A previous edition of this article incorrectly stated what Israel had said it would allow at the Kerem Shalom border crossing. It is an inspection of aid shipments, the delivery of aid.
How We Deal with Corrections
— Nick Cumming-Bruce reporting from Geneva
As the war between Israel and Hamas enters its third month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government faces increasing pressure to end its campaign, which has exacted a heavy toll and an unclear exit strategy.
Netanyahu said on Sunday he had recently spoken with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron and other leaders, urging them to continue supporting Israel’s war in Gaza until Hamas is expelled from the territory.
“I told you that, on the one hand, you can’t eliminate Hamas and pressure us to end the war, which would save us from eliminating Hamas,” Netanyahu told his cabinet members in a video statement. .
At home, Netanyahu’s government has been pressured by the families of some 137 hostages left in Gaza to at least ask for a pause in the fighting, but it is unclear what situations Hamas would accept for the release of the hostages. The hostages were released following a week-long ceasefire that began on November 24.
At least 20 hostages were reportedly killed after their abduction, according to Israeli spokesman Eylon Levy, raising concerns about the fate of the others.
Biden’s leadership has publicly subsidized the Israeli government for now, despite criticism, and has denied that it has set a timetable for Israel to end the war. On Friday, the U. S. vetoed a U. N. Security Council solution that would have called for an early ceasefire.
“We didn’t give Israel a deadline for the company; that’s not our role,” Jon Finer, the U. S. deputy national security adviser, said Thursday. “It’s their conflict. “
At least 15,000 Palestinians, and possibly many more, have been killed in Israel’s airstrikes and ground invasion of Gaza since Hamas’s bloody Oct. 7 attack on Israel, according to the Gazan health ministry.
“We have set goals and deadlines,” said Levy, an Israeli government spokesman. This war will continue for as long as it takes. This war will end with the end of Hamas.
Netanyahu’s national security adviser, Tzahi Hanegbi, said in an interview last weekend with Israel’s Channel 12 that the United States shared Israel’s goals of freeing the hostages, which he called “an effort for which we cannot set a date” and destroying Hamas. “So,” he said, “the assessment is that it’s nothing that can be determined in weeks, and I’m not sure it can be determined in months. “
Yossi Kuperwasser, a retired Israeli brigadier general, said he thought Israeli forces would need several more weeks, at least, to end Hamas’ takeover of Gaza. He said U. S. pressure to end the fighting would only embolden Hamas, which he said hoped for a ceasefire that would allow it to rebuild.
Other analysts are more skeptical about Israel’s ability to end Hamas rule in Gaza, noting that Israel’s vision of a post-Hamas enclave remains unclear. Netanyahu has dismissed the concept of a globally subsidized Palestinian Authority, administering part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and taking over Gaza under his current leadership, which would put him at odds with US officials on the issue. .
Neil MacFarquhar contributed reporting.
— Aaron Boxerman reporting from Jerusalem
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke by phone on Sunday for the first time in weeks, providing vastly different versions of what they said, reflecting the tense meetings between the two leaders since the start of the Israel-Israel war. and Hamas.
Netanyahu said he was unhappy with Moscow’s positions in the U. N. Security Council and “expressed strong grievance over the harmful cooperation between Russia and Iran,” according to a statement from his office.
For its part, the Kremlin stated that the verbal exchange focused on the “catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip. “
Russia, a permanent member of the U. N. Security Council, on Friday backed a U. N. solution demanding a swift ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and said the United States is “complicit in Israel’s brutal massacre,” an obvious reference to the more than 17,000 dead. According to Gaza health authorities, they have died in the enclave since the start of the war. The U. S. blocked the solution, arguing that Israel has the right to protect itself against Hamas attacks.
Mr. Netanyahu’s criticism of Russia over its ties with Iran is, in part, a reference to the close relationship between the two countries fostered by the war in Ukraine. Tehran, a principal backer of Hamas, has supplied Moscow with thousands of exploding drones for use in Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Putin called Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel an act of terrorism, and reiterated that position in Sunday’s call, the Kremlin said. Although his aid to Israel was first and foremost quiet, he has tried to maintain his relations with that country.
At the same time, Putin argued that the dominance of Western elites was the root of the crisis. And Russian state media has voiced in favor of Hamas and undermined Israel. He also disparaged the United States, Israel’s main ally.
“The Russian side is in a position to provide all imaginable assistance to alleviate the suffering of civilians and de-escalate the conflict,” the Kremlin said in its conversation with the leaders.
Emphasizing the complex nature of the relationship between the two leaders, Netanyahu also praised Russian efforts to free an Israeli citizen who also holds Russian citizenship. The Israeli government says the Oct. 7 Hamas attack killed about 1,200 more people and that another 240 were also killed. taken hostage.
—Matthew Mpoke Bigg
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said Sunday that “it is very important that the voice of Congress be heard” when it comes to American arms transfers to Israel, amid growing fear on Capitol Hill about how they are being handled. using American weapons in Gaza.
Blinken gave that impression on ABC’s “This Week” after the State Department informed Congress late Friday that it would bypass the same old congressional review of foreign arms sales to speed up the sale of 13,000 rounds of tank ammunition to Israel.
“A small component of what has been asked for is being incorporated rapidly,” Blinken said, adding that the measure “is being moved temporarily so that Israel can have what it needs. “
“But pretty much everything else follows the same old order, through Congress,” Blinken said.
He added that all U.S. weapons transfers were subject to rules governing their use, including “the imperative of respect for humanitarian law.” But a growing number of Democrats in Congress are insisting on greater oversight and accountability for Israel’s use of American weapons.
While the Gaza government claims that the death toll from the Israeli army’s campaign in the Palestinian territory has exceeded 17,000 people, Blinken said the Biden administration is “keenly aware of the toll this standoff is taking on innocent men, women and children. “”»
“We are working to minimize this as much as possible,” he added.
Blinken said the U. S. was “trying to do everything we can in our force to ensure that civilians are civilians and that humanitarian assistance reaches others who want it in Gaza. “
And he reiterated his view that “there is a hole between the intent and the results” of the Israeli offensive, “and it is this hole that we are looking for to close. “
He was pressured because Israel was responding to Hamas’s killing of what the Israeli government said were about 1,200 more people on Oct. 7, that the organization had pledged to carry out more attacks and that allowing its leaders would “only perpetuate the problem. “”
That’s why the United States on Friday vetoed a U. N. Security Council solution that called for an early ceasefire in Gaza, he said.
“We need to make sure that Israel has what it wants to protect itself,” Blinken said. He added that “if Hamas acted tomorrow, tomorrow it would be over. “
Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Mr. Blinken said that closing the gap between Israel’s intent and results would mean creating “deconfliction times, places and routes so that the humanitarians can bring the assistance that’s getting into Gaza to the people who need it.” He also urged taking steps so that dislocated people in Gaza “know when it is safe and where it is safe to move to get out of harm’s way before they go back home.”
Asked if the Biden administration was contemplating military action against the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen, who have fired missiles at Israel and attacked ships in the Red Sea, Blinken told ABC that “we’re going after everything. “
— Michael Crowley
Thousands of miles from Gaza, the lobby of a luxury hotel in Doha, the capital of Qatar, was a comfortable place for a Palestinian official on Sunday.
People gathered around Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian ambassador to Britain, to shake his hand, take pictures and thank him for the status of Palestinians in the war in Gaza.
Zomlot attends the Doha Forum, a foreign convention Qatar organizes annually to bring together officials, academics and journalists from the Middle East and beyond to discuss problems in the region.
While this year’s edition, under the theme “Diplomacy, Dialogue and Diversity,” included sessions on green energy and synthetic intelligence, much of the verbal exchange at official meetings and in large coffee warehouses focused on the war in Gaza, with strong support for Palestinian Perspective.
At the opening session, which was attended by Qatar’s monarch Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned of the “risk of collapse of the humanitarian system” in Gaza and renewed his call for a ceasefire. Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said the United States will be held responsible for Israel’s deadly attacks on Gaza, which the Gaza government says have killed more than 17,000 people.
In a query on the long-term Palestinian political leadership, panelists called Palestinian resistance against Israel an “anti-colonial project,” accused Israel of committing “genocide” in Gaza, and spoke of Israeli “apartheid” in the occupied West Bank. perspectives that were shared by many attendees of the occasion, but that probably wouldn’t get much airtime on similar occasions in the U. S. In the U. S. or Europe, Israel remains strong.
In an interview, Zomlot said the intensity of the war in Gaza had put the Palestinian factor at the center of this year’s event. It was, he said, “because of the intensity and the sense that a global failure to impose some kind of stability, to get everyone back to some kind of sanity, to bring adults into the room. “
Now, he said, “There are no grown-ups and there is no room, so the region feels almost left alone.”
The event’s guest list, which included officials from the Middle East and beyond, reflects tiny Qatar’s ambitions to become a global player and its efforts to maintain intelligent relations with a wide diversity of countries and political movements, adding to those at war with each other. .
Qatar mediated talks between Israel and Hamas that resulted in a week-long ceasefire and the exchange of hostages held through Hamas for 240 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons before the truce was broken on December 1.
Although Hamas, considered a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and other countries, has a workplace in Qatar, the movement’s leaders were not present at the conference. The only Israeli citizen on the official list of speakers is Sami Abu Shehadeh, a Palestinian and former member of the Israeli Parliament.
Sergei V. Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, spoke virtually at the occasion, protecting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and accusing the United States and its allies of human rights hypocrisy. the man.
“Is there a situation where the U. S. has intervened militarily and life has improved?” he asked. I think you know the answer. “
Many of the speakers at the conference blasted the United States for its military support for Israel and for using its veto on the U.N. Security Council to block a resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza on Friday.
Several Biden administration officials attended the event but kept a low profile. Only one was scheduled to speak at an invitation-only consultation on Yemen.
But on Sunday afternoon, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S. C. , took the floor and spoke out in favor of Israel.
He criticized the speakers in the event’s opening session for not talking more about the violence committed by Palestinian militants during the Hamas-led surprise attack on Israel, which Israeli authorities say killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians.
He said a bright future for Palestinians would require a new Palestinian Authority, accusing its current leaders of corruption. “I wouldn’t give 15 cents to this crowd,” he said. The authority administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and U. S. officials have said it will play a role in Gaza as long as Hamas is defeated.
Graham expressed his unwavering support for Israel from U. S. lawmakers.
“Congress will support Israel until it does what it wants to do,” he said.
— Ben Hubbard reporting from Doha, Qatar
The Israeli military bombarded Gaza with movements over the weekend and some Hamas fighters had moved into the northern Gaza Strip as it intensified its offensive in the south.
On Sunday morning, the Israeli military said that it had struck more than 250 “targets” in Gaza over the past 24 hours, including some in the south. In a statement, it also mentioned an operation in the north — specifically the Shajaiya neighborhood of Gaza City.
It was there that the Israeli army had announced the day before that some Hamas fighters had surrendered. He did not specify how many members he detained, but said they went to the Shajaiya and Jabaliya neighborhoods in Gaza City. The claims come two days after Israel said it had arrested many terror suspects.
In recent days, on social media and Israeli news channels, videos have given the impression of what have been described as Hamas fighters being arrested by Israeli forces. These videos may simply not be independently verified, and there are accounts from Gazans among those who have been described as Hamas fighters.
About 24 kilometers south of Gaza City, in Khan Younis, the Israeli military ordered others to “urgently” evacuate the city center, releasing a map of the area that appeared to point to Array. The expansion of Israeli ground operations has forced many already displaced. other people to move again.
The intensified fighting in Gaza came after a United Nations vote demanding a permanent cease-fire last week. The effort failed because the United States cast the sole vote against it. Governments, human rights groups and aid organizations condemned the United States, saying it was “complicit” in the rising death toll among civilians in the territory. Israel has conducted more than two months of aerial and ground assaults in Gaza, which have killed at least 17,000 people there, according to the Gazan health ministry.
The U. S. government said it had suggested Israel do more with civilians, particularly as Israeli forces intensified operations in southern Gaza, where thousands of Gazans fled after the first weeks of fighting in the north. But neither the U. S. nor Israel has clarified what exactly is being done to limit civilian casualties.
On Friday, the State Department notified Congress that it had used an emergency provision in the arms export act to approve the sale of 13,000 tank rounds to Israel. The approval came before Congress finished a review generally required for arms sales to a foreign nation.
Israel had previously asked the State Department to approve an order for 45,000 tank rounds, Israel’s largest order for ammunition, the United States said.
—John Yoon
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi woke up on Oct. 7, notably unpopular for being known as a candidate for a third term, guaranteed by his authoritarian control over the country to dominate elections that began on Sunday but were badly damaged. collapse.
The weeks that followed overshadowed all that, and the war supplanted the currency concerns in the more sensible minds of many Egyptians, on their lips and on social media. For Western partners and wealthy Gulf donors, the crisis has also highlighted Egypt’s important role as a conduit of humanitarian aid to Gaza and a mediator between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian armed organization that carried out the attack on Israel on Oct. 7 and ushered in the attack.
El-Sisi, a former general with a knack for surviving setbacks, appears to have yet to enjoy a hiatus, allowing him to position himself as a champion of the Palestinian cause at home and as an indispensable regional leader abroad.
In those days, in Cairo, a widespread boycott of Western corporations, along with aid to Israel, has turned the undeniable act of serving a Pepsi into a serious feigned step. Egyptians, struggling to help themselves after nearly two years of record inflation, have opened their wallets. to help those affected by the war in Gaza. And in a country where protests have been banned for years, many others defied arrest to march in solidarity with the Palestinians.
The three-day presidential election that began on Sunday is expected to ratify el-Sisi for another six-year term: none of his three rivals has a chance of toppling him.
And with public attention to the Palestinians at the highest level, Egyptians are watching for any signs that their government may be complicit in the suffering in Gaza, whether by accepting Israeli restrictions on Egyptian aid to the territory or providing the transfer of Gazans to the territory. . Egypt in exchange for aid, a concept that is largely opposed by the Arab world.
“The government definitely doesn’t want to test the patience of the Egyptian people, not when it comes to Palestine,” said Hesham Sallam, a scholar of Arab politics at Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law.
Like many in Cairo, Aya Khalil, a 34-year-old personal art teacher, wonders if the government is doing enough to inject aid into Gaza. Egypt has criticized Israel for restricting aid but calls for an end to the Israeli-Egyptian alliance. The 16-year blockade of Gaza and Egypt’s preventing Israel from having a say over Egypt’s border crossing into Gaza have escalated in recent weeks.
However, Egypt cannot distance itself from Israel, with which it has developed a strong, if low-key, security partnership in the Sinai Peninsula, nor agitate Western donors, especially when it wants all the monetary aid it can get.
Prior to Hamas’ attack on Israel, the symptoms of el-Sisi’s growing unpopularity were unmistakable. But just days after Israel’s attack on Gaza in retaliation for the Oct. 7 attacks, el-Sisi’s doubts have stabilized.
Liberal activists, al-Sisi supporters and many others found themselves in a rare moment of unity, condemning Israel’s siege and bombardment of Gaza and rejecting the idea of forcing Gazans to settle in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, which borders the territory.
Many fear such displacement would mean the Palestinians would lose their land forever and bring Hamas into a historically and emotionally charged part of Egypt, eventually drawing Egypt into a war with Israel.
El-Sisi hurried to read the work.
“The aim of the suffocating blockade on the Gaza Strip, which is to cut off water and electricity and prevent aid from accessing, is to push the Palestinians into Egypt,” he said. At a joint press conference with the German chancellor on Oct. 18, one of several times made it clear that the answer was no.
“We reject the liquidation of the Palestinians and the forced displacement in Sinai. “
— Report by Vivian Yee Cairo
Sitting on a sofa next to a crochet blanket, Adina Moshe herself appears in a video as having been freed from Hamas captivity.
His voice is calm. I left my clever friends from Kibbutz Nir Oz there,” he said. Ms. Moshe, 72, was held hostage in Gaza for 49 days after she watched militants kill her husband, Said David Moshe, in a blistering attack on October 7.
Like many of the freed hostages, he appealed to the Israeli government.
“Please make sure we all come first,” he said. “Take them home and then take military action. “
On Saturday night, Ms. Moshe, among the hostages, told non-public stories in videos that were made public for the first time. As members of the circle of relatives shared their accounts of the situations faced by the hostages in captivity, they added that they were denied good enough food, locked in cramped rooms and forced to look at photographs. The disturbing attacks on October 7 were one of the first times some of the freed captives spoke on camera.
The videos were shown in Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square, where crowds of protesters are gathering to call for the release of hostages held captive since the start of the war. Relatives of the remaining prisoners have warned that time is running out for their relatives and have urged the government to make their freedom a pressing priority.
Hamas freed 105 hostages in exchange for 240 imprisoned Palestinians in a week-long ceasefire that ended Dec. 1. There has been no exchange since then.
Among those featured in the video testimonies is 77-year-old Ophelia Adit Roitman, who was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz and taken to Gaza on the ground of a tractor. He gave the impression of having a giant bandage around his arm and hand and said he was hit with a giant rifle on October 7.
“I was very scared for the first two weeks,” said Roitman, who was held hostage for 53 days. “I think I’m crazy because I’m alone. There’s almost no light. There’s almost no food. “
“It reminded me of the Holocaust,” he continued. She pretended to break a piece of pita, saying she would eat pieces of bread so she would have food for the next day.
Maya Regev, 21, was released after being held hostage for 50 days. His brother, 18-year-old Itay Regev, was released 4 days later. In one video, they appeared to be together, dressed in T-shirts with the face of their friend Omer Shem-Tov, 21, another Israeli who was taken hostage and remains in captivity. The three were kidnapped at the Reim music festival on October 7.
“Every day is like hell,” Maya says from a wheelchair, after undergoing surgery for a gunshot wound to her leg.
Through tears, the brothers echoed each other, begging for their friend’s return. “I have a friend named Omer, and I miss Array,” Itay said, gently pulling her blouse away from her chest.
“I know what’s going on there and I know how scary it is,” she said.
Gaya Gupta contributed reporting.
— Talya Minsberg reporting from Jerusalem
Reporting from Gaza is incredibly complicated right now. Israel has banned bloodhounds from entering the territory when accompanied by its army, and only under certain conditions, while Egypt, along its border, also blocks access. Communications have been limited, in part due to the Israeli siege of the enclave. Many Palestinian bloodhounds in Gaza have been killed in airstrikes. And even before the war, Hamas limited what bloodhounds could cover in Gaza, restricting their movements, questioning their resources and translators, and expelling foreign hounds for paintings deemed reprehensible.
The Times, along with other news organizations, has asked the governments of Israel and Egypt for direct access to Gaza because reporting on the ground is vital to understanding this crisis. Throughout the war, The Times has been working with journalists who were already in Gaza when the siege began. We have been interviewing residents and officials in Gaza by phone and using digital apps. We have asked people in the area to share their stories with us on video, which we then confirm are real. We also verify photos and social media posts using similar techniques, scrutinizing them to determine where and when they were taken or written and cross-checking with other sources, such as satellite imagery. We cross reference any information we gather with interviews with the U.N. and other international organizations, many of which have employees in different parts of Gaza.
In general, we try to rely on a single source and try to provide as detailed information as possible.
– The New York Times
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