Rafah (Gaza Strip)

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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

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      Overwhelmed by War, Another Gazan Hospital Is Declared ‘Not Functional’

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      Conditions at Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza Strip were described as desperate after Israeli forces raided it in search of Hamas militants.The largest medical facility still managing to function in wartime Gaza is now a hospital in little more than name only, the head of the World Health Organization said on Sunday.After a week of siege by the Israeli military, there are only about 20 critically ill patients left at Nasser Hospital — but even that is too many for it to handle, said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the W.H.O. director general.“Nasser hospital in Gaza is not functional anymore,” Dr. Tedros said on social media.Dr. Tedros said on Sunday that some 200 patients remained at the hospital in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, and that about 20 of them urgently needed to be transferred elsewhere. “The cost of delays will be paid by patients’ lives,” he said.Israel has justified its military actions at the hospital by saying that Hamas militants have been using it and other medical centers to conceal military activities, and on Sunday it said it had found both weapons and Hamas militants at the Nasser complex.Hamas has repeatedly denied using hospitals as cover.On Thursday, after days of repeated orders for the thousands of civilians taking shelter at the hospital to leave, Israeli forces began staging a raid.Asked about the W.H.O. statement, a spokesman for the Israeli military, Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, said in a briefing that “it’s in our best interest that the hospital keeps functioning.” He said that work was being done to fix a broken generator there and that a temporary generator was in use.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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      Dozens Killed in Rafah During Israeli Hostage Rescue, Gazan Officials Say

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      Palestinians in Rafah described a night of fear as Israeli strikes pummeled the area early Monday, killing and wounding dozens, according to the Gazan health ministry, and highlighting the cost of Israel’s military operation to free its hostages.“I swear to God it was an indescribable night,” said Ghada al-Kurd, 37, who is among more than a million people sheltering in the southern Gaza city. “The bombing was everywhere — we were convinced that the Israeli army was invading Rafah.”Israel’s military said early Monday that it had conducted a “wave of attacks” on Rafah to provide cover for soldiers who freed two hostages held by Hamas. The health ministry in Gaza said that at least 67 people had been killed in the strikes, and that the toll was likely to rise. The ministry’s figures do not distinguish between combatants and civilians.Dr. Marwan al-Hamase, the director of Abu Yousef al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, said that the hospital had received 100 injured people overnight, along with the bodies of 52 who were killed. Maher Abu Arar, a spokesman for the Kuwait Hospital in Rafah, said the hospital had taken in at least 15 bodies and 50 wounded people. “There were a lot of body parts,” said Mr. Abu Arar, following “successive and sudden” Israeli strikes.Ms. al-Kurd said that people in Rafah were panicking and considered evacuating during the night, but “no one knew where to even go.” She added in a voice message that her young nieces “were crying and I was trying to calm them down,” even though she was also “very scared.”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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      Egypt Warily Eyes Gaza as War Builds Pressure on Its Border

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      Egypt has reinforced its frontier with Gaza and warned Israel that any move that would send Gazans spilling into Egyptian territory could jeopardize their decades-old peace treaty.The pressure on Egypt is building.More than half of Gaza’s population is squeezed into miserable tent cities in Rafah, a small city along Egypt’s border, left with nowhere else to go by Israel’s military campaign. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has threatened to overrun the area, and on Friday, he directed his forces to plan the evacuation of civilians from Rafah to clear the way for a new offensive against Hamas. But it is not clear where those people could go.Rather than opening its border to give Palestinians a refuge from the onslaught, as it has done for people fleeing other conflicts in the region, Egypt has reinforced the frontier with Gaza and warned Israel that any move that would send Gazans spilling into its territory could jeopardize the decades-old Israel-Egypt peace treaty, an anchor of Middle East stability since 1979.Israel’s next steps in the war could force such a breaking point. More

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      Netanyahu Orders Military Evacuation Plan for Rafah in Gaza

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      Many civilians in Rafah are sheltering in rickety tents made of plastic and wood and say there is nowhere left in Gaza to avoid Israeli shelling.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the Israeli military to draw up plans to evacuate Rafah, a Gazan city packed with more than a million people, in advance of an expected ground offensive that has set off international alarm.In a statement announcing the orders on Friday, Mr. Netanyahu’s office did not give any details of when the evacuations might be carried out, when the Israeli military might enter the city or where people might go. Many civilians in Rafah are sheltering in rickety tents made of plastic and wood and say there is nowhere left in Gaza to avoid Israeli shelling.Mr. Netanyahu’s office said it would be impossible to realize Israel’s goal of smashing Hamas’s rule in Gaza without destroying what it said were the group’s four battalions in Rafah, on Egypt’s border. The military’s “combined plan” would have to both “evacuate the civilian population and topple the battalions,” the statement said.“Any forceful action in Rafah would require the evacuation of the civilian population from combat zones,” it said.Mr. Netanyahu’s office announced the orders less than a day after President Biden issued some of his sharpest criticism of Israel’s conduct in the war, calling it “over the top” and saying the starvation, suffering and killing of civilians had “got to stop.” His criticism, which dominated Israeli news headlines, revealed growing frustration with Mr. Netanyahu as the death toll in Gaza has risen above 27,000, according to the territory’s health officials.After Mr. Netanyahu said this week that he had ordered troops to prepare to enter Rafah, aid agencies, the United Nations and U.S. officials said the prospect of an incursion there was particularly alarming.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 Signals Its Military Will Move Into Rafah, in Southern Gaza

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      A U.N. official described Rafah, a refuge for hundreds of thousands of displaced people, as a “pressure cooker of despair.” It is one of the last cities in southern Gaza that Israeli ground forces have not reached.Israel’s defense minister has signaled that ground forces will advance toward the city of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, which has become a refuge for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians pushed from their homes by nearly 13 weeks of war.Rafah, which has also been a gateway for humanitarian aid, is a sprawl of tents and makeshift shelters crammed against the border with Egypt. About half of Gaza’s 2.2 million residents have piled into and around the city, where about 200,000 people lived before the war, the United Nations said on Friday.The city is one of the last in southern Gaza that Israeli ground forces, which have been fighting house-to-house battles in nearby Khan Younis, have not yet reached.“We are completing the mission in Khan Younis and we will reach Rafah, as well, and eliminate every terrorist there who threatens to harm us,” the defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said during a visit to troops in Khan Younis, according to footage distributed by his office late Thursday.People fleeing fighting in Gaza on an overcrowded street in Rafah.Mahmud Hams/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe prospect of battles in an area with so many displaced people has alarmed refugees there and United Nations officials.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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      Some Very Difficult Questions About Israel and the War in Gaza

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      It’s become something of a tradition on “The Ezra Klein Show” to end the year with an “Ask Me Anything” episode. So as 2023 comes to a close, I sat down with our new senior editor, Claire Gordon, to answer listeners’ questions about everything from the Israel-Hamas war to my thoughts on parenting.We discuss whether the war in Gaza has affected my relationships with family members and friends; what I think about the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement; whether the Democrats should have voted to keep Kevin McCarthy as House speaker; how worried I am about a Trump victory in 2024; whether A.I. can really replace human friendships; how struggling in school as a kid shaped my politics as an adult; and much more.You can listen to our whole conversation by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on the NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts. View a list of book recommendations from our guests here.(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)Courtesy of Ezra KleinThis episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu and Rollin Hu. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      Hundreds of Thousands Flee Northern Gaza, and More

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      The New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven’t already, download it here — it’s available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.The Headlines brings you the biggest stories of the day from the Times journalists who are covering them, all in about 10 minutes. Hosted by Annie Correal, the new morning show features three top stories from reporters across the newsroom and around the world, so you always have a sense of what’s happening, even if you only have a few minutes to spare.Ahead of an anticipated ground invasion, hospitals in Gaza City said they had no way to evacuate thousands of sick and injured patients.Samar Abu Elouf for The New York TimesOn Today’s Episode:Gaza’s Hospitals Face ‘Impossible’ Choices With Israel Evacuation Order, with Raja AbdulrahimAs Israeli Invasion Looms, Diplomats Seek to Meet Gaza’s Dire Human NeedsInside Trump’s Backroom Effort to Lock Up the Nomination, with Shane GoldmacherEli Cohen More