More stories

  • in

    The International Court of Justice’s Ruling on Israel Tests International Law

    Over the past month, we’ve watched an astonishing, high-stakes global drama play out in The Hague. A group of countries from the poorer, less powerful bloc some call the Global South, led by South Africa, dragged the government of Israel and by extension its rich, powerful allies into the top court of that order, and accused Israel of prosecuting a brutal war in Gaza that is “genocidal in character.”The responses to this presentation from the leading nations of the Western rules-based order were quick and blunt.“Completely unjustified and wrong,” said a statement from Rishi Sunak, Britain’s prime minister.“Meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever,” said John Kirby, spokesman for the United States National Security Council.“The accusation has no basis in fact,” a German government spokesman said, adding that Germany opposed the “political instrumentalization” of the genocide statute.But on Friday, that court had its say, issuing a sober and careful provisional ruling that doubled as a rebuke to those dismissals. In granting provisional measures, the court affirmed that some of South Africa’s allegations were plausible, and called on Israel to take immediate steps to protect civilians, increase the amount of humanitarian aid and punish officials who engaged in violent and incendiary speech. The court stopped short of calling for a cease-fire, but it granted South Africa’s request for provisional measures to prevent further civilian death. For the most part, the court ruled in favor of the Global South. Accusing the state created in the aftermath of the slaughter that required the coinage of the term genocide is a serious step. Scholars of genocide have raised alarms about statements from Israeli leaders and its conduct in the war while stopping short of calling the killing genocide. Some have welcomed South Africa’s application as a necessary step to preventing genocide.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?  More

  • in

    Major Donors Pause Funding for U.N. Agency as Scandal Widens

    The actions came as specific, “horrific” details were more widely shared by the U.N. and Israel.Germany, Britain and at least four other countries said Saturday they were suspending funding for the United Nations agency that provides food, water and essential services for Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, many of whom have been described as being on the brink of starvation after 16 weeks of war between Israel and Hamas.The countries joined the United States, which said on Friday it would withhold funding for the group, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, after a dozen of its employees were accused by Israel of participating in the Oct. 7 attacks.The United Nations has not made public the details of the accusations against the UNRWA employees, who have been fired, but a senior U.N. official briefed on the accusations called them “extremely serious and horrific.”The Israeli military said in a statement Saturday that its intelligence services had compiled a case “incriminating several UNRWA employees for their alleged involvement in the massacre, along with evidence pointing to the use of UNRWA facilities for terrorist purposes.” It did not elaborate on what that involvement entailed.In announcing the pause in funding, the United States, the agency’s largest donor, said it was reviewing the allegations “and the steps the United Nations is taking to address them.”The governments of Australia, Canada, Finland and Iceland also said they were suspending funding for the agency.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?  More

  • in

    Negotiators Close In on Hostage Deal That Would Halt Fighting in Gaza for Weeks

    A written draft agreement calls for the phased release of captives held by Hamas in exchange for a cessation in Israel’s military offensive for about two months.American-led negotiators are edging closer to an agreement in which Israel would suspend its war in Gaza for about two months in exchange for the release of more than 100 hostages still held by Hamas, a deal that could be sealed in the next two weeks and would transform the conflict consuming the region.Negotiators have developed a written draft agreement merging proposals offered by Israel and Hamas in the last 10 days into a basic framework that will be the subject of talks in Paris on Sunday. While there are still important disagreements to be worked out, negotiators are cautiously optimistic that a final accord is within reach, according to U.S. officials who insisted on anonymity to discuss sensitive talks.President Biden spoke by phone separately Friday with the leaders of Egypt and Qatar, who have served as intermediaries with Hamas, to narrow the remaining differences. He is also sending his C.I.A. director, William J. Burns, to Paris for Sunday’s talks with Israeli, Egyptian and Qatari officials. If Mr. Burns makes enough progress, Mr. Biden may then send his Middle East coordinator, Brett McGurk, who just returned to Washington, back to the region to help finalize the agreement.“Both leaders affirmed that a hostage deal is central to establishing a prolonged humanitarian pause in the fighting and ensure additional lifesaving humanitarian assistance reaches civilians in need throughout Gaza,” the White House said in a statement Friday night summarizing the president’s conversation with Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, Qatar’s prime minister. “They underscored the urgency of the situation and welcomed the close cooperation among their teams to advance recent discussions.”In a statement in Israel on Saturday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reaffirmed his commitment to securing the release of those hostages who were not freed as part of a more limited agreement in November. “As of today, we have returned 110 of our hostages and we are committed to returning all of them home,” he said. “We are dealing with this and we are doing so around the clock, including now.”The hostages have been in captivity since Oct. 7, when Hamas gunmen stormed into Israel and killed an estimated 1,200 people and seized about 240 more in the worst terrorist attack in the country’s history. Israel’s military retaliation since then has killed more than 25,000 people, most of them women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry. It is not clear how many of those killed in Gaza were Hamas combatants.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?  More

  • in

    Netanyahu’s Cynical Political Game

    It has become clear that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is not the leader for this critical moment.The devastation of Gaza is at intolerable levels and getting worse; the Israeli government is under intense pressure from the families of hostages to do far more to free them before they perish; the United States and Arab states, anxious to avoid a regional war, are trying to mediate an end to the conflict. But Mr. Netanyahu blocks the way.As a majority of Israelis and their allies can see, Mr. Netanyahu and his insistence on “total victory” over Hamas, with no consideration of the consequences or costs, have become a part of the problem. He is playing a cynical game, using the war to serve his political ends, and Israelis, most of whom support the effort to wipe out Hamas, are getting tired of it.He has even managed to alienate Israel’s most important ally. Despite President Biden’s display of total support for Israel — and Mr. Netanyahu — after the atrocious attack by Hamas on Oct. 7, including the president’s personal visit to the Jewish state, Mr. Netanyahu has deliberately and publicly defied American advice as contrary to Israel’s “vital interests.” A particularly contentious conversation in late December ended with Mr. Biden angrily declaring, “This conversation is over.” It was a month before Mr. Biden phoned again.The problem is not necessarily Mr. Netanyahu’s hawkish stance, which is shared by many Israelis enraged by the barbaric Hamas raid. It is Mr. Netanyahu’s confusion of leadership with political survival, with the widespread perception that he opposes any negotiated settlement, and any American advice or mediation, not because he really believes they run counter to Israelis’ interests, as he claims, but because appearing to stand up to “American pressure,” and portraying the Gaza war as a far broader conflict about a Palestinian state and Iran, serves his political ends.That, at least, appears to be what a majority of Israelis believe, even those who might otherwise align with the prime minister’s insistence on trying to fully eradicate Hamas. According to a political poll taken in late December, only 15 percent of Israelis wanted him to stay in office after the war ended.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?  More

  • in

    U.N. Court Orders Israel to Prevent Genocide, but Does Not Demand Stop to War

    The top United Nations court in The Hague did not rule on whether Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, the accusation that South Africa brought before the court.The International Court of Justice ordered Israel to take actions to prevent genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.Remko De Waal/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe United Nations’ highest court said on Friday that Israel must take action to prevent acts of genocide by its forces in the Gaza Strip, adding to the international pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reduce death and destruction in the battered Palestinian enclave.But the court did not rule on whether Israel was committing genocide, and it did not call on Israel to stop its military campaign to crush Hamas, as South Africa, which brought the case, had requested.While the ruling had elements that each side could embrace, the court allowed the case charging Israel with genocide to proceed, which will likely keep the country under international scrutiny for years to come.“The court is acutely aware of the extent of the human tragedy that is unfolding in the region, and is deeply concerned about the continuing loss of life and human suffering,” Joan E. Donoghue, the president of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, said as she announced the interim ruling. The decision also ordered the delivery of more humanitarian aid to Palestinians, and called for the release of hostages held by armed groups in Gaza.The South Africans who argued the case this month have equated the oppression they faced under apartheid with the plight of Palestinians.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, when about 1,200 people were killed in Israel and about 240 were taken captive, according to Israeli officials.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?  More

  • in

    U.N. Shelter in Gaza’s Khan Younis Is Struck, Killing at Least 9

    United Nations officials said a building hit in Khan Younis that was being used as a shelter by about 800 people had been “clearly marked” as one of their facilities. Israel denied responsibility.Israeli forces pushed deeper into southern Gaza’s largest city on Wednesday, surrounding two major hospitals where thousands of people were seeking safety as a strike on a United Nations shelter killed at least nine people, according to U.N. officials and local health officials.The Israeli military said it had “currently ruled out” that its aerial or artillery fire had been responsible for the strike on the shelter in Khan Younis, where the U.N. was housing about 800 people. In addition to the nine dead, 75 other people were injured, according to Thomas White, who helps oversee U.N. aid operations in Gaza. U.N. officials did not directly blame Israel, but said the shelter, in a vocational training center, had been hit by two tank rounds. Israel is the only combatant in Gaza with tanks.Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the U.N. Palestinian aid agency, said that the shelter was “clearly marked” as a U.N. facility and that its coordinates had been shared with the Israeli authorities. “Once again a blatant disregard of basic rules of war,” Mr. Lazzarini wrote on social media.At a news conference in Washington, Vedant Patel, a State Department spokesman, called the strike “incredibly concerning” and added: “Civilians must be protected, and the protected nature of U.N. facilities must be respected.” He declined to say whether U.S. officials had spoken to the Israelis about the shelter strike.The Israeli military said that it was conducting a review of its operations in the area of the shelter.The Israeli military, which has described Khan Younis as a bastion of Hamas, the militant group that led the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, says its forces have encircled the city after weeks of heavy bombardment and gunfights. On Wednesday, Israeli soldiers were surrounding two major hospitals where thousands of Gazans were seeking safety.Khan Younis was a scene of intense fighting on Wednesday.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn a statement, the Israeli military accused Hamas of exploiting the civilian population and said that its operation in Khan Younis would continue until it had finished “dismantling Hamas’s military framework and Hamas strongholds.”Thousands of the civilians now in danger in Khan Younis had fled there to escape airstrikes and shelling in northern Gaza earlier in the war, packing into shelters and tents on the streets. No place in the city is safe, some say.“Our last night in Khan Younis felt like doomsday,” one Gazan, Yafa Abu Aker, said on Wednesday morning after walking about five miles from a refugee camp in the city to Rafah, near the Egyptian border. That city, too, is packed with people who have been forced from their homes.In Khan Younis, Ms. Abu Aker said, she and others sought refuge in areas that the Israeli military had designated as safe zones, only to witness violent clashes, military planes flying overhead, bombs falling, shelling from tanks and gunfire.“If we had stayed,” she said, “we would have been buried under the rubble.”On Tuesday, the Israeli military ordered evacuations from parts of the city that include two hospitals, Nasser, the largest in southern Gaza, and Al-Amal. They are among the last hospitals in Gaza still providing limited medical care.Palestinians inspecting the site of an Israeli strike on a mosque in Rafah on Wednesday.Fadi Shana/ReutersAid organizations and local officials said both hospitals were under siege. The Palestine Red Crescent Society, which runs Al-Amal, reported “intense shelling” nearby and said that a strike had killed three people outside its offices and in a nearby building. Israeli troops were “surrounding” Red Crescent workers and “enforcing restrictions on movement” around the group’s offices and the hospital, it said.The Gaza Health Ministry said that Nasser Hospital had for all practical purposes been cut off by “continuous bombing,” preventing injured people from getting there and blocking the transfer of patients to a nearby Jordanian field hospital. The field hospital, too, was included in an evacuation area, the United Nations’ humanitarian affairs office said on Tuesday.The three hospitals, with a total of more than 600 beds, account for a fifth of the remaining functional hospital capacity in Gaza, according to the U.N. It said the evacuation area held 88,000 residents and an estimated 425,000 displaced people, packed into about 1.5 square miles.Doctors Without Borders, the aid group, said late Tuesday that its staff members at Nasser could hear bombs and heavy gunfire, and that 850 patients and thousands of people sheltering there were unable to leave because roads from the hospital were either inaccessible or too dangerous. The group said that it was “deeply concerned” for people’s safety.Palestinians wounded during the Israeli offensive in Khan Younis at a hospital in Rafah on Tuesday.Hatem Ali/Associated PressThe Israeli military has said that mortar fire was launched at its troops from the hospital. The claim could not be independently verified.The strike on the shelter was only the latest to hit a U.N. facility. The organization says that 237 of its buildings have been hit in the war, including 150 belonging to its aid agency for Palestinians.U.N. officials said the death toll from the strike on Wednesday was likely to rise.Hanan Al-Reifi, who had been staying at the shelter, said that “many people” had been killed and wounded. She said that emergency services had not responded to calls for help and that people at the shelter did not have fire extinguishers.The strike was likely to further stoke accusations that, despite pressure from the Biden administration and others, the Israeli military has not done enough to protect civilians in its campaign to crush Hamas.Israel launched its offensive after Hamas led the Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and seizing about 240 hostages, according to Israeli officials. Since then, more than 25,000 people have been killed in Gaza, local health officials say, and most of the territory’s 2.2 million people have been forced from their homes.People killed in Khan Younis outside a morgue in Rafah on Wednesday.Fatima Shbair/Associated PressReporting was contributed by More

  • in

    At Davos, War Is on the Agenda, but the Focus Is on A.I. and Elections

    The leaders and executives gathering at the World Economic Forum are obsessed with elections and artificial intelligence, not Ukraine or Gaza.Each day this week has brought a new and fleeting reminder to the executives and politicians at the annual World Economic Forum meeting of the two wars threatening global security and clouding the economy. Ukraine’s president spoke on Tuesday. Israel’s spoke on Thursday.Neither was able to hold the collective attention of a gathering that this year has focused overwhelmingly on artificial intelligence and populist politics.Gaza and Ukraine have made daily appearances on the public agenda in Davos, along with climate change and economic inequality. But in the warm halls and slushy streets around town, conversations almost inevitably turn to the two accelerating trends that are destabilizing business models and democracies.Everyone wants to talk about how A.I. and this year’s elections, especially in the United States, could shake up the world. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel led by Hamas or the ensuing Israeli bombing of Gaza? Drowned out in comparison.“No one is talking about Israel,” said Rachel Goldberg, who came to Davos to urge action to free the more than 100 hostages who were taken on Oct. 7 and continue to be held by Hamas, including her 23-year-old son, Hersh.In an interview on Wednesday, Ms. Goldberg said she was not surprised the war had taken a back seat here. “I think it’s complicated,” she said. “And I think it’s very polarizing.”Davos is many things layered on top of one another. It is a font of wealthy idealism, where the phrase “committed to improving the state of the world” frequently adorns the walls of the main meeting center.The forum is a networking event where chief executives, world leaders, celebrities, philanthropists and journalists speed-date through half-hour coffee meetings. It is a trade show for big ideas, with overlapping panel discussions on topics including gender equity, media misinformation and the transition to green energy.It is also a venue for top government officials to speak on grave issues, including war. That is where much of the Gaza and Ukraine discussion played out this week.President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, meeting on Tuesday.Laurent Gillieron/Keystone, via Associated PressPresident Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine called for international aid — but not more weapons — in a packed-house address on Tuesday to hundreds of people. He also took questions from reporters afterward.Without more assistance from the United States and others, Mr. Zelensky said, “a huge crisis will happen.” He added: “We have a war now, and we will have a huge crisis — a crisis for the whole of Europe.”Several leaders spoke about Gaza and the broader conflict it has spawned in the Middle East, though typically to smaller crowds. In a room of about 60 attendees on Wednesday, Mohammad Mustafa, the chairman of Palestine Investment Fund and the former deputy prime minister of Palestine, called for additional international aid for the people in Gaza and for an end to the war.“The military action has got to stop very quickly,” Mr. Mustafa said. “There is no need for anyone to build their political careers at the expense of more Palestinian people.”Hossein Amir Abdollahian, the foreign minister of Iran, blamed Israel for raising tensions in the Middle East in the past several months. “If the genocide in Gaza stops, then it will lead to the end of the other crises and attacks in the region,” he said.In his Thursday speech, President Isaac Herzog of Israel called Iran the center of an “empire of evil” destabilizing the Middle East and displayed a photograph of Kfir Bibas, a 1-year-old hostage being held in Gaza. “We have a very cruel, sadistic enemy who has taken a decision to try to torture the Israeli national psyche as well as the hostages themselves,” Mr. Herzog said.But those speeches rarely dominated the conversations on the sidelines of the event, at the nightly private dinners after the day’s agenda concluded or in most of the storefronts that large corporations paid to transform into branded event spaces along the main promenade in town.President Isaac Herzog of Israel with a picture of Kfir Bibas, a child who was taken hostage by Hamas, on Thursday.Denis Balibouse/ReutersOne possible explanation: Attendees and leaders here do not view either war as a significant threat at the moment to the global economy. Neither Gaza nor Ukraine cracked the Top 10 near-term concerns in the Global Risk Report — a survey of 1,500 global leaders — that the forum released on the eve of the gathering. A World Economic Forum chief economists’ report released this week suggested that growth forecasts for the Middle East had “slightly weakened” amid uncertainties about the war between Israel and Hamas. It did not mention Ukraine.In private conversations around Davos this week, corporate leaders acknowledged the wars in Gaza and Ukraine as one of many concerns. But they grew much more animated about other topics that they said they expected to affect their businesses in the near term — potentially enormously, for good or ill.A.I. topped that list. In interviews, executives expounded, usually with significant enthusiasm, on the benefits and drawbacks of the technology. They also talked politics, exhaustively. Over dinner, they and other attendees debated whether former President Donald J. Trump would win back the White House in November — and how his populist, protectionist policy could roil markets and upend their business models.Some executives explicitly ranked Gaza and Ukraine lower than the American elections on their list of geopolitical concerns. Many attendees lamented that there was not more energy behind war discussions, or recognition of the risks the wars pose to the economy and global security. Last year, concerns about Ukraine shared the spotlight at the gathering, along with a surge of A.I. interest.This year, “everyone is focusing on other subjects,” Pascal Cagni, France’s ambassador for international exports, said in an interview. Economically and politically, he added, Ukraine is “a critical issue.”There were a few exceptions. Supporters of Ukraine opened their own storefront space on the main promenade and staged several events each day to draw attention to the conflict. The technology company Palantir and its chief executive, Alex Karp, hosted Ms. Goldberg and other parents of hostages for events and interviews.Waiting for the arrival of Mr. Zelensky at the Ukraine House in Davos on Tuesday.Gian Ehrenzeller/EPA, via ShutterstockSeveral governments sent leaders to Davos in an attempt to quietly advance back-channel diplomacy in Ukraine or Gaza. That was true of the Biden administration, which sent Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Jake Sullivan, the White House’s national security adviser, to Davos for a flurry of meetings centered on Gaza.In an interview on Wednesday, Ms. Goldberg said she was grateful for all efforts to bring her son and the other hostages home. She wore “103” taped to her sweater, which represented the number of days since her son had been taken.In Davos, Ms. Goldberg was sharing a house with other parents of hostages. “I walked out this morning and here, you know, you have these, like, gorgeous views and beautiful mountains,” she said. She said she had turned to another mother and said: “It’s so beautiful. It’s perverse.”But, she added a moment later: “I’m very grateful that I’m here. Because I am having access to people that I would never have access to. And the goal is to save Hersh’s life, and everyone who is there, their lives. I can only do that if we have access to people who have power. And that’s people who are here.”Reporting was contributed by More

  • in

    Trump’s Landslide Victory in Iowa

    More from our inbox:Young Voters: Vote!U.S. Strikes in YemenThe Genocide Charges Against IsraelDonald J. Trump at a caucus site in Clive, Iowa, on Monday evening. His victory was called by The Associated Press only 31 minutes after the caucuses had begun.Doug Mills/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Trump Wins Iowa in Key First Step Toward Rematch” (front page, Jan. 16):If you weren’t scared before Monday night’s Iowa caucuses, you should be terrified now. The disgraced, twice-impeached, quadruple-indicted former president came within one vote of winning all 99 of Iowa’s counties, and received 51 percent of the vote.Ron DeSantis came in a distant second with 21 percent of the vote, and Nikki Haley was a distant third with just 19 percent of the vote.The bid for the Republican nomination for president is all but over, leaving America with a terrible choice between the autocratic and awful former president, and the obviously too old and frail current president.Unless Ms. Haley can win convincingly in New Hampshire, and match Donald Trump in South Carolina, the former president will be the nominee.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?  More