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      Facing Global Outrage, Netanyahu Calls Civilian Deaths in Rafah Strike ‘Tragic Accident’

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      The strike on Sunday, which Israeli officials said targeted two Hamas leaders taking cover near a civilian encampment, ignited a fire that killed 45 people, according to the Gazan authorities.With international condemnation mounting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said on Monday that the killing of dozens of people a day earlier at a camp for displaced Palestinians in Rafah was “a tragic accident,” but gave no sign of curbing the Israeli offensive in the southern Gaza city.The deadly fire that tore through the encampment on Sunday after an airstrike came at a particularly delicate time for Israel, just days after the International Court of Justice appeared to order the country’s military to halt its offensive in Rafah and as diplomats were aiming to restart negotiations for a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas.The Israel military said that the target of the strike in Rafah on Sunday was a Hamas compound, and that “precise munitions” had been used to target a commander and another senior militant official there.But at least 45 people, including children, were killed by the blast and by the fires it set off, according to the Gaza health ministry. The ministry said that 249 people were wounded.In a speech to the Israeli Parliament on Monday, Mr. Netanyahu said the military had sought to protect noncombatants, by issuing evacuation orders, adding that about a million civilians had left Rafah ahead of, or during, the offensive. “Despite our supreme effort not to harm uninvolved civilians,” he said, “a tragic accident occurred to our regret last night.”Palestinians mourning relatives killed on Monday in Rafah.Haitham Imad/EPA, via ShutterstockWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Russia Bombs Hardware Superstore in Kharkiv, Killing 6, Ukraine Says

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      It was the latest attack in a sustained bombing campaign that has made life increasingly dangerous for civilians in the northeastern Ukrainian city.Russia bombed a hardware superstore in the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Saturday afternoon, killing at least six people and injuring at least 40 others, Ukrainian officials said. The attack was the latest in a sustained bombing campaign against the city that has made life increasingly difficult and dangerous for civilians.Oleh Syniehubov, the head of the Kharkiv regional military administration, said that 16 people were still missing, suggesting that the death toll could rise. He added that another airstrike on Saturday, in the center of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, injured at least 14 people.“For the entire day, Kharkiv has been under Russian terrorist strikes. The air raid in the Kharkiv region has been ongoing for more than 12 hours,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media.Saturday’s attack, Mr. Zelensky added, underscored Ukraine’s recent calls on Western allies to provide it with air defense systems and other weapons capable of shooting down Russian missiles and the planes that launch the bombs. “If Ukraine had sufficient air defenses systems and modern combat aircraft, Russian strikes like this one would have been impossible,” he said.Videos and photos posted online by Ukrainian officials showed large plumes of black smoke billowing from the superstore, as firefighters scrambled to extinguish a blaze that the authorities said extended over 10,000 square meters.Kharkiv, currently home to 1.3 million people and located just 25 miles from the Russian border, has been increasingly targeted by Russian airstrikes in recent months, in what Ukrainian officials and military experts say is a tactic intended to intimidate residents and create panic.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Biden Administration Advances $1 Billion Arms Sale to Israel

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      The notification of the deal to Congress as the president holds up the delivery of other weapons shows the fine line the administration is trying to walk with its longtime ally.The Biden administration has told Congress that it intends to move forward with a plan for the United States to sell more than $1 billion in new weapons to Israel, according to three congressional aides familiar with the deal.The notification of the sale, which would include new tactical vehicles and ammunition, comes as President Biden has withheld a shipment of bombs to Israel, hoping to prevent U.S.-made weapons from being used in a potential invasion of the southern Gaza city of Rafah. Last week, Mr. Biden said he would block the delivery of weapons such as bombs and missiles that could be fired into the densely populated area where more than a million Palestinians are sheltering.The potential arms transfer illustrated the narrow path the Biden administration is walking with Israel, trying to prevent an assault on Rafah and limit civilian casualties in Gaza but continuing to supply a longtime ally that the president has said has a right to defend itself. One congressional aide said Congress had been aware of the arms deal for months, and suggested that the administration had simply waited for a foreign aid package with more aid for Israel to pass before moving forward with the required congressional notification process.When asked about the package, which was reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal, the State Department referred to recent comments from Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, citing a continued commitment to supply Israel with military assistance to defend itself from threats in the region.“The president was clear he would not supply certain offensive weapons for such an operation, were it to occur,” Mr. Sullivan said. “It has not yet occurred. And we are still working with Israel on a better way to ensure the defeat of Hamas everywhere in Gaza, including in Rafah.”The administration has been pushing for a cease-fire deal in which Hamas would release at least some of the hostages it took on Oct. 7, when it attacked Israel and began the war. But the prime minister of Qatar, a key player in the talks, said on Tuesday that they were at “almost a stalemate.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Long, Tortured Road to Biden’s Clash With Netanyahu Over Gaza War

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      The president offered strong support to Israel after Oct. 7 but has grown increasingly frustrated over the conduct of the war. “He has just gotten to a point where enough is enough,” a friend says.President Biden laid it out for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel long before letting the public know. In a conversation bristling with tension on Feb. 11, the president warned the prime minister against a major assault on the Gaza city of Rafah — and suggested that continued U.S. support would depend on how Israel proceeded.It was an extraordinary moment. For the first time, the president who had so strongly backed Israel’s war against Hamas was essentially threatening to change course. The White House, however, kept the threat secret, making no mention of it in the official statement it released about the call. And indeed, the private warning, perhaps too subtle, fell on deaf ears.Six days later, on Feb. 17, Mr. Biden heard from Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken. The president’s chief diplomat was calling from his blue-and-white government plane as he was flying home from a security conference in Munich. Despite the president’s warning, Mr. Blinken reported that momentum for an invasion of Rafah was building. It could result in a humanitarian catastrophe, he feared. They had to draw a line.At that point, the president headed down a road that would lead to the most serious collision between the United States and Israel in a generation. Three months later, the president has decided to follow through on his warning, leaving the two sides in a dramatic standoff. Mr. Biden has paused a shipment of 3,500 bombs and vowed to block the delivery of other offensive arms if Israel mounts a full-scale ground invasion of Rafah over his objections. Mr. Netanyahu responded defiantly, vowing to act even “if we need to stand alone.”Mr. Biden’s journey to this moment of confrontation has been a long and tortured one, the culmination of a seven-month evolution — from a president who was so appalled by the Hamas-led terrorist attack on Oct. 7 that he pledged “rock solid and unwavering” support for Israel to an angry and exasperated president who has finally had it with an Israeli leadership that he believes is not listening to him.“He has just gotten to a point where enough is enough,” said former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, a onetime Republican senator from Nebraska and a friend of Mr. Biden’s from their days together in Congress and President Barack Obama’s administration. “I think he felt he had to say something. He had to do something. He had to show some sign that he wasn’t going to continue this.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      4 Children From Gaza Arrive in U.S. for Medical Treatment

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      The children, who were injured or suffered malnutrition, were greeted at Kennedy Airport with toys and balloons. “These are their first memories here,” one supporter said.The four children had survived horrors in Gaza.But on Sunday morning, they reached the end of an arduous journey out of the conflict zone and into American hospitals to receive urgent medical care. They flew from Cairo to Kennedy Airport, where they were greeted with much fanfare by a crowd of about 50 people carrying plush toys, flowers and bobbing balloons.Among the children was Fadi Alzant, 6, a gaunt boy with pale skin and strawberry blond hair who appeared dazed as the crowd rushed around his wheelchair. An airport employee grew agitated and shouted at people to disperse and to put away their cameras.Fadi, who has cystic fibrosis and weighs about 25 pounds, is suffering from severe malnourishment caused by famine, according to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, which coordinated the children’s journeys with assistance from the World Health Organization.He will be treated at Cohen Children’s Medical Center in Queens. Paramedics lifted the tiny, wide-eyed child out of his wheelchair and onto a gurney that dwarfed him even further. Then, they carried him to an ambulance bound for the hospital.Supporters from various aid organizations waited to greet the children.Anna Watts for The New York Times“We love you!” said a woman in the crowd, who was dabbing her eyes.“Let’s not overwhelm them, guys,” someone else said. “Did they get water?”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Billionaire Donor Barry Sternlicht Assails Brown’s Deal With Protesters

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      One of Brown University’s major donors, the billionaire real estate mogul Barry Sternlicht, on Friday sharply criticized the school’s agreement to hold a board vote on cutting investments tied to Israel, calling it “unconscionable” and saying he had “paused” donations to the school.Brown is among a small number of universities that have agreed to discuss their investments in companies that do business in Israel, in order to persuade student protesters to dismantle encampments. Mr. Sternlicht, in a scathing email to The New York Times, which he copied to Brown’s president, Christina H. Paxson, said the arrangement amounted to sympathy for Hamas, which attacked Israel in October, and described students protesting Israel’s actions in Gaza as “ignorant.”“There should never be a vote when people do not have the facts,” he wrote. “It’s not education, it’s propaganda.”Mr. Sternlicht, 63, said no deal with protesters could be fruitful because the two sides did not agree on “facts and moral clarity,” as well as the scale of Israel’s invasion of Gaza after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, in which about 1,200 were killed and another 250 were taken hostage. Israel’s subsequent intense bombardment of the tightly packed area has left more than 34,000 dead and drawn international condemnation.He cited the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed in wars in Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq, asking: “Where were the protests?”“As far as wars go, Israel has been quite muted,” Mr. Sternlicht wrote.The blowback from Mr. Sternlicht, who has described himself as a political independent and whose name is on a Brown residence hall, shows how quickly the issue of divestment from Israel may vex universities. Until a week ago, even discussing the subject was widely considered a nonstarter, as it was sure to divide a large swath of students and faculty from many of the businesspeople whose donations fill university endowments.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Israeli Officials Believe I.C.C. Is Preparing Arrest Warrants Over Hamas War

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      Israeli officials increasingly believe that the International Criminal Court is preparing to issue arrest warrants for senior government officials on charges related to the conflict with Hamas, according to five Israeli and foreign officials.The Israeli and foreign officials also believe the court is weighing arrest warrants for leaders from Hamas.If the court proceeds, the Israeli officials could potentially be accused of preventing the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip and pursuing an excessively harsh response to the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, according to two of the five officials, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter.The Israeli officials, who are worried about the potential fallout from such a case, said they believe that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is among those who might be named in a warrant. It is not clear who might be charged from Hamas or what crimes would be cited.The Israeli officials did not disclose the nature of the information that led them to be concerned about potential I.C.C. action, and the court did not comment on the matter.Arrest warrants from the court would probably be seen in much of the world as a humbling moral rebuke, particularly to Israel, which for months has faced international backlash over its conduct in Gaza, including from President Biden, who called it “over the top.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why Does the U.S. Arm Ukraine With Fanfare and Israel in Secret?

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      President Biden flanked by Javelin antitank systems in 2022 as he discussed arming Ukraine. Jonathan Ernst/Reuters When the Biden administration ships arms to Ukraine, it pulls out the megaphones. It announces its shipments and hails its own efforts “to support the brave Ukrainian people as they defend their country,” as Secretary of State Antony Blinken […] More