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      Kamala Harris to Meet With Top Israeli Official as Cease-Fire Talks Continue

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      Vice President Kamala Harris is scheduled to meet with Benny Gantz, a member of the Israeli war cabinet, in Washington on Monday, according to a White House official and a spokesman for Mr. Gantz.During the meeting with Mr. Gantz, Ms. Harris is expected to discuss the urgency of securing a hostage deal, which would allow for a temporary cease-fire, and the need to significantly increase aid into Gaza, according to the White House official, who provided details on the condition of anonymity.The meeting, which is scheduled to take place at the White House, comes as the Biden administration faces pressure to help secure a temporary cease-fire and hostage deal in the Israel-Hamas war and to more forcefully address the escalating humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.On Saturday, another senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic efforts, told reporters that negotiations were continuing, and that Israel had “more or less accepted” a framework for the deal and that the ball was now in Hamas’s court.The proposal could lead to a six-week pause in the fighting, as well as the release of some of the hostages held in Gaza and Palestinian prisoners in Israel. President Biden had expressed hope that a deal could be reached by Monday as U.S. officials said they were working to secure a deal by the start of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month that will start this year around March 10.The United States also delivered its first airdrop of food into Gaza on Saturday amid warnings that the besieged enclave was on the brink of famine. Israel has imposed tight restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid, even as international relief organizations have suspended some convoys because of rising anarchy and the looting of some aid trucks inside Gaza.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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      News Leaders Around the World Pledge Support for Journalists in Gaza

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      Nearly 60 leaders from international and regional news outlets signed a letter on Thursday and Friday committing their support for journalists covering the war in Gaza and calling for their safety and the freedom to do their work amid intense personal risk.The letter, coordinated by the Committee to Protect Journalists with the support of the World Association of News Publishers, also called on Israeli authorities to protect journalists as noncombatants, as required by international law, adding that those responsible for violations of that protection should be held accountable.“These journalists — on whom the international news media and the international community rely for information about the situation inside Gaza — continue to report despite grave personal risk,” the letter says of the Palestinian media workers doing the on-the-ground reporting. “They continue despite the loss of family, friends and colleagues, the destruction of homes and offices, constant displacement, communications blackouts and shortages of food and fuel.”The signatories include leaders of The Associated Press, Reuters, The New York Times and regional outlets across Africa, the Middle East, Europe and Asia.Palestinian journalists have faced grave risks or personal loss while trying to report on the war: Some have been injured while reporting; others have lost family members and colleagues. Several have quit amid the challenges. Since Oct. 7, at least 94 journalists have been killed in the war, making it the deadliest period for journalists since the Committee to Protect Journalists started collecting data in 1992, according to the organization. Israeli and Egyptian authorities have prohibited international media from entering Gaza, and journalists from other major news outlets have evacuated, making the true scale of the war impossible to grasp.According to data from the Committee to Protect Journalists, most of the media workers killed in the war were Palestinian, and many of them were killed along with their families in airstrikes. Some human rights groups have said that Israel has targeted journalists, though Israel has repeatedly denied that accusation.The letter prompted backlash from some journalists who said they or their colleagues were punished by their news organizations for affirming their support for Palestinian journalists and civilians in letters highly critical of Israel’s war tactics in Gaza.When journalists have resigned or been fired for protesting the Israel-Hamas war, news organizations have said that voicing opinions that take sides violates their newsroom policies. More

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      Gaza Aid Convoy Deaths: What We Know From Israeli Military Footage

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      Gazan authorities said that more than 100 people were killed and hundreds more injured in a chaotic scene early Thursday morning in Gaza City, where a crowd gathered around a convoy of trucks carrying desperately needed aid and the Israeli military opened fire. Drone footage released by the Israeli military shows hundreds of people circling […] More

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      Palestinian Authority’s Government to Resign as U.S. Calls for Change

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      Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh of the Palestinian Authority, the body that administers part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, tendered the resignation of his cabinet on Monday, according to the authority’s official news agency.The decision follows diplomatic efforts, involving the United States and Arab states including Saudi Arabia, to persuade the authority to overhaul itself in a way that would enable it to take over the administration of Gaza after the war there ends.But it was unclear whether the appointment of a new prime minister and cabinet would be enough to revamp the authority or persuade Israel to let it govern Gaza. President Mahmoud Abbas, the most senior leader of the authority, will remain in position along with his security chiefs, regardless of whether he accepts Mr. Shtayyeh’s resignation.Israeli leaders had strongly hinted that they would not allow the authority’s existing leadership to run Gaza. American and Arab leaders had hoped that new leadership might make Israel more likely to cede administrative control of Gaza to the authority.With no functional parliament within the areas controlled by the authority, Mr. Abbas has long ruled by decree, and he exerts wide influence over the judiciary and prosecution system.According to diplomats briefed on his thinking, Mr. Abbas’s preferred candidate for prime minister is Mohammad Mustafa, a longtime economic adviser who is considered a member of his inner circle. More

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      A Re-established West Bank Settlement Symbolizes Hardened Israeli Views

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      Homesh, one of the four West Bank settlements dismantled by Israel when it withdrew from Gaza in 2005, has taken on new importance since Oct. 7 and the war against Hamas.For an Israeli settlement that has become such a resounding symbol of religious and right-wing politics in the West Bank, Homesh is not much to look at.Three families live in tarpaulin-covered shelters full of bunk beds for some 50 young men, who study in a yeshiva that is a shabby prefab structure surrounded by abandoned toys, building materials and garbage.They live part time here amid the ruins and rubbish of a hilltop settlement ripped down in 2005 by the Israeli army and police. It is one of four West Bank settlements dismantled when Israel pulled all of its troops and settlements out of Gaza. Israel’s intention then, pushed by Washington, was to signal that outlying settlements too hard to defend would be consolidated in any future peace deal.The decision to dismantle them is now being challenged by the more religious and right-wing ministers in the government of Benjamin Netanyahu. They are agitating to settle more land in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and even remove Palestinians from Gaza to resettle there.Homesh, perched in the hills above Nablus, has become a symbol of their resolve.Early last year, the Israeli government decided to relegalize Homesh, but the Supreme Court then required the government to dismantle it once more and ensure that Palestinians who own the land on which it sits can reach it safely.Three families live in tarpaulin-covered shelters full of bunk beds.Sergey Ponomarev 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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      A U.S. Call for a Humanitarian Cease-Fire in Gaza

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      Vetoing a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza while circulating a softer hostages-for-cease-fire resolution of its own may have been the best of the bad options available to the Biden administration. President Biden is right to take this step. Given the scale of death and destruction in Gaza, and the prospect of more to come, he can take other measures as well that might lessen Palestinians’ suffering and loss of life.The issue is not whether Israel was justified in going after Hamas after the terrorist attack of Oct. 7. It was, and it has achieved some of its military aims. It has destroyed significant parts of Hamas’s military infrastructure and reduced its fighting force. Hamas reportedly says it has lost about 6,000 of an estimated 25,000 fighters; Israel says it has killed more than 10,000 of them.But this war, on its current course, is leading to the wholesale killing of Palestinians while Hamas gains in international standing and the remaining Israeli hostages remain captive. The United States, as Israel’s most important ally and source of military aid, should take the lead in changing that.The president was right to demonstrate sympathy and support for Israel in the days after the Oct. 7 attack. Since then, his administration has worked tirelessly with Arab allies, first mediating a brief halt in fighting in November and more recently trying to negotiate a longer cease-fire to release the Israeli hostages and to bring humanitarian relief to Gaza.Hamas launched its attack to provoke an Israeli response, knowing that the people of Gaza would be acutely vulnerable. The terrorist group hides its fighters among civilians, and built its infrastructure, including miles of tunnels, underneath homes, schools and hospitals.Since the war began, the two million people who live in Gaza have been pounded by Israeli bombardment. More than 29,000 people have been killed, according to Palestinian figures; more than half of Gaza’s homes and buildings have been destroyed, and the United Nations has raised the alarm that, cut off from supplies of food, Gazans are at risk of starvation. The death toll could soon rise sharply if Israel carries out a ground invasion of Rafah, a city in the far south of Gaza, where the military believes 10,000 Hamas fighters remain, and to which a million civilians have fled.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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      Netanyahu Issues First Plan for Postwar Gaza

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      The proposal, which calls for indefinite Israeli military control and buffer zones in the territory, rankled Arab nations and was rejected by Palestinians. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel released on Friday his most detailed proposal yet for a postwar Gaza, pledging to retain indefinite military control over the enclave, while ceding the administration of civilian life to Gazans without links to Hamas.The plan, if realized, would make it almost impossible to establish a Palestinian state including Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, at least in the short term. That would likely accelerate a clash between Israel and a growing number of its foreign partners, including the United States, that are pushing for Palestinian sovereignty after the war ends. The blueprint for Gaza comes after nearly 20 weeks of war in the territory and a death toll approaching 30,000 people, at least half of them women and children, according to Gazan authorities.Mr. Netanyahu’s proposal for postwar Gaza was circulated to cabinet ministers and journalists early on Friday. He has laid out most of the terms of the proposal in previous public statements, but this was the first time they had been collected in a single document. The proposal also calls for the dismantling of UNRWA, the U.N. agency charged with delivering the bulk of the life-sustaining aid to the besieged territory. And it calls for an overhaul of the Gazan education and welfare systems, as well as buffer zones along Gaza’s borders with Israel and Egypt.The plan was circulated on the same day that American, Israeli, Qatari and Egyptian officials began negotiations in Paris over the release of hostages and a possible cease-fire. 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 Steps Up Attacks in Gaza Amid Cease-Fire Talks

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      Strikes overnight killed nearly 100, seven of them in Rafah, as officials said there had been momentum on a deal to free some Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.Intense bombardment of a Gaza Strip city filled with refugees flattened a large mosque and killed or wounded scores of people on Thursday as Israel repeated its intention to push into the area with ground forces if Hamas does not release hostages before the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.Nearly 100 people were killed across the enclave from Israeli strikes over the past day, the Gazan health authorities said Thursday, bringing the total death toll after almost 20 weeks of war to nearly 30,000.Around half of the Gaza Strip’s population of 2.3 million people are crammed into the southern city of Rafah along the border with Egypt, where the strike on the mosque occurred Thursday. Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, reported that at least seven Palestinians had been killed overnight in Rafah and dozens more wounded.Israel’s preparations for an invasion of that area come as diplomats raced to forestall it, with Ramadan set to begin around March 10.President Biden’s Middle East coordinator, Brett McGurk, met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday for “a good couple of hours,” focusing on whether negotiators could “cement a hostage deal” according to a White House spokesman. Talks last week in Cairo for a hostage deal failed when Mr. Netanyahu withdrew his negotiators, accusing Hamas of refusing to budge on what he called “ludicrous” demands and pledging to press on with Israel’s offensive.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