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    USAID Turmoil Threatens Key Aid Supplies to Gaza, Officials Say

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    The Trump administration’s efforts to downsize the United States Agency for International Development have endangered the funding for food, tents and medical treatment for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, according to U.S. officials and workers for humanitarian groups funded by the agency.Officials said that the threats to the aid supply chain risked destabilizing the fragile cease-fire agreement between Hamas and Israel, which is contingent on the weekly entry of 4,200 aid and commercial trucks to the territory.With almost all U.S.A.I.D. staff set to be placed on administrative leave by Friday night, there will be only a handful of officials left to sign off on and audit hundreds of millions of dollars in outstanding payments to the agency’s partners on the ground in Gaza, raising alarm about how those groups will fund their operations.Of more than 200 officials in the agency’s Mideast team, just 21 will remain in post to manage its entire regional portfolio, according to an internal agency email reviewed by The New York Times. The team that organizes emergency aid supplies in dozens of crisis zones around the world each year, of which Gaza was just one, is down to just 70 staff members from more than 1,000.This is expected to slow or prevent the delivery of food packages to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, as well as tents, mattresses, blankets, hygiene kits and medical treatment, according to three officials and an aid worker. All four people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the news media.While the aid agency does not operate inside Gaza, it has provided roughly $1 billion in aid to international aid groups on the ground since the war began in October 2023 — about a third of the total aid response, according to the United Nations. Hundreds of millions of dollars have yet to be disbursed and now may never be transferred to United Nations agencies and other major aid organizations, three officials 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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      Trump Imposes Sanctions on the ICC, Accusing It of Targeting the U.S. and Israel

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      President Trump signed an executive order on Thursday placing sanctions on the International Criminal Court, saying that his administration would “impose tangible and significant consequences” on people who work on investigations that threaten the national security of the United States and its allies, including Israel.The court faced backlash from the U.S. and Israel in November over its decision to issue arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the course of its conflict with Hamas in Gaza.Mr. Trump’s order said that the court’s actions against Israel and its preliminary investigations concerning the United States “set a dangerous precedent, directly endangering current and former United States personnel” by exposing them to harassment and the risk of international criminal prosecution.“The I.C.C. has, without a legitimate basis, asserted jurisdiction over and opened preliminary investigations concerning personnel of the United States and certain of its allies, including Israel, and has further abused its power” in issuing the warrants for Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Gallant, the order said.The order said the sanctions could include the blocking of purchases of property and assets, and barring I.C.C. officials and their immediate family members from entering the United States.Neither the United States nor Israel recognizes the I.C.C.’s jurisdiction, but the court accepted Palestine as a member in 2015, giving it jurisdiction over international crimes that take place in Gaza.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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      Netanyahu Tells Trump Israel Must ‘Complete Its Victory’

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      Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said he had told President-elect Donald J. Trump in a telephone conversation over the weekend that Israel needed to “complete its victory” over Iranian proxies and bring back hostages held in Gaza.Mr. Netanyahu, who described Mr. Trump as a friend, said in a statement on Sunday that their latest discussion had been “very friendly, warm and important.” The Israeli prime minister has been quick to cultivate his relationship with Mr. Trump, and was among the first leaders to call him after his victory in November.Many analysts have said that the incoming president, who has called for a halt to the war in Gaza, is broadly supportive of the Israeli government’s goal of ending the conflict with Hamas on its terms. This month, Mr. Trump threatened “hell to pay” if the hostages in Gaza were not freed before his inauguration on Jan. 20, prompting praise from Mr. Netanyahu, who said the statement added to pressure on Hamas.Mr. Netanyahu said that he had explained to Mr. Trump in their call on Saturday that Israel had dealt “a tough blow” to both the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and to Hamas, which attacked Israel in October 2023, setting off the war in Gaza. Both groups have been supported by Iran. Mr. Trump did not immediately comment on the call.Israel has largely destroyed Hamas as a military organization, and killed its leader, Yahya Sinwar, in an offensive that has shattered the enclave and killed tens of thousands of people. It also launched an intense campaign of airstrikes and ground attacks in Lebanon that severely weakened Hezbollah, killing its leader, Hassan Nasrallah. The two sides began observing a cease-fire last month. In recent days, amid the fall of Syria’s longtime leader, Bashar al-Assad, Israeli forces have also moved into Syria beyond the Golan Heights and launched airstrikes on military targets in that country.Mr. Netanyahu said he had told Mr. Trump that Israel was “committed to preventing Hezbollah’s rearmament” and used the statement to repeat a warning to Hezbollah and Iran that Israel “will continue acting against you as much as necessary, on any front and at any time.”The Biden administration, in its final weeks, has intensified efforts to reach a cease-fire in Gaza. The White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said last week that the administration aimed to seal a deal this month that would halt fighting in exchange for a return of hostages, although months of talks involving Israel and Hamas have failed to reach a breakthrough. More

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      Amnesty International Accuses Israel of Genocide in Gaza

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      Israel rejected the charge — the first of its kind by a major human rights organization — saying it was “based on lies.”Amnesty International on Thursday became the first major international human rights organization to accuse Israel of carrying out genocide in Gaza, drawing a rebuke from Israeli officials who denied the claim.Amnesty’s contention, outlined in a 296-page report, comes as the International Court of Justice, the principal court of the United Nations, is reviewing similar allegations by South Africa.“Israel committed and is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza,” the Amnesty report said.The Israeli Foreign Ministry swiftly rebuffed the report, saying it was “based on lies.”“Israeli citizens have been subjected to daily attacks” on multiple fronts, said Oren Marmorstein, the spokesman of the ministry. “Israel is defending itself against these attacks acting fully in accordance with international law.”Amnesty International said it took into account acts by Israel between October 2023 and July 2024, including what it described as “repeated direct attacks on civilians” and extensive restrictions on humanitarian aid.Israel has maintained that it is waging a war against Hamas in Gaza and not civilians. It has also blamed the United Nations for mismanaging the delivery of aid and accused Hamas of looting it.The genocide accusation is acutely sensitive for Israel, which was founded in 1948 in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Many Israelis argue that it is Hamas that should face charges of genocide after its attack on Oct. 7, 2023, when about 1,200 people were killed in Israel and about 240 were taken captive, according to Israeli officials.While the Amnesty report didn’t focus on the Oct. 7 attack, it said militants from Hamas and other armed groups conducted “deliberate mass killings, summary killings and other abuses, causing suffering and physical injuries.” It said war crimes committed by Hamas would be the subject of a separate report.Under a convention adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, genocide is defined as carrying out certain acts of violence with the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”In the case before the International Court of Justice, South Africa has argued that inflammatory public statements made by Israeli leaders are proof of intent to commit genocide. Part of Israel’s defense is to show that whatever politicians may have said in public was overruled by executive decisions and official orders from Israel’s war cabinet and its military’s high command.Amnesty International said it used the 1948 convention to make its determination that Israel was committing genocide and it warned against narrow interpretations of what constitutes intent. More

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      Deadly Israeli Strike Hits Gaza Humanitarian Zone

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      The Israeli military said it was targeting senior Hamas militants in the area. Video from the scene showed the charred remains of tents.The Israeli military bombed a densely populated tent encampment on Wednesday night in an area of southern Gaza that it had designated as a humanitarian zone, saying the airstrike targeted senior Hamas militants who were operating in the area.Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s news agency, reported that at least 20 people were killed and several others wounded in the strike on a coastal area in southern Gaza known as Al-Mawasi, where thousands of displaced Palestinians are sheltering. The death toll could not be independently verified.The Israeli military said in a statement that there were secondary explosions after the strike, suggesting “the presence of weaponry in the area.” It added that it took steps to mitigate the risk of civilian harm. Israel is trying to eliminate Hamas, which led the attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that sparked the war in Gaza, and it says Hamas militants hide among Gaza’s civilian population.The Palestinian civil defense in Gaza said in a statement on Wednesday evening that its rescue and emergency crews were trying to extinguish a fire that engulfed the tents of displaced people after the strike.The aftermath of the strike on Thursday.Haitham Imad/EPA, via ShutterstockVideo taken in the aftermath of the strike by the Reuters news agency showed people walking through the mangled and charred remains of their makeshift tents on Thursday morning, with smoke rising from piles of clothes, mattresses and other belongings.“The flames of the missile were the cause of almost all of this destruction,” Ahmed Abu Shahla, a displaced man sheltering in Al-Mawasi, told Reuters. “There were two children here in this place who were completely burned.”Abu Kamal al-Assar, another displaced Palestinian who survived the strike, told Reuters that “it was a big and scary explosion” that turned the area “into a fireball.”Al-Mawasi was designated as safer for civilians by Israel’s military. But Israel has also said that it will target Hamas or its infrastructure wherever it believes it to be and the area has frequently been hit by strikes.The military has repeatedly ordered Palestinians in other areas of Gaza to evacuate to the humanitarian zone, despite protests from aid groups that the area lacks adequate shelter, water, food, sanitation and health care. More

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      Israeli Officials Welcome Trump’s Demand to Free Hostages Before Inauguration

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      President-elect Donald J. Trump has threatened to take unspecified action unless the hostages held in Gaza are released before he takes office in January.Senior Israeli officials have welcomed President-elect Donald J. Trump’s demand that hostages taken in the Hamas-led attack on Israel be released from Gaza before his inauguration in January, and his threat that there will be “hell to pay” in the Middle East if they are not.Mr. Trump’s social media post on Monday did not elaborate on what action would be taken if the hostages are not released by Jan. 20, when he will be sworn in. Still, some Israeli officials appeared to be reassured by Mr. Trump’s remarks, which suggested the onus was more on the militants holding the hostages than on Israel to free the captives.“Thank you and bless you Mr. President-elect,” President Isaac Herzog of Israel said in a post on social media. “We all pray for the moment we see our sisters and brothers back home!”Mr. Herzog’s position is largely ceremonial. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, seen as the main Israeli decision maker in the war against Hamas in Gaza, has not publicly commented on Mr. Trump’s remarks, nor have leaders of the Israeli military.Mr. Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Monday that “there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East, and for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against Humanity,” if the hostages aren’t released before his inauguration.“Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America,” he said. “RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!”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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      Former Defense Minister Accuses Israel of Committing War Crimes in Gaza

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      The comments by Moshe Yaalon were swiftly denied and condemned by allies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who said that they would hurt the country and help its enemies.A former Israeli defense minister has accused Israel of committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip, a rare critique from a member of the security establishment at a time of war.The comments by Moshe Yaalon came amid mounting criticism of the Israeli military’s conduct in Gaza. They were swiftly denied and condemned by allies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, saying that they would hurt the country and help its enemies.Mr. Yaalon served as the Israeli military’s chief of staff during the second intifada and as Mr. Netanyahu’s defense minister during the 2014 war in Gaza, the longest conflict between Israel and Hamas before the current war. But he broke with Mr. Netanyahu in 2016 and has since become a critic of the Israeli leader.At an event on Saturday, Mr. Yaalon denounced Mr. Netanyahu’s government for its actions in Gaza.“The path they’re dragging us down is to occupy, annex, and ethnically cleanse — look at the northern strip,” he said. He also said Israel was being pulled in the direction of building settlements in Gaza, a notion that is supported by far-right politicians in Mr. Netanyahu’s government.When the interviewer at the event asked Mr. Yaalon to clarify whether he thought Israel was on the way to carrying out ethnic cleansing, he responded: “Why on the way? What’s happening there? What’s happening there?”“There’s no Beit Lahia. There’s no Beit Hanoun. They’re now operating in Jabaliya. They’re basically cleaning the territory of Arabs,” he said, referring to towns and cities in northern Gaza where a renewed Israeli offensive against the militant group Hamas has caused extensive damage in recent months. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the war began in response to the deadly Hamas-led attack on Israel in October 2023.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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      A Power Vacuum in Gaza Could Empower Warlords and Gangs

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      Hamas’s weakened position could leave the territory without any governing institutions.A picture taken during a tour organized by the Israeli Army shows a Palestinian truck arriving to pick up aid destined for the Gaza Strip arriving from a drop-off area near the Kerem Shalom crossing on Nov. 28.Jack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSince the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas, the war in Gaza has been dogged by a persistent question: What happens after the conflict ends?Recent events point to one worrying scenario: Gaza, without a centralized governing authority, could be dominated by warlords and organized crime.Wartime is notorious for giving rise to black markets and criminal gangs, and the conflict in Gaza is no exception. In one troubling episode in November, armed gunmen looted a convoy of 109 United Nations aid trucks. Over the last year, a contraband trade in tobacco has become a particular problem for humanitarian aid convoys, with organized gangs ransacking aid shipments for cigarettes smuggled inside them that can sell for $25 to $30 each.The Israeli military is determined to wipe out Hamas, but Israel has not laid out a plan for the day after the conflict stops. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has resisted calls for the Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza.Hamas was a repressive regime that used violence against its own people. But because it also ran the local government in Gaza, its weakened condition threatens to leave the territory without any governing institutions.Such power vacuums create ideal conditions for so-called criminal governance, in which criminal mafias, sometimes linked to families or tribes, take over much of the traditional role of a government within their territories, competing with weak official institutions. It may even devolve into outright warlordism, in which territory is carved up between armed groups into self-governing fiefdoms.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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      Israel Accuses World Central Kitchen Worker of Role in Oct. 7 Attack

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      The Israeli military said it killed the worker in a strike in Gaza on Saturday. “To the best of our knowledge, no WCK team members are affiliated with Hamas,” a spokeswoman for the aid group said.Israel on Saturday said it had killed a World Central Kitchen worker it accused of taking part in the Hamas-led attack that started the war in Gaza last year, in the second Israeli strike to kill workers affiliated with the aid group.A spokeswoman for World Central Kitchen, a U.S.-based relief group, said on Saturday that three of its contractors had been killed in an Israeli airstrike on a vehicle. In a statement, the aid group said that it “had no knowledge that any individual in the vehicle had alleged ties” to the Hamas-led attack. “To the best of our knowledge, no WCK team members are affiliated with Hamas,” the spokeswoman, Linda Roth, said in an email. The Israeli military declined to comment on the two other workers World Central Kitchen reported were killed.The aid group said it was pausing operations in Gaza, where a dire humanitarian crisis is unfolding for some two million people. The organization took a similar action in April, after seven of its workers were killed in an Israeli airstrike.The Israeli military said on Saturday that the person it targeted in the latest strike had taken part in the Oct. 7 attack on Kibbutz Nir Oz, an Israeli village near the Gaza border where dozens of people were abducted. He had been monitored by Israeli “intelligence for a while and was struck following credible information regarding his real-time location,” the military 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