Netanyahu, Benjamin

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      Israeli Leaders to Discuss Hamas Response on Cease-Fire Proposal

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      Mediators have renewed discussions about a cease-fire proposal, but wide gaps remain between Israel’s government and Hamas.Israeli ministers were set to meet on Thursday evening to discuss Hamas’s response to a new proposal for a truce in Gaza and the release of hostages, even as an unusually large rocket and drone attack by Hezbollah, the Lebanese armed group, sparked wildfires on the country’s northern border.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel greenlit a new delegation of negotiators to engage in more in-depth talks with mediators following Hamas’s response, said an Israeli official who circulated a written statement to reporters on condition of anonymity. Such meetings have been rare for the past several weeks as negotiations ground to a halt in June. Regional mediators — mostly Qatar and Egypt — have sought to revive dormant talks about a cease-fire in Gaza after nearly nine months of war. The Biden administration hopes that a truce in Gaza will allow Israel and Hezbollah, which has been firing at Israel in solidarity with Hamas, to reach a diplomatic settlement as well.The discussions are based on a three-stage framework deal publicized by President Biden in late May and endorsed by the United Nations Security Council. Last week, Qatari mediators sent Hamas possible amendments in an effort to bridge gaps between the two sides. Hamas had demanded stronger guarantees to limit Israel’s ability to call off the agreement and return to battle before the second stage of the agreement, which would see a permanent cease-fire. On Wednesday, Hamas announced that it had “exchanged some ideas” with the mediators on the cease-fire deal, saying it was “dealing positively” with ongoing talks on the matter. They also submitted a formal response that was ultimately transferred to Israel for examination, the Israeli government said. A second Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said on Wednesday night that wide gaps between the sides remained but that Hamas’s response left potential to move forward in the talks. The official declined to offer further details.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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      Hezbollah Says Commander Was Killed in an Israeli Strike in Southern Lebanon

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      Smoke billowing during an Israeli bombardment on the southern Lebanese border village of Khiam on June 8.Rabih Daher/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAn Israeli firefighter extinguishing a fire ignited after rockets that were launched from southern Lebanon landed in the Golan Heights, in northern Israel, on Sunday.Jalaa Marey/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHezbollah said on Tuesday that Israeli forces killed one of its commanders in a strike in southern Lebanon, stoking concerns about escalating the conflict on another Israeli front.The commander, Taleb Abdallah, also known as Abu Taleb, was among the highest-ranking Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon to have been killed by Israel since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel set off war in the Gaza Strip and inflamed tensions along Israel’s northern border.Mr. Abdallah’s role in Hezbollah was not immediately clear. But the group has not referred to a dead fighter as a “commander” since January, when Wissam Hassan al-Tawil, a commander in the group’s Radwan unit, was killed in a strike. In an apparent indication of Mr. Abdallah’s seniority, Hezbollah on Tuesday released a photo of him alongside Mr. al-Tawil.The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the strike.Hezbollah, a powerful Lebanese militia and political movement backed by Iran, and Israel have bombarded each other across the border for much of the past eight months, with more than 150,000 people on both sides of the boundary forced to flee their homes. But the intensity of the attacks has increased this month amid threats by Israeli officials at the highest levels to pursue further military action.Israel has been targeting Hezbollah commanders with the aim of pushing the group north of the Litani River in Lebanon, hoping to prevent cross-border attacks and to eventually allow Israeli civilians displaced by the fighting to return to their homes. Some experts have expressed skepticism about whether the targeted killings can accomplish this aim.Last week, during a visit to northern Israel after a barrage of Hezbollah rockets set off wildfires that blazed for days, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a threat of “very intense action” to “restore security to the north.”In a sign of the heightening conflict, Israel this week struck deeper into northeast Lebanon than it had since the war in Gaza began. On Tuesday, the Israeli military said that Hezbollah had fired about 50 rockets into Israel from southern Lebanon.In recent weeks, Hezbollah for the first time has begun targeting Israel’s vaunted Iron Dome missile-defense system.Answering calls by Hamas to open a second front a day after its deadly assault on Israel, Hezbollah launched attacks into Israel on Oct. 8. Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has said that his group is trying to pin Israel’s troops along the border and limit its capacity to attack Hamas in Gaza.Hezbollah says that more than 300 fighters have been killed in the most recent round of fighting with Israel. The United Nations says that about 80 Lebanese civilians have died. In Israel, the authorities say that 19 security personnel and at least eight civilians have been killed.Euan Ward More

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      Israel’s Euphoria Over Hostage Rescue May Be Fleeting

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      The operation conducted by Israel’s military to free four hostages resulted in a high death toll among Palestinians and has not resolved the challenges facing the Israeli government.For months, Israelis had heard only about hostages being killed or declared dead in Gaza. The “lucky” families were those whose loved ones’ remains were retrieved by soldiers, at great risk, and brought home to Israel for burial.So the audacious rescue on Saturday of four living hostages instantly raised morale in Israel and offered at least a momentary victory for the country’s embattled prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.But by Sunday, euphoria was already giving way to a harsher reality. The heavy air and ground assault that accompanied the rescue killed scores of Palestinians, including civilians, according to Gaza health officials, puncturing Israel’s claims that the operation was a resounding success, at least internationally. And the operation failed to resolve any of the deep dilemmas and challenges vexing the Israeli government, according to analysts.Eight months into its grinding war in Gaza, Israel still appears to be far from achieving its stated objectives of dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities. And Israelis fear that time is running out for many of the hostages in Gaza. About a third of the 120 that remain have already been declared dead by Israeli authorities.Andrey Kozlov, center, and Almog Meir Jan, second from the right, two of four hostages who were rescued in Gaza, arriving in Ramat Gan, Israel, on Saturday.Tomer Appelbaum/Associated PressAt the same time, Israel’s leadership is grappling with an escalation of hostilities across the northern border with Lebanon and battling increasing international isolation and opprobrium over the war in Gaza, including allegations of genocide that are being heard by the International Court of Justice in The Hague.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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      Protest Against Gaza War Draws Thousands to the White House

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      The demonstration included ringing the White House grounds with a red banner showing the names of the more than 36,000 Palestinians killed during the war.Demonstrators marched around the White House, calling for President Biden to halt military aid to Israel and demanding an immediate cease-fire in Gaza.Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA, via ShutterstockThousands of pro-Palestinian protesters in Washington converged around the White House on Saturday, urging President Biden to stop all military aid to Israel and calling for an immediate cease-fire in Israel’s war in Gaza.Holding signs calling Mr. Biden a liar, the protesters, mostly clad in red and bearing Palestinian flags, marched around the block of parkland where the White House sits. They spilled across two six-lane boulevards, pushing out tourists, whose faces showed variations of confusion, anger or intrigue. The police presence was heavy, and the U.S. Park Police used pepper spray against a protester at least once.Mr. Biden was not at the White House, but in France, where he joined President Emmanuel Macron for a state dinner in Paris on Saturday night. But the dissenting voices in the American capital highlighted the challenges he faces domestically as he tries to carve out a narrow position that both supports Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas and calls for a quick cessation of hostilities.The pro-Palestinian activists outside the White House, who were highly critical of the Biden administration’s response to the war, encouraged a key portion of Mr. Biden’s base — young and nonwhite voters — to reconsider their support for the president ahead of the election this fall.“There is no world in which I can confidently vote for” Mr. Biden, said Nas Issa, a spokeswoman for the Palestinian Youth Movement, one of the left-leaning groups that organized Saturday’s protest. If Mr. Biden “doesn’t change course and hold Netanyahu and the Israeli government at large to account, under what circumstances would it be acceptable to any person of conscience to vote for him?” she added, referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.On Saturday afternoon, some protesters created a ring along the mile-long White House perimeter, unspooling consecutive lengths of red paper on which names of the more than 36,000 Palestinians who had been killed during the war were written. The others marched along the perimeter. The format was intended to evoke a red line that, if crossed by the Israeli military in Gaza, would cause Mr. Biden to withhold weapons shipments to Israel. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Israel Rescues 4 Hostages in Assault That Killed Scores of Gazans

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      The news was met with jubilation in Israel, where tensions over the hostages’ safety have been rising in recent months.Israeli soldiers and special operations police rescued four hostages from Gaza on Saturday amid a heavy air and ground assault and flew them back to Israel by helicopter to be reunited with their families. The news was met with jubilation in Israel, where anxieties over the fate of the roughly 120 remaining captives have been rising after eight months of war.Residents in the town of Nuseirat, where the hostages were being held, reported intense bombardments during the rescue operation. Khalil al-Daqran, an official at a hospital in the city, told reporters that scores of Palestinians had been killed and that the hospital’s wards and corridors were packed with the wounded.Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman, told reporters the rescue mission took place around 11 a.m. Saturday, when forces located the four hostages in two separate buildings where they were being held by Hamas militants. He said the Israeli forces came under fire but managed to extract the hostages in two helicopters. One special forces police officer died.The freed hostages — Noa Argamani, 26, Almog Meir Jan, 22, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 41 — were kidnapped by Palestinian militants from the Nova music festival during the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, when about 1,200 people were killed in Israel and 250 taken hostage, Israel says. All four were in good medical condition and were transferred to a hospital in Israel for further examinations, the Israeli authorities said in a statement.Almog Meir Jan embracing loved ones on Saturday in Ramat Gan, Israel, in a photograph released by the Israeli Army.Israeli Army, via ReutersThe fate of the hostages has been a source of intense political pressure on the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, amid the broader criticism that his government, for its own reasons, is in no hurry to wind down the conflict or to address the issue of who should govern Gaza after the war.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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      Biden Says He Would Not Pardon His Son in Felony Gun Trial

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      In a wide-ranging interview with ABC News, the president touched on Hunter Biden’s trial, Donald Trump’s felony conviction and the war in Gaza.President Biden said on Thursday that he would not grant Hunter Biden a pardon if he was convicted in his felony gun trial, a rare comment from Mr. Biden about the legal troubles facing his son.When asked during an interview with ABC News whether he would accept the outcome of the trial of his son, who faces charges including lying on an application to obtain a gun in October 2018, Mr. Biden said, “Yes.”In the wide-ranging interview, the president also defended his border policies and reiterated his support for a cease-fire proposal in the war in Gaza. When the topic turned to former President Donald J. Trump and his recent felony conviction, Mr. Biden said his opponent needed to “stop undermining the rule of law.”Last week, a New York jury found Mr. Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush money paid to a porn actress, in an unlawful conspiracy to aid his 2016 presidential campaign. He has since repeated his criticism of the judge in the case and suggested he could seek to prosecute his political opponents if elected again. At a campaign rally in Arizona on Thursday, Mr. Trump called his trial “rigged” and said the charges had been “fabricated.”Mr. Biden took on a sharper edge when asked about his political opponent’s broadsides after a recent executive order allowing the suspension of asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. The former president called the move “weak and pathetic.”“Is he describing himself — weak and pathetic?” Mr. Biden said in the interview, which took place on the sidelines of his visit to the beaches of Normandy in France to observe the 80th anniversary of D-Day.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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      What to Know About the Latest Gaza Cease-Fire Proposal

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      President Biden raised hopes last week when he endorsed a plan that he said could lead to a “cessation of hostilities permanently.” He said Israel had put forward the plan, but neither Israel nor Hamas has said definitively that they would accept or reject the proposal, and they appear to still be locked in disagreement over fundamental issues.Here’s a look at what is known about the cease-fire deal, which key points still must be negotiated, and the hurdles still ahead:What’s in the plan?Israel and Hamas agreed to a cease-fire in November that lasted for a week. But the proposal now on the table — as laid out by Mr. Biden, a senior U.S. administration official and Israeli officials — is more ambitious. Major issues remain unresolved, including whether Hamas would remain in control of the Gaza Strip.The proposal would unfold in three phases.In phase one, among other things, Israel would withdraw from population centers in Gaza during a six-week cease-fire, and dozens of women and elderly hostages held in Gaza by Hamas and its allies would be exchanged for hundreds of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons.During that time, talks over a permanent cease-fire would continue, and if successful, the deal would enter phase two, with the full withdrawal of Israel’s military from the enclave. All hostages and more Palestinian prisoners would be freed. Under phase three, Hamas would return the bodies of hostages who had died, and a three- to five-year reconstruction period, backed by the United States, European countries and international institutions, would begin.Near a rally on Wednesday in Tel Aviv for hostages who were kidnapped during the Oct. 7 attack.Marko Djurica/ReutersWhat are Israel’s concerns?One of the key gaps between Hamas and Israel over the plan is the length of the cease-fire and the future role of Hamas. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said on Monday that he was open to a six-week cease-fire, according to a person who attended a closed-door meeting he held with Israeli lawmakers. But publicly he has said that Israel will fight until Hamas’s governing and military capabilities are destroyed.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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      After Biden’s Push for Truce, Netanyahu Calls Israel’s War Plans Unchanged

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      The timing of the remarks seemed to rebuff the president’s hopes for a speedy end to the war. But some analysts said the prime minister was aiming at domestic supporters, not the White House. A day after President Biden called on Israel and Hamas to reach a truce, declaring that it was “time for this war to end,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday reiterated that Israel would not agree to a permanent cease-fire in Gaza as long as Hamas still retains governing and military power.In his statement, Mr. Netanyahu did not explicitly endorse or reject a proposed cease-fire plan that Mr. Biden had laid out in an unusually detailed address on Friday. Two Israeli officials confirmed that Mr. Biden’s proposal matched an Israeli cease-fire proposal that had been greenlit by Israel’s war cabinet. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations.But the timing of Mr. Netanyahu’s remarks, coming first thing the next morning, seemed to put the brakes on Mr. Biden’s hopes for a speedy resolution to the war, which has claimed the lives of more than 36,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.“Israel’s conditions for ending the war have not changed: the destruction of Hamas’s military and governing capabilities, the freeing of all hostages and ensuring that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel,” Mr. Netanyahu’s office said in the statement released on Saturday morning. Biden administration officials and some Israeli analysts said they believed that Israel still supported the proposal Mr. Biden described on Friday, and that Mr. Netanyahu’s statement on Saturday was more tailored to his domestic audience and meant to manage his far-right cabinet members, rather than to push back against the White House. Mr. Biden is eager for the war to end, with the American presidential election just five months away.But Mr. Netanyahu’s domestic political worries could prove paramount. On Saturday night, two of Mr. Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners — Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir — threatened to quit his government should he move forward with the proposal. Mr. Ben-Gvir labeled the terms of the agreement a “total defeat” and a “victory for terrorism.” If both of their parties left his coalition, it could mark the end of Mr. Netanyahu’s government.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