Netanyahu, Benjamin

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      Biden Says Netanyahu Is Not Doing Enough to Free Israeli Hostages

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      President Biden issued a one-word rebuke on Monday of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s commitment to reaching a cease-fire and hostage release deal, in the latest iteration of the White House’s monthslong effort to cajole and censure the Israeli leader.As he exited Marine One on the White House lawn, Mr. Biden was asked a series of questions by waiting reporters about whether Mr. Netanyahu was doing enough to achieve a deal to get the hostages back. The president responded simply: “No.”He then turned away from the reporters and headed for a meeting in the Situation Room. He told reporters he would have more to say after the meeting, which was expected to include his top national security advisers and Vice President Kamala Harris. Later, he and Ms. Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, were scheduled to appear at a campaign event together in Pennsylvania.Mr. Biden and Mr. Netanyahu have clashed often in the past 10 months or so, but with particular intensity since the spring. White House officials thought they were near a hostage deal in mid-July, one of several moments in which they believed — and Mr. Biden publicly declared — that the negotiations mediated by the United States, Qatar and Egypt would result in a temporary cease-fire, with hopes of a longer-lasting one.But Mr. Biden’s hopes have been continually dashed. The latest disagreement with Mr. Netanyahu has arisen over his insistence that Israel maintain a military presence in Gaza along the Egyptian border after a cease-fire agreement comes into effect, a demand that Hamas and Egypt both oppose.Other obstacles to a deal have come from Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader, who has been engaged in the negotiations remotely as he hides out, presumably underground in Gaza. More

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      Discovery of 6 Dead Hostages in Gaza Spurs Protest and Division in Israel

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      The Israeli military said Sunday that Hamas had killed the hostages before they were discovered by Israeli troops on Saturday.The Israeli military said on Sunday that six bodies found in a tunnel under the Gaza Strip belonged to hostages who had been killed by Hamas, setting off a wave of grief and anger in Israel and further cleaving the deep divisions among the public, and the country’s leaders, over the future course of the war.Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the military’s chief spokesman, said the bodies had been recovered a day earlier in the labyrinths under the southern city of Rafah, about one kilometer from where a seventh hostage, Farhan al-Qadi, was found alive last week.“They were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists a short time before we reached them,” Admiral Hagari said. The Israeli Ministry of Health said in a statement on Sunday that the hostages were killed by “a number of short-range shots” and that they had died about “48-72 hours before their examination.”After the recovery of six hostages that the Israeli military said had been killed by Hamas, demonstrators filled the streets of Tel Aviv demanding that the government do more to bring the remaining hostages home.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesIn an initial statement, Hamas did not directly address the accusations but said responsibility for the deaths lay with Israel, which it blamed for the lack of an agreement to stop the fighting in Gaza. Hamas later asserted in a separate statement that the hostages were killed by the Israeli military’s bullets, without providing evidence.The recovery of the hostages’ bodies put into stark relief the competing priorities of Israel’s leaders: those intent on dismantling Hamas through the pursuit and killing of its fighters and officials, and those who want to reach a truce that would bring home the dozens of captives still believed to be still alive in the enclave.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 Protesters Demand a Deal for the Release of Hostages

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      Protesters flooded the streets of Israeli cities on Sunday in mass demonstrations demanding that the government immediately accept a deal for the release of hostages held in Gaza. The furious protests, some of the largest the country has seen over months of failed negotiations, came after the Israeli military announced that six of the hostages had recently been killed in Gaza.In Tel Aviv, protest organizers put the number of people in the hundreds of thousands. Hostage families and a crowd of supporters carried six prop coffins in a march through the city. They swarmed in front of the Israeli military headquarters and clashed with the police on a major highway.In Jerusalem, the Israeli police fired skunk water, a noxious crowd control weapon, and forcefully removed a crowd of hundreds who rallied at the city’s main entrance. In smaller cities too, including Rehovot, in central Israel, people blocked traffic and chanted, “We want them back living, not in coffins!”Israelis demonstrated outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office after the military recovered the bodies of six killed hostages from a tunnel underneath Rafah, Gaza.Ronen Zvulun/ReutersThe national uproar built on months of protests and increasingly aggressive actions by the families of many hostages, who have been attempting to pressure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to accept a deal to little avail.The frustration of the families, who have accused Mr. Netanyahu of sacrificing their loved ones for his own political gain, appeared to reach a boiling point on Sunday after the Israeli military said it had recovered the bodies of six hostages killed in Gaza. The Israeli health ministry said they had been shot at close range sometime between Thursday and Friday morning.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 Says It Has Recovered More Bodies in Gaza

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      The Israeli military asked the public not to speculate, but many Israelis assumed the announcement referred to dead hostages. The news amplified calls for a cease-fire and hostage-release deal.The Israeli military said on Saturday that it had found a number of dead bodies during an operation in the Gaza Strip, asking the Israeli public to refrain from speculation about their identities.The announcement was widely interpreted in Israel, however, as confirmation that more Israeli hostages had died in captivity, and it quickly amplified calls for an immediate cease-fire in order to free the roughly 100 captives still held, both dead and alive, in Gaza.Roughly 250 people were captured by Hamas and its allies during their Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which started the war.The military said in a statement on Saturday that the recently found bodies had yet to be identified and brought to Israel. It did not give further details about how many bodies had been found or where they were discovered, and it would not officially confirm that they were hostages.Still, the news of the discovery accelerated an increasingly rancorous debate within Israeli society about whether Israel should soften its position during negotiations with Hamas for a cease-fire. Under the terms currently being negotiated, scores of hostages would be released from captivity in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians detained in Israel.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is holding out for a deal in which the country would be able to retain control of strategic parts of Gaza during the cease-fire and restart the war in the future.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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      In a Region on Edge, Israel and Hezbollah Launch Major Attacks on Each Other

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      The escalating strikes across the Israel-Lebanon border fueled fears of a bigger conflagration, but both sides signaled that they were de-escalating, for now.Amid fears of an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon, the two sides on Sunday mounted the biggest round of cross-border strikes since the war in Gaza began, with Israel bombing dozens of sites in a pre-emptive attack, and Hezbollah launching hundreds of rockets and drones.Within hours, both sides appeared to de-escalate, at least temporarily, but signaled that the violence and dangerous tensions could continue. Hezbollah said its operation, vengeance for the Israeli assassination of a senior commander, had “finished for the day,” but left open the possibility of further action. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said that “what happened today is not the final word.”For weeks, Israelis have waited in trepidation for a major attack promised by Hezbollah in retaliation for the airstrike last month in a suburb of Beirut that killed one of its leaders, Fuad Shukr. Iran, which backs both Hezbollah and Hamas, has also vowed retribution for the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas political leader, on a visit to Tehran, hours after Mr. Shukr was killed, though it appears to have put that plan on hold.After the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7 that triggered the war in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah began firing frequently on Israel, prompting widespread Israeli bombardment. Repeated strikes, counter-strikes and threats have forced more than 160,000 people to evacuate on both sides of the border, stoking fears that the conflict would ignite full-scale regional war pitting Israel not only against Hezbollah — a more potent force than Hamas — but also its patron Iran.Before dawn on Sunday, Israel’s military said it used about 100 warplanes to strike more than 40 Hezbollah launch sites in Lebanon, saying it had acted to prevent a major attack. Lebanon’s Health Ministry said at least three people had been killed and two others hurt, and Israel said a soldier was killed and two others wounded during the Hezbollah barrage.The Hezbollah leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, in a televised address in Beirut, on Sunday.Bilal Hussein/Associated PressWe 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., Egypt and Qatar Say Gaza Cease-Fire Talks Will Resume Next Week

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      Top officials from the U.S., Israel, Egypt and Qatar ended two days of talks in Doha aimed at trying to resolve remaining disagreements between Israel and Hamas.High-level talks to halt the war in Gaza ended without an immediate breakthrough on Friday, but the United States, Egypt and Qatar said the negotiations would continue next week as mediators raced to secure a truce that they hope will avert a wider regional conflagration.The announcement came after top American, Israeli, Egyptian and Qatari officials ended two days of talks in Doha, the Qatari capital, aimed at trying to resolve remaining disagreements between Israel and Hamas. U.S. and regional officials hope that movement in the negotiations will blunt or stop a widely anticipated Iranian-led retaliation for the killing of senior leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, militant groups backed by Iran.U.S., Iranian and Israeli officials said on Friday said that Iran had decided to delay its reprisal against Israel to allow the mediators to continue working toward a cease-fire in Gaza.After the first day of talks ended on Thursday night, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, the Qatari prime minister, called the acting Iranian foreign minister, Ali Bagheri Kani, to encourage Iran to refrain from any escalation given the cease-fire talks in Doha, according to two Iranian officials and three other officials familiar with the call who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.Mr. Al Thani spoke with Mr. Bagheri Kani again on Friday, and both officials “stressed the need for calm and de-escalation in the region,” according to the Qatari Foreign Ministry. Mr. Bagheri Kani said in a statement that the Qatari prime minister had described the cease-fire negotiations on Thursday as being at a “sensitive” phase.On Friday, Egypt, Qatar and the United States said in a joint statement that the mediators had presented Israel and Hamas with “a bridging proposal” consistent with the terms laid out by President Biden on May 31 and later endorsed by the U.N. Security Council.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 Settlers Storm West Bank Village, Drawing Rare Rebukes From Israeli Officials

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      Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians have surged in the West Bank, but a riot on Thursday in the village of Jit stood out for drawing rapid and unusual rebukes from Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose coalition government includes West Bank settlers in top positions. “Dozens of Israeli civilians, some of them masked, entered the town of Jit and set fire to vehicles and structures in the area, hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails,” the Israeli military said in a statement. The military said that its forces, along with Israeli Border Police, were dispatched to the scene and dispersed the riot by firing shots into the air and “removing the Israeli civilians from the town.” The Palestinian Authority said that one Palestinian was shot dead during the attack on the village and that another was critically injured. The Israeli military said it was “looking into” reports of a fatality and that it had opened an investigation with other security agencies into what it called “this serious incident,” adding that one rioter was arrested and transferred to the police for questioning. The prime minister’s office issued a statement saying that Mr. Netanyahu “takes seriously the riots that took place this evening in the village of Jit, which included injury to life and property by Israelis who entered the village.” The statement vowed to find and prosecute those responsible for “any criminal act.” The Israeli military condemned “incidents of this type and the rioters, who harm security, law, and order,” and accused those involved in the violence of diverting troops and security forces “from their main mission of thwarting terrorism and protecting the security of civilians.” The riot came as the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas has stretched into its 11th month, a period that has also seen increased Israeli military activity against what it terms suspected terrorism in the occupied West Bank, as well as a surge in violent settler attacks there against Palestinians. 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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      Gaza Cease-Fire Talks: What Has Happened and Where Things Stand

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      Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip has lasted more than 10 months, with only one weeklong pause in fighting, in late November. That temporary cease-fire led to the return of 50 Israeli hostages captured during the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel in exchange for 150 Palestinian prisoners — and raised hopes among mediators and the international community that another deal would follow.Those hopes were dashed repeatedly over many months of unsuccessful efforts by mediators. In the interim, tensions in the Middle East have risen, particularly in recent weeks after the assassinations of a Hezbollah commander in Lebanon and a Hamas leader in Iran, prompting vows from Iran and Hezbollah to retaliate against Israel.World leaders eager to avert a wider full-scale war believe that an agreement between Israel and Hamas could prevent an escalation. Still, even the most vocal champions of a cease-fire admit that closing a deal will be tough. President Biden on Tuesday told reporters he was “not giving up” on an agreement but that it was “getting harder” to remain optimistic.On Thursday, negotiators are meeting in Doha, Qatar, to try to reach an agreement. Here’s a timeline of recent talks:May: President Biden calls for an end to the war.Declaring Hamas no longer capable of carrying out a major terrorist attack on Israel, Mr. Biden on May 31 pressed for hostilities in Gaza to end and endorsed a new cease-fire plan that he said Israel had offered to win the release of hostages.“It’s time for this war to end, for the day after to begin,” Mr. Biden said that day. Calling it “a decisive moment,” Mr. Biden put the onus on Hamas to reach an agreement, saying, “Israel has made their proposal. Hamas says it wants a cease-fire. This deal is an opportunity to prove whether they really mean it.”June: U.N. Security Council passes a cease-fire resolution.The United Nations Security Council on June 10 adopted a cease-fire plan backed by the United States, with 14 nations in favor and Russia abstaining. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the American ambassador to the United Nations, said that the United States would work to make sure that Israel agreed to the deal and that Qatar and Egypt would work to bring Hamas to the negotiating table.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