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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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      Yahya Sinwar Is Dead, but a Palestinian State Still Seems Distant

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      A two-state solution remains the goal of the United States and the West, but many in the region say the devastation in Gaza and the lack of effective Palestinian leadership make it a remote prospect.The killing of Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, has raised hopes in the Biden administration that it could help pave the way for the eventual creation of a Palestinian state.But in many ways the goal of an independent Palestinian state seems further away than ever. In Gaza, there has been death and destruction on a devastating scale. There is a lack of a clear and solid Palestinian leadership. And Israel is grappling with its own trauma over the Hamas-led attack of Oct. 7.President Biden is hoping Mr. Sinwar’s death can bring about a temporary cease-fire in Gaza and the return of Israeli hostages, while producing a path toward negotiations on the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel — the so-called two-state solution. But it is unclear who can speak for Hamas now in Gaza, or even if the group really knows where all the hostages are or how many remain alive.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has vowed to continue the war against Hamas as he prosecutes another conflict against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and also to retaliate against Iran. Since Oct. 7, he has repeatedly ruled out the possibility of a two-state solution, and the stability of his coalition government is dependent on far-right ministers who oppose a Palestinian state of any kind.Yahya Sinwar, center, in Gaza City last year. Mr. Sinwar’s death is unlikely to spark moves toward Palestinian statehood, analysts say.Fatima Shbair/Associated PressAll that makes the prospect of Israel agreeing to a serious negotiation on a Palestinian state extremely unlikely, said Mkhaimar Abusada, a Gazan scholar who is a visiting professor at Northwestern University.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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      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

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      Athens Democracy Forum: Seeking the Road to Peace in the Middle East

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      Panelists at the Athens Democracy Forum discussed the widening conflict and the challenge of getting the warring parties to a consensus.This article is from a special report on the Athens Democracy Forum, which gathered experts last week in the Greek capital to discuss global issues.As the war in the Middle East faced another round of deadly escalation, the international negotiator Nomi Bar-Yaacov called on all sides in the conflict to stop and consider how “we got here.”An Israeli citizen and associate fellow at the London-based think tank Chatham House, she didn’t hesitate to give her own answer.“At the heart of this lies the right of the Palestinians to self-determination and to statehood,” Ms. Bar-Yaacov said, leading off a sometimes-edgy 40-minute panel discussion on the Middle East at the Athens Democracy Forum last week.In recent days, the heightened confrontation between Israel and Iran has exacerbated fears in the region and globally about an even larger and more dangerous conflict.And yet, the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict was what started the current war, just as it has other Middle East wars before it. And most of the panelists agreed that the most feasible path to peace would be the two-state solution that has been on and off the table since Israel was created.“Nobody in 76 years has come up with a better idea,” said Roger Cohen, Paris bureau chief of The New York Times, who has reported frequently from the region.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 London, a Pro-Palestinian Protest Disrupts the Launch of an American Mural

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      The U.S. ambassador Jane Hartley was en route to the dedication of a climate-themed mural in London by Shepard Fairey, who created the iconic Obama ‘Hope’ poster. But then a protest began.It’s the kind of cultural exchange any diplomat would savor: A prominent American street artist paints a mural, dedicated to the cause of climate activism, on an apartment building in one of London’s hippest neighborhoods.Jane D. Hartley, the United States ambassador to Britain, who proposed the idea to the artist Shepard Fairey, has a track record in these projects. When she was ambassador to Paris from 2014 to 2017, she asked another well-known American artist, Jeff Koons, to create a sculpture to honor victims of terrorist attacks there.But when Ms. Hartley was on her way to the dedication ceremony for this latest project on Monday morning, she got word that a small band of pro-Palestinian demonstrators had gathered in the Shoreditch neighborhood, beneath the red-and-blue mural, which rises four floors above the street.They began chanting anti-American slogans and unfurling banners calling for justice for the Palestinians in Gaza — a message that seemed even more fraught than usual, given the timing on the first anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel.It was another example of how the Israel-Gaza conflict has reverberated around the world, fueling protests, large and small, on college campuses, city squares,and in this case, in a normally tranquil neighborhood.Ms. Hartley’s security team diverted her car, while Mr. Fairey, who was on hand to greet her, hurriedly relocated with embassy staff members to a nearby café. He seemed bemused by the disruption, noting that much of his work has a protest element, even if his patron on this project was a government official.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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      Kamala Harris Meets With Arab and Muslim Leaders in Michigan

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      Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday met with Arab and Muslim leaders while campaigning in Michigan, a crucial battleground state where roiling discontent over the United States’ backing of Israel’s war in Gaza and its escalating attacks in Lebanon could threaten her support.“The big takeaway was that she fully understands the severity of the situation, she absolutely understands the impact this has had on our communities, and the potential impact this could have on voters,” said Wa’el Alzayat, the chief executive of Emgage Action, a group that mobilizes Muslim American voters and has endorsed Ms. Harris.During the meeting, which took place backstage at a rally in Flint, Mich., Muslim and Arab leaders pressed Ms. Harris to work toward ending the war in Gaza, expressed concerns about the civilian casualties and about tens of thousands of people being displaced in Lebanon, Mr. Alzayat said.He added that Ms. Harris, who was joined by her campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, said she understood the frustrations in the community and was committed to finding a path to peace. The meeting was originally scheduled for 10 minutes but ran for 20, sending a strong message about “the gravity of the current moment we’re in,” he said.Ms. Harris’s campaign said in a statement that she expressed her concern for the “scale of suffering in Gaza,” and outlined her goal to end the war in Gaza, which started after Hamas attacked Israel nearly one year ago, on Oct. 7. The vice president also expressed her desire to secure the release of hostages taken during the attack, and continue to ensure Israel’s security while also seeing to it that Palestinian people can “realize their right to dignity, freedom, self-determination.”Ms. Harris also expressed her concern about civilian casualties and displacement in Lebanon, and reiterated the Biden administration’s desire for a diplomatic solution and preventing a regional war, the campaign said.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 Strikes on Gaza Schools and an Orphanage Kill Scores of Palestinians

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      Israeli forces stepped up their attacks on the Gaza Strip overnight and into Wednesday, killing scores of people at several schools and homes across the enclave and at an orphanage sheltering displaced civilians, local officials and the Gaza Health Ministry said.An Israeli military operation that began in several parts of Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, early on Wednesday morning killed at least 51 people and injured 82 by midafternoon, the Health Ministry said. Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, said that the operation had included an incursion by Israeli ground troops as well as intense airstrikes, and that several women and children were among the dead.In the north, near Gaza City, at least eight people were killed and several others injured by Israeli bombardment of an orphanage building owned by al-Amal Institute for Orphans where hundreds of displaced civilians were staying, the institute said in a statement. A majority of those sheltering in the building, which was heavily damaged by the attack, were women and children, the institute said.An injured man comforting a woman during a funeral for victims killed by an Israeli strike in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, on Wednesday.Bashar Taleb/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAnd across the enclave, the Israeli military said it had bombed four school buildings during the day. The strikes killed at least 17 people at a school east of Gaza City, and at least five people at a school sheltering displaced people in Nuseirat, in central Gaza, the Palestinian Civil Defense said.The Israeli military did not immediately respond to questions about the locations of the other two schools. The military said, without providing evidence, that all four schools were being used as Hamas command and control centers — a claim it has repeatedly made to justify increasingly frequent strikes on school buildings in Gaza.The strikes on the schools and orphanage on Wednesday were condemned by the French Foreign Ministry, which said in a statement that the Israeli forces had “repeatedly targeted civilian infrastructure where people are seeking refuge.” Action on Armed Violence, an advocacy group that focuses on the effect that conflict has on civilians, said in a new analysis on Tuesday that, on average, explosive Israeli weapons had hit civilian infrastructure in Gaza every three hours since the war began. More