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      Israel Withdraws Troops From Southern Gaza as War Hits 6-Month Mark

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      With the conflict at an apparent impasse, international mediators were gathering in Cairo with hopes of brokering a temporary cease-fire.The Israeli military said Sunday that it had withdrawn a division of ground troops from the southern Gaza Strip, as international mediators gathered with hopes of brokering a temporary cease-fire six months into a war that has now become the longest involving Israel since the 1980s.Israel has significantly reduced the number of troops it has on the ground in Gaza over the past several months. Only a fraction of the soldiers that it deployed in the territory earlier in the war against Hamas remain.Now, the last group of Israeli soldiers in the southern city of Khan Younis has left Gaza in order “to recuperate and prepare for future operations,” the army said. The withdrawal of the soldiers, members of the 98th Division, means that no Israeli troops are actively maneuvering in southern Gaza, the Israeli news media reported.But Israeli officials made clear that the army would stay in other parts of Gaza to preserve its “freedom of action and its ability to conduct precise intelligence-based operations.”The drawdown from Khan Younis, about four months after Israeli forces invaded southern Gaza, raised questions about Israel’s plans in the face of widespread calls for it to de-escalate the conflict. It was also unclear what it might signal about Israel’s oft-stated plan to invade the southernmost city of Rafah, where more than a million have fled to escape the fighting.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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      A Chance for Hope in Haiti’s Latest Crisis

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      Dead bodies are rotting on the streets of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. Clean drinking water is scarce, and a cholera outbreak threatens. Hunger looms. The outgunned police force has all but disappeared.Armed groups have seized control of ports and major roads in the capital and freed inmates from jails. They shut down the airport, preventing the country’s deeply unpopular prime minister, Ariel Henry, from returning from a trip abroad, and have threatened to overrun the presidential palace. Under intense pressure from the United States and other regional powers to speed the transition to a new government, Henry agreed to resign late Monday.And now comes the hardest part: determining who will govern Haiti. Will a transitional government manage to lead that fragile nation back to stability and democracy? Or will the armed men who roam the streets and murder, kidnap and rape with impunity, along with the political and business leaders aligned with them, seize control and set off a fresh cycle of violence and criminality?I want to be hopeful and see this as a rare moment of possibility for self-determination for the Haitian people, whose country has long been a plaything of foreign powers and avaricious local elites. Much of my hope comes from having closely followed the work a collection of political, civic, business and religious groups that for the past two years have been frantically trying to forge a path for Haiti out of its disaster, demanding that Henry step aside and hand power to a transitional government that could, with help from abroad, stabilize the country and lead it back to democracy through new elections.“This is too much of a good crisis to waste,” Fritz Alphonse Jean, a former central banker who has played a pivotal role in that effort and would serve in the proposed transitional government, told me.But I am equally fearful, having seen armed groups, some of them aligned with political and business power brokers in Haiti, gathering strength as Henry clung to power with the tacit support of the United States and other regional powers. These brutal gangs have succeeded where civilians have failed: They physically blocked Henry from returning and forced his resignation. Now they threaten to seize momentum from the leaders who seek the restoration of Haitian democracy.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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      Israelis Broach a Concession in Hostage Talks With Hamas

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      Israel negotiators are reported to be considering the release of high-profile Palestinians convicted of terrorism in exchange for freedom for some of the hostages in Gaza.Israeli negotiators have offered a significant concession in cease-fire talks with Hamas, signaling that they might be open to releasing high-profile Palestinians jailed on terrorism charges in exchange for some Israeli hostages still being held in the Gaza Strip, according to two officials with knowledge of the talks.President Biden said Monday that he believed negotiators were nearing an agreement that would halt Israel’s military operations in Gaza within a week, though earlier in the day, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was still talking about further military action.Mr. Netanyahu said that the Israeli military had presented a plan to the war cabinet to evacuate civilians from “areas of fighting” in Gaza. He appeared to be speaking of Israel’s long-expected invasion of Rafah, the southern city where more than half of Gaza’s population is sheltering, many in makeshift tents.Mr. Netanyahu did not disclose any details of the evacuation plan, and it was not clear whether he was using the prospect of an invasion as a cudgel to gain leverage in the negotiations. On Sunday, he said an invasion could be “delayed somewhat” if Hamas agreed to release Israeli hostages.Many countries and international aid groups have warned that an invasion of Rafah could lead to mass casualties on top of the nearly 30,000 Gazans who, according to the territory’s health officials, have already been killed in the war.Speaking with reporters in New York on Monday, Mr. Biden sounded optimistic about a deal to pause the fighting. “We’re close,” he said. “We’re not done yet. My hope is by next Monday, we’ll have a 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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      Netanyahu Says Israel Will Invade Gaza City of Rafah

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      Amid signs of progress toward a pause in the fighting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israeli forces planned to keep pushing into Gaza.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that Israeli forces would push into the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah regardless of the outcome of talks to pause the fighting that appear to have been making some progress in recent days.“It has to be done,” the Israeli prime minister said. “Because total victory is our goal, and total victory is within reach.”Mr. Netanyahu did say that if a cease-fire deal was reached, the move into Rafah, which during 20 weeks of war has served as a last refuge for hundreds of thousands of Gazan families forced from their homes, would be “delayed somewhat.”The push toward Rafah has drawn warnings from Israel’s closest ally, the United States, because of the potential for mass civilian casualties beyond the nearly 30,000 Gazans who have already been reported killed in the war, more than half of whom are women and children.Mr. Netanyahu, speaking on the CBS News program “Face the Nation,” said Sunday that he believed that Israel would be “weeks away” from total victory once the Rafah operation began.Israeli officials have said that the battle for Rafah could take place during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which is expected to begin during the second week of March. Ramadan has been a critical moment for tensions between Israelis and Palestinians over the years.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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      Biden Calls Israel’s Response in Gaza ‘Over the Top’

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      President Biden criticized Israel’s response in the Gaza Strip as “over the top” on Thursday, while defending U.S. efforts to broker a cease-fire and increase the amount of humanitarian aid reaching the territory.In remarks that were overshadowed by questions over his memory and his mistakenly referring to the President of Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, instead as the president of Mexico, Mr. Biden appeared to describe Israel’s war in Gaza as disproportionate.“A lot of innocent people starving, in trouble, dying,” he said at a news conference at the White House, where he answered questions about his age and memory. “And it’s got to stop.”Israel has signaled this week that its military is gearing up to push into Rafah, a sliver at the southern end of Gaza where hundreds of thousands of civilians fleeing the violence have been crammed in. More than 27,000 people have been killed in Gaza four months of war, and most people are facing starvation and disease in addition to the continual airstrikes.The president has previously been critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza, saying in December that the country was engaged in “indiscriminate bombing” as the United States and other allies were pushing for more targeted approaches to limit civilian deaths. He said at the time that Israel’s conduct in the war was eroding international support for its position in the conflict.Those remarks, at a fund-raiser in Washington, also included assessments of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the leader of “the most conservative government in Israel’s history,” showing growing rifts between Israel and its strongest ally.That gulf over a way out of the war was on full display this week, when Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken traveled to the Middle East to push for a cease-fire deal.The Israeli prime minister pre-empted a joint news conference that would have been customary after his meeting with Mr. Blinken and instead met on his own with reporters to criticize the proposal the Americans saw as a potential opening to a solution. More

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      Putin Calls on U.S. to ‘Negotiate’ on Ukraine in Tucker Carlson Interview

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      In a two-hour interview, President Vladimir Putin of Russia was more direct than usual about how he sees his Ukraine invasion ending: not with a military victory, but a deal with the West.President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has worked for decades to win allies in the West, using his spy agencies to interfere in elections and deploying diplomats to build links with Kremlin-friendly politicians.On Thursday, the world witnessed a new, verbose chapter in those efforts: Mr. Putin’s two-hour interview, taped in a gilded hall at the Kremlin, with one of America’s most prominent and most divisive conservative commentators.Speaking to Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, Mr. Putin called on the United States to “make an agreement” to cede Ukrainian territory to Russia in order to end the war. He sought to appeal directly to American conservatives just as Republican lawmakers are holding up aid to Ukraine on Capitol Hill, echoing the talking points of politicians like former President Donald J. Trump who say that the United States has more pressing priorities than a war thousands of miles away.“Don’t you have anything better to do?” Mr. Putin said in response to Mr. Carlson’s question about the possibility of American soldiers fighting in Ukraine. “You have issues on the border, issues with migration, issues with the national debt.”He went on: “Wouldn’t it be better to negotiate with Russia?”Much of the interview constituted a familiar Kremlin history lesson about Russia’s historical claim to Eastern European lands, beginning in the ninth century, that Mr. Putin made little effort to distill for American ears. He opined on artificial intelligence, Genghis Khan and the Roman Empire. He also laid out his well-worn and spurious justifications for invading Ukraine, asserting that Russia’s goal was to “stop this war” that he claims the West is waging against Russia.But Mr. Putin was more direct than usual about how he sees his Ukraine invasion ending: not with a military victory, but through an agreement with the West. At the interview’s end, Mr. Putin told Mr. Carlson that the time had come for talks about ending the war because “those who are in power in the West have come to realize” that Russia will not be defeated on the battlefield.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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      Northern Ireland Has a Sinn Fein Leader. It’s a Landmark Moment.

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      The idea of a first minister who supports closer ties to the Republic of Ireland — let alone one from Sinn Fein, a party with historic ties to the Irish Republican Army — was once unthinkable. On Saturday, it became reality.As Michelle O’Neill walked down the marble staircase in Northern Ireland’s Parliament building on the outskirts of Belfast on Saturday, she appeared confident and calm. She smiled as applause erupted from supporters in the balcony. Yet her determined walk and otherwise serious gaze conveyed the gravity of the moment.The political party she represents, Sinn Fein, was shaped by the decades-long, bloody struggle of Irish nationalists in the territory who dreamed of reuniting with the Republic of Ireland and undoing the 1921 partition that has kept Northern Ireland under British rule.Now, for the first time, a Sinn Fein politician holds Northern Ireland’s top political office, a landmark moment for the party and for the broader region as a power-sharing government is restored. The first minister role had previously always been held by a unionist politician committed to remaining part of the United Kingdom.“As first minister, I am wholeheartedly committed to continuing the work of reconciliation between all our people,” Ms. O’Neill said, noting that her parents and grandparents would never have imagined that such a day would come. “I would never ask anyone to move on, but what I can ask is for us to move forward.”The idea of a nationalist first minister in Northern Ireland, let alone one from Sinn Fein, a party with historic ties to the Irish Republican Army, was indeed once unthinkable.But the story of Sinn Fein’s transformation — from a fringe party that was once the I.R.A.’s political wing, to a political force that won the most seats in Northern Ireland’s 2022 elections — is also the story of a changing political landscape and the results of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which ended the decades-long sectarian conflict known as the Troubles.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’s Bind: Compromising in Gaza or Holding On to Power at Home

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      To end the war in Gaza and free the remaining Israeli hostages, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may have to cut deals that analysts say could end his government — and potentially his career.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is fighting two parallel battles, one in Gaza and another at home — and neither is going according to plan.In Gaza, Mr. Netanyahu is leading a military campaign to defeat Hamas and free the remaining Israeli hostages captured during the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. At home, he is fighting to secure both his short-term political survival and his long-term legacy.On both fronts, he is struggling.In Gaza, more than 100 hostages remain captive despite months of war and protracted negotiations for their release. Hamas is battered but undefeated, and generals have privately said that the war, despite devastating Gaza and killing more than 26,000 people, according to officials there, is approaching a deadlock. In Israel, polls show the prime minister would easily lose an election if one were held tomorrow. And after Mr. Netanyahu presided over the defense failures on Oct. 7, the deadliest day in Israel’s history, his legacy has been ruined.His efforts to resolve these crises are at odds with each other, analysts said.To burnish his legacy, he is pushing for a landmark peace deal with Saudi Arabia, a long-term strategic goal for Israel. Saudi Arabia, however, will not normalize ties without an Israeli commitment to a two-state solution. And without greater cooperation from Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies, it will become harder for Israel to wind down its war in Gaza and plan for the territory’s future.But to retain power and preserve his right-wing coalition, he must reject the premise of a Palestinian state.An Israeli soldier, photographed during an escorted tour by the Israeli military for international journalists, taking up a position in the central Gaza Strip.Avishag Shaar-Yashuv 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?  More