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      Netanyahu Faces Pressure at Home and Abroad, From Foes and Friends

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      Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is facing challenges on multiple fronts, with his domestic support appearing to erode at a time when international fury and frustration over the war in Gaza have reached new heights.The Israeli leader has come under sharper criticism from allies like the United States as the civilian death toll climbs in Gaza, and the Israeli military’s killing there this week of seven aid workers has heightened global anger.On Thursday, President Biden and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken both suggested that American support for Israel was not unconditional in remarks that laid bare the growing divisions between Washington and Jerusalem.In a phone call with Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. Biden called the strikes on relief workers and the broader humanitarian crisis in Gaza “unacceptable,” according to a White House statement.“He made clear the need for Israel to announce and implement a series of specific, concrete and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering and the safety of aid workers,” the White House statement said. “He made clear that U.S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these steps.”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 Agrees to Open Erez Crossing for Gaza Aid After Biden Pressure, U.S. Says

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      Israel agreed to open another crossing for aid to get into Gaza, the Biden administration said late Thursday, a move seemingly aimed at tempering the U.S. president’s growing frustration over the dire humanitarian crisis in the enclave.The Israeli government did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the announcement, which came hours after President Biden had a tense phone call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. During the call, Mr. Biden threatened to condition future support for Israel on how it addresses his concerns about civilian casualties and the humanitarian situation in Gaza.In a statement, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council said that Israel had agreed to open the Erez crossing to allow aid into northern Gaza, to use the port of Ashdod to direct aid into the enclave and to significantly increase deliveries from Jordan — “at the president’s request.”“These steps,” the spokeswoman, Adrienne Watson, said, “must now be fully and rapidly implemented.” More

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      Biden Administration Presses Congress on $18 Billion Sale of F-15 Jets to Israel

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      The deal, which would be one of the largest U.S. arms sales to Israel in years, awaits congressional approval as criticism of the war in Gaza rises.The Biden administration is pressing Congress to approve a plan to sell $18 billion worth of F-15 fighter jets to Israel, as President Biden resists calls to limit U.S. arms sales to Israel over its military offensive in Gaza.The State Department recently sent an informal notice to two congressional committees to start a legislative review process for the order, a first step toward the department’s giving formal authorization for the transfer of up to 50 of the planes.The F-15 order was reported earlier by Politico and CNN and confirmed by two U.S. officials. The deal, which would be one of the largest U.S. arms sales to Israel in years, would also include munitions, training and other support.Although the United States has expedited some arms for Israel’s current campaign against Hamas, the F-15s would not be delivered for at least five years, the U.S. officials said.With a top speed of nearly 2,000 miles per hour, the F-15 is capable of both air-to-air combat and bombing targets on the ground. While Israel has used the F-15s it already owns to strike Gaza, its request for the planes appears to reflect longer-term concern about regional threats, including from Lebanon-based Hezbollah, Iran-backed militias in Syria, and Iran itself. The Israel Defense Forces would probably employ F-15s in any potential attack on Iran’s nuclear program.Israeli officials have also told their U.S. counterparts that Israel is about to place a new order for F-35 jets, a U.S. official 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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      Trump’s Call for Israel to ‘Finish Up’ War Alarms Conservatives

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      Recent private remarks he made urging an end to the Gaza conflict, with no insistence on freeing Israeli hostages first, were another departure from conservatives’ support for Benjamin Netanyahu.Two Israeli journalists traveled to Palm Beach, Fla., a little over a week ago, hoping to elicit from Donald J. Trump a powerful expression of support for their country’s war in Gaza.Instead, one of them wrote that what they heard from Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago “shocked us to the core.”“Both U.S. presidential candidates, Biden and Trump, are turning their rhetorical backs on Israel,” concluded Ariel Kahana, a right-wing settler who is the senior diplomatic correspondent for Israel Hayom. The newspaper is owned by the billionaire Republican donor Miriam Adelson; Ms. Adelson herself arranged the interview with Mr. Trump, according to a person with direct knowledge of the planning.What had Mr. Trump said that so alarmed Mr. Kahana?He told the interviewers that Israel was losing public support for its Gaza assault, that the images of devastation were bad for Israel’s global image and that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should end his war soon — statements that sounded far more like something President Biden might say than the kind of cheerleading Mr. Netanyahu has come to expect from Washington Republicans.“You have to finish up your war,” Mr. Trump said. “You have to get it done. We have to get to peace. We can’t have this going on.”That statement apparently troubled Mr. Kahana even more than Mr. Biden’s warnings to Israel. Mr. Biden has called for a six-week cease-fire in exchange for Hamas releasing Israeli hostages. In the interview excerpts released by Israel Hayom, Mr. Trump did not qualify his call for Israel to finish the war by insisting on the release of hostages.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 Christians Mark Easter in Gaza’s Only Catholic Church

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      The only Catholic church in the Gaza Strip held somber Easter celebrations on Sunday for hundreds of displaced Palestinian Christians who have been sheltering within its compound since the war began nearly six months ago.The Holy Family Church is in Gaza City, in the northern part of the strip, an area that has suffered some of the heaviest Israeli bombardment since October and where the global authority on food security says a full-scale famine is imminent.Children ride their bikes past the Holy Family church compound on Sunday. Church officials said Israeli rockets hit a convent on the compound in December and rendered it uninhabitable.Mohamed Hajjar/EPA, via ShutterstockThe families who have taken refuge at the church have been “scraping to get by” for months with limited food and “almost nonexistent” medical supplies — the same as all Palestinians in northern Gaza, including Muslims celebrating the holy month of Ramadan, said Father Davide Meli, the chancellor of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. “It’s a high holiday for all of us,” he said.The priest of the Holy Family parish, Father Gabriel Romanelli, was in Bethlehem when the war began on Oct. 7, and Israeli authorities have repeatedly denied him permission to return to Gaza, according to Father Meli.The Holy Family Church is the only Catholic church in the Gaza Strip.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesA nun prays during Easter Mass at the Holy Family Church.Dawoud Abu Alkas/ReutersMore than 500 people are sheltering at the Holy Family Church and approximately 300 others are at the historic Saint Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church nearby, Father Meli said. Together, he added, they make up the vast majority of Gaza’s tiny and tight-knit Christian population.Both churches have been attacked during the war. An Israeli airstrike killed 18 people at the Saint Porphyrius church in October, according to the Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, which condemned the attack as a war crime. The Israeli military later said it was targeting a nearby building.Hundreds of displaced Palestinians have sought shelter at the church in northern Gaza.Mohamed Hajjar/EPA, via ShutterstockAt the Holy Family Church in December, Israeli snipers killed a mother and daughter inside the church compound and injured seven others who rushed to help them, according to the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. Church officials said Israeli rockets also hit a convent within the compound earlier that day, destroying the building’s sole generator and leaving some of the dozens of disabled people living there without working respirators that they needed to survive.The Israeli military denied knowledge of the incident, which Pope Francis condemned as an attack on a church “where there are no terrorists, but families, children, people who are sick and have disabilities, sisters.” He called for an immediate cease-fire in his Easter address on Sunday. More

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      Fighting Rages Around Two Gaza Hospitals as Pressure on Israel Rises

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      Israeli forces are battling to retake areas they had already seized, showing the militants’ resilience, as critics call for less destructive tactics in the war.Israeli troops and Hamas fighters waged deadly battles in and around two of the Gaza Strip’s major hospitals on Thursday as the Israeli government came under growing pressure at home and abroad to moderate its approach to a war that has devastated the enclave.Fighting raged for the 11th day at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City in an area Israeli forces first seized in November. The clashes illustrated the difficulty the Israelis are having in keeping control of places they had already taken as Palestinian militants melt away and then return.In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, increasingly unpopular and facing criticism on multiple fronts, met for the first time with the families of kidnapped soldiers being held in Gaza, who accused him before the meeting of ignoring their plight for nearly six months. The soldiers’ relatives had largely remained silent in public while other families of captives spoke out, many of them saying the prime minister should agree to a truce with Hamas if that was what it would take to free their relatives.But there has been no apparent change in Israel’s determination to press on with its offensive in Gaza, despite pressure from, among others, hostage families, the Biden administration and the United Nations, where the Security Council passed a resolution on Monday demanding a cease-fire. After vetoing previous cease-fire resolutions, the United States abstained on Monday, allowing the measure to pass and signaling American displeasure over Israel’s conduct of the war.The International Court of Justice in The Hague on Thursday ordered Israel to take concrete steps to stop obstructing humanitarian aid to Gaza as starvation spreads there, calling on Israel to increase the number of land crossings for supplies and to provide “full cooperation” with the United Nations. The ruling contained the strongest language the court has used so far as it weighs a case filed by South Africa that accuses Israel of genocide, which Israel denies.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 and Hezbollah Trade Fire, With Deaths Reported on Both Sides

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      The exchange came as a U.N. cease-fire demand appeared to be having little effect on the war in Gaza, and pressure increased on neighboring Jordan to sever ties with Israel.Hezbollah militants fired dozens of rockets into northern Israel from Lebanon on Wednesday, in what they said was retaliation for an Israeli strike in southern Lebanon overnight.The militants’ barrage came as pro-Palestinian protesters turned up the pressure on the government in neighboring Jordan to sever ties with Israel. It also came as the United States said a previously canceled meeting with an Israeli delegation in Washington to discuss a planned offensive into the southern Gazan city of Rafah would be rescheduled.For months, Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed group based in Lebanon, has traded fire with Israeli forces across the border, and on Wednesday, the Israeli military said its forces had targeted a “significant terrorist operative” near the town of al-Habbariyeh in southern Lebanon.Lebanon’s Ministry of Health, which said the Israeli strike had hit an emergency medical center and killed seven paramedics, denounced it as “unacceptable.”Hezbollah’s response was swift: An Israeli government spokesman said 30 rockets were launched into Israel. The strikes included a direct hit on a building in the city of Kiryat Shmona that killed a 25-year-old person, according to the Israeli authorities.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.N. Security Council Calls for Immediate Cease-Fire in Gaza as U.S. Abstains

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      The U.S. decision not to vote on the resolution drew criticism from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who ordered a delegation to hold back from a planned trip to Washington.The United Nations Security Council on Monday passed a resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in the Gaza Strip during the remaining weeks of Ramadan, breaking a five-month impasse during which the United States vetoed three calls for a halt to the fighting.The resolution passed with 14 votes in favor and the United States abstaining, which U.S. officials said they did in part because the resolution did not condemn Hamas. In addition to a cease-fire, the resolution also called for the “immediate and unconditional release of all hostages” and the lifting of “all barriers to the provision of humanitarian assistance.”Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel immediately criticized the United States for allowing the resolution to pass, and ordered a delegation scheduled to go to Washington to hold high-level talks with U.S. officials to remain in Israel instead. President Biden had requested those meetings to discuss alternatives to a planned Israeli offensive into Rafah, the city in southern Gaza where more than a million people have sought refuge. American officials have said such an operation would create a humanitarian disaster.Mr. Netanyahu’s office called the U.S. abstention from the vote a “clear departure from the consistent U.S. position in the Security Council since the beginning of the war,” and said it “harms both the war effort and the effort to release the hostages.”Top Israeli officials indicated that they would not implement the resolution for now. “The State of Israel will not cease firing. We will destroy Hamas and continue fighting until the every last hostage has come home,” Israel Katz, the country’s foreign minister, wrote on social media.Smoke rising during an Israeli bombardment on a building in Rafah on Sunday.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWe 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