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Israel Hits Gaza Town for Third Time in Days, Killing Dozens, Officials Say

Gazan agencies said that children were among those killed in the strike in Beit Lahia. A U.S. State Department spokesman called the strike “a horrifying incident with a horrifying result.”

The Israeli military on Tuesday hit a town in the northern Gaza Strip for the third time in just over a week, striking a residential building and killing dozens of people, Gazan officials said, as Israel intensified its offensive in the territory after more than a year of war.

The Palestinian Civil Defense, a Gazan emergency service, said at least 55 people had been killed in the strike in the town of Beit Lahia. Gaza’s Health Ministry put the toll higher, saying that at least 93 people had been killed, including 25 children.

The Israeli military, which asserts it is fighting a regrouped Hamas presence in northern Gaza, said that it was “aware of reports that civilians were harmed” and was looking into the details. The area was previously evacuated, it said, and was “an active combat zone.”

Matthew Miller, a U.S. State Department spokesman, called the strike in Beit Lahia “a horrifying incident with a horrifying result” and noted that many of the children reportedly killed had probably fled strikes in other parts of Gaza. He said the Biden administration had contacted the Israeli government for more information.

Hamas condemned the strike as a “horrific massacre” and demanded international action to stop Israel.

Israeli forces struck another residential block in Beit Lahia on Sunday, killing and wounding dozens, according to the civil defense service. They also hit a residential building in the town on Oct. 20, killing dozens of people, Palestinian officials and emergency workers said.

What Are the Implications of Israel Banning UNRWA?

Many humanitarian agencies have expressed fears that two measures enacted in Israel on Monday that ban UNRWA, the U.N. agency aiding Palestinians, from operating in the country could cripple its aid deliveries. The aid has never been more urgently …

The aid has never been more urgently needed. Almost all of Gaza’s 2.2 million people have been displaced over more than a year of war, and face acute and sometimes catastrophic malnutrition.

The laws are to go into full effect in 90 days, and will almost certainly create new hurdles for the agency, formally the United Nations Relief Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees. The agency also works with Palestinians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Lebanon and Syria.

Legal scholars, diplomats and aid workers were assessing the new laws’ implications on Tuesday. What was clear was that they could create new diplomatic challenges for Israel, with several European governments condemning their passage and the United States — a top UNRWA funder — being on record against the measures.

Here’s a look at the laws and what might happen next.

What do the laws say?

The 120-seat Knesset passed two bills with overwhelming majorities late on Monday, the first day of its winter session.

The first effectively revokes UNRWA’s invitation, first extended in 1967, to operate within Israel. The legislation says that the foreign minister, Israel Katz, will notify the United Nations of this no more than one week after the bill’s passage. It says that “no Israeli government agencies or representatives may have any contact” with the agency.

Secret Documents Show Hamas Tried to Persuade Iran to Join Its Oct. 7 Attack

The Times reviewed the minutes of 10 meetings among Hamas’s top leaders. The records show the militant group avoided several escalations since 2021 to falsely imply it had been deterred — while seeking Iranian support for a major attack.

For more than two years, Yahya Sinwar huddled with his top Hamas commanders and plotted what they hoped would be the most devastating and destabilizing attack on Israel in the militant group’s four-decade history.

Minutes of Hamas’s secret meetings, seized by the Israeli military and obtained by The New York Times, provide a detailed record of the planning for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack, as well as Mr. Sinwar’s determination to persuade Hamas’s allies, Iran and Hezbollah, to join the assault or at least commit to a broader fight with Israel if Hamas staged a surprise cross-border raid.

The documents, which represent a breakthrough in understanding Hamas, also show extensive efforts to deceive Israel about its intentions as the group laid the groundwork for a bold assault and a regional conflagration that Mr. Sinwar hoped would cause Israel to “collapse.”

The documents consist of minutes from 10 secret planning meetings of a small group of Hamas political and military leaders in the run-up to the attack, on Oct. 7, 2023. The minutes include 30 pages of previously undisclosed details about the way Hamas’s leadership works and the preparations that went into its attack.

The documents, which were verified by The Times, lay out the main strategies and assessments of the leadership group:

Hamas initially planned to carry out the attack, which it code-named “the big project,” in the fall of 2022. But the group delayed executing the plan as it tried to persuade Iran and Hezbollah to participate.
As they prepared arguments aimed at Hezbollah, the Hamas leaders said that Israel’s “internal situation” — an apparent reference to turmoil over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s contentious plans to overhaul the judiciary — was among the reasons they were “compelled to move toward a strategic battle.”
In July 2023, Hamas dispatched a top official to Lebanon, where he met with a senior Iranian commander and requested help with striking sensitive sites at the start of the assault.
The senior Iranian commander told Hamas that Iran and Hezbollah were supportive in principle, but needed more time to prepare; the minutes do not say how detailed a plan was presented by Hamas to its allies.
The documents also say that Hamas planned to discuss the attack in more detail at a subsequent meeting with Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader at the time, but do not clarify whether the discussion happened.
Hamas felt assured of its allies’ general support, but concluded it might need to go ahead without their full involvement — in part to stop Israel from deploying an advanced new air-defense system before the assault took place.
The decision to attack was also influenced by Hamas’s desire to disrupt efforts to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, the entrenchment of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Israeli efforts to exert greater control over the Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem, sacred in both Islam and Judaism and known to Jews as the Temple Mount.
Hamas deliberately avoided major confrontations with Israel for two years from 2021, in order to maximize the surprise of the Oct. 7 attack. As the leaders saw it, they “must keep the enemy convinced that Hamas in Gaza wants calm.”
Hamas leaders in Gaza said they briefed Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s Qatar-based political leader, on “the big project.” It was not previously known whether Mr. Haniyeh, who was assassinated by Israel in July, had been briefed on the attack before it happened.

Prelude to War

The documents provide greater context to one of the most pivotal moments in modern Middle Eastern history, showing it was both the culmination of a yearslong plan, as well as a move partly shaped by specific events after Mr. Netanyahu returned to power in Israel in late 2022.

Yahya Sinwar in April 2023 in Gaza City. Documents show that he and other Hamas leaders wanted time to lull Israeli leaders into a false sense of security before attacking Israel. Credit…Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times

Lebanon’s Prime Minister Calls for U.N. Resolution on an ‘Immediate’ Cease-Fire

Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, appealed to the United Nations on Friday to adopt a resolution calling for an “immediate” cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah, the latest attempt by his embattled government to bring an end to the …

“The diplomatic solution remains on the table,” Mr. Mikati said in a televised address, in which he urged the parties to return to the provisions of a 2006 U.N. agreement on demilitarizing the countries’ shared border, adopted after the previous war between Israel and Hezbollah.

The measure, Security Council Resolution 1701, has been largely ineffective. Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant and political group, still exercises de facto control over southern Lebanon, the area along the border with Israel, and has not laid down its arms. In fact, the group has entrenched itself militarily in the region since the 2006 war, amassing a vast stockpile of weapons and missiles along the border.

Israel, similarly, has not upheld its side of the bargain and has been accused by the United Nations and Lebanon of violating Lebanon’s territorial sovereignty.

Pushing the U.N. to call for a cease-fire, Mr. Mikati said on Friday that Lebanon wanted to see “the deployment of the army in the south and the bolstering of its presence along the border.”

Despite the military’s being one of the few institutions in Lebanon that holds cross-sectarian support, it is largely reliant on U.S. funding and considered by many as incapable of defending against Israel. Lebanon’s crisis-racked caretaker government is also largely powerless to rein in Hezbollah.

“Hezbollah,” Mr. Mikati added, “is in agreement on this issue.” But at a news conference on Friday, a Hezbollah spokesman indicated that the group had no plans to wind down its fighting with Israel soon.

“The battle with the Zionist enemy is still in its earliest stages,” said Mohammad Afif, the head of Hezbollah’s media office.