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      Shapiro’s College-Era Criticism of Palestinians Draws Fresh Scrutiny

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      Gov. Josh Shapiro, Democrat of Pennsylvania, wrote in his college newspaper three decades ago that Palestinians were “too battle-minded” to achieve a two-state solution in the Middle East, prompting criticism as Vice President Kamala Harris considers him to be her running mate.Mr. Shapiro, 51, has embraced his Jewish identity and been one of the Democratic Party’s staunchest defenders of Israel at a moment when the party is splintered over the war in Gaza.But he says his views have evolved since publishing an opinion essay as a college student at the University of Rochester in New York, when he wrote that Palestinians were incapable of establishing their own homeland and making it successful, even with help from Israel and the United States.“They are too battle-minded to be able to establish a peaceful homeland of their own,” he wrote in the essay, published in the Sept. 23, 1993, edition of The Campus Times, the student newspaper. “They will grow tired of fighting amongst themselves and will turn outside against Israel.”Mr. Shapiro, who was 20 at the time, noted in his essay that he had spent five months studying in Israel and had volunteered in the Israeli Army.“The only way the ‘peace plan’ will be successful is if the Palestinians do not ruin it,” Mr. Shapiro wrote, adding, “Palestinians will not coexist peacefully.”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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      Iran’s Options for Retaliation Risk Escalating Middle East Crisis

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      The killing of Hamas’s political leader in Tehran was a humiliating security failure for the Iranian government.Most new Iranian presidents have months to settle into the decades-old cadence of gradual nuclear escalation, attacks against adversaries and, episodically, secret talks with the West to relieve sanctions.President Masoud Pezeshkian had 10 hours.That was the elapsed time between his swearing-in and the explosion inside an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps guesthouse, at 2 a.m. in Tehran, that killed Ismail Haniyeh, the longtime political leader of Hamas. Mr. Haniyeh had not only attended the swearing-in, but had also been embraced by the new president and met that day with the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, making the assassination a particularly brazen act.Now Mr. Pezeshkian — along with Ayatollah Khamenei and top military generals — will be immersed in critical choices that may determine whether war breaks out between two of the Mideast’s most potent militaries. He spent his first day in office in national security meetings. The final decision on how to retaliate rests with Mr. Khamenei and on Wednesday he where ordered Iranian forces to strike Israel directly for what appeared to be its role in killing Mr. Haniyeh.But how that retaliation unfolds makes a difference. If Iran launches direct missile attacks, as it attempted for the first time in 45 years in April, the cycle of strike and counterstrike could easily escalate. If Hezbollah, its closest ally in the region, steps up attacks on Israel’s north or the Houthis expand their attacks in the Red Sea, the war could expand to Lebanon, or involve the need for American naval forces to keep the sea lanes open.Mourners for Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s longtime political leader, in Tehran on Wednesday.Arash Khamooshi for The New York TimesBehind all of those options is perhaps the riskiest choice of all: whether Iran decides to take the final step toward building an actual nuclear weapon. For decades it has walked right up to the line, producing nuclear fuel and in recent years enriching it to near bomb-grade levels. But American intelligence assessments say the country has always stopped short of an actual weapon, a decision Iranian leaders have publicly been reconsidering in recent months.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 Haniyeh’s Death, Who Are Hamas’s Most Prominent Leaders?

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      Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed on Wednesday in Iran, was among the most senior members of Hamas’s leadership, a group that is tightly coordinated despite being scattered inside and outside Gaza.Hamas’s leaders, especially those in Gaza, have repeatedly been targets of Israeli assassination attempts, but the group has swiftly replaced those who have been killed.The group’s leadership structure is often opaque, but here is a look at what we know about some of Hamas’s most prominent leaders who are either believed to be alive or whose fate is unclear.Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in GazaMr. Sinwar helped establish Hamas in the late 1980s around the time of a Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule. He was arrested by the Israeli authorities several times, spending over 20 years in Israeli prison until he was released in a prisoner exchange in 2011.After rising through Hamas’s ranks, he was elected its leader in Gaza in 2017. Israeli officials said that he was one of the leaders who had masterminded the Oct. 7 attack, alongside Mohammed Deif, the commander of Hamas’s military wing in Gaza, and Marwan Issa, the deputy commander, who was killed in an Israeli strike in March. Mr. Sinwar is believed to be hiding in the group’s tunnel network beneath Gaza.A number of Hamas’s leaders in Gaza, including Mr. Sinwar, are seen as more radical than Mr. Haniyeh, the leader who was killed in Iran. The death of Mr. Haniyeh, who was considered a relatively pragmatic counterpoint, “will make a cease-fire much more difficult to achieve,” said Hugh Lovatt, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.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 Killed Hezbollah Commander in Airstrike Near Beirut

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      The strike was in retaliation for a deadly rocket attack this weekend in the Golan Heights. At least three civilians were killed and 74 others wounded on Tuesday, Lebanese officials said.Israel launched a deadly strike in a densely populated Beirut suburb on Tuesday in retaliation for a rocket attack in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights that it blamed Hezbollah for and that killed 12 children and teenagers on a soccer field.The target of the Israeli strike in a southern suburb of Lebanon’s capital was Fuad Shukr, a senior official who serves as a close adviser to Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, according to three Israeli security officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details.The Israel Defense Forces later said in a statement that its fighter jets had “eliminated” Mr. Shukr, but there was no confirmation from Hezbollah, the powerful Iran-backed group, and the claim could not be independently verified.Hezbollah has denied carrying out the attack in the Golan Heights on Saturday. The latest strikes were likely to fuel concerns that Israel’s long-running conflict with the group could escalate into a full-blown war even as Israel wages a military offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip after that group led a deadly assault in Israel on Oct. 7.The attack on Tuesday is believed to be the first time since the war with Hamas began that Israel has targeted Hezbollah in Beirut. In January, an Israeli airstrike in a Beirut suburb killed Saleh al-Arouri, a senior leader of Hamas, which is also backed by Iran.The strike on Tuesday killed at least three other people — a woman and two children — and wounded at least 74 others, five critically, according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Health. Officials were still searching the rubble for other victims, the ministry said. More

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      Netanyahu Vows ‘Severe’ Response to Deadly Rocket Attack Tied to Hezbollah

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      Fears linger among Lebanese civilians after a strike killed 12 children and teenagers in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.Tensions were high on both sides of the Israeli-Lebanese border on Monday as Israeli leaders vowed to deliver a significant military blow against the armed group Hezbollah in response to a deadly rocket attack over the weekend.The attack on Saturday killed 12 children and teenagers in the Druse Arab village of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia that dominates southern Lebanon and that has been firing rockets into Israel for months, denied responsibility for the strike. But Israel and the United States blamed the group, saying it was Hezbollah’s rocket that had been fired from territory it controls.Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who visited the site of the attack on Monday, said, “Our response is coming, and it will be severe.” Local residents heckled Mr. Netanyahu, telling him they had no security and chanting, “Murderer! Murderer!” videos posted on social media showed.Mr. Netanyahu’s visit to Majdal Shams came the morning after Israeli cabinet ministers authorized him and Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, to determine the nature and timing of the military response. The strike and Israel’s expected counterattack have raised fears that nearly 10 months of armed conflict between Israel and Hezbollah could spiral into an all-out war.Hezbollah began firing rockets, antitank missiles and drones into Israel in solidarity with Hamas after that group, which is also backed by Iran, led the deadly Oct. 7 attack on southern 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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      New Israeli Evacuation Order in Gaza Displaces Palestinians Again

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      The order affected part of southern Gaza, while farther north, the Israeli military struck the grounds of a school it said was being used by Hamas, killing more than 30 people, Gaza officials said.The Israeli army ordered the evacuation of several neighborhoods in southern Gaza on Saturday, the latest in a series of such directives recently that have forced tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians to relocate yet again.The decision affects an area around the city of Khan Younis that Israel had previously designated a “humanitarian zone” for Palestinian civilians, who are weary from nearly a year of unrelenting war and a daily struggle to avoid disease and find enough food and clean water to survive.“People aren’t being regarded as people,” said Juliette Touma, a spokeswoman for UNRWA, the main United Nations agency providing aid to Palestinians in Gaza. “They’re being treated as pinballs and chess pieces.”The Israeli military said its recent evacuations and operations in Khan Younis have targeted a renewed Hamas insurgency and accused Hamas of installing weapons infrastructure in the area under the latest evacuation order on Saturday.Over the past week, amid new evacuation orders, more than 190,000 people have fled the places where they were sheltering in southern and central Gaza, the United Nations said on Friday.Dozens of people have been killed in fighting in the area, according to both Israel and Palestinian health officials. The Israeli military said on Friday that its forces had killed more than 100 militants in Khan Younis in recent days, while Palestinian health officials have said that at least some casualties arriving at local hospitals with severe blast wounds have been women and children.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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      Silent No More, Harris Seeks Her Own Voice Without Breaking With Biden

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      The vice president’s expressions of concern for Palestinian suffering marked a shift in emphasis from the president’s statements as she moved to establish herself as the leader of her party.After meeting with Israel’s prime minister this week, Vice President Kamala Harris said she “will not be silent.” She was referring to her concerns about Palestinian suffering in the Gaza war, but in a way it was a larger declaration of independence.For nearly four years, she has been the quiet understudy, relegated to the role of the supportive deputy while President Biden made pronouncements. Now she has suddenly been thrust to the fore as the new presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, and neither silence nor agreeable head nods are sufficient any more.The challenge for her over the next 100 days will be to find her own voice without overtly breaking with Mr. Biden, a delicate political high-wire act without a reliable net. Every statement she makes, every sentence she utters, will be scrutinized to determine whether it is consistent with the president she serves. Yet even as she wants to demonstrate loyalty to Mr. Biden, she also hopes to show the public who she is.She is fortunate in that she and Mr. Biden do not diverge all that much, according to people who have worked with them. While friction between presidents and their vice presidents is common, there have been few notable instances where Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris have been reported to be at odds. So for her, it may not be as difficult to suppress contrary instincts in the truncated election campaign she faces as it has been for other vice presidents eager to differentiate themselves.But this is a balancing act being figured out on the fly. Because Mr. Biden was running himself until less than a week ago, neither he nor Ms. Harris has had much time to figure out how to coordinate their messages. It was notable that Mr. Biden left it to Ms. Harris on Thursday to be the public voice of the administration during the White House visit by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, taking the silent role himself.Mr. Biden cares deeply about keeping former President Donald J. Trump out of the White House and therefore has reason to be invested in Ms. Harris’s success. He also knows that because, until he was forced to quit the race, he had insisted on running again despite concerns about his age, many will blame him for not ceding the stage earlier if Mr. Trump wins.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 Retrieves Bodies of 5 Hostages From Tunnel in Gaza

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      The military said that intelligence, including information from detained Palestinian militants, had led to the bodies in the Khan Younis area.Israeli forces retrieved the bodies of five hostages from a tunnel in the southern Gaza Strip, the military said on Thursday, amid growing international and domestic pressure for a cease-fire deal that would lead to the release of the remaining captives.The bodies were found on Wednesday in a zone around the city of Khan Younis that Israel previously designated as a humanitarian area where Gazan civilians could go to avoid the fighting and to receive aid, the military said. The tunnel shaft was nearly 220 yards long and more than 20 yards underground, with several rooms, the military said.Israel has said that Hamas — which led the attack on Israel on Oct. 7 that prompted the war in Gaza — has exploited the designated humanitarian zone to launch rockets at Israel, as well as to use it for other military purposes. Aid groups have lamented that Israel has struck the area despite telling Gazans they would be safer there. Hamas had no immediate response.The five hostages — Maya Goren, 56; Ravid Katz, 51; Oren Goldin, 33; Tomer Ahimas, 20; and Kiril Brodski, 19 — had already been presumed dead by Israeli officials.From left: Ravid Katz, Kiril Brodski, Tomer Ahimas, Oren Goldin and Maya Goren in photos provided by the Hostages Families Forum.Agence France-Presse, via The Hostages Families ForumMr. Brodski and Mr. Ahimas were soldiers who were killed during the Hamas-led attack in October, while the other three were civilians whose bodies were taken to Gaza as bargaining chips, Israeli officials 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