Israel-Gaza War (2023- )

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      Who Are the Top Hamas Leaders in Gaza?

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      Marwan Issa, who was the target of an Israeli strike in central Gaza over the weekend, is one of three leaders of Hamas in Gaza who Israel says were the main planners of the Oct. 7 attack, which killed over 1,200 people and led to the kidnapping of about 240 others, according to Israeli officials. It remained unclear on Tuesday whether the strike had hit him.Here is what to know about the most senior Hamas leaders in Gaza:Marwan IssaMr. Issa, the deputy commander of Hamas’s military wing, would be the highest ranking Hamas military official to be killed by Israel in recent years. Like many other senior Hamas military leaders in Gaza, Mr. Issa has kept a low profile, rarely appearing in public, in part to avoid targeted strikes like the one over the weekend that Israel’s military said hit an underground space he had used.An Israeli army spokesman described Mr. Issa as having helped plan the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7. In addition to his military role, Mr. Issa served as a negotiator in talks that led to a cease-fire following a nearly two-week flare-up with Israel in 2021, as well as a deal in 2011, when one captive Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, was exchanged for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.Yahya SinwarYahya Sinwar at a rally in Gaza City last year.Mohammed Abed/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Sinwar, Hamas’s leader in Gaza, was born in the Khan Younis refugee camp, which was set up after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and has since become a permanent community, part of the wider city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza. He founded a precursor to Hamas’s military wing, called Al Majd, and helped establish Hamas in 1987. At the time, he was responsible for identifying and punishing Palestinians suspected of infringing “morality” codes or collaborating with Israel.In 1988, Mr. Sinwar was arrested by Israeli forces and sentenced to four life sentences for his role in killing four Palestinians suspected of working with Israel, according to Israeli court records.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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      Washington State and ‘Uncommitted’ Will Test Biden Again Over Gaza War

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      Washington State’s primary voters will offer the next glimpse of how many Democratic voters oppose President Biden’s policy toward Israel’s war in Gaza, though it may be days before a full picture of the results is clear.The state’s primary on Tuesday comes after noteworthy numbers of Democratic voters in other states chose “uncommitted” in apparent protest of Mr. Biden’s position, including 13 percent in Michigan, 19 percent in Minnesota and 29 percent in the little-watched Democratic caucuses in Hawaii, where the antiwar advocacy groups that organized elsewhere did not have a presence.Washington’s brand of anti-establishment Pacific Northwest liberalism has the potential to be a good fit for the “uncommitted” vote that has won increasing slices of the Democratic electorate in recent weeks.And it is unlikely Mr. Biden’s forceful performance in his State of the Union address last week would have a strong impact on the results in Washington, which votes entirely by mail. More than 512,000 Democratic primary ballots had already been received by Thursday, when he delivered the speech, according to data from the Washington secretary of state’s office.Stuart Holmes, the director of elections for the secretary of state, said to expect about half the state’s ballots to be counted and reported when polls close on Tuesday night. The rest of the ballots will be tabulated and reported once a day until all votes are counted, with the vast majority of the counting expected to be complete by the end of this week, Mr. Holmes said.Shasti Conrad, the chairwoman of the Washington State Democrats, said the party would support Mr. Biden.“We know President Biden and Vice President Harris are working tirelessly toward an end to the violence and a just, lasting peace in the Middle East,” Ms. Conrad said. “Voters in Washington understand the tremendous progress Democrats have made.”“Uncommitted” backers have offered a low bar for success in each of the preceding states where they have been active.Larry Cohen, the chairman of Our Revolution, the political organization begun by supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders that is backing “uncommitted,” put the goal for success in Washington State at 10 percent — far less than previous states but more than “uncommitted” received in 2020, when 6,450 people, about 0.4 percent of Democratic primary voters, chose “uncommitted.”The state canceled its presidential primaries in 2012, the last time an incumbent Democratic president was seeking re-election. The parties held nominating caucuses instead. More

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      Thousands of Pregnant Women in Gaza Suffer From Malnutrition, Health Authorities Say

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      When Wafaa al-Kurd was nearly due to give birth, she said, she weighed less than she did before becoming pregnant and was surviving on rice and artificial juice.She gave birth to a girl weighing nearly six pounds, named Tayma, just over two weeks ago, she said. Since then, her husband has spent his days scouring markets in northern Gaza, where the family lives, trying to find enough food for his wife to breastfeed and keep Tayma alive.Nearly 60,000 pregnant women in Gaza are suffering from malnutrition, dehydration and lack of proper health care, according to the Gaza health ministry. In a statement on Friday, the ministry said that about 5,000 women in Gaza were giving birth every month in “harsh, unsafe and unhealthy conditions as a result of bombardment and displacement.”The ministry added that about 9,000 women, including thousands of mothers and pregnant women, had been killed since Israel’s bombardment and invasion began in early October.The United Nations and aid agencies have warned that famine is looming in the besieged enclave, where health officials reported that at least 25 people, most of them children, died from malnutrition and dehydration in recent days.Dr. Deborah Harrington, an obstetrician working at Al Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza, said the expecting and new mothers she treated had not received nearly enough pre- and postnatal care, risking both their lives and their babies’.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. Military Enters a New Phase With Gaza Aid Operations

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      As the United States continues providing Israel with munitions, the Pentagon will deliver food and other assistance to Gazans by sea and air.The United States has a history of using its military to get food, water and other humanitarian relief to civilians during wars or natural disasters. The walls of the Pentagon are decorated with photographs of such operations in Haiti, Liberia, Indonesia and countless other countries.But it is rare for the United States to try to provide such services for people who are being bombed with tacit U.S. support.President Biden’s decision to order the U.S. military to build a floating pier off the Gaza Strip that would allow aid to be delivered by sea puts American service members in a new phase of their humanitarian aid history. The same military that is sending the weapons and bombs that Israel is using in Gaza is now also sending food and water into the besieged territory.The floating pier idea came a week after Mr. Biden authorized humanitarian airdrops for Gaza, which relief experts criticized as inadequate. Even the floating pier, aid experts say, will not do enough to alleviate the suffering in the territory, where residents are on the brink of starvation.Nonetheless, senior Biden officials said, the United States will continue to provide Israel with the munitions it is using in Gaza, while trying to deliver humanitarian aid to Palestinians under bombardment there.So the Pentagon is doing both.For decades the Army Corps of Engineers, using combat engineers, has built floating docks for troops to cross rivers, unload supplies and conduct other military operations. Maj. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder, the Pentagon spokesman, said on Friday that the Army’s Seventh Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary), out of Joint Base Langley-Eustis, near Norfolk, Va., would be one of the main military units involved in the construction of the floating pier for 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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      Providing Both Bombs and Food, Biden Puts Himself in the Middle of Gaza’s War

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      The president’s decision to send aid by air and sea represents a shift prompted by the growing humanitarian crisis. But it raised uncomfortable questions about America’s role.From the skies over Gaza these days fall American bombs and American food pallets, delivering death and life at the same time and illustrating President Biden’s elusive effort to find balance in an unbalanced Middle East war.The president’s decision to authorize airdrops and the construction of a temporary port to deliver desperately needed humanitarian aid to Gaza has highlighted the tensions in his policy as he continues to support the provision of U.S. weaponry for Israel’s military operation against Hamas without condition.The United States finds itself on both sides of the war in a way, arming the Israelis while trying to care for those hurt as a result. Mr. Biden has grown increasingly frustrated as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel defies the president’s pleas to do more to protect civilians in Gaza and went further in expressing that exasperation during and after his State of the Union address this past week. But Mr. Biden remains opposed to cutting off munitions or leveraging them to influence the fighting.“You can’t have a policy of giving aid and giving Israel the weapons to bomb the food trucks at the same time,” Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, said in an interview the day after the speech. “There is inherent contradiction in that. And I think the administration needs to match the genuine empathy and moral concern that came out last night for Palestinian civilian lives with real accountability for Netanyahu and the extreme right-wing government there.”The newly initiated American-led air-and-sea humanitarian campaign follows the failure to get enough supplies into Gaza by land and represents a sharp turnaround by the administration. Until now, American officials had eschewed such methods as impractical, concluding that they would not provide supplies on the same scale as a functional land route and would be complicated in many ways.Airdrops are actually dangerous, as was made clear on Friday when at least five Palestinians were killed by falling aid packages, and they can create chaotic, hazardous situations without a stable distribution system on the ground. The construction of a temporary floating pier will take 30 to 60 days, if not longer, according to officials, and could entail risk for those involved, although Mr. Biden has stipulated that it be constructed offshore with no Americans on the ground.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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      Israeli Forces ‘Fired Precisely’ at Gazans During Aid Convoy Chaos, Military Says

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      Israeli soldiers “fired precisely” at Gazans who approached them during a chaotic scene near an aid convoy in northern Gaza last week that led to the deaths of dozens of Palestinians, but they did not fire on the convoy itself, the Israeli military said on Friday after an initial internal review.The account differs sharply from those of witnesses and Palestinian officials who described extensive shooting after thousands of desperate Gazans massed around an Israeli-organized aid convoy. The deaths prompted global outrage and underscored the widespread hunger and hopelessness in northern Gaza, where five months of war and little aid have driven many to the brink.The initial review largely matched Israel’s early account of the disaster, reiterating its claim that many civilians were harmed or killed in a stampede as they crowded around the aid trucks. It said that Israeli forces had opened fire toward dozens of Gazans who had approached them.Gazan officials did not immediately respond to the Israeli review.The Israeli military said that its review found that the soldiers had “fired precisely” at people who were approaching them in what it said was an attempt to keep “suspects” at a distance. “As they continued to approach, the troops fired to remove the threat,” it said in a statement summarizing the review’s findings.Hours after the disaster, doctors in Gaza described receiving scores of casualties at hospitals in the area, many of them killed or wounded by gunfire.A fact-finding committee appointed by the Israeli military chief of staff will continue to investigate the episode, the military said. Some human rights groups say that the Israeli military lacks independent accountability mechanisms and rarely penalizes soldiers for harming Palestinians in contested circumstances. More

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      Harvard’s Response to Subpoenas Is Called ‘Useless’ by House Committee

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      Harvard said it has been acting in good faith and submitted nearly 1,500 pages of new material.Representative Virginia Foxx, who is leading a House investigation of campus antisemitism, blasted Harvard University on Tuesday for handing over “useless” documents in response to subpoenas.“I don’t know if it’s arrogance, ineptness, or indifference that’s guiding Harvard,” Representative Foxx, a North Carolina Republican, said in a statement. “Regardless, its actions to date are shameful.”Many of the 2,500 pages were duplicates of already submitted documents, she said, and heavy redactions made some documents worthless. Harvard said it has been acting in good faith and since January has turned over nearly 4,900 pages of material to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, not including any duplicate material. The university also released a four-page document detailing how it has fought antisemitism on campus, including more policing of social media and stricter enforcement of rules on demonstrations. This overview was the only part of its submission that Harvard made public; the committee did not release any of the material.“Harvard is focused on safety and ensuring a sense of belonging for our Jewish students — so that every member of our community is protected, embraced and valued, and can thrive at Harvard,” Jason Newton, a spokesman, said.In early February, after Harvard’s first round of submissions, Representative Foxx accused it of a “limited and dilatory” response. The university, she said, had handed over letters from nonprofits and copies of student handbooks that were publicly available. Subpoenas soon followed, asking for “all Harvard Corporation meeting minutes and/or summaries, whether formal or informal, since Jan. 1, 2021,” among a wide range of other documents.With Harvard and the House at loggerheads, it is unclear what the repercussions could be. “The committee is weighing an appropriate response to Harvard’s malfeasance,” Representative Foxx said.The committee was already in uncharted territory. Harvard is the first university to be served a subpoena by the Education and the Workforce Committee since it was established in 1867, according to Nick Barley, a committee spokesman.The standoff is perhaps just the most visible example of the divisions that have taken hold on campus since the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas on Israel, with many Jewish students, alumni and donors saying that Harvard was not doing enough to protect students from antisemitic slogans, social messaging and campus protests.Other universities have also been struggling with the challenges of responding to the Hamas attacks and the growing death toll and hunger in Gaza, as the war continues and campuses become the site of bitter protests by pro-Palestinian students and some faculty.Representative Foxx has also announced investigations of antisemitism at the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia and M.I.T. More

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      Kamala Harris Calls for ‘Immediate Cease-Fire’

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      Vice President Kamala Harris on Sunday called for an “immediate cease-fire” in Gaza, saying that Hamas should agree to the six-week pause currently on the table and that Israel should increase the flow of aid into the besieged enclave amid a humanitarian crisis.Ms. Harris’s remarks, delivered in Selma, Ala., bolstered a recent push by the Biden administration for an agreement and came a day before she was to meet with a top Israeli cabinet official involved in war planning, Benny Gantz. Her tone, sharper and more urgent than President Biden’s in recent days, showed the White House’s building frustration with Israel. Last month the president called Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack “over the top.”Ms. Harris also assailed what she called a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza and pressed Israel to allow for the increase of aid into the besieged enclave.Ms. Harris was in Selma on Sunday for the 59th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. Her comments on Israel were her most forceful to date on the Middle East conflict, which has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians, according to Gazan health authorities, and put the enclave on the brink of famine.“People in Gaza are starving,” Ms. Harris said. “The conditions are inhumane. And our common humanity compels us to act.”She added: “Given the immense scale of suffering in Gaza, there must be an immediate cease-fire.” That line drew loud applause from the crowd that had gathered to mark the civil rights event.Ms. Harris reiterated the Biden administration’s support for a six-week cease-fire, which would allow for a pause in fighting and the release of Israeli hostages taken during the attack in Israel. U.S. officials said this weekend that Israel had all but signed on to the deal, but Hamas has yet to agree to it.Ms. Harris restated the United States’ support for Israel’s right to defend itself against the ongoing threat by Hamas, which she said had no regard for innocent life in Israel or in Gaza.She also said that Israel must do more to allow for the flow of aid into Gaza, including opening borders, lifting any unnecessary restrictions on aid deliveries and restoring services to Gaza.“The Israeli government must do more to significantly increase the flow of aid,” she said. “No excuses.”The remarks came as Ms. Harris was scheduled to meet with Mr. Gantz, a member of the Israeli war cabinet, at the White House on Monday, and as the Biden administration faces immense pressure to limit the carnage in Gaza. More