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      Saudi Arabia Pledges to Send Financial Aid to Palestine

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      Saudi Arabia has pledged to send financial aid to the struggling Palestinian Authority, reversing a decision made during the Trump administration to slash funding to the governing body that administers some areas in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.The promise of a cash infusion won’t resolve the authority’s financial woes, but it reflects the improved relationship between Saudi Arabia and Palestinian leaders, which frayed during the Trump era. It is also a sign that the kingdom is strengthening its support for the establishment of a Palestinian state at a time when the Saudis appear to have shifted their tone on normalizing relations with Israel.For months, the Biden administration and its allies have warned that the Palestinian Authority’s dire financial straits could foreshadow another escalation in the West Bank. Israeli forces have been stepping up raids targeting militants in which they ripped up roads and wrecked shops and homes in the territory.The Saudi foreign ministry announced on Sunday night that it would send a monthly aid package to the country’s “brothers in Palestine” to alleviate the “humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip and its surrounding areas,” without specifying the amount or intended recipients. The commitment was made during a recent visit by the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, to Saudi Arabia, according to one of his aides.“Prince Mohammed affirmed to the president, Abu Mazen, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s support for the Palestinian people politically and materially,” said Mahmoud al-Habbash, a senior adviser to Mr. Abbas. Mr. al-Habbash was referring to the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, and Mr. Abbas, using his nickname.Saudi Arabia has agreed to deliver $60 million to the Palestinian Authority in six installments, with the first payment expected in the coming days, according to a senior Palestinian Authority official.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 Strike in Central Beirut Damages a Building

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      If the explosion is confirmed to be an Israeli attack, it would be the first Israeli strike within the Lebanese capital since the 2006 war with Hezbollah.Footage showed emergency personnel responding to the strike on the Cola neighborhood of Beirut, Lebanon.Fadel Itani/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesEmergency crews in Beirut were working early Monday in an area of the city where an apparent Israeli airstrike damaged a residential building, The Associated Press reported.If Israel is confirmed to be behind the attack, it would be the first known Israeli strike within Beirut since Israel’s 2006 war with Hezbollah, a militia backed by Iran. Israel has been stepping up its attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon over the past two weeks, killing its leader and striking targets nearly daily.The A.P. released videos from the Lebanese capital on Monday that showed people and emergency workers gathering below a damaged multistory building in the largely Sunni Muslim neighborhood of Cola. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.A militant group based in Lebanon and Gaza, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, said that three of its members had been killed in the strike in Cola. That claim by the group, which is mostly known for a string of airline hijackings and bombings decades ago, could not be independently verified.The intensifying cadence of Israeli strikes has stretched deep into Lebanon. Israel has said that most have been directed at Hezbollah, whose leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed late Friday by Israeli bombs. But the military has also hit other groups, including a strike against Iran-backed Houthi forces in Yemen.Euan Ward More

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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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      In U.N. Speech, Netanyahu Declares That Israel Is ‘Winning’

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      The Israeli prime minister castigated Israel’s critics and the United Nations itself during his visit to New York for the U.N. General Assembly.When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel arrived in New York City for the United Nations General Assembly, he seemed to be entering a lion’s den.Speaker after speaker at the annual gathering of world leaders had portrayed Israel as a global villain. Police arrested dozens of pro-Palestinian demonstrators who called Mr. Netanyahu a war criminal. His public rebuttal of a Biden administration plan to pause the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah raised tensions between the two governments.But Mr. Netanyahu bulldozed his way through his visit, castigating Israel’s critics and the United Nations itself, offering no diplomatic concessions, and ordering an airstrike in Beirut that may have killed Israel’s long hunted archnemesis, the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.The strike landed even as Mr. Netanyahu delivered defiant remarks to a U.N. General Assembly hall — largely emptied after dozens of diplomats walked out in protest — in which he triumphantly declared of Israel’s multiple conflicts: “We are winning.”It is an assessment some U.S. officials say could reflect short-term truth while skirting past the risk of a larger conflict that could be devastating for all involved.Hours later, senior Israeli officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive military operation, expressed remarkable confidence about their military and sabotage campaign against Hezbollah. Their blows against the group over the past two weeks and Mr. Nasrallah’s possible death could be a turning point, they said, in their ongoing struggle with Iran, which arms and funds Hezbollah, Hamas and other proxy forces in what the officials portrayed as a plan to destroy Israel.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 Likely to Have Enough Weapons for Multiple Conflicts

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      Over the last week alone, Israel launched more than 2,000 airstrikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon and continued its near-daily bombings against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Its air defenses also fended off attacks, in one instance intercepting a ballistic missile headed for Tel Aviv.And there are no signs of the onslaught slowing. “We’re not stopping, while simultaneously preparing plans for the next phases,” the Israeli military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said on Wednesday.But how long can Israel keep it up?Military and weapons experts say that is not clear. Israel, like many countries, is highly secretive about the weapons in its stockpile, and government spokespeople who vigorously safeguard that information did not respond to requests for comment.Yet there are several reasons why experts believe Israel could outlast its adversaries in its two-front offensive, even while defending itself from approaching strikes. Israel’s defense industry churned out so many weapons last year that it was able to export some, even despite the war in Gaza beginning in October. The United States has sent Israel at least tens of thousands of missiles, bombs and artillery rounds in recent years.And given the threats it has faced, Israel has almost certainly built up its stockpiles to sustain multiple conflicts at once — especially if Iran rallies its allied groups in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen to strike at the same time.“It will not run out, because in the Middle East, you cannot run out of weapons,” said Yehoshua Kalisky, a military technology expert at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. “The leaders know how to calculate the amount of weapons that are needed, and what they would have to have in the stockpile, because in this jungle you have to be strong.”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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      Senior Hezbollah Leader Is Killed in Beirut in Israeli Airstrike

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      The attack, which Lebanese officials said killed at least 14 and injured more than 60, stoked fears Israel is driving toward a full-blown war on its northern border, even as the fight in Gaza goes on.Israeli fighter jets bombed an apartment building in Beirut’s densely populated southern suburbs on Friday in what the military called an attack on Hezbollah militants, including a senior commander who was wanted in the deadly 1983 bombings of the U.S. embassy and U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut.The Israeli military’s chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said the senior commander, Ibrahim Aqeel, had been killed, along with “around” 10 others from Hezbollah’s elite Radwan unit, who were meeting underneath the residential building.In a statement, Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese militia backed by Iran, confirmed that Mr. Aqeel had been killed. The strike marked an escalation in Israel’s bloody conflict with the militia and fueled fears among Lebanese, Israelis and diplomats that Israel is driving closer to a full-blown war with Hezbollah, even as it continues to fight Hamas in Gaza.The strike on Friday came as Lebanon was still reeling from the attacks on Tuesday and Wednesday — widely attributed to Israel — that blew up communication devices belonging to Hezbollah members, killing at least 37 people and injuring thousands, Lebanese health officials said. Hezbollah’s leader vowed on Thursday to retaliate against Israel for those blasts, but did not describe how or when.As with Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, the one on Friday in Lebanon led to destruction and death in a heavily residential area. Lebanese officials said that two apartment buildings had collapsed, killing at least 14 people and injuring more than 60 others, including children. Residents described ambulances racing through the streets, a column of smoke rising above the skyline and rescuers frantically digging through rubble.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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      Houthis Launch Missile at Central Israel

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      The rare attack was an illustration of the evolving conflict in the Middle East between Israel and Iranian proxies.The Houthi militia in Yemen claimed responsibility on Sunday for a rare missile attack on Israel, the second time in two months that the Iranian-backed group has successfully penetrated the skies over the central part of the country.The assault was the latest illustration of the evolving conflict in the Middle East between Israel and Iranian proxies, which have mounted attacks on Israeli territory in what they have said is solidarity with Palestinians under bombardment in Gaza. It also demonstrated the military capabilities of the Houthis, based hundreds of miles from Israel on the southern edge of the Arabian Peninsula.Air-raid sirens blared in dozens of towns and villages in central Israel around 6:30 a.m. on Sunday, sending people rushing to fortified safe rooms and bomb shelters.The Israeli military initially said the Houthis had fired a surface-to-surface missile that landed in an “open area” and that no casualties were reported. In a follow-up statement, the military said an initial inquiry indicated the missile had “fragmented midair” and that it was reviewing its attempts to intercept the strike.Yahya Sarea, a Houthi military spokesman, said the armed group had fired a ballistic missile at what he claimed was a military target in central Israel. His claims could not be independently verified.“The enemy should expect more strikes and quality operations,” Mr. Sarea said in a televised statement.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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      3 Israelis Killed at West Bank-Jordan Border Crossing

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      The Allenby crossing, near the West Bank city of Jericho, has been the scene of violence in the past.A gunman killed three Israelis at a sensitive border crossing between Jordan and the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Sunday, according to the Israeli military.The attack comes amid a surge of violence in the occupied territory since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on Israel prompted the war in Gaza, and at a delicate moment for the relationship between Israel and neighboring Jordan.The gunman arrived at the Israeli-controlled part of the Allenby Bridge crossing from Jordan in a truck on Sunday and opened fire on Israeli security forces, the military said in a statement. The military did not identify the gunman, who was killed at the scene. The three victims were forklift operators who worked at the crossing, according to the Israel Airports Authority.The crossing, near the West Bank city of Jericho, is the main pathway for most Palestinians in the occupied territory to travel abroad, and it has served as an entry point for some aid being delivered to the war-ravaged Gaza Strip.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel described the gunman as “an abhorrent terrorist” and extended his condolences to the families of the victims.It was not immediately clear how the gunman managed to take a weapon into the Israeli-controlled part of the crossing. The Israel Airports Authority said in a statement that the Allenby Bridge was closed, as were two land crossings between Israel and Jordan.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