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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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      Senators Release Border Deal to Unlock Ukraine Aid, but Fate Remains Uncertain

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      Senate Republicans and Democrats on Sunday unveiled a $118.3 billion compromise bill to crack down on unlawful migration across the U.S. border with Mexico and speed critical security aid to Ukraine, but the deal faces long odds in a Congress deeply divided over both issues.The release of the agreement, struck after more than three months of near-daily talks among senators and Biden administration officials, counted as an improbable breakthrough on a policy matter that has bedeviled presidents of both parties and defied decades of efforts at compromise on Capitol Hill. President Biden, who last month promised he would shut down the border immediately if the measure became law, implored Congress on Sunday to pass the bill and send it to his desk as soon as possible.“If you believe, as I do, that we must secure the border now, doing nothing is not an option,” he said in a statement, adding that Republicans “have to decide. Do they want to solve the problem? Or do they want to keep playing politics with the border?”The bill features some of the most significant border security restrictions Congress has contemplated in years. They include making it more difficult to claim asylum, vastly expanding detention capacity and effectively shutting down the border to new entrants if more than an average of 5,000 migrants per day try to cross over unlawfully in the course of a week, or more than 8,500 attempt to cross in any given day.But Speaker Mike Johnson has already pronounced the bill “dead on arrival” in the Republican-controlled House. And with former President Donald J. Trump actively campaigning against the deal, it was not clear whether the measure could even make it out of the Democratic-led Senate, where it needs bipartisan backing to move forward.Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, said he planned to put the package to an initial vote on Wednesday, in a critical test of its ability to survive.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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      The 8 Days That Roiled the U.N.’s Top Agency in Gaza

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      The crisis that threatens the future of the main United Nations agency in Gaza, amid a humanitarian disaster, began at a routine meeting between diplomats in Tel Aviv.When a senior U.S. diplomat called the Israeli military last week to request further details about Israeli allegations against a United Nations agency in Gaza, military leaders were so surprised that they ordered an internal inquiry about how the information had reached the ears of foreign officials.The allegations were grave: 12 employees of the organization, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, were accused of joining Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel or its aftermath.The claims reinforced Israel’s decades-old narrative about UNRWA: that it is biased against Israel and influenced by Hamas and other armed groups, charges that the agency strongly rejects.But while most Israeli officials oppose UNRWA, some military leaders did not want to see it shuttered amid a humanitarian disaster in Gaza. In fact, it was not the military that disclosed the information to the United States but UNRWA itself.The sequence of events began on Jan. 18, when Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, met with a top Israeli diplomat in Tel Aviv. Mr. Lazzarini meets roughly once a month in Israel with the diplomat, Amir Weissbrod, a deputy director general at the Israeli Foreign Ministry who oversees relationships with U.N. agencies. This was meant to be a routine discussion about the delivery of food, fuel and other aid supplies to Gaza, according to a U.N. official briefed on the meeting.Instead, Mr. Weissbrod came supplied with the shocking intelligence about UNRWA, which had been given to him by officers in the military, according to four officials familiar with the situation.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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      Major Donors Pause Funding for U.N. Agency as Scandal Widens

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      The actions came as specific, “horrific” details were more widely shared by the U.N. and Israel.Germany, Britain and at least four other countries said Saturday they were suspending funding for the United Nations agency that provides food, water and essential services for Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, many of whom have been described as being on the brink of starvation after 16 weeks of war between Israel and Hamas.The countries joined the United States, which said on Friday it would withhold funding for the group, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, after a dozen of its employees were accused by Israel of participating in the Oct. 7 attacks.The United Nations has not made public the details of the accusations against the UNRWA employees, who have been fired, but a senior U.N. official briefed on the accusations called them “extremely serious and horrific.”The Israeli military said in a statement Saturday that its intelligence services had compiled a case “incriminating several UNRWA employees for their alleged involvement in the massacre, along with evidence pointing to the use of UNRWA facilities for terrorist purposes.” It did not elaborate on what that involvement entailed.In announcing the pause in funding, the United States, the agency’s largest donor, said it was reviewing the allegations “and the steps the United Nations is taking to address them.”The governments of Australia, Canada, Finland and Iceland also said they were suspending funding for the agency.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?  More

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      U.N. Shelter in Gaza’s Khan Younis Is Struck, Killing at Least 9

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      United Nations officials said a building hit in Khan Younis that was being used as a shelter by about 800 people had been “clearly marked” as one of their facilities. Israel denied responsibility.Israeli forces pushed deeper into southern Gaza’s largest city on Wednesday, surrounding two major hospitals where thousands of people were seeking safety as a strike on a United Nations shelter killed at least nine people, according to U.N. officials and local health officials.The Israeli military said it had “currently ruled out” that its aerial or artillery fire had been responsible for the strike on the shelter in Khan Younis, where the U.N. was housing about 800 people. In addition to the nine dead, 75 other people were injured, according to Thomas White, who helps oversee U.N. aid operations in Gaza. U.N. officials did not directly blame Israel, but said the shelter, in a vocational training center, had been hit by two tank rounds. Israel is the only combatant in Gaza with tanks.Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the U.N. Palestinian aid agency, said that the shelter was “clearly marked” as a U.N. facility and that its coordinates had been shared with the Israeli authorities. “Once again a blatant disregard of basic rules of war,” Mr. Lazzarini wrote on social media.At a news conference in Washington, Vedant Patel, a State Department spokesman, called the strike “incredibly concerning” and added: “Civilians must be protected, and the protected nature of U.N. facilities must be respected.” He declined to say whether U.S. officials had spoken to the Israelis about the shelter strike.The Israeli military said that it was conducting a review of its operations in the area of the shelter.The Israeli military, which has described Khan Younis as a bastion of Hamas, the militant group that led the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, says its forces have encircled the city after weeks of heavy bombardment and gunfights. On Wednesday, Israeli soldiers were surrounding two major hospitals where thousands of Gazans were seeking safety.Khan Younis was a scene of intense fighting on Wednesday.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn a statement, the Israeli military accused Hamas of exploiting the civilian population and said that its operation in Khan Younis would continue until it had finished “dismantling Hamas’s military framework and Hamas strongholds.”Thousands of the civilians now in danger in Khan Younis had fled there to escape airstrikes and shelling in northern Gaza earlier in the war, packing into shelters and tents on the streets. No place in the city is safe, some say.“Our last night in Khan Younis felt like doomsday,” one Gazan, Yafa Abu Aker, said on Wednesday morning after walking about five miles from a refugee camp in the city to Rafah, near the Egyptian border. That city, too, is packed with people who have been forced from their homes.In Khan Younis, Ms. Abu Aker said, she and others sought refuge in areas that the Israeli military had designated as safe zones, only to witness violent clashes, military planes flying overhead, bombs falling, shelling from tanks and gunfire.“If we had stayed,” she said, “we would have been buried under the rubble.”On Tuesday, the Israeli military ordered evacuations from parts of the city that include two hospitals, Nasser, the largest in southern Gaza, and Al-Amal. They are among the last hospitals in Gaza still providing limited medical care.Palestinians inspecting the site of an Israeli strike on a mosque in Rafah on Wednesday.Fadi Shana/ReutersAid organizations and local officials said both hospitals were under siege. The Palestine Red Crescent Society, which runs Al-Amal, reported “intense shelling” nearby and said that a strike had killed three people outside its offices and in a nearby building. Israeli troops were “surrounding” Red Crescent workers and “enforcing restrictions on movement” around the group’s offices and the hospital, it said.The Gaza Health Ministry said that Nasser Hospital had for all practical purposes been cut off by “continuous bombing,” preventing injured people from getting there and blocking the transfer of patients to a nearby Jordanian field hospital. The field hospital, too, was included in an evacuation area, the United Nations’ humanitarian affairs office said on Tuesday.The three hospitals, with a total of more than 600 beds, account for a fifth of the remaining functional hospital capacity in Gaza, according to the U.N. It said the evacuation area held 88,000 residents and an estimated 425,000 displaced people, packed into about 1.5 square miles.Doctors Without Borders, the aid group, said late Tuesday that its staff members at Nasser could hear bombs and heavy gunfire, and that 850 patients and thousands of people sheltering there were unable to leave because roads from the hospital were either inaccessible or too dangerous. The group said that it was “deeply concerned” for people’s safety.Palestinians wounded during the Israeli offensive in Khan Younis at a hospital in Rafah on Tuesday.Hatem Ali/Associated PressThe Israeli military has said that mortar fire was launched at its troops from the hospital. The claim could not be independently verified.The strike on the shelter was only the latest to hit a U.N. facility. The organization says that 237 of its buildings have been hit in the war, including 150 belonging to its aid agency for Palestinians.U.N. officials said the death toll from the strike on Wednesday was likely to rise.Hanan Al-Reifi, who had been staying at the shelter, said that “many people” had been killed and wounded. She said that emergency services had not responded to calls for help and that people at the shelter did not have fire extinguishers.The strike was likely to further stoke accusations that, despite pressure from the Biden administration and others, the Israeli military has not done enough to protect civilians in its campaign to crush Hamas.Israel launched its offensive after Hamas led the Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and seizing about 240 hostages, according to Israeli officials. Since then, more than 25,000 people have been killed in Gaza, local health officials say, and most of the territory’s 2.2 million people have been forced from their homes.People killed in Khan Younis outside a morgue in Rafah on Wednesday.Fatima Shbair/Associated PressReporting was contributed by More

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      With Deal Close on Border and Ukraine, Republican Rifts Threaten to Kill Both

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      A divided G.O.P. coalesced behind a bit of legislative extortion: No Ukraine aid without a border crackdown. Now they are split over how large a price to demand, imperiling both initiatives.Senator James Lankford, the Oklahoma Republican and staunch conservative, this week trumpeted the immigration compromise he has been negotiating with Senate Democrats and White House officials as one shaping up to be “by far, the most conservative border security bill in four decades.”Speaker Mike Johnson, in contrast, sent out a fund-raising message on Friday denouncing the forthcoming deal as a Democratic con. “My answer is NO. Absolutely NOT,” his message said, adding, “This is the hill I’ll die on.”The Republican disconnect explains why, with an elusive bipartisan bargain on immigration seemingly as close as it has been in years on Capitol Hill, the prospects for enactment are grim. It is also why hopes for breaking the logjam over sending more U.S. aid to Ukraine are likely to be dashed by hard-line House Republicans.The situation encapsulates the divide cleaving the Republican Party. On one side are the right-wing MAGA allies of former President Donald J. Trump, an America First isolationist who instituted draconian immigration policies while in office. On the other is a dwindling group of more mainstream traditionalists who believe the United States should play an assertive role defending democracy on the world stage.The two wings coalesced last fall around a bit of legislative extortion: They would only agree to President Biden’s request to send about $60 billion more to Ukraine for its fight against Russian aggression if he agreed to their demands to clamp down on migration at the United States border with Mexico. But now, they are at odds about how large of a price to demand.Hard-right House Republicans, who are far more dug in against aid to Ukraine, have argued that the bipartisan border compromise brokered by their counterparts in the Senate is unacceptable. And they bluntly say they do not want to give Mr. Biden the opportunity in an election year to claim credit for cracking down on unauthorized immigration.Instead, with Mr. Trump agitating against the deal from the campaign trail, they are demanding a return to more severe immigration policies that he imposed, which stand no chance of passing the Democrat-controlled Senate. Those include a revival of the Remain in Mexico policy, under which migrants seeking to enter the United States were blocked and made to stay elsewhere while they waited to appear in immigration court to plead their cases.While Senate G.O.P. leaders have touted the emerging agreement as a once-in-a-generation opportunity for a breakthrough on the border, hard-right House members have dismissed it as the work of establishment Republicans out of touch with the G.O.P. base.“Let’s talk about Mitch McConnell — he has a 6 percent approval rating,” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, said of the Senate minority leader. “He wouldn’t be the one to be listening to, making deals on the border.”She said that after Mr. Trump’s decisive win in the Iowa caucuses, “It’s time for all Republicans, Senate and the House, to get behind his policies.”As for the proposed aid to Ukraine, Ms. Greene is threatening to oust Mr. Johnson from the speakership if he brings it to the floor.“My red line is Ukraine,” she said, expressing confidence that the speaker would heed her threat. “I’m making it very clear to him. We will not see it on the House floor — that is my expectation.”House Republicans have opposed sending money to Ukraine without a deal on immigration.Emile Ducke for The New York TimesThe situation is particularly fraught for Mr. Johnson, the novice House speaker whose own sympathies lie with the far right but who is facing immense institutional pressures — from Mr. Biden, Democrats in Congress and his fellow Republicans in the Senate — to embrace a deal pairing border policy changes with aid to Ukraine.Mr. Johnson has positioned himself as a Trump loyalist, quickly endorsing the former president after winning the gavel, and said that he has spoken regularly to the former president about the Senate immigration deal and everything else. After infuriating hard-right Republicans on Thursday by pushing through a short-term government funding bill to avert a shutdown, the speaker has little incentive to enrage them again and defy the wishes of Mr. Trump, who has disparaged the Senate compromise.“I do not think we should do a Border Deal, at all, unless we get EVERYTHING needed to shut down the INVASION,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media this week.Democrats already have agreed to substantial concessions in the talks, including making it more difficult for migrants to claim asylum; expanding detention and expulsion authorities; and shutting down the intake of migrants when attempted crossings reach a level that would overwhelm detention facilities — around 5,000 migrants a day.But far-right Republicans have dismissed the compromise out of hand, saying the changes would still allow many immigrants to enter the country each year without authorization.Election-year politics is playing a big role. Representative Bob Good, Republican of Virginia and the chairman of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, said passing the Senate bill would give “political cover” to Mr. Biden for his failures at the border.“Democrats want to look like they care about the border, then run out the clock so Biden wins re-election,” Mr. Good said. “It would be terrible for the country to give political cover to the facilitators of the border invasion.”Representative Tim Burchett, Republican of Tennessee, said that while Mr. Johnson broke with the right on federal spending because he feared a government shutdown, “I think on the immigration issue, there’s more unity.”Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Senate Republican, warned that the immigration compromise was a “unique opportunity” that would not be available to Republicans next year, even if they were to win majorities in both chambers of Congress and win back the White House.“The Democrats will not give us anything close to this if we have to get 60 votes in the U.S. Senate in a Republican majority,” he said.Speaker Mike Johnson has positioned himself as a Trump loyalist. Kenny Holston/The New York TimesMany mainstream House Republicans believe that Mr. Johnson would be making a terrible mistake if he heeded the advice of the most far-right voices and refused to embrace an immigration deal. They argue that doing so would squander an opportunity to win important policy changes and the political boost that would come with showing that Republicans can govern.“Big city mayors are talking about the same thing that Texas conservatives are talking about,” said Representative Patrick T. McHenry, Republican of North Carolina, a close ally of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. “Take the moment, man. Take the policy win, bank it, and go back for more. That is always the goal.”But for some Republicans, taking the policy win is less important than continuing to have a political issue to rail against in an election year.“It’s worse than doing nothing to give political cover for a sham border security bill that does nothing to actually secure the border,” Mr. Good said.Mr. Burchett, one of the eight Republicans who voted to oust Mr. McCarthy, rolled his eyes when asked about Mr. McHenry’s entreaties not to make the perfect the enemy of the good.“McHenry’s leaving,” he said of the congressman, who has announced he will not run for re-election next year. More

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      This Border Deal Is a Political Trap for Democrats

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      For the past two months, a small group of senators from both parties has been negotiating a deal to address the crisis at our southern border. The lawmakers are united in their desire to stop unauthorized migrants from entering the United States — an ambitious objective that has eluded past administrations.But the policies under discussion are likely to drive more unauthorized migration to the border and make President Biden’s immigration challenges even worse.In December border officials processed some 300,000 migrants — the most recorded in a single month. Over the past decade, Republican leaders in Congress have failed to come to the table to negotiate on immigration policies that Americans support, and yet they have created the false perception that Trump-era policies can solve the border crisis. Mr. Trump’s record on immigration shows it’s just not that simple.The negotiations demonstrate how far the immigration debate has shifted away from solutions that once defined bipartisan immigration reform efforts, like a 2013 Senate bill that would have prioritized border security and a path to legal status and eventual citizenship for the estimated 11 million to 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States.In 2016, Donald Trump killed broad support in his party for this type of deal by casting immigrants as threats to our nation. As president, he restricted the number of immigrants coming to the United States, separated families, and dismantled our immigration courts, hampering the ability to process asylum seekers at the border. And yet in 2019, under his watch, there was a 90 percent increase in migrant apprehensions along the southern border compared to the year before.Today, as the crisis is being felt not just along the border but also in cities across the nation, voters strongly disapprove of President Biden’s handling of the border. His administration has not taken meaningful action to stop Republican-controlled states from sending buses full of asylum seekers to cities with no advance notice or to step in with a federal solution. As a result, Democrats are now more open to working toward a solution that reduces unauthorized immigration.The proposed deal would simultaneously restrict and expand executive authority. For starters, Mr. Biden could lose key powers that presidents have used for decades to regulate immigration in times of crisis. Worse, if Mr. Trump is re-elected, he will have new tools at his disposal that he could use to terrorize immigrants and make the chaos at the border even more acute.As a former government official who has worked in the executive and legislative branches to identify solutions to mass migration at the southern border, I agree with lawmakers that the status quo is unsustainable and that reforms are needed. But this deal will not alleviate Mr. Biden’s border challenges unless Congress builds legal migration pathways that weaken cartels who have profited the most from new asylum restrictions.Take the reported expulsion authority that Senate negotiators are considering. The policy would allow border officials to expel migrants without asylum screenings. That may appear to be an effective deterrence measure but similar asylum restrictions, including Title 42, have proved otherwise. When I served on the National Security Council, I examined whether expulsions played a role in reducing smuggling activity. The data showed that not only did more people attempt to cross than before, but they also took more dangerous routes, guided by smugglers who profited handsomely.Instead of what is on the table now, Democrats should learn from past mistakes and fight for a plan that would create more legal pathways, incentivize people to seek asylum at our ports of entry, expedite asylum claims so that people who are eligible can work and contribute to our economy, and deport people who do not have valid legal claims to stay in the United States. Congress must grant Mr. Biden’s request for funding to hire agents and asylum officers to process migrants in a humane and orderly fashion — which a majority of voters support.The most nonsensical demand in the current border deal is that Senate Republicans want to restrict the president’s parole authority. In January 2023, Mr. Biden announced a series of measures aimed at stemming unauthorized crossings, including new legal pathways for migrants from Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua. The president invoked his powers to extend parole to people from these countries who had an American sponsor, giving them permission to work and apply for asylum if they hoped to stay beyond two years. And it worked. The data shows that apprehension of these migrants declined by 92 percent within a year.Democrats may think that it is worth embracing punitive immigration policies for the hope of improving Mr. Biden’s polling numbers. But if these lawmakers really want to stop people from coming here, they must also address the drivers of migration.Deteriorating conditions in Latin America and the Caribbean guarantee that more migrants will be forced to seek refuge in the United States. Democrats should incentivize countries across the region to build capacity to protect asylum seekers, create legal pathways and increase foreign aid and humanitarian assistance to help would-be migrants live safely closer to home.In the short term, the White House can demonstrate leadership by using every tool at its disposal to accelerate the processing of asylum cases, work with regional partners to find protection for migrants before they make their way to the border and develop a federal response to help cities buckling under the strain of absorbing tens of thousands of migrants. An administration capable of welcoming more than 70,000 Afghans and coordinating their arrival in communities around the country is equally capable of coordinating the arrival of asylum seekers and identifying temporary federal housing to relieve communities struggling to provide housing.There is too much at stake for Democrats to accept the terms of this Senate proposal. While it is understandable to want to fix the vulnerabilities at the border, Mr. Trump and his advisers have been clear that terrorizing immigrants is central to their second-term agenda. He has promised to round up immigrants in camps and conduct mass deportations. He has accused immigrants of “poisoning the blood of our country.”Mr. Biden has begun his re-election campaign with a promise to protect our democracy from these harms. Yet by compromising on policies that are likely to increase unauthorized migration at the border, he risks emboldening Mr. Trump and his ilk to step up their attacks on immigrants. On Jan. 5, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said in a radio interview that the state isn’t “shooting people” illegally crossing the border because “the Biden administration would charge us with murder.”Mr. Biden must help voters understand that the border won’t change until Congress builds the immigration system our country needs. This political moment demands ambitious solutions that can address the scope of today’s migration challenge, not a set of policies that will keep us stuck in the same failed legal framework of the past decade.Andrea R. Flores is the vice president for immigration policy and campaigns at FWD.us.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More