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    Poised to Expand Gaza Offensive, Israel Calls Up Thousands of Reserve Soldiers

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    The mobilization could indicate that Israel is preparing to shift its tactics in its fight against Hamas. Israel will mobilize thousands of reserve soldiers to bolster its campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the military announced on Saturday night, as the country appeared poised to expand its offensive in the Palestinian enclave.The call-up suggested the Israeli government was preparing to shift tactics in an attempt to force Hamas to agree to its terms for an end to the war. It is unclear whether that would prove successful, as Hamas has fought a determined insurgency through more than a year of Israeli operations in Gaza. Israel’s security cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was set to meet on Sunday to formally sign off on broadening the campaign in Gaza, said an Israeli official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.The mobilization announcement compounded fears in Gaza, where Israel has barred food, medicine and other humanitarian aid from entering for over two months. Reeling from more than a year of hunger and fighting, many are still displaced or living amid the rubble of their homes.After Israel ended a two-month cease-fire with Hamas in mid-March, Israeli forces resumed attacking across the enclave. But while Israel jets and drones have regularly bombarded Gaza from the air, Israeli ground forces slowed their advance after seizing some territory.More than 50,000 people have been killed in Israel’s military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, according to Gaza health officials. They do not distinguish between combatants and civilians, but their tallies include thousands of children.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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      Palestinian Leader Abbas Appoints Hussein al-Sheikh as Deputy Amid Succession Fears

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      For many ordinary Palestinians, the appointment of Hussein al-Sheikh was emblematic of how out-of-touch the leadership of the Western-backed Palestinian Authority has become.Palestinian leaders in the Israeli-occupied West Bank met this week for the first gathering of its kind in years. Their mission: to allow Mahmoud Abbas, the aging Palestinian Authority president, to appoint a longtime loyalist to a newly minted senior position. On Saturday night, Mr. Abbas formally named Hussein al-Sheikh, a close confidant, as his deputy. Some analysts believed Mr. al-Sheikh’s promotion indicated that Mr. Abbas, 89, was signaling that Mr. al-Sheikh was his preferred heir, while others saw it as a cosmetic reshuffle to placate Arab officials frustrated by the Palestinian leader.For many Palestinians, their leadership’s focus on palace politics as the war in Gaza has raged, and a sweeping Israeli military operation in the northern West Bank has displaced tens of thousands of people, has further underscored the complacency of the Western-backed Palestinian Authority. “The ship is sinking, and everyone’s fighting over who’s going to be seated at what table,” said Ghaith al-Omari, a former adviser to Mr. Abbas and a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a research group. More than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza, according to local health officials, who do not distinguish between civilians and combatants. The war began with Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel, which killed about 1,200 people and took roughly 250 hostage. The war cast a spotlight on the Palestinian cause and spurred worldwide protests. But the frail and internally divided Palestinian Authority — the Palestinians’ internationally recognized representative — has struggled for relevance. 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. Reverses Itself, Saying U.N.’s Gaza Agency Can Be Sued in New York

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      The Justice Department and the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office told a judge that an immunity law did not apply. A group of Israelis had accused the agency of assisting Hamas.Reversing a Biden administration position, President Trump’s Justice Department argued that a lawsuit could proceed in Manhattan that accuses a United Nations agency of providing more than $1 billion that helped to enable Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.The lawsuit says that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency allowed Hamas to siphon off the organization’s funds to help build a terrorist infrastructure that included tunneling equipment and weapons that supported the attack, in which about 1,200 people were killed and roughly 250 were taken hostage.The Biden administration argued last year that UNRWA could not be sued because it was part of the United Nations, which enjoys immunity from such lawsuits.But the Justice Department told a federal judge in Manhattan on Thursday that neither UNRWA nor the agency officials named in the lawsuit were entitled to immunity.“The complaint in this case alleges atrocious conduct on the part of UNRWA and its officers,” the department wrote in a letter to Judge Analisa Torres of Federal District Court, adding, “The government believes they must answer these allegations in American courts.”“The prior administration’s view that they do not was wrong,” the department said.The letter was submitted by Yaakov M. Roth, a senior Justice Department official, and Jay Clayton, the interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.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’s Military Cites ‘Professional Failures’ in Killings of Gaza Medics

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      In a statement summarizing its investigation into the deadly episode, the military said a deputy commander would be dismissed.The Israeli military said Sunday that an investigation into its soldiers’ deadly attack on medics in Gaza last month had identified “several professional failures” and that a commander would be dismissed.The military had previously acknowledged carrying out the attack in Rafah, southern Gaza, that killed 14 rescue workers and a United Nations employee who drove by after the others were shot. But it had offered shifting explanations for why its troops fired on the emergency vehicles and said it was investigating the episode, one that prompted international condemnation and that experts described as a war crime.On Sunday — nearly a month after the attack — the military released a statement summarizing its investigation.“The examination identified several professional failures, breaches of orders, and a failure to fully report the incident,” it said.The deadly shootings of the rescue workers resulted from “an operational misunderstanding” by troops on the ground “who believed they faced a tangible threat from enemy forces.” Firing on a U.N. vehicle, the statement added, involved “a breach of orders” in a combat setting.Israeli troops fired on ambulances and a fire truck sent by the Palestine Red Crescent Society and the Civil Defense, as well as the United Nations vehicle that passed by separately, according to witness accounts, video and audio of the attack.The military said on Sunday that “due to poor night visibility,” the deputy commander on the ground “did not initially recognize the vehicles as ambulances.”Palestinians in Khan Younis, Gaza, mourned medics on March 31 who were killed by Israeli fire while on a rescue mission.Hatem Khaled/ReutersTwo weeks ago, the Israeli military acknowledged that some of its early assertions, based on accounts from troops involved in the killing, were partly mistaken.Military officials had initially asserted, repeatedly and erroneously, that the vehicles were “advancing suspiciously” toward the troops “without headlights or emergency signals.”The military backtracked on that assertion a day after The New York Times published a video, discovered on the cellphone of one of the dead paramedics, that showed the clearly marked vehicles flashing their lights and coming to a halt before the attack.Israeli soldiers later buried most of the bodies in a mass grave, crushed the ambulances, fire truck and a U.N. vehicle, and buried those as well.In the statement on Sunday, the Israeli military said that “removing the bodies was reasonable under the circumstances, but the decision to crush the vehicles was wrong.”The commander of the brigade involved will receive a reprimand “for his overall responsibility for the incident,” it said, while the battalion’s deputy commander will be dismissed because of his responsibilities “and for providing an incomplete and inaccurate report during the debrief.”Bilal Shbair More

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      Israeli Attacks Kill Dozens in Gaza, Health Ministry Says

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      Israel was keeping up its intense bombing campaign in the enclave, which has exacted a heavy price on civilians struggling to find safe places to shelter.The latest round of Israeli attacks in a renewed military offensive in Gaza has killed dozens of Palestinians, the territory’s health ministry said on Saturday.The ministry said that 92 dead and 219 wounded people had arrived at hospitals over the past 48 hours. Gaza health officials do not differentiate between civilians and combatants in casualty counts.Since the collapse last month of a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, Israel’s military has embarked on a major bombing campaign and seized territory in Gaza. Israeli officials have said that the military is targeting militants and weapons infrastructure in a bid to compel Hamas to release more hostages held in the enclave.More than 1,700 people have been killed in Gaza since the cease-fire fell apart, and more than 51,000 people have been killed since the war began in October 2023, according to the health ministry.Israel’s renewed offensive has exacted a heavy price on civilians struggling to find places to shelter and reinforced a feeling among Palestinians in Gaza that nowhere is safe.On Friday, the Israeli military told The New York Times that Mawasi, a narrow strip of coastal land in southern Gaza, was no longer considered a “humanitarian zone.” Earlier in the war, the Israeli military repeatedly instructed Palestinians to go to Mawasi, which it had described at the time as a “humanitarian zone.”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 Strikes Area With Tent Camps for Displaced Gazans

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      The attack on the Mawasi area of southern Gaza killed at least a dozen people, according to the emergency rescue service in the territory. Israel did not confirm the location of the attack.Gaza’s Civil Defense, the local emergency rescue service, reported that an Israeli strike overnight into Thursday in the Mawasi encampment area killed at least a dozen people, including children. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Nader IbrahimIsrael bombarded an area in southern Gaza with large tent encampments for Palestinians displaced by the war and killed at least a dozen people, including children, the Civil Defense emergency rescue service in the territory said on Thursday.The strike was part of the latest round of attacks on Gaza that killed more than 20 people overnight between Wednesday and Thursday, according to Palestinian officials, who do not distinguish between civilians and combatants in death tolls.One of the strikes hit the coastal area of Mawasi near the city of Khan Younis, an area largely designated by the Israeli military as a “humanitarian zone” where tens of thousands of displaced people have been sheltering in tents.In video distributed by wire agencies, the strike appeared to ignite a fire that burned some tents and rescue workers attempted to douse the flames in the wake of the strike on Mawasi before driving off with the dead and wounded.Atef al-Hout, the director of the Nasser hospital, said in a telephone interview that the bodies of at least 14 people had arrived at the medical facility overnight on Thursday, including seven children. Most were believed to have been killed in the strike on Mawasi, he said.Inspecting damage at the site of an Israeli strike in an area of tent camps for displaced Palestinians in southern Gaza on Thursday.Hatem Khaled/ReutersWe 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 Columbia Activist Sought Middle Ground on Gaza. The U.S. Detained Him.

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      Mohsen Mahdawi was arrested at a citizenship interview in Vermont. He had spent a decade trying to understand the conflict that shaped his life, his supporters say.As Columbia University’s student protest movement careened toward the center of the nation’s political discourse last year, one of its most ardent leaders suddenly fell quiet.Mohsen Mahdawi had been a key organizer of pro-Palestinian demonstrations, but he said he walked away from that role in March 2024 — well before the rallies reached a fever pitch as students set up encampments and broke into a campus building.A fissure had been growing. By the fall of 2024 it had widened: Parts of the movement were becoming more radical, and some students were distributing fliers during a campus demonstration glorifying violent resistance. Mr. Mahdawi, meanwhile, was approaching Israeli students, hoping to find middle ground in the divisive Israeli-Palestinian conflict that, for decades, had unleashed horrors on both sides and in his own life.He told friends that he was being sidelined in part because he wanted to engage in dialogue with supporters of Israel, a stance many pro-Palestinian activists reject.His calls for compassion did not protect him from President Trump’s widening dragnet against pro-Palestinian student organizers on campus.At an appointment to obtain U.S. citizenship on Monday in Vermont, Mr. Mahdawi, who is expected to graduate next month from Columbia, was taken into custody by immigration police.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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      Inside Trump’s Pressure Campaign on Universities

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      As he finished lunch in the private dining room outside the Oval Office on April 1, President Trump floated an astounding proposal: What if the government simply canceled every dollar of the nearly $9 billion promised to Harvard University?The administration’s campaign to expunge “woke” ideology from college campuses had already forced Columbia University to strike a deal. Now, the White House was eyeing the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university.“What if we never pay them?” Mr. Trump casually asked, according to a person familiar with the conversation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private discussion. “Wouldn’t that be cool?”The moment underscored the aggressive, ad hoc approach continuing to shape one of the new administration’s most consequential policies.Mr. Trump and his top aides are exerting control of huge sums of federal research money to shift the ideological tilt of the higher education system, which they see as hostile to conservatives and intent on perpetuating liberalism.Their effort was energized by the campus protests against Israel’s response to the October 2023 terrorist attack by Hamas, demonstrations during which Jewish students were sometimes harassed. Soon after taking office, Mr. Trump opened the Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, which is scrutinizing leading universities for potential civil rights violations and serving as an entry point to pressure schools to reassess their policies.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 Medic Missing Since Israeli Attack Is in Israeli Custody, Palestinian Group Says

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      Asaad al-Nasasra has not been heard from since the March 23 ambush by Israeli forces, which left 15 aid workers dead and drew international condemnation.A Gaza paramedic for the Palestine Red Crescent Society who has been missing since Israeli forces ambushed a group of ambulances and other aid vehicles in late March is in Israeli custody, the Red Crescent and the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Sunday.Israeli forces killed 15 other rescue and aid workers in the same attack, buried their bodies in a mass grave and crushed their ambulances, their fire truck and a United Nations vehicle — actions that have drawn international condemnation and scrutiny.Witnesses have said that Asaad al-Nasasra, 47, the paramedic who disappeared after the March 23 attack, survived but was detained and taken away by Israeli soldiers. But there had been no official word of his whereabouts until Sunday, when the Red Crescent said the I.C.R.C. had notified it that he was being held by Israel.The Red Cross said in a statement that it had received information that Mr. al-Nasasra was being held “in an Israeli place of detention.”Asked for comment, the Israeli military replied with a statement that it had released last week saying that it was still investigating the attack. It has said it will not comment further until the investigation is complete.The Israeli military has offered changing explanations for why its troops fired on the emergency vehicles, first saying that they had been “advancing suspiciously” without their lights on until a video of the attack contradicted that account. It initially said nine of those killed had been operatives from Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another militant group, before saying, without providing evidence, that six operatives were killed in the attack.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