Middle East Crisis: Turkey Halts Trade With Israel as Relations Deteriorate

Turkey said late Thursday that it had halted all trade with Israel until "uninterrupted and adequate humanitarian aid is allowed into Gaza," signaling further deterioration in relations between the two countries.

Turkey's Trade Ministry said in a statement that exports and imports "for all products" would pause. On Friday, the trade minister, Omer Bolat, said that the suspension would remain in place until Israel's bombardment of Gaza stops.

"Until a permanent cease-fire is established and uninterrupted humanitarian aid is allowed into Gaza, suspension of trade with Israel will be implemented for all imports and exports," Mr. Bolat said at a news conference to announce monthly trade figures.

The move, which was initially reported by Bloomberg, prompted the Israeli foreign minister, Israel Katz, to lash out at Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

"This is how a dictator behaves, disregarding the interests of the Turkish people and businessmen, and ignoring international trade agreements," Mr. Katz said in a post on social media. Mr. Katz added that he had instructed the Foreign Ministry to create alternatives to trading with Turkey, focusing on local production and imports from other countries.

Turkey reported $5.4 billion in exports to Israel in 2023 and $1.64 billion in imports, according to United Nations figures.

Mr. Erdogan did not comment publicly on any changes in Turkey's trade ties with Israel. But the Turkish leader has strongly criticized Israel's bombardment of Gaza, which began after Hamas led an Oct. 7 attack into Israel that killed about 1,200 people and led to the abduction of about 240 others. More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed amid Israel's bombardment of the territory, according to health officials in the territory.

The Turkish leader has also forcefully defended Hamas and recently met with Ismail Haniyeh, the group's political leader, and other Hamas officials in Istanbul on April 20. Mr. Erdogan told reporters then, "Israel will certainly pay the price of the atrocities it has been inflicting on Palestinians one day."

The decision by Turkey to halt trade came after its Trade Ministry imposed export restrictions on Israel on April 9 in 54 product groups, including cement and jet fuel, and said they would remain in force until "Israel declares an immediate cease-fire in Gaza."

The Trade Ministry defined Thursday's suspension as "the second step in intergovernmental measures" and cited "worsening humanitarian tragedy in Palestine."

The Turkish foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, also announced on Wednesday that Turkey would join South Africa's genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. In a preliminary decision in January, the court ordered Israel to ensure that its forces were not committing genocide in Gaza.

— Gulsin Harman and Ben Hubbard reporting from Istanbul

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Dozens of family members of Israeli hostages and their supporters gathered in protest on Thursday opposite the Israeli military's headquarters in Tel Aviv while the country's war cabinet convened there to discuss, among other things, developments in talks aimed at securing the release of the captives.

The protesters blocked a sidewalk near the building where Israel's top officials were meeting and, using loudspeakers, they counted to 209 — the number of days that had passed since the hostages were seized on Oct. 7. They called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to a deal that would secure the remaining hostages' release, no matter how costly.

"Tension is very high," said Shay Dickmann, the cousin of Carmel Gat, one of the hostages still in Gaza. "Whenever there's talk about a deal our heart opens."

Many of the relatives of hostages have staged similar demonstrations to Thursday's in the months since their loved ones were taken captive. But in the last several days, they have experienced especially tense anticipation, clinging to reports indicating progress in the negotiations with Hamas.

But others in Israel — including right-wing lawmakers like Bezalel Smotrich, the country's finance minister — have expressed disdain about the concessions the government would have to make to secure such a deal. Israel has recently said it would agree to the release of fewer hostages in exchange for a cease-fire and the release of Palestinian prisoners.

The proposal's detractors have also raised concerns that a cease-fire would interfere with a planned ground incursion into Rafah, the southern Gaza city that Israel's government maintains is the last stronghold of Hamas. Far-right members of Israel's governing coalition have threatened to bring down Mr. Netanyahu's administration if the war ends without Hamas's total defeat.

Ms. Dickmann said she realized that the concessions Israel would have to make to reach a deal were difficult to accept but that they were "worth the lives that can still be saved."

"I want to believe my country cares about my cousin's life," she said.

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Rebuilding all the homes destroyed by Israel's military offensive in the Gaza Strip could take until the next century if the pace of reconstruction were to match what it was after wars there in 2014 and 2021, according to a United Nations report released on Thursday.

Citing data from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the U.N. report said that as of April 15, some 370,000 homes in Gaza had been damaged, 79,000 of which have been destroyed. If those destroyed homes were rebuilt at the same pace as they were after the two previous wars — an average of 992 per year — it would take 80 years, according to projections in the report from the United Nations Development Program and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia.

The report detailed the war's socioeconomic impact on the Palestinian population and said "the level of destruction in Gaza is such that the required assistance to rebuild would be on a scale not seen since 1948" to replace public infrastructure, including schools and hospitals.

The report said that even if Israel were to allow five times as much construction material into Gaza after this war as it did after the war in 2021 — "the most optimistic scenario" — rebuilding all of the destroyed homes would still take until 2040. That projection does not account for the time it would take to repair the hundreds of thousands of homes that were damaged but not destroyed.

The cost of rebuilding Gaza is increasing "exponentially" each day the fighting continues, Abdallah Al Dardari, the director of the U.N.D.P.'s regional bureau for Arab states, speaking over a video call from Amman, Jordan, said at a news conference on Thursday.

Mr. Al Dardari said that before "some sort of normalcy" can be established for Palestinians in Gaza, an estimated 37 million tons of debris must be cleared to allow for the construction of temporary shelters and, eventually, the rebuilding of homes.

The report also found that the unemployment rate for Palestinians across the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza surged to roughly 46 percent from about 26 percent after six months of war.

Over those six months, poverty rates in the Palestinian territories more than doubled, to an estimated 57.2 percent from 26.7 percent. That means 1.67 million Palestinians were pushed into poverty after the war began, the report said. Its estimates were based on a poverty line of $6.85 a day.

The effects of the war on Palestinians both in and out of Gaza "will be felt for years," the report said.

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With the United States and Israel insisting that the fate of a Gaza cease-fire deal is in the hands of Hamas, the leader of the group's political wing said on Thursday that it was studying Israel's latest proposal with a "positive spirit," and would soon return to in-person negotiations.

The proposal, after almost seven devastating months of war, includes the release of hostages held by Hamas and Palestinian prisoners in Israel, and the return of civilians to the largely depopulated northern part of Gaza. It would also allow for increased delivery of aid to the territory.

On Thursday, the Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, told an Egyptian official that his group was examining the proposal. A Hamas delegation will go to Egypt soon to "complete the ongoing discussions" for a deal that "realizes our people's demands and ends the aggression," according to a statement from the group.

Less than a day earlier, a Hamas spokesman, Osama Hamdan, had said on Lebanese television that "our position on the current negotiating paper is negative." But the Hamas press office later said his comment was not an outright rejection. Some changes would need to be made for Hamas to agree, the office said, without elaborating.

In Israel, the war cabinet met on Thursday evening to discuss the cease-fire negotiations and a planned Israeli invasion of Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza, where around a million people have been sheltering, according to an Israeli official who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to communicate with the media on the matter.

On a visit to Israel on Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken put the onus squarely on Hamas to accept the Israeli proposal. "We are determined to get a cease-fire that brings the hostages home and to get it now, and the only reason that that wouldn't be achieved is because of Hamas," he said.

However, the Israeli opposition leader, Yair Lapid, said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had "no political excuse" not to make a deal quickly.

The complex negotiations have dragged on for months, with each bargaining piece moved also shifting several others. Complicating matters further is that Israel and the United States do not talk directly with Hamas, which they consider a terrorist organization, but communicate through officials of Qatar and Egypt who act as intermediaries.

A seemingly intractable sticking point is Israel's planned ground offensive into Rafah. "If the enemy carries out the Rafah operation, negotiations will stop," Mr. Hamdan said on Wednesday. "The resistance does not negotiate under fire."

The Biden administration has pressed the Israeli government hard to abandon the idea of a major invasion of the city, and to rely instead on surgical operations to kill or capture Hamas leaders and fighters.

But Israeli officials have said, consistently and emphatically, that the offensive will take place. Far-right parties in Mr. Netanyahu's coalition have hinted at leaving it if he calls off the offensive, which could cause the government to collapse and force new elections.

"We will enter Rafah and we will eliminate the Hamas battalions there — with or without a deal — in order to achieve the total victory," Mr. Netanyahu said in a statement released on Tuesday.

Hamas has insisted that any agreement would eventually lead to a permanent cease-fire, not just a temporary halt in the fighting — a stance that Israel has rejected as a Hamas play for time to re-establish itself as a governing and military force. The Biden administration has held out hope that a six-week pause in the war could be the first step toward a lasting end to the fighting.

Israel this week softened some of its positions. It agreed to allow Palestinians to return to northern Gaza en masse in the first phase of a cease-fire. Israel had previously insisted on screening returnees and limiting their flow.

Israel also backed away from its demand that Hamas release 40 hostages — female civilians and soldiers, and those who ill or aged — after Hamas indicated that it did not have 40 living hostages in those categories. The latest proposal lowers the figure to 33. The number of Palestinians Israel is offering to free in exchange is unclear.

In the Hamas-led Oct. 7 assault on Israel, about 250 people were kidnapped and taken back to Gaza, according to the Israeli government. More than 100 were released in a weeklong cease-fire in November, and Israeli officials say they believe that more than 30 — possibly many more — are dead.

The Oct. 7 attacks killed some 1,200 people, Israel has said. Gazan health officials say that Israel's subsequent bombing and invasion have killed more than 34,000 people, and injured far more. Most of Gaza's population of some 2.3 million have been displaced, and more than a million people are suffering catastrophic food insecurity, according to the United Nations.

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As cease-fire talks appear to be gaining momentum, Hamas's point man in negotiations is likely to be a conservative former lawmaker from the Gaza Strip who is the deputy to Yahya Sinwar, the hard-line and powerful leader of Hamas in the enclave.

The ex-lawmaker, Khalil al-Hayya, has led the Hamas delegations that met recently with Egypt's General Intelligence Service, a key mediator that has been shuttling messages between Israel and Hamas.

Mr. Hayya, 63, who favors a salt-and-pepper beard and often goes without a tie, was most likely selected as Hamas's top negotiator because he comes from the Gaza Strip and is close to Mr. Sinwar, the presumed mastermind of the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, according to analysts.

"He's the closest to Sinwar among the leaders in the diaspora," said Salah al-Din al-Awawdeh, an Istanbul-based Palestinian analyst close to Hamas. "At this moment, he's the most important link between Sinwar and the outside world."

Mr. Hayya, a longtime resident of Gaza, left the territory before Oct. 7 and has spent much of his time in Doha, Qatar, and in Istanbul. He officially serves as Mr. Sinwar's deputy, a position he took on after he supported Mr. Sinwar in internal elections in 2021 against a challenger who nearly unseated him, Mr. Awawdeh said.

On Thursday, Ismail Haniyeh, the chairman of Hamas's political wing, told Abbas Kamel, the chief of Egypt's General Intelligence Service, that Hamas was studying the latest Israeli proposal for a cease-fire with a "positive spirit" and that the group would send a delegation to Cairo to participate in talks soon, according to a statement from Hamas.

While Hamas officials have expressed skepticism about the latest Israeli proposal, it includes some concessions on longtime sticking points in the negotiations.

While Mr. Hayya has been entrusted with some latitude as a negotiator, he does not have free rein. In recent rounds of talks, Hamas officials have conducted extensive internal discussions before sharing their own proposals or responding to those of other parties.

Mr. Sinwar's opinion has been crucial to Hamas's ultimate responses, which have often taken hours or sometimes days to obtain, according to American officials, an Israeli official and an official familiar with the talks.

While exchanging messages with Mr. Sinwar has occasionally taken a long time, Hamas leaders abroad have also used the excuse of difficulties in communicating with him to fend off demands to provide swift responses to new proposals, Mr. Awawdeh said.

"It lessens the pressure on the movement," he said. "Sometimes, the mediators tell Hamas leaders: 'We need an answer immediately. We need it right now.' The best response is to say there are no communications with Gaza."

In a television interview last week, Mr. Hayya, a former legislator, said that the main obstacle in the negotiations was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel's government, which he asserted did not want a cease-fire.

"That's the bottom line," he told Ahsarq News, a Pan-Arabic television channel.

Israeli officials have expressed openness to a temporary pause in the fighting, but have repeatedly said that a ground offensive in Rafah — the southernmost city in Gaza, where around one million people have taken shelter — was necessary in order to destroy several Hamas battalions there.

Mr. Hayya, who has lost several family members in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is seen as a by-the-book Hamas institutionalist who has no history of corruption, unlike some other officials in the organization, analysts said.

"He represents the movement's position completely: He doesn't veer away from it at all," Mr. Awawdeh said.

He also has a reputation for being less extreme than some other leaders in the Hamas hierarchy, who support no compromise with Israel. "He's not radical," said Hussam Dajani, a Gaza-based analyst.

Julian Barnes contributed reporting to this article.

— Adam Rasgon Reporting from Jerusalem

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President Biden Addresses Campus Protests

President Biden defended the right of demonstrators to protest peacefully, but condemned the "chaos" that has prevailed at many colleges nationwide.

Violent protest is not protected. Peaceful protest is. It's against the law when violence occurs. Destroying property is not a peaceful protest. It's against the law. Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations — none of this is a peaceful protest. Threatening people, intimidating people, instilling fear in people is not peaceful protest. It's against the law. Dissent is essential to democracy, but dissent must never lead to disorder or to denying the rights of others, so students can finish the semester and their college education. There's the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos. People have the right to get an education, the right to get a degree, the right to walk across the campus safely without fear of being attacked. But let's be clear about this as well. There should be no place on any campus — no place in America — for antisemitism or threats of violence against Jewish students. There is no place for hate speech or violence of any kind, whether it's antisemitism, Islamophobia or discrimination against Arab Americans or Palestinian Americans. It's simply wrong. There's no place for racism in America.

President Biden broke days of silence on Thursday to finally speak out on the wave of protests on American college campuses against Israel's war in Gaza that have inflamed much of the country, denouncing violence and antisemitism even as he defended the right to peaceful dissent.

In a previously unscheduled televised statement from the White House, Mr. Biden offered a forceful condemnation of students and other protesters who in his view have taken their grievances over the war too far. But he rejected Republican calls to deploy the National Guard to rein in the campuses.

"There's the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos," Mr. Biden said into cameras in his first personal remarks on the campus fray in 10 days. "People have the right to get an education, the right to get a degree, the right to walk across the campus safely without fear of being attacked." Antisemitism, he added, "has no place" in America.

The president's comments came as universities across the nation continued to struggle to restore order. Police officers in riot gear arrested about 200 people as they cleared a protest encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles, while other officers removed demonstrators occupying a library at Portland State University in Oregon. Activists erected 30 tents at the University of Wisconsin-Madison a day after the police removed tents and detained 34 people.

The confrontations on Thursday followed a tense 24 hours during which police officers made arrests at Fordham University's Manhattan campus, the University of Texas at Dallas, Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and Tulane University in New Orleans, among other places. As of Thursday, the campus unrest had led to nearly 2,000 arrests at dozens of academic institutions in the last two weeks, according to a New York Times tally.

Administrators at some colleges, including Brown University in Rhode Island and Northwestern University in Illinois, opted to avoid conflict by striking deals with pro-Palestinian protesters to bring a peaceful end to their encampments — agreements that have drawn harsh criticism from some Jewish leaders.

The protests have erupted in response to Israel's war in Gaza since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led terrorist attack killed 1,200 people in Israel and resulted in more than 200 taken hostage. More than 34,000 people in Gaza have been killed since then, according to authorities there, including both Hamas combatants and civilians. The protesters have demanded that the Biden administration cut off arms to Israel and that their schools divest from companies linked to Israel, but in many cases the demonstrations have included antisemitic rhetoric and harassment targeting Jewish students.

Some of those sympathetic to the protesters pushed back against administrators for resorting to police action. The Columbia University chapter of the American Association of University Professors on Thursday called for the condemnation of Nemat Shafik, the university's president, after a police operation that removed students occupying Hamilton Hall and resulted in more than 100 arrests.

"Armed counterterrorism police on campus, student arrests and harsh discipline were not the only path through this crisis," the group said.

The images of arrests and clashes have come to dominate the political debate in Washington in recent days as Republicans seek to position themselves as defenders of Jewish students and portray Democrats and university leaders as soft on antisemitism.

A day after the House passed a bipartisan measure seeking to codify a broader definition of antisemitism into federal education policy, with 70 Democrats and 21 Republicans voting no, a group of 20 Senate Republicans introduced their own version of the resolution.

"Antisemitism is rearing its ugly head at college campuses across our nation," said the bill's sponsor, Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina and a possible vice-presidential running mate for former President Donald J. Trump. "Jewish students are being targeted with violence and harassment, and the university presidents and administrators, who should be defending them, are caving to the radical mob and allowing chaos to spread."

Mr. Trump weighed in on social media. "This is a radical left revolution taking place in our country," he wrote in all capital letters as the confrontation at U.C.L.A. escalated. "Where is Crooked Joe Biden? Where is Governor Newscum? The danger to our country is from the left, not from the right!!!"

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a Democrat, issued his own statement on Wednesday. "The right to free speech does not extend to inciting violence, vandalism, or lawlessness on campus," he said.

That was the formulation that Mr. Biden advanced during his televised comments on Thursday morning before leaving the White House for a daylong trip to North Carolina, where he met with relatives of four law enforcement officers killed in Charlotte on Monday and later gave a speech in Wilmington announcing plans to replace lead pipes.

"Destroying property is not a peaceful protest. It's against the law," the president said. "Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations — none of this is a peaceful protest. Threatening people, intimidating people, instilling fear in people is not peaceful protest. It's against the law. Dissent is essential to democracy, but dissent must never lead to disorder or to denying the rights of others so students can finish the semester and their college education."

Mr. Biden has been pushing for an agreement between Israel and Hamas that would end the combat, at least temporarily, but a deal has remained elusive. Under a U.S.-sponsored proposal on the table, Israel would enter a cease-fire for six weeks and release hundreds of Palestinians held in its prisons while Hamas would free 33 of the more than 100 hostages it is still holding.

The president and his team hope that such a first stage would lead to a longer cessation of hostilities and the release of more hostages as well as more food, medicine and other aid to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. But American officials said that while Israel has agreed to the plan, Hamas has so far refused.

The president's four-minute statement came after some Democrats frustrated by his reluctance to speak out pressed him to publicly address the campus uprisings. Until Thursday, Mr. Biden had offered only a couple of sentences in response to reporter questions on April 22 that even Democrats considered too equivocal and otherwise left it to his spokespeople to express his views. Republicans have castigated him for not weighing in himself.

Mr. Biden implied that his critics were simply being opportunistic. "In moments like this, there are always those who rush in to score political points," he said. "But this isn't a moment for politics. It's a moment for clarity. So let me be clear: Peaceful protest in America. Violent protest is not protected. Peaceful protest is."

In calming some in his party, though, Mr. Biden took heat from others on the political left. In their view, he employed none of the nuance that he expressed in 2020 when otherwise peaceful protests after the police killing of George Floyd got out of control and Mr. Biden acknowledged root causes of the anger even while condemning violence.

"He could've made some effort to do the same today," said Matt Duss, a former foreign policy adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist from Vermont. "Instead, he chose to amplify a right-wing caricature. Unfortunately, it's consistent with an overall policy approach that shows little regard for Palestinian perspectives or Palestinian lives."

In his statement, Mr. Biden emphasized that he would always defend free speech, even for those protesting his own support for Israel's war. But he made clear that he thought too many of the demonstrations had gone beyond the bounds of simple speech.

"Let's be clear about this as well," he added. "There should be no place on any campus, no place in America, for antisemitism or threats of violence against Jewish students. There is no place for hate speech or violence of any kind, whether it's antisemitism, Islamophobia, or discrimination against Arab Americans or Palestinian Americans."

In response to questions by reporters, Mr. Biden said he would not change his Middle East policy as a result of the protests. Asked as he left the room if the National Guard should intervene, he said simply, "No."

Reporting was contributed by Jonathan Wolfe from Los Angeles; Ernesto Londoño from St. Paul, Minn.; Bob Chiarito from Madison, Wis.; and Mike Baker from Seattle.

— Peter Baker Traveling with President Biden aboard Air Force One

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As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel repeats his vow to launch a ground invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza and Israeli airstrikes continue to pummel the city, it is a particularly fearful time for displaced families sheltering there.

"What should we do? Where will we go?" said Mohammed Abu Youssef, who spoke on Wednesday in video shot by the Reuters news agency about how he and his children had narrowly survived an airstrike. "I am waiting for a tent so I can leave," he added as he burst into tears.

Mr. Abu Youssef said his family had recently fled to Al-Shaboura neighborhood in Rafah, seeking safety. He suffered a head injury in the strike, he said, and his brother-in-law, who was sheltering with him, lost two children. Several other relatives were also wounded, he said.

Roughly a million displaced Palestinians have sought shelter in Rafah from the Israeli bombardment and ground fighting that health officials say have killed more than 34,000 people across Gaza. Israel has said that the purpose of the planned invasion is to root out Hamas fighters there.

Mr. Abu Youssef said he was now left grappling with the uncertainty of again trying to find a place where his family could be safe. Some displaced families in Rafah have already been moving north into areas of Gaza that were combat zones earlier in the war.

Nader Ibrahim contributed reporting and video production from London.

— Hiba Yazbek reporting from Jerusalem