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    Exploring the Failures in the Mideast

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    More from our inbox:Disgusted by Trump’s Lewd Comments at RallyLessons From BaseballQueen Esther’s Legacy Anna Moneymaker/Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “Biden’s Moral Failure on Israel,” by Peter Beinart (Opinion guest essay, Oct. 11):There is much about Israel’s behavior toward Arabs to be condemned, but the horrors of Oct. 7, 2023, cannot be ignored. Israel had a right to retaliate, and the fact that Hamas refuses to stop fighting gives Israel the right to continue fighting.Hamas could have just stopped sending missiles toward Israel but it has not. Hamas killed 1,200 people on Oct. 7. The nightmare of Gaza was started by Hamas and can be finished by Hamas.The nightmare of the West Bank is another story, and there is much blame to be placed on Israel. Until the Israeli government is changed there will be no solution.The politics of the United States is in the middle of this problem, and there is no easy way to deal with it. I believe that if Kamala Harris wins she will be able to be more forceful with the Israelis, but unfortunately, she will have no ability to force Hamas to come to the table.President Biden has not been able to take Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, out of the picture. Only the Israelis can do that, and perhaps once our election is over, they might be able to effect a solution.Leonard ZivitzFullerton, Calif.To the Editor:I am so grateful to Peter Beinart for calling out President Biden’s failure to stand in the way of the sprawling, ethnocentric ambitions of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of 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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      He Dreamed of Escaping Gaza. The World Watched Him Burned Alive.

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      He was the son his mother boasted about: He memorized the entire Quran as a boy, and rose to the top of his university class. He wanted to become a doctor. But most of all, Shaaban al-Dalou dreamed of escape.Since Israel launched its devastating retaliation for the Hamas-led attack just over a year ago, Mr. al-Dalou wrote impassioned pleas on social media, posted videos from his family’s small plastic tent and even launched a GoFundMe page calling out to the world for help getting out of the Gaza Strip.Instead, the world watched him burn to death.Mr. al-Dalou, 19, was identified by his family as the young man helplessly waving his arms, engulfed in flames, in a video that has become a symbol of the horrors of war for Gazans, trapped inside their blockaded enclave as the international community looks on.A still image from a video of Mr. al-Dalou amid burning debris.Hani Abu Rezeq, via ReutersOn Oct. 14, Israel said it conducted a “precision strike” on a Hamas command center operating near Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al Balah, a coastal city in central Gaza. Dozens of families like the Dalous, forced to flee their homes, had set up tents in a parking lot inside the hospital compound. They had hoped that international laws forbidding most attacks on medical facilities would ensure their safety.The Israeli military said that the fire that erupted afterward was probably caused by “secondary explosions,” without specifying what that meant. It added that “the incident is under review.”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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      Fighting Rages in Gaza and Lebanon, Despite Killing of Hamas Leader

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      Peace talks were nowhere in sight and, despite Yahya Sinwar’s death, the violence seemed only to increase, as Israel struck northern Gaza and Hezbollah fired dozens of projectiles.Israeli forces pounded targets in the northern Gaza town of Jabaliya on Saturday, killing at least 33 people and injuring dozens of others in the bombardment, a Palestinian emergency services group said.Israel has surrounded Jabaliya for a week as it seeks to root out Hamas fighters who it says have reorganized in the area. Since Friday, approximately 20,000 Palestinians have fled the neighborhood, according to UNRWA, the main United Nations agency aiding Palestinians in Gaza, amid Israel’s bombardment. Paltel, the largest telecommunications provider in Gaza, said that internet service was completely down in northern Gaza.Fighting also escalated in Lebanon on Saturday, as the Israeli military targeted several areas outside of Beirut in airstrikes that covered the area in clouds of dust. The resurgence in attacks, after several days of relative calm, came after Hezbollah warned of “a new and escalating phase” in the conflict with Israel.In Gaza, the Gazan Health Ministry reported that Israeli forces had targeted the entrance of the laboratory at Kamal Adwan Hospital, a major facility near Jabaliya, killing one person and injuring several others. The ministry has warned of a crisis in Gaza’s hospitals, citing fuel shortages and a lack of essential medicines and medical supplies.There were also reports of an Israeli airstrike hitting a residential building in Beit Lahia, in northern Gaza, with Hamas officials saying dozens of people had been killed. Medhat Abbas, a spokesman for the Gaza Health Ministry, also said dozens of people were wounded and missing, according to Reuters.The Israeli military said it was examining what had happened. It also said that it disputed the death toll released by Hamas officials, saying it “did not align” with the military’s initial assessment.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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      Families of Israeli Hostages Call on Netanyahu to Reach Gaza Cease-Fire Deal

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      The families of several Israeli hostages held in Gaza issued a sharply worded televised statement on Saturday in which they called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to seize the moment after this week’s killing of the Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, to reach a hostage and cease-fire deal to bring home their loved ones.“Netanyahu, there are no excuses left,” said Einav Zangauker, whose 24-year-old son, Matan, was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct. 7, 2023, adding, “You got your victory photo in Gaza.”One by one, the speakers also stressed the danger their family members in Gaza face and voiced their anger at what they see as the abandonment of the hostages by the government. Of the 101 hostages still in Gaza, at least a third are believed to be dead.“Netanyahu, after Sinwar’s elimination, it’s obvious to everyone that the lives of the hostages are in danger,” said Ifat Calderon, whose cousin Ofer Calderon is being held in Gaza. “We all understand there is a narrow window of opportunity — and maybe the last — to save lives.”Ms. Zangauker, who has been a vocal critic of Mr. Netanyahu throughout the war, said that the war’s goal, “which was to create the conditions for getting our hostages back, has been achieved.”Mr. Netanyahu has stated throughout the war that Israel’s goals are to return the hostages and destroy Hamas’s capabilities to ensure Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israelis. During the Hamas-led attacks on Israel last October, about 1,200 people were killed and 250 were taken into Gaza.Several of the family members said they worried Mr. Netanyahu was dragging his feet on ending the war and that he feared his right-wing coalition partners, who have exhorted him to continue fighting Hamas and without whom Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition might collapse.Addressing the prime minister, Ms. Calderon said, “If you do not take advantage of the current opportunity, if you do not place a new Israeli initiative on the table, that will clearly mean you have decided to abandon our hostages in order to extend the war and maintain your reign.”The prime minister’s office could not be reached for comment. But Mr. Netanyahu has repeatedly depicted Hamas as the primary obstacle to an agreement.“This war can end tomorrow,” Mr. Netanyahu said on Thursday after the death of Mr. Sinwar. “It can end if Hamas lays down its arms and returns our hostages.” On Friday, Mr. Sinwar’s longtime deputy said that Hamas would not soften its demand for a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.But hostage family members stressed on Saturday that Mr. Sinwar’s death was a turning point, and they added that they wanted Mr. Netanyahu to do more to bring their family members home.“Stop trying to sell your fake spins to the public as if you are doing everything to bring back the hostages,” said Yehuda Cohen, the father of Nimrod Cohen, another Israeli hostage. More

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      Despite Sinwar’s Death, Mideast Peace May Still Be Elusive

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      The killing of Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader whose decision to attack Israel more than a year ago set off the ever-widening war tearing up the Middle East, could be the key to ending the bloodshed. Now that Israel has decapitated Hamas in Gaza, the thinking goes, it might be ready to declare victory and move on, while a demoralized Hamas might show greater flexibility in cease-fire talks.Or, at least, that outcome would most likely be welcomed by most of the countries. Despite their pledges to keep on fighting, Hezbollah, Hamas and other Iranian proxies may also be looking for offramps, analysts say, even if Israel seems not to be displaying much appetite for taking the win.“All of them are super eager for offramps. They have been from the start,” said Michael Wahid Hanna, a Middle East expert at the International Crisis Group, speaking of the Arab nations. “It’s a difficult situation for the entire region. And there are many ways in which this could get much worse.”Egypt and Jordan, just next door to the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, have called repeatedly for a cease-fire. Beyond their people’s anguish over civilian suffering in Gaza and Lebanon, they are anxious to end the instability rocking the region and halt the damage to their economies.Egypt’s prime minister, Mostafa Madbouly, recently warned that Egypt would have to transition to what he called a “war economy” if increasing regional instability threatens critical sources of Egyptian revenue, including tourism and shipping through the Suez Canal. Traffic through the canal has dropped by about half over the past year as Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militia has attacked shipping in the Red Sea in what it says is retaliation for Israel’s assault on Gaza.The Gulf Arab monarchies have also pushed for calm. Qatar’s prime minister and foreign minister, as well as Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, all discussed working toward an end to the conflict in calls on Thursday with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken. Not only is a safe environment good for business, but the Gulf States also recognize that their ambitious national development plans cannot succeed in a region embroiled in constant conflict, especially one involving their neighbor, Iran.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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      Drone Hits Building Near Netanyahu’s Home in Coastal Israel

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      A drone from Lebanon struck a building near the private residence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Saturday, his office said, highlighting the continuing challenge posed to Israel’s air defense by unmanned vehicles.Mr. Netanyahu and his wife were not home at the time of the strike, according to the prime minister’s office, which said that there had been no injuries.The episode came nearly a week after a Hezbollah drone attack killed four people and wounded dozens of others at a military base in northern Israel.The military said it had intercepted two additional drones launched on Saturday, which set off air-raid sirens at a military base in Glilot, just north of Tel Aviv. But that did not trigger sirens in Caesarea, the coastal location of Mr. Netanyahu’s home. The military said the incident was “under review.”Israel possesses some of the most advanced and effective air defense technology in the world, a multilayered system that has intercepted nearly all of the thousands of drones, missiles and rockets fired at it over the past year by Iran and its regional proxy forces, including Hezbollah in Lebanon.But drones — which are cheaper for its adversaries to acquire and operate — have occasionally evaded Israel’s air defenses. Experts say they pose a particular challenge for Israel because they emit less heat, often contain less metal and fly at lower altitudes and slower speeds than the rockets and missiles its air defenses are primarily designed to thwart.On Saturday, as the Israeli military tried to determine how one drone had evaded the system in Caesarea, it said that dozens of other “projectiles” had entered Israel from Lebanon.Firefighters tended to an area in northern Israel on Saturday.Gonzalo Fuentes/ReutersMost of them were either intercepted or allowed to fall into unpopulated areas, but one man was killed and another injured during a rocket barrage fired toward the city of Acre, according to Magen David Adom, Israel’s emergency service.Israel’s vulnerability to drones was also illustrated in June, when Hezbollah broadcast footage of sensitive installations in Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city, that it captured from a drone that hovered over the northern city seemingly without being detected.The Hezbollah drone episode that killed four soldiers nearly a week ago occurred at a military training base near Binyamina, just outside Caesarea.And in July, Israel was stunned when a drone launched by the Houthi militia in Yemen, another Iranian proxy, slammed into an apartment building near a United States Embassy branch office in a popular beachfront neighborhood of Tel Aviv, killing one person and injuring eight others.Rawan Sheikh Ahmad More

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      Sinwar’s Final Moments: On the Run, Hurt, Alone, but Still Defiant

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      Israeli forces had been steadily closing in on Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader, for weeks before he was cornered and killed in a ruined house in the Gaza Strip.At the end, the fearsome militant leader who had helped unleash a vicious war seemed barely a threat.In video captured by an Israeli drone, a man sat alone, badly wounded and caked in dust amid the ruins of a building in the Gaza Strip, wrapped in a kaffiyeh and staring directly into the camera. The man, Israeli officials say, was Yahya Sinwar, the chief of Hamas.The stare-down lasted some 20 seconds, then the man limply but defiantly hurled a broken piece of wood toward the drone. Not long afterward, officials say, an Israeli soldier shot him in the head, and a tank shell flattened part of the building.So ended the long hunt for one of the world’s most wanted men. It began hours after the brutal Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that Mr. Sinwar helped orchestrate, and concluded amid the destruction of a Rafah neighborhood resembling so many parts of Gaza, leveled by the Israeli military in the year since.The manhunt involved Israeli commandos and spies, as well as a special unit established inside the headquarters of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence service, and at the Central Intelligence Agency. It used a sophisticated electronic surveillance dragnet and ground-penetrating radar provided by the United States.New details about Mr. Sinwar’s movements over the past year have emerged since his death, including the fact that Israeli intelligence officers had seen mounting evidence since August that Mr. Sinwar, or possibly other top Hamas leaders, might be in Rafah’s Tel al-Sultan neighborhood.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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      Hamas Says Its Demands Are Unchanged as Biden Pushes for Gaza Cease-Fire

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      A top deputy to the killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar vowed that his “banner will not fall” and that the group would hold to its cease-fire conditions.A top Hamas official vowed on Friday that the killing of the group’s leader, Yahya Sinwar, would change nothing for its war with Israel, saying that it would fight on even as President Biden pressed for a deal to stop the conflict in the Gaza Strip and free the remaining hostages there.In Hamas’s first official comments since Israel announced Mr. Sinwar’s death on Thursday, his deputy, Khalil al-Hayya, said that the group maintained its conditions for a cease-fire. He said Hamas still insisted on an end to Israel’s onslaught in Gaza, as well as its complete withdrawal from the territory and the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel.“We are continuing Hamas’s path,” Mr. al-Hayya, who lives in exile in Qatar, said in televised remarks in which he praised Mr. Sinwar for dying on the battlefield and added that his “banner will not fall.” It remained unclear when Hamas would announce a successor to Mr. Sinwar, who was fatally shot by Israeli soldiers in southern Gaza on Wednesday.Mr. Sinwar orchestrated the Hamas assault on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, during which about 1,200 people were killed and another 250 were taken to Gaza as hostages. The assault led to Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza, which has killed 42,000 people, according to local health officials, and left much of the territory in ruins.Mr. Biden and top members of his administration have expressed hope that Mr. Sinwar’s death could provide an opening toward ending the war, which has spread to include allies of Hamas like the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which began firing rockets into Israel last October, and Iran, which backs both militant groups.American officials, as well as many Israelis, have been pushing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to reach a cease-fire deal that would secure the release of the 101 hostages still being held in Gaza, at least a third of whom are believed to be dead.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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      Secret Documents Show Hamas Tried to Persuade Iran to Join Its Oct. 7 Attack

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      The Times reviewed the minutes of 10 meetings among Hamas’s top leaders. The records show the militant group avoided several escalations since 2021 to falsely imply it had been deterred — while seeking Iranian support for a major attack.For more than two years, Yahya Sinwar huddled with his top Hamas commanders and plotted what they hoped would be the most devastating and destabilizing attack on Israel in the militant group’s four-decade history.Minutes of Hamas’s secret meetings, seized by the Israeli military and obtained by The New York Times, provide a detailed record of the planning for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack, as well as Mr. Sinwar’s determination to persuade Hamas’s allies, Iran and Hezbollah, to join the assault or at least commit to a broader fight with Israel if Hamas staged a surprise cross-border raid.The documents, which represent a breakthrough in understanding Hamas, also show extensive efforts to deceive Israel about its intentions as the group laid the groundwork for a bold assault and a regional conflagration that Mr. Sinwar hoped would cause Israel to “collapse.”The documents consist of minutes from 10 secret planning meetings of a small group of Hamas political and military leaders in the run-up to the attack, on Oct. 7, 2023. The minutes include 30 pages of previously undisclosed details about the way Hamas’s leadership works and the preparations that went into its attack.The documents, which were verified by The Times, lay out the main strategies and assessments of the leadership group:Hamas initially planned to carry out the attack, which it code-named “the big project,” in the fall of 2022. But the group delayed executing the plan as it tried to persuade Iran and Hezbollah to participate.As they prepared arguments aimed at Hezbollah, the Hamas leaders said that Israel’s “internal situation” — an apparent reference to turmoil over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s contentious plans to overhaul the judiciary — was among the reasons they were “compelled to move toward a strategic battle.”In July 2023, Hamas dispatched a top official to Lebanon, where he met with a senior Iranian commander and requested help with striking sensitive sites at the start of the assault.The senior Iranian commander told Hamas that Iran and Hezbollah were supportive in principle, but needed more time to prepare; the minutes do not say how detailed a plan was presented by Hamas to its allies.The documents also say that Hamas planned to discuss the attack in more detail at a subsequent meeting with Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader at the time, but do not clarify whether the discussion happened.Hamas felt assured of its allies’ general support, but concluded it might need to go ahead without their full involvement — in part to stop Israel from deploying an advanced new air-defense system before the assault took place.The decision to attack was also influenced by Hamas’s desire to disrupt efforts to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, the entrenchment of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Israeli efforts to exert greater control over the Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem, sacred in both Islam and Judaism and known to Jews as the Temple Mount.Hamas deliberately avoided major confrontations with Israel for two years from 2021, in order to maximize the surprise of the Oct. 7 attack. As the leaders saw it, they “must keep the enemy convinced that Hamas in Gaza wants calm.”Hamas leaders in Gaza said they briefed Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s Qatar-based political leader, on “the big project.” It was not previously known whether Mr. Haniyeh, who was assassinated by Israel in July, had been briefed on the attack before it happened.Prelude to WarThe documents provide greater context to one of the most pivotal moments in modern Middle Eastern history, showing it was both the culmination of a yearslong plan, as well as a move partly shaped by specific events after Mr. Netanyahu returned to power in Israel in late 2022.Yahya Sinwar in April 2023 in Gaza City. Documents show that he and other Hamas leaders wanted time to lull Israeli leaders into a false sense of security before attacking Israel. Samar Abu Elouf 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