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      Why the World’s Biggest Powers Can’t Stop a Middle East War

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      The United States’ ability to influence events in the Mideast has waned, and other major nations have essentially been onlookers.Over almost a year of war in the Middle East, major powers have proved incapable of stopping or even significantly influencing the fighting, a failure that reflects a turbulent world of decentralized authority that seems likely to endure.Stop-and-start negotiations between Israel and Hamas to end the fighting in Gaza, pushed by the United States, have repeatedly been described by the Biden administration as on the verge of a breakthrough, only to fail. The current Western-led attempt to avert a full-scale Israeli-Hezbollah war in Lebanon amounts to a scramble to avert disaster. Its chances of success seem deeply uncertain after the Israeli killing of Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader of Hezbollah on Friday.“There’s more capability in more hands in a world where centrifugal forces are far stronger than centralizing ones,” said Richard Haass, the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. “The Middle East is the primary case study of this dangerous fragmentation.”The killing of Mr. Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah over more than three decades and the man who built the Shiite organization into one of the most powerful nonstate armed forces in the world, leaves a vacuum that Hezbollah will most likely take a long time to fill. It is a major blow to Iran, the chief backer of Hezbollah, that may even destabilize the Islamic Republic. Whether full-scale war will come to Lebanon remains unclear.“Nasrallah represented everything for Hezbollah, and Hezbollah was the advance arm of Iran,” said Gilles Kepel, a leading French expert on the Middle East and the author of a book on the world’s upheaval since Oct. 7. “Now the Islamic Republic is weakened, perhaps mortally, and one wonders who can even give an order for Hezbollah today.”For many years, the United States was the only country that could bring constructive pressure to bear on both Israel and Arab states. It engineered the 1978 Camp David Accords that brought peace between Israel and Egypt, and the Israel-Jordan peace of 1994. Just over three decades ago, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel and Yasir Arafat, the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, shook hands on the White House lawn in the name of peace, only for the fragile hope of that embrace to erode steadily.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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      Citing Gaza Help, Blinken Waives Human Rights Conditions on Aid to Egypt

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      Cairo will receive its full military aid allotment of $1.3 billion after the secretary of state also said it had made progress on releasing political prisoners and protecting Americans.For the first time under the Biden administration, the United States will send Egypt its full allotment of $1.3 billion in annual military aid, waiving human rights requirements on the spending mainly in recognition of Cairo’s efforts to reach a cease-fire deal in Gaza, U.S. officials said.The decision, which the State Department notified Congress of on Wednesday, marks a striking shift for the administration. President Biden came into office promising “no blank checks” that would enable Egypt’s rights abuses, and in each of the past three years, his administration had withheld at least some of the congressionally mandated aid to Cairo, a close American ally.But the decision shows how the administration’s calculus has changed as Mr. Biden prioritizes trying to halt the violence in Gaza, one of the key goals he has set for himself in his final months in office.In response to longtime concerns about human rights abuses in Egypt, U.S. law places conditions on about a quarter of the military aid to Egypt each year. To release it, the secretary of state must certify that Cairo has complied with a range of human rights requirements.A State Department spokesman said the secretary, Antony J. Blinken, had found that Egypt had only partly met the human rights requirements but had overridden them, employing a legally permitted waiver “in the U.S. national security interest.”Mr. Blinken’s decision was based on Egypt’s monthslong role as an intermediary between Hamas and Israel as the two sides try to negotiate a cease-fire deal that would free Israeli hostages in Gaza and allow more humanitarian aid into the territory, which borders Egypt’s Sinai Desert, the spokesman said.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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      U.S., Egypt and Qatar Say Gaza Cease-Fire Talks Will Resume Next Week

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      Top officials from the U.S., Israel, Egypt and Qatar ended two days of talks in Doha aimed at trying to resolve remaining disagreements between Israel and Hamas.High-level talks to halt the war in Gaza ended without an immediate breakthrough on Friday, but the United States, Egypt and Qatar said the negotiations would continue next week as mediators raced to secure a truce that they hope will avert a wider regional conflagration.The announcement came after top American, Israeli, Egyptian and Qatari officials ended two days of talks in Doha, the Qatari capital, aimed at trying to resolve remaining disagreements between Israel and Hamas. U.S. and regional officials hope that movement in the negotiations will blunt or stop a widely anticipated Iranian-led retaliation for the killing of senior leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, militant groups backed by Iran.U.S., Iranian and Israeli officials said on Friday said that Iran had decided to delay its reprisal against Israel to allow the mediators to continue working toward a cease-fire in Gaza.After the first day of talks ended on Thursday night, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, the Qatari prime minister, called the acting Iranian foreign minister, Ali Bagheri Kani, to encourage Iran to refrain from any escalation given the cease-fire talks in Doha, according to two Iranian officials and three other officials familiar with the call who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.Mr. Al Thani spoke with Mr. Bagheri Kani again on Friday, and both officials “stressed the need for calm and de-escalation in the region,” according to the Qatari Foreign Ministry. Mr. Bagheri Kani said in a statement that the Qatari prime minister had described the cease-fire negotiations on Thursday as being at a “sensitive” phase.On Friday, Egypt, Qatar and the United States said in a joint statement that the mediators had presented Israel and Hamas with “a bridging proposal” consistent with the terms laid out by President Biden on May 31 and later endorsed by the U.N. Security Council.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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      Gaza Cease-Fire Talks: What Has Happened and Where Things Stand

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      Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip has lasted more than 10 months, with only one weeklong pause in fighting, in late November. That temporary cease-fire led to the return of 50 Israeli hostages captured during the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel in exchange for 150 Palestinian prisoners — and raised hopes among mediators and the international community that another deal would follow.Those hopes were dashed repeatedly over many months of unsuccessful efforts by mediators. In the interim, tensions in the Middle East have risen, particularly in recent weeks after the assassinations of a Hezbollah commander in Lebanon and a Hamas leader in Iran, prompting vows from Iran and Hezbollah to retaliate against Israel.World leaders eager to avert a wider full-scale war believe that an agreement between Israel and Hamas could prevent an escalation. Still, even the most vocal champions of a cease-fire admit that closing a deal will be tough. President Biden on Tuesday told reporters he was “not giving up” on an agreement but that it was “getting harder” to remain optimistic.On Thursday, negotiators are meeting in Doha, Qatar, to try to reach an agreement. Here’s a timeline of recent talks:May: President Biden calls for an end to the war.Declaring Hamas no longer capable of carrying out a major terrorist attack on Israel, Mr. Biden on May 31 pressed for hostilities in Gaza to end and endorsed a new cease-fire plan that he said Israel had offered to win the release of hostages.“It’s time for this war to end, for the day after to begin,” Mr. Biden said that day. Calling it “a decisive moment,” Mr. Biden put the onus on Hamas to reach an agreement, saying, “Israel has made their proposal. Hamas says it wants a cease-fire. This deal is an opportunity to prove whether they really mean it.”June: U.N. Security Council passes a cease-fire resolution.The United Nations Security Council on June 10 adopted a cease-fire plan backed by the United States, with 14 nations in favor and Russia abstaining. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the American ambassador to the United Nations, said that the United States would work to make sure that Israel agreed to the deal and that Qatar and Egypt would work to bring Hamas to the negotiating table.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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      Report reveals secret US inquiry into alleged 2016 Egyptian $10m gift to Trump

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      A spokesperson for Donald Trump blamed “Deep State Trump-haters and bad faith actors” for a bombshell report on Friday about a secret criminal investigation into whether Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, the authoritarian ruler of Egypt, sought to give the former president $10m during his victorious 2016 White House run.“The investigation referenced found no wrongdoing and was closed,” Steven Cheung told the Washington Post, which published the report on Friday.“None of the allegations or insinuations being reported on have any basis in fact. The Washington Post is consistently played for suckers by Deep State Trump-haters and bad faith actors peddling hoaxes and shams.”The deep state conspiracy theory holds that a permanent, shadow government of agents, operatives and bureaucrats exists to thwart Trump. One of the theory’s chief propagators, Steve Bannon, has said it is “for nut cases”. Nonetheless, it remains popular on the US right and among Trump’s aides.Bannon was Trump’s campaign chair in 2016. According to the Post, five days before Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, an organisation linked to Egyptian intelligence services withdrew $10m from a Cairo bank.“Inside the state-run National Bank of Egypt,” the Post said, “employees were soon busy placing bundles of $100 bills into two large bags.”Four men “carried away the bags, which US officials later described in sealed court filings as weighing a combined 200 pounds and containing what was then a sizable share of Egypt’s reserve of US currency”.According to the Post, US federal investigators learned of the withdrawal in 2019, by which time they had spent two years investigating CIA intelligence that indicated Sisi sought to give Trump $10m.Such a contribution would potentially have violated federal law regarding foreign donations.This year, in a New York state case concerning hush-money payments to the adult film star Stormy Daniels, Trump was convicted on 34 criminal charges of falsifying business records.According to the Post, US investigators who discovered the $10m Cairo withdrawal “also sought to learn if money from Sisi might have factored into Trump’s decision in the final days of his run for the White House to inject his campaign with $10m of his own money”.Eight years on, with Trump running for president again, the Post report landed in the aftermath of the bribery conviction of Robert Menendez, a Democratic senator from New Jersey who took gold bars and cash from Egyptian sources.Menendez faces a maximum sentence of 222 years.While in office, Trump repeatedly praised Sisi, over objections from US politicians concerned about the Egyptian’s authoritarian rule.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs described by the Post, the US investigation which uncovered the Cairo withdrawal was questioned by William Barr, Trump’s second attorney general. Ultimately, a prosecutor appointed by Barr closed the inquiry without criminal charges being filed.Later, as the 2020 election approached, CNN reported that a mysterious DC courthouse hearing in 2018 – involving prosecutors working for Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election – concerned an Egyptian bank.A Trump spokesperson, Jason Miller, said then: “President Trump has never received a penny from Egypt.”On Friday, Cheung, Trump’s current spokesperson, called the Post report “textbook fake news”.The justice department, the US attorney in Washington DC and the FBI declined to answer questions, the Post said.The prosecutor who closed the case, Michael Sherwin, said he stood by his decision.An Egyptian government spokesperson declined to answer the Post’s questions.An anonymous government source told the Post: “Every American should be concerned about how this case ended. The justice department is supposed to follow evidence wherever it leads – it does so all the time to determine if a crime occurred or not.” More

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      ‘Is There Any Chance He Can Sit on a Camel?’ A Senator’s Wife Wanted to Know.

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      An aide to Senator Robert Menendez testified that she had been asked to consult with an Egyptian intelligence officer who had befriended Nadine Menendez.In March 2019, an aide to Senator Robert Menendez drafted a letter that used strong language to criticize the president of Egypt and the country’s human rights record. Mr. Menendez declined to sign it.Mr. Menendez, then the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he wanted to try a less confrontational approach, the aide, Sarah Arkin, testified on Monday at the senator’s bribery trial.“We’ve been going after them for so long on human rights — have been really out there publicly criticizing them — and it hasn’t really changed anything on the ground,” Ms. Arkin, a senior staff member with the committee, said Mr. Menendez had told her.Instead, Mr. Menendez said he wanted “to be a little less publicly critical and do more private and quiet engagement,” Ms. Arkin said.Ms. Arkin’s testimony came at the start of the seventh week of the senator’s trial in Manhattan federal court. Mr. Menendez, 70, is charged with steering aid and weapons to Egypt in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes as part of a wide-ranging and yearslong conspiracy.He has strenuously maintained his innocence, and as Mr. Menendez was leaving court on Monday he defended his record related to Egypt and its president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. “No one has been a harsher critic of Egypt,” Mr. Menendez said. “No one has been more persistent a critic of President el-Sisi on the question of human rights, democracy, rule of law.”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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      After Hajj Deaths, Egypt Suspends 16 Companies

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      The action against 16 tour companies came as governments look into whether many travelers were not properly registered to make the journey into the desert.After hundreds of pilgrims died in the scorching desert heat during the annual hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, the Egyptian government announced on Saturday that it had suspended the licenses of 16 tour companies that had facilitated travel for some pilgrims to Saudi Arabia.At least 450 people have died during this year’s pilgrimage, in which travelers endured maximum temperatures that ranged from 108 degrees to 120 degrees Fahrenheit (42 to 49 degrees Celsius). But the actual number of fatalities is expected to climb as governments get more accurate tallies of the deaths. (Egypt, for one, has officially acknowledged only 31 deaths.)In announcing the suspension of the 16 travel companies, the Egyptian government said the businesses failed to offer the pilgrims important services like medical care. It said the companies did not provide the pilgrims with “appropriate accommodation,” which caused them to suffer from “exhaustion due to the high temperatures.”Reuters reported that some travel agencies may not have officially registered for the pilgrimage, to get around the high costs of package tours. And, Reuters said, companies were being blamed for letting pilgrims travel to Saudi Arabia on personal visas, rather than hajj visas, which provide access to medical care and the holy sites.Mahmoud Qassem, a member of Egypt’s Parliament, said the travel companies “left the pilgrims stranded and turned off their mobile phones” so they could not hear the travelers’ calls for help.There were also complaints that pilgrims were not given access to enough cooling stations or water amid the intense heat.The number of unregistered visitors — in addition to the intense desert heat — could have left Saudi Arabia unprepared for dealing with such a large influx of people.Tunisia’s government has said that the death toll of pilgrims from that country was expected to rise from the 49 reported on Friday, as the number of people traveling on tourist visas became more clear.The hajj has been the site of several tragedies, including a stampede in 2015 that killed more than 2,200 people. In recent years, with rising temperatures, many pilgrims have also succumbed to heat stress.The Saudi government has said that during this year’s hajj, more than 1.8 million Muslims traveled to Mecca, 1.6 million of them from outside Saudi Arabia.Hager Al-Hakeem contributed reporting from Luxor, Egypt. More

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      Israel’s Wartime Government Frays as Frustration with Netanyahu Grows

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      Benny Gantz, a centrist member of leadership, presented the prime minister with an ultimatum that demanded a plan for the future of Israel’s war.Benny Gantz, a centrist member of Israel’s war cabinet, presented Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with an ultimatum on Saturday, saying he would leave the government if it did not soon develop a plan for the future of the war in Gaza.While Mr. Gantz’s departure would not topple the country’s emergency wartime government, the move would further strain a fragile coalition that has provided Mr. Netanyahu’s far-right government with a boost of international legitimacy, and it would make the prime minister even more reliant on his hard-line partners.“If you choose the path of zealots, dragging the country into the abyss, we will be forced to leave the government,” Mr. Gantz said in a televised news conference. “We will turn to the people and build a government that will earn the people’s trust.”Mr. Gantz, who leads the National Unity party, said he would give Mr. Netanyahu until June 8 — three weeks’ time — to develop a plan that would aim to secure the release of hostages taken to Gaza by Hamas-led militants on Oct. 7, address the future governance of the territory, return displaced Israelis to their homes and advance normalization with Saudi Arabia, among other issues.Mr. Gantz’s ultimatum was the latest sign of pressure building on Mr. Netanyahu to develop a postwar plan. The prime minister is increasingly being squeezed — externally from Israel’s closest ally, the United States, and from within his own War Cabinet — to clarify a strategy for Gaza. Just days earlier, Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister, said the government was charting “a dangerous course” and demanded that Mr. Netanyahu immediately pledge not to establish an Israeli military government in Gaza.In a response to Mr. Gantz’s ultimatum, Mr. Netanyahu accused the former military chief of staff and a longtime political rival of calling for “Israeli defeat” by effectively allowing Hamas to remain in power.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