privacy and always closed to keep rats out. Ms. Liu appreciates that her neighbors don’t complain when her belongings spill into common spaces.

Kwun Tong is the most densely populated district in Hong Kong, and the poorest. People are drawn to it for its connectivity and services. Ms. Liu moved there six years ago to take a housekeeping course. Her daughter rides two stops on the subway to attend public school and studies with a tutor nearby until dinnertime. Their apartment is close to a large wet market.

The Hong Kong Leader’s Plan

Ms. Liu’s home would not meet the standards required under the policy outlined by Mr. Lee, the city’s chief executive, which stipulates that each home must have a separate bathroom and kitchen. It would likely require significant renovation or remodeling.

The policy also calls for apartments to be at least 86 square feet and come with windows.

Ms. Liu’s bathroom and stove are in a narrow cubicle that is slightly more than 20 square feet, separated from the main room by a common hallway. There is one faucet but no shower cubicle or sink, so she soaks ingredients in a bowl on the floor. The fridge faces the toilet.

Merged toilet and kitchen setups like this are common in subdivided apartments. Some apartments come only with toilets or kitchens that are shared with other households.

The government estimates that 30 percent of the city’s 110,000 subdivided homes will fall short of the new standards.

The Housing Bureau said in a response to questions from The New York Times that the rules were needed to improve living conditions. It said it would inspect apartments and that landlords could face prison time for not complying with the rules.

The bureau also said that landlords would have a few years to renovate their units to meet the standards, and register them in a centralized system.

Plan Leaves Much to be Desired

At a recent meeting between social workers with the Kwun Tong Subdivided Home Concern Group, a nonprofit, and residents of the district, questions were raised about the government’s plan. What are the standards for a proper toilet? If rents go up, will the government provide tenants with subsidies? Will those evicted be given priority in housing wait-lists?

“The standards have been raised but our finances haven’t,” said Moon Tang, a mother of three. She also wondered what would happen to people if they were evicted. “If they had money, they would have rented a more expensive space in the first place,” she said. “Where do they go?”

In its emailed response to questions, the Housing Bureau said the government would “adopt a gradual and orderly approach” to the changes and would help residents “where necessary.” Most affected tenants would be able to turn to an increased supply of permanent and temporary public housing apartments by the time the rules come into force in the coming years, it said.

Experts note, however, that the new policy also fails to address problems faced by those living in “cage homes” or “coffin homes” — bed spaces separated by wired metal or panels of wood. (Such spaces are regulated by a separate law.)

Siu Ming Chan, an assistant professor at the City University of Hong Kong who researches poverty and housing, said the rules could lead to a rise in rents, making apartments even more unaffordable. The government should increase subsidies for those affected by the policy, many of whom are older and live alone, he added.

Ben Shek, 68, a former technician who lives alone in a 60-square-foot Kwun Tong apartment that would likely be considered substandard, does not want to move. He suffered a stroke more than a decade ago that left him with a limp and unable to work. He shares a bathroom with two other families, inside a carpentry workshop. He likes his place because it is on the ground floor, making it easy for him to get around.

“Since I’m not working anymore, I don’t get to have too many expectations,” he said. “And even if I did, they can’t be too high.”

The Biden administration’s support for Israel in the war in Gaza has been divisive for left-leaning voters in the United States, including many Arab Americans, and some say it has soured them on Vice President Kamala Harris’s candidacy.

Many in Gaza share that anger over the United States’ willingness to keep shipping weapons to Israel to carry out its campaign against Hamas despite the death and devastation in Gaza. But in interviews across the territory, many said they were skeptical that either Ms. Harris or former President Donald J. Trump would do much to improve their situation.

“I am fearful that both candidates are for the same thing, which is no end in sight for the war in Gaza,” said Abdul Kareem al-Kahlout, 35, a math teacher in Deir al Balah.

The war began after the militant group Hamas led the Oct. 7 terror attack that Israeli authorities say killed about 1,200 people in Israel. Since then, the Israeli military’s bombardment and ground operations in Gaza have killed more than 43,000 people, according to local authorities, a figure that includes Hamas fighters. The war has pushed the remaining population to the brink of famine and left much of the territory in ruins.

Many people interviewed in Gaza said they were more focused on keeping themselves and their loved ones alive after more than a year of war. They have had little access to electricity or the internet, or to adequate food and medicine, so they have not had much time to follow American politics.

“I have no preference,” said Mohammed Owaida, 33, who is from Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. “We only need one thing: for this war to come to an end. We are exhausted. Whoever wins and can do that, I support.”

Across the border, polls show that Israelis overwhelmingly view Mr. Trump as the candidate who best serves their country’s interests, an opinion based largely on the sense that his first term in office brought benefits to Israel. While a Harris win would offer a sense of continuity at a turbulent time, many Israelis assume it would come with more criticism of Israeli policies toward Palestinians.

Mr. Trump took staunch pro-Israel stances during his term, including a proposed peace plan that strongly favored Israeli demands over Palestinian ones. But he has also called on Israel to wind down the war. Ms. Harris has mostly stuck to President Biden’s views: backing Israel’s right to self-defense while pressing for a deal to end the war and release the hostages held in Gaza.

Israelis generally believe that whoever wins, there won’t be a serious change in relations with the United States, their most important ally. And many in Gaza agreed, saying it was unlikely that the United States would waver in its support for Israel.

Lina Rabah, 36, said she thought American leaders viewed the people of the Gaza Strip as little more than “a chess piece on their board.”

“All I want is for the United States to see us as humans, not just as numbers in a long conflict,” said Ms. Rabah, who has three children.

“If either Trump or Harris truly values human life and human rights, then they must use their power — not remarks or speeches to the media — to press for an immediate cease-fire,” she said.

Rima Swaisi, a journalist from Gaza City who works for Wafa, the official news agency of the Palestinian Authority, said she thought Ms. Harris was more likely to pursue an end to the war than Mr. Trump, who has been a strong supporter of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. She called Ms. Harris the “less worse” option, and said she would never forget that Mr. Trump “gave Jerusalem to Israel” by moving the U.S. Embassy to that city from Tel Aviv in 2017, in a break with decades of American policy.

“If we have to choose between the two devils, then anyone but Trump,” she said. Of Ms. Harris, she said: “I just hope she wins and most importantly does something differently toward the Palestinian people.”

But some in Gaza said the election did not present Palestinians with a less bad option.

Hanin Ashour, 33, said she had lost four family members since the war began, including two young children: Mariam, 8 months, and Omar, 2. American officials have often talked about human rights, she said, but now she blames them for the deaths of her loved ones.

She has become so disgusted by U.S. policies, she said, that she will not even use humanitarian aid from American organizations. To her, the idea of pinning her hopes on an American politician is absurd.

“I cannot even eat anything that comes from the country that killed my innocent family members,” she said. “So what — am I supposed to wait to hear from U.S. presidents who support Israel with missiles? How am I supposed to listen to them?”

Isabel Kershner contributed reporting from Jerusalem.

Britain’s Conservative Party made history last weekend, becoming the country’s first major party to elect a Black woman as leader.

And yet this milestone was reached not by a party of the progressive center-left but by Britain’s oldest and most traditional conservative political force.

“I’m glad because it shows that my country and my party are actually places where it doesn’t matter who you are or what you look like,” the new leader, Kemi Badenoch, told the BBC on Sunday. After all, the Conservatives have broken glass ceilings before, picking all three of Britain’s female prime ministers, as well as its first leader who wasn’t white, Rishi Sunak.

Now 44, Ms. Badenoch was born in London and raised in Nigeria, returning to Britain when she was 16. In her first parliamentary speech, in 2017, she declared, “To all intents and purposes, I am a first-generation immigrant.”

She will now lead a party that has struck an increasingly harsh tone on immigration, a shift that mirrors her own changed views on the subject.

Her rise to the top echelon of British politics is the result partly of determination, hard work and a fearlessness that have helped her survive the at times brutal infighting within her party in recent years. Claire Coutinho, a fellow Conservative lawmaker, wrote on social media that “Kemi’s fierce intellect and love of Britain will make her an excellent leader.”

But she has also benefited from good fortune and a concerted effort by the former Prime Minister David Cameron to diversify the Conservative Party almost two decades ago.

“The reason she has been able to advance so rapidly through the party is the politics that David Cameron put in place — because he felt that the Conservative Party didn’t look enough like modern Britain,” said Robert Ford, a professor of political science at the University of Manchester.

The irony is that Mr. Cameron’s brand of liberal Conservatism has ended up benefiting Ms. Badenoch, a staunch opponent of so-called “woke” diversity policies. Mr. Cameron’s deliberate recruitment of parliamentary candidates who were female and not white “is the kind of thing she is scathingly critical of,” Professor Ford added.

Plain-speaking and sometimes antagonistic, Ms. Badenoch has a reputation for wading into debates on identity politics. Her pitch to become party leader was that she is “Labour’s worst nightmare because they can’t portray me as prejudiced,” an apparent reference to her racial identity.

Less well scripted were her comments, during the leadership campaign, suggesting that maternity pay was excessive and joking that a minority of civil servants performed so poorly that they should be in jail. Both were seized on by critics as the kind of unforced errors that could prove damaging to the Conservatives if they want to win back centrist voters.

Ms. Badenoch is a “high risk, high return” leader, said Professor Ford. “She is prone to say things that can blow up in her face and is not so quick to row back on them” he said. But on the plus side, he said: “She gets attention.”

Ms. Badenoch was born in 1980 to a mother who was a lecturer in physiology and a father who was a doctor. Her parents were prosperous enough for their eldest daughter, Kemi, to be born in a private hospital in Wimbledon, in southwest London, before returning to Lagos, the Nigerian city where she was raised.

Initially she lived a comfortable life but, after political and economic upheavals, her family’s fortunes declined. Years later, she recalled “doing my homework by candlelight because the state electricity board could not provide power,” and fetching water from a nearby well when the faucets ran dry, because of failures by the nationalized water company. These experiences contributed to her preference for a small state. “I was unlucky enough to live under socialist policies. It’s not something I’d wish on anyone,” she wrote.

At 16, Ms. Badenoch returned to London to stay with friends, working part time at McDonald’s as she studied. She has recalled being disappointed by her teachers’ low expectations but went to Sussex University to study computer systems engineering.

Asked later what formed her Conservative views, Ms. Badenoch pointed to her experience at college “among snotty, middle-class north Londoners” who talked of helping Africans. “These stupid lefty white kids didn’t know what they were talking about,” she said in an interview this year with The Times of London, adding that she believed a campaign to boycott Nestlé over its promotion of infant formula in African countries was ill informed. “That instinctively made me think, ‘These are not my people.’”

Sunder Katwala, the director of British Future, a research institute, described Ms. Badenoch’s rise as “a remarkable personal achievement,” adding that she was “incredibly formed by the experience of being a young Black African woman who comes to Britain, and a lot of that strengthens her to become conservative.” Ms. Badenoch, he said, is very positive about British democracy because she is comparing it to the Nigeria she grew up in — “whether the lights are on or not, or whether you have to pay bribes.”

When Mr. Cameron became leader of the Conservatives in 2005, he concluded that the Tories were “the oldest political party in the world — and we looked it.” Intent on diversifying the party, he oversaw a policy in which party members were encouraged to pick parliamentary candidates from a curated list of candidates, half of whom were female and a large proportion of whom were Black or from ethnic minority backgrounds.

In 2010, Ms. Badenoch, then Kemi Adegoke, ran for election in a pro-Labour district in south London where she unsurprisingly lost. But the campaign brought her close to the man she was to marry, Hamish Badenoch, a privately educated Conservative activist, now a managing director at Deutsche Bank.

In her interview with the Times of London, Ms. Badenoch acknowledged that her reputation for being confrontational extends to home life. “He thinks my capacity to tolerate conflict is too high,” she said of her husband. “He says, ‘You’re the politician in the family and I’m the diplomat.’”

A supporter of Brexit, Ms. Badenoch prospered under three Conservative prime ministers and was promoted to the cabinet in 2022.

Her position on immigration has hardened in recent years. In comments from 2018 that recently resurfaced, she welcomed the Conservative government’s proposal to relax restrictions on visas for skilled migrants. But net migration has trebled since Brexit, and she said she had since changed her mind.

Ms. Badenoch now argues that “numbers matter but culture matters more,” adding that the most important fact was who was coming to Britain and what their values and aspirations were.

She has also been critical of diversity policies. “Many practices have not only been proven to be ineffective, they have also been counterproductive,” she wrote earlier this year.

“She sees critical race theory as very dangerous, and she thinks that Britain’s history on race is very different to America’s and that we don’t want America’s race politics,” Mr. Katwala said.

Part of Ms. Badenoch’s political appeal is her avoidance of the bland platitudes favored by many politicians. But at times her trenchant views have upset some colleagues, and many analysts had assumed that she would fail to make the final shortlist for the Conservative leadership.

Under the rules of the contest, the party’s lawmakers choose the final two candidates before dues-paying party members — around 130,000 people — vote for the winner.

When the lawmakers voted on the final two in October, the favorite, James Cleverly, a more centrist former foreign secretary, was unexpectedly eliminated. That left Ms. Badenoch competing against Robert Jenrick, another right winger.

Analysts think that some of Mr. Cleverly’s supporters lent their votes to Mr. Jenrick to push him into the final runoff instead of Ms. Badenoch, but the tactic backfired.

“One of the reasons she’s leader is that so many of the members of Parliament she now leads were so eager to keep her off the ballot that they ended up knocking off the one they wanted to keep on the ballot,” said Professor Ford. “They tried to be too clever by half.”

The result of that miscalculation is that British politics is entering a new, unpredictable era. While Ms. Badenoch has shown herself prone to occasional gaffes and unpopular opinions that could limit her appeal to the broader electorate, her confidence and energy may create a challenge for Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Some senior Labour lawmakers have also noted that her leadership casts an unflattering light on the relative lack of diversity in their own party’s leadership team. Labour has typically presented itself as more progressive on race issues.

“I think her identity and heritage makes for a very visible symbolic contrast at prime minister’s question time in Parliament: an older white man facing a younger Black woman,” Professor Ford said. “It’s interesting, it’s novel — it will pose new questions for Labour.”

Russia has been plotting to place incendiary devices on cargo planes in Europe and even performed a test run this summer, setting off fires at shipping hubs in Britain and Germany, according to four Western officials briefed on intelligence about the operation.

The effort represents a potentially significant escalation of the Kremlin’s sabotage operations against Western adversaries.

The goal of the plot, orchestrated by Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, is not entirely clear, according to two of the officials, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters. It could have been what ultimately occurred: to set fires with incendiary devices placed at logistics hubs belonging to the package shipping company DHL, perhaps meant to instill fear or deliver a warning.

But Western intelligence agencies are also investigating whether Moscow intended something more ambitious, and menacing, such as destroying planes on American runways, setting off bombs at U.S. warehouses or even blowing up aircraft midair. Officials said that both the U.S. and its European allies were potential targets of the Russian plot.

The operation is an effort by Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, to inflict damage on the West for its support of Ukraine’s military, officials said. The Kremlin’s goal appears to be to shake Western backing for Ukraine or, failing that, exact a price for it.

In the first two years of the war with Ukraine, the Kremlin largely avoided directly provoking Kyiv’s allies, particularly those belonging to NATO, officials said, fearful of a dangerous escalation. Today, any such reticence appears to have dissolved, they said.

“Hostile activity carried out on behalf of the Russian Federation is increasingly taking the form of terrorist activities,” Poland’s domestic intelligence service said in a communiqué published last month.

The Kremlin has denied that its agents engage in sabotage.

The incendiary devices were planted at DHL shipping hubs in Leipzig, Germany, and Birmingham, England, the Western officials said. The fires caused minimal damage and no injuries, they said, but the blazes raised the frightening specter of bombs potentially being loaded on aircraft.

The Wall Street Journal described details of the plot on Monday.

In a statement, DHL, whose global headquarters are in Germany, confirmed “two recent incidents involving shipments in our network.”

“We are fully cooperating with the relevant authorities to protect our people, our network and our customers’ shipments,” the statement said.

Last month, the Polish authorities announced the arrests of four suspects involved in planting the incendiary devices. The country’s National Prosecutor’s Office said the plot had been part of a test run with the ultimate goal of putting explosive devices on planes bound for the United States and Canada, though the Western officials could not confirm this was the intent.

It is possible that Russia wanted the option of eventually blowing up cargo planes flying to or over America. But the officials briefed on the intelligence said that would be a stark change from Russia’s current strategy of “horizontal escalation,” in which Moscow seeks to carefully manage its responses to allied support to Ukraine. Blowing up a plane over the United States, which would revive memories of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, would provoke a strong retaliation from Washington, something Moscow has wanted to avoid.

But Western intelligence agencies have not completely ruled out the possibility that Moscow wants at least the option of carrying out such a provocative attack; that would be especially true if the United States enables Ukraine to strike deeper into Russia or provides Kyiv with more powerful weaponry, something the Biden administration has so far resisted.

Over the last several months the Transportation Security Administration has added “security measures for U.S. aircraft operators and foreign air carriers regarding certain cargo shipments bound for the United States,” a spokesperson for the agency said in a statement to the Times.

A U.S. government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said at this time there was “no current active threat targeting U.S.-bound flights.”

The plot is part of a broader Russian campaign of sabotage in Europe, using vandalism, arson and physical attacks on individuals, officials say.

In February, two assassins suspected of ties to the Russian intelligence services killed a Russian defector in southern Spain. Last spring, U.S. intelligence agencies uncovered a Russian plot to kill the chief executive of a German arms manufacturer. And in Estonia, several people are on trial on charges of committing acts of vandalism at the behest of Russian intelligence operatives, including breaking the car windows of the country’s interior minister.

“The scale of Russia’s attempts to sow discord across Europe and the use of untrained criminals mean that it is very probable that at some point there may be an attack where someone is killed or where a civilian is seriously harmed,” a spokesperson for Estonia’s internal security service said in a statement recently sent to The New York Times.

Officials cautioned that it can be difficult to definitively attribute apparent acts of sabotage to Russia’s intelligence services, in particular when they use local criminal proxies who may not even know whom they’re working for. There have also been cases in which Russian agents, in secret communications with their bosses, have taken credit for events they had nothing to do with, officials said.

The sabotage campaign is being waged almost exclusively by the GRU, officials said. It is an agency that European security officials have long been familiar with. In 2018, operatives from the agency used a highly potent nerve agent in the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal, a GRU defector who was living in Britain.

The agency was behind a similar assassination attempt against a Bulgarian arms manufacturer, as well as explosions at weapons plants in the Czech Republic and a thwarted coup in Montenegro, according to Western security officials.

After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the GRU’s activities in Europe abated somewhat as European countries expelled operatives and limited travel for Russians. But in the past year, the agency has figured out ways to restore its operations.

“The GRU in particular is on a sustained mission to generate mayhem on British and European streets,” Ken McCallum, the director general of Britain’s Mi5, the country’s domestic intelligence service, warned in rare public remarks last month. “We’ve seen arson, sabotage and more. Dangerous actions conducted with increasing recklessness.”

Even so, officials say, it is harder for Russian intelligence services to operate on European territory than it once was. Starting in 2018 and continuing through the start of the war in Ukraine, European countries have expelled hundreds of Russian intelligence officers. A number of deep-cover Russian operatives, called “illegals,” have also been identified and arrested.

This has left the intelligence services, particularly the GRU, increasingly reliant on criminal proxies, often hired over the internet, to carry out acts of sabotage, officials say.

These proxies are relatively inexpensive to use and give Russian intelligence services a degree of deniability. But they are also unreliable and prone to poor discipline that can lead to botched operations.

“They can’t use their own people; they’re having to do with criminal elements,” Richard Moore, the head of Mi6, Britain’s foreign intelligence service, said in public remarks in September. “Criminals do stuff for cash. They are not reliable; they are not particularly professional, and, therefore, usually we are able to roll them up pretty effectively. It’s not amateurish; it’s just a little more reckless.”

“I think the Russian intelligence services have gone a bit feral,” he added.

Mark Walker contributed reporting.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, on Tuesday over differences on the prosecution of the war in Gaza — a risky step at a moment when Israel is fighting on two fronts. The move sparked protests across the country, including a large gathering near the prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem.

Mr. Gallant was pushing for a cease-fire deal in Gaza that would secure the release of hostages held there, and his dismissal removes the main proponent in the Israeli government for such an agreement. Mr. Gallant and Mr. Netanyahu also clashed over domestic political issues, particularly the conscription of ultra-Orthodox Israelis.

Large crowds opposed to Mr. Gallant’s dismissal blocked traffic and lit bonfires on a major highway in Tel Aviv.

Mr. Gallant, 65, had increasingly been viewed as an internal opponent to the prime minister, and he has been a more moderate voice within the government on security issues. Mr. Netanyahu, who announced the decision in a video statement, said “significant gaps on handling the war” emerged between him and Mr. Gallant.

Mr. Gallant said Mr. Netanyahu fired him over three main disagreements: the conscription of ultra-Orthodox Jews, a deal to release hostages and his call for a state commission of inquiry into the security failures surrounding the attack Hamas led on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

“My firm stance is that every military-age person must be enlisted,” Mr. Gallant said in a statement carried live on television. “They must serve in the Israel Defense Forces and defend the State of Israel. This is no longer just a social issue. It is a paramount issue for our security and existence.”

Ultra-Orthodox lawmakers who provide critical support in Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition have opposed sweeping measures to draft their constituents, even as Israeli casualties in Gaza and Lebanon mount. Had Mr. Gallant succeeded in advancing his position, it could have put Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition at risk.

At the conclusion of his remarks, Mr. Gallant saluted Israeli forces, fallen soldiers, the hostages and their families.

The prime minister’s decision comes at an extraordinary moment for Israel. Its military is fighting against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, two groups backed by Iran, and bracing for a possible Iranian attack in a cycle of retaliatory strikes. It is also conducting raids to try to root out Palestinian militants in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Israel’s closest ally, the United States, is voting in a presidential election that could have major implications for the American approach to the war in the Middle East. Mr. Gallant maintained close contact with senior U.S. officials, who often chose to communicate with him instead of Mr. Netanyahu, a dynamic that frustrated the Israeli prime minister. On Monday, Antony J. Blinken, the secretary of state, called Mr. Gallant to discuss the situation in Gaza and Lebanon.

The White House’s National Security Council avoided directly criticizing Mr. Netanyahu for the firing. It said that Mr. Gallant “has been an important partner on all matters related to the defense of Israel” and pledged to “work collaboratively” with the next Israeli defense minister.

Mr. Netanyahu named Israel Katz, the foreign minister with scant security experience, as the new defense minister. Mr. Katz, an ally of the prime minister, is unlikely to stand in the way of Mr. Netanyahu’s approach to cease-fire talks, which critics say have undermined the possibility of a deal. He is also expected to align with the prime minister when it comes to deciding how long to fight in Lebanon and how to respond to threats from Iran.

Mr. Netanyahu said he offered Gideon Saar, a hard-liner, as a replacement for Mr. Katz as foreign minister and to formally bring his small, right-wing party into the coalition. Mr. Saar, a hard-liner and once a virulent critic of Mr. Netanyahu, joined his government in September from the opposition, but his faction didn’t sign a coalition agreement. If Mr. Saar’s party formally joins the coalition, it would give Mr. Netanyahu an extra degree of political stability.

The decision also came as a new national security scandal was unfolding in Israel. The Israeli authorities are investigating a spokesman who has been working over the past year in Mr. Netanyahu’s office and is suspected of illegally obtaining and leaking classified documents to the news media.

Mr. Netanyahu informed Mr. Gallant in a letter dated Nov. 5 that he would end his term as defense minister within 48 hours of receiving the notice.

“More than ever, at the height of a war, complete trust is needed between the prime minister and the defense minister,” Mr. Netanyahu said in the video statement on Tuesday. “In recent months, that trust between the defense minister and I was damaged.”

Mr. Gallant, a member of Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party and the defense minister since 2022, also clashed with the prime minister over legislation seeking the overhaul of the Israeli judiciary and proposals for the future administration of Gaza.

In May, Mr. Gallant warned that the lack of a postwar plan for governing Gaza could force Israel into a permanent military occupation, costing it “in blood and many victims, for no purpose.” His remarks were widely understood as an implicit criticism of Mr. Netanyahu.

In August, Mr. Gallant disparaged Mr. Netanyahu’s declared goal of “total victory” over Hamas in Gaza as “nonsense.”

After more centrist politicians left Mr. Netanyahu’s government in June, Mr. Gallant, who was a senior general in the military, was seen as the main voice of moderation within the government’s decision-making circles.

In June, when relations between Mr. Netanyahu and President Biden appeared to fray after the Israeli prime minister accused the United States of withholding weapons, it was Mr. Gallant who visited Washington to meet with Biden administration officials, affirming his commitment to a cease-fire deal and emphasizing Israel’s appreciation of American support.

Natan Sachs, an expert on Israeli affairs at the Brookings Institution, said the Biden administration had grown to see Mr. Gallant as a critical interlocutor — despite the defense minister’s own hawkish views — as Mr. Netanyahu appeared to fall increasingly under the sway of his hard-line coalition allies.

Mr. Gallant often reflected Israel’s more pragmatic security establishment.

“He was a known quantity, a responsible person and someone who was basically trusted,” said Mr. Sachs. “It’s a loss for the relationship in the short term,” he added.

Israeli critics of Mr. Netanyahu, including many families of hostages captured on the day of the Hamas attack, have argued that the prime minister has prioritized the destruction of Hamas and the killing of its leaders, and even his own political career, over the signing a truce that would allow the captives to be returned.

“I want to say that I did something when the country was falling apart,” said Michal Eshel, 38, one of those demonstrating close to the prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem on Tuesday night. “Those who are supposed to protect us are protecting their seat and their government.”

Addressing Israeli military officers in July, Mr. Gallant called for an investigation into the vulnerabilities and failures in government, military and security circles that allowed the Oct. 7 attack to happen. He acknowledged the inquiry must investigate himself as well as the prime minister. For his part, Mr. Netanyahu has resisted all efforts to form a state commission of inquiry, saying the investigation must wait until after the war.

Even before the war, Mr. Gallant made his disagreements with the prime minister known. He played a pivotal role in long-running protest, social division and disquiet in the military in 2023 over a plan proposed by Mr. Netanyahu to overhaul the Israeli judiciary.

The prime minister nominally fired him for having criticized the pace of the government’s judicial overhaul plan, but reversed his decision shortly after that.

Aaron Boxerman, Natan Odenheimer, Johnatan Reiss and Matthew Mpoke Bigg contributed reporting.

Dozens of teenagers, some as young as 14, had been held for nearly three months in a squalid detention center that houses murder suspects. They faced treason charges and possible death sentences for alleged participation in protests against Nigeria’s government.

But since they were arraigned in a courtroom on Friday, their appearance there shocked people around the country, creating a wave of indignation at their treatment. Videos showed the boys, gaunt and haggard, hastily grabbing crackers handed to them, collapsing or just staring around blankly.

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has since ordered their immediate release and the opening of an investigation into their arrest and ordeal in detention. The authorities have dropped all charges against them.

But the announcements may do little to calm the widespread outrage that has gripped Africa’s most populous country for months, over economic policies adopted by Mr. Tinubu’s administration that Nigerians say are making them hungrier and poorer.

And lawyers, civil society activists and rights organizations say that the boys’ ordeal epitomizes a pattern of arbitrary detention and human rights violations by Nigerian authorities, who seldom face accountability.

Abba Hikima, a lawyer representing the minors, said the government had wanted to make an example of children to deter others from protesting against Mr. Tinubu’s policies.

“Let’s not forget the genesis of the problem: that the government is incapable of tolerating protests against its unpopular measures,” Mr. Hikima said in a telephone interview.

Among the alleged abuses the teenagers endured, lawyers and activists said, were inhumane detention conditions, including malnourishment and jailing them with adults; and charges far out of proportion to their alleged crimes, with possible death sentences that would be incompatible with Nigeria’s children protection law.

In one video, a group of youths is seen scuttling for food as some stand behind a lectern and others sit on the floor. In another, some are lying in the courtroom in Abuja, the capital, and grimacing as lawyers and judges surround them.

“They were supposed to be kept in a juvenile center or children rehabilitation center,” said Isa Sanusi, Amnesty International’s country director in Nigeria. “Not in a place where robbery and murder suspects are detained. They came out famished, emaciated, hungry.”

Nigeria, a country of 220 million people, has been grappling with its worst economic crisis in 30 years. More than 40 percent of its population lives in extreme poverty, on the equivalent of less than $2.15 a day, and many say their ordeal is only getting worse.

The teenagers’ hunger in the courtroom videos mirrored the alarming situation in Nigerian cities and towns. Last week, United Nations’ food agencies labeled the country as one of a handful of “hot spots of very high concern” for hunger, its second-highest ranking for food insecurity, with only Palestine, Sudan, South Sudan, Haiti and Mali faring worse.

Many Nigerians blame Mr. Tinubu, who was elected last year, for devaluing the national currency, the naira, and cutting a popular fuel subsidy that gave Nigerians access to cheap oil but weighed heavily on government coffers for decades.

Thousands of demonstrators, driven mainly by hunger, protested this summer and again this fall, rallying under the hashtag #EndBadGovernance. Some looted businesses and set government buildings on fire.

More than 1,000 people were detained in the aftermath of the protests, according to Amnesty International. Of the 76 defendants who were arraigned on Friday, about 30 were under age 18, Mr. Sanusi said.

Fatima Muhammad, a mother of two boys aged 16 and 18, said her children had been arrested on Aug. 2 while on their way to collect money from a telephone market in Kano, in northern Nigeria, the country’s second largest city.

They were later transferred to a detention center in Abuja, more than 200 miles to the south. The facility’s officials called Ms. Muhammad to demand money for her children’s food, she said. She said she exhausted her savings to visit them in detention, and had to beg for money to feed them.