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      Israelis Broach a Concession in Hostage Talks With Hamas

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      Israel negotiators are reported to be considering the release of high-profile Palestinians convicted of terrorism in exchange for freedom for some of the hostages in Gaza.Israeli negotiators have offered a significant concession in cease-fire talks with Hamas, signaling that they might be open to releasing high-profile Palestinians jailed on terrorism charges in exchange for some Israeli hostages still being held in the Gaza Strip, according to two officials with knowledge of the talks.President Biden said Monday that he believed negotiators were nearing an agreement that would halt Israel’s military operations in Gaza within a week, though earlier in the day, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was still talking about further military action.Mr. Netanyahu said that the Israeli military had presented a plan to the war cabinet to evacuate civilians from “areas of fighting” in Gaza. He appeared to be speaking of Israel’s long-expected invasion of Rafah, the southern city where more than half of Gaza’s population is sheltering, many in makeshift tents.Mr. Netanyahu did not disclose any details of the evacuation plan, and it was not clear whether he was using the prospect of an invasion as a cudgel to gain leverage in the negotiations. On Sunday, he said an invasion could be “delayed somewhat” if Hamas agreed to release Israeli hostages.Many countries and international aid groups have warned that an invasion of Rafah could lead to mass casualties on top of the nearly 30,000 Gazans who, according to the territory’s health officials, have already been killed in the war.Speaking with reporters in New York on Monday, Mr. Biden sounded optimistic about a deal to pause the fighting. “We’re close,” he said. “We’re not done yet. My hope is by next Monday, we’ll have a cease-fire.”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 Authority’s Government to Resign as U.S. Calls for Change

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      Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh of the Palestinian Authority, the body that administers part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, tendered the resignation of his cabinet on Monday, according to the authority’s official news agency.The decision follows diplomatic efforts, involving the United States and Arab states including Saudi Arabia, to persuade the authority to overhaul itself in a way that would enable it to take over the administration of Gaza after the war there ends.But it was unclear whether the appointment of a new prime minister and cabinet would be enough to revamp the authority or persuade Israel to let it govern Gaza. President Mahmoud Abbas, the most senior leader of the authority, will remain in position along with his security chiefs, regardless of whether he accepts Mr. Shtayyeh’s resignation.Israeli leaders had strongly hinted that they would not allow the authority’s existing leadership to run Gaza. American and Arab leaders had hoped that new leadership might make Israel more likely to cede administrative control of Gaza to the authority.With no functional parliament within the areas controlled by the authority, Mr. Abbas has long ruled by decree, and he exerts wide influence over the judiciary and prosecution system.According to diplomats briefed on his thinking, Mr. Abbas’s preferred candidate for prime minister is Mohammad Mustafa, a longtime economic adviser who is considered a member of his inner circle. More

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      A Re-established West Bank Settlement Symbolizes Hardened Israeli Views

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      Homesh, one of the four West Bank settlements dismantled by Israel when it withdrew from Gaza in 2005, has taken on new importance since Oct. 7 and the war against Hamas.For an Israeli settlement that has become such a resounding symbol of religious and right-wing politics in the West Bank, Homesh is not much to look at.Three families live in tarpaulin-covered shelters full of bunk beds for some 50 young men, who study in a yeshiva that is a shabby prefab structure surrounded by abandoned toys, building materials and garbage.They live part time here amid the ruins and rubbish of a hilltop settlement ripped down in 2005 by the Israeli army and police. It is one of four West Bank settlements dismantled when Israel pulled all of its troops and settlements out of Gaza. Israel’s intention then, pushed by Washington, was to signal that outlying settlements too hard to defend would be consolidated in any future peace deal.The decision to dismantle them is now being challenged by the more religious and right-wing ministers in the government of Benjamin Netanyahu. They are agitating to settle more land in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and even remove Palestinians from Gaza to resettle there.Homesh, perched in the hills above Nablus, has become a symbol of their resolve.Early last year, the Israeli government decided to relegalize Homesh, but the Supreme Court then required the government to dismantle it once more and ensure that Palestinians who own the land on which it sits can reach it safely.Three families live in tarpaulin-covered shelters full of bunk beds.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesWe 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 U.S. Call for a Humanitarian Cease-Fire in Gaza

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      Vetoing a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza while circulating a softer hostages-for-cease-fire resolution of its own may have been the best of the bad options available to the Biden administration. President Biden is right to take this step. Given the scale of death and destruction in Gaza, and the prospect of more to come, he can take other measures as well that might lessen Palestinians’ suffering and loss of life.The issue is not whether Israel was justified in going after Hamas after the terrorist attack of Oct. 7. It was, and it has achieved some of its military aims. It has destroyed significant parts of Hamas’s military infrastructure and reduced its fighting force. Hamas reportedly says it has lost about 6,000 of an estimated 25,000 fighters; Israel says it has killed more than 10,000 of them.But this war, on its current course, is leading to the wholesale killing of Palestinians while Hamas gains in international standing and the remaining Israeli hostages remain captive. The United States, as Israel’s most important ally and source of military aid, should take the lead in changing that.The president was right to demonstrate sympathy and support for Israel in the days after the Oct. 7 attack. Since then, his administration has worked tirelessly with Arab allies, first mediating a brief halt in fighting in November and more recently trying to negotiate a longer cease-fire to release the Israeli hostages and to bring humanitarian relief to Gaza.Hamas launched its attack to provoke an Israeli response, knowing that the people of Gaza would be acutely vulnerable. The terrorist group hides its fighters among civilians, and built its infrastructure, including miles of tunnels, underneath homes, schools and hospitals.Since the war began, the two million people who live in Gaza have been pounded by Israeli bombardment. More than 29,000 people have been killed, according to Palestinian figures; more than half of Gaza’s homes and buildings have been destroyed, and the United Nations has raised the alarm that, cut off from supplies of food, Gazans are at risk of starvation. The death toll could soon rise sharply if Israel carries out a ground invasion of Rafah, a city in the far south of Gaza, where the military believes 10,000 Hamas fighters remain, and to which a million civilians have fled.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 Issues First Plan for Postwar Gaza

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      The proposal, which calls for indefinite Israeli military control and buffer zones in the territory, rankled Arab nations and was rejected by Palestinians. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel released on Friday his most detailed proposal yet for a postwar Gaza, pledging to retain indefinite military control over the enclave, while ceding the administration of civilian life to Gazans without links to Hamas.The plan, if realized, would make it almost impossible to establish a Palestinian state including Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, at least in the short term. That would likely accelerate a clash between Israel and a growing number of its foreign partners, including the United States, that are pushing for Palestinian sovereignty after the war ends. The blueprint for Gaza comes after nearly 20 weeks of war in the territory and a death toll approaching 30,000 people, at least half of them women and children, according to Gazan authorities.Mr. Netanyahu’s proposal for postwar Gaza was circulated to cabinet ministers and journalists early on Friday. He has laid out most of the terms of the proposal in previous public statements, but this was the first time they had been collected in a single document. The proposal also calls for the dismantling of UNRWA, the U.N. agency charged with delivering the bulk of the life-sustaining aid to the besieged territory. And it calls for an overhaul of the Gazan education and welfare systems, as well as buffer zones along Gaza’s borders with Israel and Egypt.The plan was circulated on the same day that American, Israeli, Qatari and Egyptian officials began negotiations in Paris over the release of hostages and a possible cease-fire. 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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      N.Y.C. Protest Calling for Gaza Cease-Fire Targets Pro-Israel Senators

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      Demonstrators marched to the Manhattan headquarters of the lobbying group AIPAC, then to the offices of senators who have accepted donations from the group, where some were arrested.More than a dozen people were arrested Thursday evening during a peaceful pro-Palestinian protest inside a Manhattan building where Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrats of New York, have offices.Wearing black T-shirts reading “Cease Fire Now” and holding up signs demanding that the senators “stop funding genocide,” the protesters linked arms and sat on the floor in front of elevators in the lobby of the building at 780 Third Avenue, singing slogans and ignoring instructions to leave until police officers arrested them.The demonstration, organized by a local chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, a progressive activist group, was the latest in what have become almost daily protests throughout New York City since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7. Those attacks killed at least 1,200 Israelis, according to Israeli officials; Israel’s subsequent military operation in Gaza has killed 29,000 Palestinians, according to Gazan health officials. The mounting death toll and humanitarian crisis in Gaza have prompted international calls for a cease-fire.By about 3:30 p.m. Thursday, several hundred protesters had gathered at Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza, in front of the United Nations headquarters, where the United States this week cast the lone vote against a resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in the Gaza Strip. It was the third time the Biden administration had blocked similar resolutions, signaling its continued support of Israel.Accompanied by a heavy police presence, the demonstrators on Thursday marched through a light rain toward the headquarters of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a powerful lobbying group established decades ago to promote Israel’s interests in the United States.Organizers blamed senators supported by AIPAC for passing an aid package this month that included $14.1 billion for Israel’s war against Hamas. The bill must still go through the House, where its fate is uncertain.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 Steps Up Attacks in Gaza Amid Cease-Fire Talks

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      Strikes overnight killed nearly 100, seven of them in Rafah, as officials said there had been momentum on a deal to free some Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.Intense bombardment of a Gaza Strip city filled with refugees flattened a large mosque and killed or wounded scores of people on Thursday as Israel repeated its intention to push into the area with ground forces if Hamas does not release hostages before the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.Nearly 100 people were killed across the enclave from Israeli strikes over the past day, the Gazan health authorities said Thursday, bringing the total death toll after almost 20 weeks of war to nearly 30,000.Around half of the Gaza Strip’s population of 2.3 million people are crammed into the southern city of Rafah along the border with Egypt, where the strike on the mosque occurred Thursday. Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, reported that at least seven Palestinians had been killed overnight in Rafah and dozens more wounded.Israel’s preparations for an invasion of that area come as diplomats raced to forestall it, with Ramadan set to begin around March 10.President Biden’s Middle East coordinator, Brett McGurk, met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday for “a good couple of hours,” focusing on whether negotiators could “cement a hostage deal” according to a White House spokesman. Talks last week in Cairo for a hostage deal failed when Mr. Netanyahu withdrew his negotiators, accusing Hamas of refusing to budge on what he called “ludicrous” demands and pledging to press on with Israel’s offensive.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. Defends Israel’s Occupation of the West Bank at Top U.N. Court

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      A U.S. official urged judges not to call for Israel’s withdrawal from occupied territory, arguing that Israel faced “very real security needs” and that a Palestinian state must be established for a lasting peace.The United States on Wednesday defended Israel’s decades-long occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, arguing at the U.N.’s highest court that Israel faced “very real security needs.”The defense came a day after the United States issued its third veto against a call for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza at the United Nations Security Council, a vote that drew an angry response from nations and aid groups that have urged a stop to the fighting to help Gaza’s civilians.The latest show of American support for Israel was at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, where Richard C. Visek, the acting legal adviser at the U.S. State Department, urged a 15-judge panel not to call for Israel’s immediate withdrawal from occupied Palestinian territory.The United States urged the International Court of Justice not to call for immediate withdrawal of Israel from Palestinian territories, and to consider the country’s security needs.Piroschka Van De Wouw/ReutersHe said that only the establishment of an independent Palestinian state “living safely and securely alongside” Israel could bring about lasting peace, repeating a longstanding U.S. position, but the prospect of which appears even more elusive amid the war in Gaza.“This conflict cannot be resolved through violence or unilateral actions,” Mr. Visek said. “Negotiations are the path to a lasting peace.”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