The U.S. calls for a U.N. Security Council vote on the latest cease-fire proposal. (2024)

Blinken meets with Egypt’s president before traveling to Israel.

Tensions have grown between President Biden and Mr. Netanyahu over the number of Palestinian civilians killed by Israel’s military during the war in Gaza. Mr. Biden said last month that he had paused the delivery to Israel of some larger bombs to ensure that they were not used in an assault on the Gazan city of Rafah.

Mr. Blinken will also be stepping into fresh tumult in Israel, following the move by Benny Gantz, a rival of Mr. Netanyahu, and his centrist National Unity party to leave the emergency wartime government in protest of Mr. Netanyahu’s handling of the war.

An official schedule released by the State Department showed that Mr. Blinken planned to meet in the evening on Monday with Mr. Netanyahu in Jerusalem and with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in Tel Aviv. The schedule did not show a meeting with Mr. Gantz.

Pressing for a cease-fire deal will be one of Mr. Blinken’s top priorities during his trip. But more than two weeks have passed since Israel presented the deal to Hamas, and even Mr. Netanyahu’s government has not formally embraced it. The Israeli prime minister, under pressure from far-right members of his government, has said the war in Gaza should continue until Hamas’s military and governing capabilities are destroyed.

There has also been no official response to the proposal from Hamas. Some Hamas officials have suggested that they cannot agree to a limited halt to the fighting without greater assurances that Israel is prepared to negotiate an end to the war. U.S. officials say they are awaiting more definitive word from Hamas.

And it was unclear whether the Israeli raid on Saturday, which freed four hostages from Hamas captivity but killed dozens of Palestinians, might have further set back the chances that the militant group would agree to a deal with Israel.

“It’s a legitimate question,” Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, told CNN on Sunday. “It’s hard for me to put myself in the mind-set of a Hamas terrorist. We don’t know exactly what it is that they’re going to do.”

On his eighth trip to the region since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, Mr. Blinken also plans to visit Qatar, another Arab nation mediating between Israel and Hamas, and which hosts Hamas’s political leaders. The group’s ultimate decisions are made by its leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar.

Mr. Blinken’s efforts come a few days after inconclusive visits to Egypt and Qatar last week by the C.IA. director, William J. Burns, and Brett McGurk, the top White House official for Middle East affairs, in pursuit of a cease-fire deal.

In Jordan, Mr. Blinken will attend a conference Tuesday on humanitarian aid for Gaza co-hosted by Jordan, Egypt and the United Nations.

The U.S. calls for a U.N. Security Council vote on the latest cease-fire proposal.

It was not immediately clear when or if a Security Council vote would take place. Even if a resolution passed, there was no indication that it would persuade Israel or Hamas to move forward with the cease-fire proposal.

The three-phase plan would begin with an immediate, temporary cease-fire and work toward a permanent end to the war and the reconstruction of Gaza. Mr. Biden said Israel had put forward the plan, and Hamas has signaled it is open to the terms he laid out, but neither side has said definitively that it would accept or reject the plan.

One major sticking point is whether a deal would allow Hamas to remain in control of Gaza — a scenario that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has described as a red line.

Another issue concerns the precise timing and logistics of a cease-fire. Mr. Netanyahu has said that Israel will fight until Hamas’s governing and military capabilities are destroyed. But Hamas has made any progress on a hostage deal conditional on an Israeli commitment for a permanent cease-fire and the full withdrawal of its troops from Gaza.

On Sunday, a new development in Israel’s domestic politics — the departure of a centrist party from Mr. Netanyahu’s emergency wartime cabinet — seemed likely to complicate the cease-fire negotiations.

The centrist party’s leader, Benny Gantz, has boosted the international credibility of Mr. Netanyahu’s government. Mr. Gantz has called for a cease-fire deal and pushed for an administrative body — backed by Americans, Europeans, Palestinians and other Arabs — to oversee civilian affairs in postwar Gaza. Analysts say Mr. Gantz’s departure could embolden far-right partners in Mr. Netanyahu’s governing coalition who have threatened to bring down the government if he moves forward with the latest proposal.

The U.S. mission’s statement on Sunday alluded to Gaza’s postwar future by saying that the cease-fire deal would lead to “a road map for ending the crisis altogether and a multiyear internationally backed reconstruction plan.” The statement did not provide further details or explain how Mr. Blinken plans to sell the plan to Israel and other parties in the region during his three-day trip to the Middle East, which began on Monday.

The politics of hammering out a realistic cease-fire deal are extraordinarily complex. One major obstacle has been the United States, a permanent member of the Security Council. It has vetoed three cease-fire resolutions since the war in Gaza began last October.

Last month, a U.S. official said that the United States also planned to block a draft resolution from Algeria that described Israel as an “occupying power” in Gaza and called for an immediate stop to the Israeli military offensive in the city of Rafah.

Edward Wong contributed reporting.

As his political alliance breaks up, a battle looms for Netanyahu at home.

But Mr. Gantz’s move means that Mr. Netanyahu is now totally dependent on his far right and ultra-Orthodox coalition partners as he prosecutes the war in Gaza in the face of mounting international opprobrium, leaving him increasingly isolated and exposed at home and abroad.

Mr. Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, another powerful member of National Unity, also left Mr. Netanyahu’s small war cabinet. They are both former military chiefs who were widely viewed as key voices of moderation in the five-member body, which was formed in October after the Hamas-led assault on Israel prompted the Israeli bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza.

The two centrist politicians raised public confidence in the government’s decision-making process at a time of national trauma. They also lent the war cabinet an aura of legitimacy and consensus as Israel fought Hamas in Gaza, as well as its archenemy Iran and its other proxies, including the powerful Hezbollah militia across Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.

Mr. Gantz accused Mr. Netanyahu of “political procrastination,” suggesting that he had been putting off critical strategic decisions to ensure his political survival. His decision to quit the wartime government ushers in a new period of political instability and left many Israelis wondering where the country goes from here.

Describing the political shake-up as “incredibly consequential,” Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan research group in Jerusalem, said in a statement that Israelis had already been giving low grades to the government on a host of wartime issues. That included the handling of the fighting and relations with the United States, Israel’s crucial ally, he said.

“With Gantz’s absence, I expect those grades to become even lower,” Mr. Plesner said.

Mr. Gantz had issued an ultimatum three weeks ago, warning Mr. Netanyahu that he would break up the emergency government unless the prime minister came up with clear plans, including who would replace Hamas as the ruler of a postwar Gaza and how to bring back the scores of hostages still being held in the Palestinian enclave.

Mr. Gantz joined the government last October to foster a sense of unity at a time of crisis. He joined forces with his political rival, Mr. Netanyahu, despite a deep lack of trust between the two and a history of betrayal. The last time Mr. Gantz went into a government with Mr. Netanyahu, in 2020, it also ended badly after Mr. Netanyahu broke their power-sharing agreement.The influence of Mr. Gantz and Mr. Eisenkot, whose son, a soldier, was killed in December while fighting in Gaza, has waned in recent months, leading many Israelis to ask why they hadn’t left the emergency government and joined the opposition earlier. Mr. Gantz has called for early elections this fall.

Mr. Netanyahu’s formal partners remaining in the war cabinet are his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, a rival within their conservative Likud party whom Mr. Netanyahu tried to fire last year; and Ron Dermer, a seasoned Netanyahu confidant with more diplomatic than political experience. It is unclear if it will continue to function.

A separate and broader security cabinet includes two ultranationalist party leaders: Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister for national security, and Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister. Both want to resettle Gaza with Israelis.

Mr. Ben-Gvir and Mr. Smotrich have both vowed to bring down Mr. Netanyahu’s government if he proceeds with an Israeli proposal for a deal involving a truce and a swap of hostages for Palestinian prisoners, which, as outlined by President Biden over a week ago, would effectively wind down the war.

Gazans recall ‘unimaginably intense’ Israeli bombing around the hostage raid.

“People were rushing like the day of judgment; I did not know where to run,” said Ms. Abu Amr, who was on her way to pay a condolence call to her uncle’s family after two of his sons had died. “Kids were screaming, women were falling down while running.”

Along with other Gazans, she managed to clamber onto a passing pickup truck that was trying to ferry people safely out amid the strikes, she recalled. One girl was separated from her mother in the confusion, while an old man lost his grip and fell off the truck onto the ground, she said.

Ms. Abu Amr finally arrived home with her son hours later, shocked that she was still alive. “I won’t take my son out of the house again,” she said.

To rescue the hostages, Israeli troops entered two residential buildings in which they were being held, according to Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman. Admiral Hagari said there were families living in the apartments, as well as armed Hamas militants guarding the hostages, making it “impossible to reach them without harming the civilians of Gaza.”

The precise death toll remained unclear as health officials sought to gather statistics amid chaotic scenes at hospitals. Gazan health officials reported that more than 200 people were killed in the raid; the Israeli military said it was aware of fewer than 100 casualties, without specifying whether these were dead or wounded or both. Neither side provided a breakdown of combatants versus civilians.

On Sunday, the corridors and hallways of the last major medical center in central Gaza, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, remained “densely crowded” with new patients, after more than 100 dead bodies had been brought there on Saturday, said Khalil Daqran, a hospital official. Most of the bodies had since been buried or claimed by relatives, he added.

The medical facility — already packed before the Israeli rescue mission in nearby Nuseirat — overflowed, said Abdelkarim al-Harazin, 28, a physician working there.

“The bombing was unimaginably intense,” said Dr. al-Harazin. “The whole hospital became one giant emergency room, even as people came looking for their dead relatives.”

When Al-Aqsa became overwhelmed, many of the wounded were sent to a nearby field hospital operated by the International Medical Corps, according to Javed Ali, an official with the aid group.

Diana Abu Shaban, 28, first heard gunfire as she was about to hang laundry near the tent where she was sheltering in Nuseirat. As the assault escalated, she told her daughters to hide before realizing that the frail tent could not protect them. Gathering her children, she sprinted to the nearby Al-Awda medical center in a desperate search for safety.

She said her husband, Saeed, had left earlier that morning for the market, where Palestinian residents said the strikes were particularly intense.

“I heard lots and lots of missiles,” Ms. Abu Shaban said. “I thought my husband would be killed or injured.”

After two hours, the bombing died down and she and her children left the hospital, she said. Later, they discovered that her husband had survived by hiding in a nearby shop.

Abd Al-Rahman Basem al-Masri, 25, who lives on the northern edge of Deir al-Balah, said Saturday had been the worst day he’d witnessed since the start of the war.

Mr. al-Masri said he, his mother and his younger brother had driven back from his uncle’s house and were approaching their home when an airstrike pounded into the ground beside it.

In a video shot by a friend who was also in the car, an expanding cloud of smoke can be seen rising behind the building. “In that moment, I lost hope that we can continue to live here,” Mr. al-Masri said.

Another Gazan who lives in Nuseirat, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said he and more than 10 family members hid inside for hours as heavy airstrikes rattled the neighborhood. He said he had no idea hostages had been held in the area.

After the bombing subsided, he headed out into the devastated market area, where he said he saw the street covered in blood and bodies. Gazans there were cursing not just Israel, but Hamas as well, he said, blaming them for bringing this disaster upon them.

He said neither Israel nor Hamas cared about the destruction as they sought to attack one another. Everyday people, he added, were the victims.