The Israeli military orders civilians to evacuate eastern Rafah as airstrikes escalate. (2024)

Israel says it will send a delegation to talks on the proposal.

As Israeli forces carried out strikes in eastern Rafah, the prime minister’s office said that the war cabinet had decided unanimously that Israel would continue with its military actions in the city to exert pressure on Hamas. The decision, the office said, sought to advance all of Israel’s war aims, including freeing hostages.

Khalil al-Hayya, a senior Hamas official, said in an interview with Al Jazeera that the proposal Hamas was willing to accept included three phases, of 42 days each, and stressed that its main goal was a permanent cease-fire.

Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’s political wing, first described Hamas’s new position in a post on the group’s Telegram channel at 7:36 p.m. in Israel. His statement came hours after Israel had ordered people in part of Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza, to evacuate before a promised offensive there, and a day after Hamas fired rockets near the Kerem Shalom crossing in the border region between Israel and southern Gaza, killing four soldiers.

Mr. Haniyeh said he had told the Qatari prime minister and the chief of Egypt’s General Intelligence Service that Hamas had accepted “their proposal.” There was no immediate comment from Egypt.

Matthew Miller, the State Department spokesman, confirmed that Hamas had “issued a response” and that the United States was reviewing it with partners in the region.

Hamas negotiators had left Cairo on Sunday after talks hit an impasse and they failed to reach an agreement with mediators on Israel’s most recent offer.

The main stumbling block in the indirect negotiations mediated by Qatar and Egypt has been the length of the cease-fire. Hamas has demanded a permanent cease-fire, which would in effect end the seven-month war, while Israel wants a temporary halt in fighting that would allow for the exchange of hostages held in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners.

Mr. al-Hayya, who has been leading Hamas delegations at in-person talks in Cairo, said the new offer also included a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, the return of displaced people to their homes and a “real and serious” swap of hostages for Palestinian prisoners.

In its most recent proposal, Israel made some concessions, including agreeing to the return of displaced Palestinians to northern Gaza and reducing the number of hostages it would accept being freed in the initial phase of an agreement.

The Israeli military’s chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said at a news briefing on Monday evening: “We examine each response and reply in a very serious matter, and maximize every opportunity in the negotiations to secure the release of the hostages as a core mission.” But he said that at the same time, Israeli forces would “continue operating” in Gaza.

The Israeli military ordered the evacuation of over 100,000 Palestinians from parts of Rafah on Monday morning. Israeli leaders have vowed for months to invade the city in order to root out Hamas forces there, prompting international concern for the safety of the 1.4 million people sheltering there.

Michael Crowley and Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.

The C.I.A. director consulted on changes to a U.S.-Israel proposal, which Hamas has embraced, officials say.

The two officials said the response from Hamas was a serious one, and that it was now up to Israel to decide whether to enter into an agreement. The proposal, they said, calls for Hamas to free hostages — women, the elderly and those in need of medical treatment — in return for a 42-day cease-fire and the release of a much larger number of Palestinian prisoners. Israel had sought 33 hostages, but it is not clear how many women and elderly are still alive, and the first tranche could end up including remains.

That would be the first of three phases of reciprocal actions from each side. In the second phase, the two sides would work toward reaching a “sustainable calm,” which would involve the release of more hostages, the officials said. Both officials acknowledged that the warring parties would likely clash over the definition of “sustainable calm.”

One of the officials, in the Middle East, said that Hamas viewed the term as an end to the war, with Israel halting its military actions and withdrawing troops from Gaza. The officials said that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was expected to push back against that definition.

One official said that the negotiating parties agreed to the term “sustainable calm” weeks ago, after Israel objected to any reference to a “permanent cease-fire.” Israeli officials have consistently said they oppose any agreement that explicitly calls for that or for an end to the war.

Mr. Burns has been the main representative for the United States in the negotiations, and he is in the region to work on the proposals and counterproposals. Qatari and Egyptian mediators spoke with him on Monday about the changes that Hamas was ready to accept, the two officials said. Hamas said that Arab mediators had put forward the changes, but one official said that Hamas had suggested them. Mr. Burns is expected to attend the talks in Cairo on Tuesday.

The Israeli prime minister’s office said that while the new proposal failed to meet Israel’s demands, the country would still send a working-level delegation to talks in hopes of reaching an acceptable deal. A U.S. official said the purpose of the talks in Cairo was to negotiate the amendments proposed by Hamas and talk through remaining issues.

Qatar’s Foreign Ministry said that a Qatari delegation would also attend the talks on Tuesday, and expressed “hope that the talks will culminate in reaching an agreement for an immediate and permanent” cease-fire, an exchange of hostages and prisoners, and a “sustainable” flow of aid into all of Gaza.

Israel announced on Monday that its war cabinet had voted unanimously to continue with its military action in Rafah in order to exert pressure on Hamas. That announcement and the start of any offensive in the city could jeopardize the prospects for an agreement. Mr. Netanyahu said last week that he would carry out an offensive in Rafah “with or without” an agreement.

U.S. officials say they oppose any such operation without a proper plan from Israel to mitigate civilian casualties and a humanitarian crisis. One U.S. official said the strikes that the Israeli military carried out in eastern Rafah on Monday appeared to be part of a smaller operation, and not necessarily the opening moves of a larger assault. More than one million Palestinians have sought shelter in Rafah as they fled other parts of Gaza under attack by Israel.

Adam Rasgon contributed reporting from Jerusalem.

Here is a timeline of the recent twists and turns in the cease-fire talks.

Here is a look at the recent dizzying turns of events:

Monday, April 29

Israeli officials, offering a hint of hope for a deal, said that their negotiators had reduced the number of hostages they wanted Hamas to release during the first phase of a truce.

Thursday, May 2

A Hamas leader said that the group would soon send a delegation to Cairo to “complete ongoing discussions” on a cease-fire deal.

Saturday, May 4

With talks underway, a senior Hamas official said in a text message that the group’s representatives had arrived in Cairo for the talks, “with great positivity” toward the latest proposal.

Sunday, May 5

The talks — which are held indirectly, through mediators — hit an impasse, and Hamas said its delegation had left Cairo. An Israeli official described the negotiations as in “crisis.”

Late in the day, Hamas launched rockets at a border crossing between Gaza and Israel, killing four Israeli soldiers. Israel stepped up its attacks in Gaza.

Monday, May 6

Hamas said it accepted the terms of a cease-fire — not as laid out in Israel’s proposal, but drawn from one put forth by Egypt and Qatar. The announcement came hours after Israel had ordered people to evacuate from some areas in Rafah, a sign that its forces might be close to launching a long-anticipated invasion of the crowded city. Then, the Israeli military said it was carrying out “targeted strikes” in eastern Rafah.

Late in the day, in keeping with a week of contradictory signals, the Israeli prime minister’s office said that Hamas’s latest cease-fire proposal was unsatisfactory. But it said would send a working-level delegation back to the talks in Cairo anyway.

Tuesday, May 7

Israeli tanks crossed into Rafah and established control over the Gaza side of the border crossing with Egypt in what it called a limited operation aimed at destroying Hamas targets used to attack Israeli soldiers. Analysts said it was unclear whether the Israeli action in Rafah would ratchet up the pressure on Hamas negotiators to make a deal, or would sabotage the talks.

The Israeli military orders civilians to evacuate eastern Rafah as airstrikes escalate.

On Monday night, the Israeli military said it was “conducting targeted strikes against Hamas terror targets in eastern Rafah.”

Earlier in the day, the military had dropped leaflets in eastern Rafah ordering people to evacuate temporarily to what it described as a humanitarian zone, and said it would also notify people by text messages, phone calls and broadcasts in Arabic.

An Israeli military spokesman would not say if or when troops would enter the city, but described the evacuation as “part of plans to dismantle Hamas” and to bring back hostages taken on Oct. 7.

Thousands of people were leaving the city, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society, which said on Monday that there had been “escalating Israeli airstrikes” in areas east of Rafah. The extent of any casualties was not immediately clear.

Israel’s closest allies, including the United States, have been urging it not to mount a large ground operation in Rafah, saying it would take a heavy toll on civilians, more than a million of whom have crammed into the city to escape fighting elsewhere. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected those calls, saying Israel needs to defend itself and eliminate Hamas, which attacked Israel on Oct. 7.

Hours after the evacuation order, President Biden spoke by phone with Mr. Netanyahu and “reiterated his clear position on Rafah,” according to a White House statement.

The order came a day after officials said that months of talks over a cease-fire and the release of hostages had hit an impasse, with Israel and Hamas still sharply at odds over the duration of any truce. Hamas wants a permanent cease-fire while Mr. Netanyahu has expressed openness to only a temporary halt in the fighting and has said Israel would invade Rafah with or without an agreement.

Salama Marouf, the head of the Hamas-run Gaza government media office, said in a statement on Monday that the evacuation order showed that Israel “went into truce negotiations deceptively without abandoning the idea of ​​a broad aggression against Rafah.” He said the announcement was “a real test of the seriousness” of the countries that had warned against an invasion of the city.

On Sunday, Mr. Netanyahu repeated his promises to destroy Hamas, vowing in English, in a speech marking Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, that Israel “will defeat our genocidal enemies.”

The Israeli military spokesman, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, said that a rocket attack on Sunday by the armed wing of Hamas, which killed four Israeli soldiers near the Kerem Shalom border crossing, was a “violent reminder” of the group’s presence in Rafah. The attack came from an area near the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt and prompted Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right national security minister, to post on social media: “Netanyahu, go to Rafah now!”

About two weeks ago, the Israeli authorities said that before they moved on Rafah, they would expand a humanitarian zone in nearby Al-Mawasi where civilians could shelter. On Monday, the Israeli military said that it had done so, and that the zone had field hospitals, tents and larger supplies of food, water and medicines.

The military is not calling for a “wide-scale evacuation of Rafah,” Lt. Col. Shoshani told reporters on Monday. “This is a very specific scoped operation at the moment to move people out of harm’s way.”

Israel has told civilians in many parts of Gaza to evacuate from their homes since the start of the war, but many of the places Israel said would be safe for Gazans were also hit by airstrikes. And previous Israeli evacuation orders offer no clear clues about when a ground operation in Rafah might start.

Israel began instructing civilians to leave northern Gaza and move south for their own safety around two weeks before its invasion began on Oct. 27. Then, in December, Israel urged civilians in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, to move just days before launching an invasion of that city.

In both cases, civilians reported that obeying the orders was fraught with peril, leaving them with agonizing decisions and often no safe options. Northern Gaza was under heavy bombardment in the weeks before the invasion, while people in Khan Younis said that the evacuation orders were inadequately communicated and sometimes left them with just hours to escape.

UNRWA, the U.N. agency that aids Palestinian refugees, said on Monday that it would not evacuate its staff from Rafah and would continue to provide humanitarian aid to those who have taken refuge there.

“An Israeli military offensive will lead to an additional layer of an already unbearable tragedy for the people in Gaza,” Philippe Lazzarini, the agency’s commissioner general, said on social media.

Isabel Kershner, Myra Noveck and Liam Stack contributed reporting.

With talks uncertain and a Rafah attack looming, Netanyahu tilts at an elusive victory.

But analysts say it would also be a necessary step toward the total victory over Hamas that Mr. Netanyahu has pledged — however elusive that may prove — and would mollify the hard-liners in the government coalition that keeps him in power.

Critics had accused Mr. Netanyahu of scuttling the latest round of hostage talks, which appeared to have stalled over the weekend. The two sides were mainly stuck over Hamas’s demand that Israel commit to a permanent cease-fire as part of any deal, according to Israeli and Hamas officials, and over Mr. Netanyahu’s insistence on a Rafah invasion and willingness to commit to only a temporary pause in the seven-month war.

Negotiators were hoping to make some progress by allowing for a degree of ambiguity, at least in the early stages of a phased deal. But Mr. Netanyahu made it patently clear over the weekend, in a series of statements, that he was not willing to give up on Rafah or commit to an end to the war, and on Monday, when Hamas said it would agree to a plan set out by Egypt and Qatar, Israeli forces stepped up their strikes on the city.

One Israeli official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said on Sunday that Mr. Netanyahu’s statements about Rafah and the continuation of the war had compelled Hamas to harden its demands. At the same time, a Hamas rocket attack launched from near the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt on Sunday, which killed four soldiers in Israel, showed that Hamas was still capable of mounting damaging attacks from its last redoubt.

Pushing back against the accusations, Mr. Netanyahu’s office issued a statement on Monday calling the claims that he, and not Hamas, had torpedoed the deal “an absolute lie and willful deception of the public.”

On the contrary, the statement said, Hamas had not “moved a millimeter from its extreme demands, which no Israeli government could accept.”

By Monday evening, when Hamas announced that there was a truce plan it could agree to, Israeli analysts were crediting the military’s moves in Rafah with having pressured Hamas into seeking a deal.

But the meaning of going into Rafah is also open to interpretation. The Israeli military portrayed Monday’s call for a “temporary” evacuation of eastern Rafah as “limited in scope,” suggesting that it is not a precursor to an imminent invasion of the whole city.

That raised questions about Israel’s ability to destroy the last four Hamas battalions that it says are in Rafah and must be defeated.

Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli consul-general in New York, said of Mr. Netanyahu after seven months of war: “He’s out of options.”

“We are not going to see Hamas raise a white flag,” Mr. Pinkas said. Yet Mr. Netanyahu, he added, “has turned Rafah into some kind of Stalingrad.”

Adam Rasgon contributed reporting.

Israel’s attacks in Rafah are another complication for cease-fire talks.

The incursion on Tuesday followed days of uncertainty, including questions about the state of talks, a rocket launch by Hamas militants on Sunday that killed four Israeli soldiers and an order by Israel for over 100,000 people to evacuate from some areas in Rafah.

It was a defiant move for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who has been under global pressure to step back from a vow to attack the city, which is packed with people seeking safety. President Biden has urged Mr. Netanyahu not to launch a large-scale operation there, and he repeated that warning on Monday.

Israel’s insistence that the incursion was limited could reflect a desire to limit global criticism, but Mr. Netanyahu also faces domestic pressure to take Rafah, which Israeli military commanders say is Hamas’s last stronghold.

Here is a look at the state of play in the cease-fire talks:

What are the latest developments?

In what appeared to be a sharp reversal, Hamas said on Monday it could largely accept a proposal for a hostage-prisoner exchange and cease-fire offered by Israel and the United States. The officials said Hamas was asking for minor wording changes.

The Israel-U.S. proposal called for the group to free hostages in return for a six-week cease-fire and the release of a much larger number of Palestinian prisoners. Those hostages would be women, older people and those in need of medical treatment.

Israel had sought 33 hostages, but it is not clear how many women and elderly are still alive, and the first group could end up including bodies.

The prime minister’s office said that the new proposal failed to meet Israel’s demands, but that the country had sent a working-level delegation to talks in Cairo on Tuesday in hopes of reaching a deal. Hamas officials and Qatar also sent delegations.

Late on Monday, Mr. Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that the war cabinet had decided unanimously to “continue with its action in Rafah in order to exert military pressure on Hamas.” That was followed by the military’s push into eastern Rafah overnight.

What are the main sticking points?

At issue is the eventual enactment of a “sustainable calm.” The revised Hamas proposal keeps that phrase, wording that all sides had said earlier they could accept.

But the two sides are stuck on a fundamental question: Will this cease-fire be a temporary pause to allow an exchange of hostages for prisoners, or a long-term end to the fighting that would leave Hamas in power?

Israel insists on a temporary cease-fire, saying it will keep fighting afterward to end Hamas’s rule in Gaza. Hamas demands a permanent cease-fire and vows to retain control.

In November, the two sides agreed to a truce that lasted a week, during which 105 hostages were exchanged for 240 Palestinian prisoners in Israel. But Hamas has conditioned the release of further hostages on an Israeli commitment to end the war.

To get past this hurdle, mediators have come up with a three-stage cease-fire. During the first phase, up to 33 of the remaining hostages would be freed in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. But Hamas informed negotiators on Monday that not all of them are still living and that the remains of those who have died would be among the initial releases, according to two people familiar with the talks.

More would be released during the second phase, during which Israel would release more prisoners and commit to a sustained end to the fighting, officials familiar with the talks said.

But Israeli leaders have also vowed to conduct a major military operation in Rafah against Hamas’s forces they believe to be fortified there. Mr. Netanyahu has repeatedly said Israel would invade Rafah with or without a cease-fire deal.

What would happen after the war?

Hamas wants Israel to withdraw its forces after the war, but Israel says it must retain security control over Gaza. Israel withdrew its forces from Gaza after previous conflicts with Hamas in 2009 and 2014, but this time, Israeli leaders say it’s not so simple.

The country’s leaders have pledged to do whatever it takes to ensure that something like the Oct. 7 assault can never happen again, and they say that means maintaining the Israeli military’s freedom to operate in Gaza.

Israeli forces have also demolished many buildings inside Gaza’s border area to create a buffer zone with Israel, prompting international criticism.

In public, at least, Hamas has rejected the idea of a long-term Israeli military presence in the Palestinian enclave. In March, a senior Hamas official, Ghazi Hamad, said the group was willing to accept a phased Israeli retreat as part of a prospective cease-fire deal, as long as Israel committed to ultimately withdrawing entirely from the Gaza Strip.

What pressure is Mr. Netanyahu under?

Mr. Netanyahu says he is committed to bringing home the hostages held in Gaza, but his political survival depends on far-right allies in his governing coalition who oppose the recent cease-fire proposals.

Two of those allies — the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, and the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir — denounced the version supported by Israel and the U.S., saying it amounted to a Hamas victory. They have called for Israeli forces to conduct a ground operation in Rafah.

Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition holds 64 of the 120 seats in Israel’s parliament, meaning any defections could endanger his premiership and pave the way for elections.

Yair Lapid, the leader of Israel’s parliamentary opposition, has said he would back Mr. Netanyahu in order to pass a deal that brings hostages home to Israel. But that would leave Mr. Netanyahu totally dependent on some of his harshest critics in the opposition — a political alliance unlikely to last long.

Fears, and prices, soar in Rafah after Israel’s evacuation order.

“If we have to leave, we will be entering the unknown,” said Nidal Kuhail, 29, a resident of Gaza City who has been sheltering in Rafah with his family. “Are we going to have a place to go? Are we going to be able to find a place to set up the tent?”

His tent is in a part of Rafah that is not covered by the evacuation order, but his family was still overcome with anxiety and divided over what to do next.

“Some are saying, ‘Let’s get out of here early,’ and others are saying, ‘Let’s wait a bit,’” said Mr. Kuhail, who worked as a manager at a Thai restaurant in Gaza City before the war.

Field workers for UNRWA, the U.N. agency that assists Palestinian refugees, estimated on Monday that around 200 people an hour were fleeing the evacuation zone through the main exit routes, said Sam Rose, the aid agency’s director of planning, who has spent the past two weeks in Gaza.

The atmosphere in Rafah was hopeful over the weekend, when reports of progress in cease-fire talks emerged, Mr. Rose said. But that optimism was transformed into ubiquitous fear and anxiety after Israel issued its evacuation order for the eastern parts of the city, indicating that it may move ahead with a planned ground invasion as it tries to dismantle Hamas in Gaza.

Many in Rafah said they knew they had to go, but did not know how to manage it.

Mousa Ramadan al-Bahabsa, 55, was sheltering with his 11 children inside a tent he erected at a U.N. school near al-Najma Square in Rafah. They have moved three times since the start of the war in October, he said.

After the evacuation order was issued, he said, people living at the school just looked at one another in shock. Then many began to pack up their things. But he did not have enough money to leave.

“All the people around me are evacuating,” said Mr. al-Bahabsa, who said the war had left him penniless. “I do not know where to go or who to ask for help.”

Leaving Rafah is expensive, Palestinians interviewed there said on Monday. Even though the Israeli military is telling people to move to an area that is less than 10 miles away, taking a taxi out of town would cost more than $260, and leaving on a smaller auto rickshaw would cost half that. A donkey-drawn cart would cost around $13, but even that is too expensive for many people.

The order also led to a spike in prices, Palestinians in Rafah said. The cost of fuel jumped to $12 a liter from $8, as did the cost of basic foodstuffs like sugar, which rose to $10 per kilogram from $3, they said.

“I do not even have 1 shekel,” Mr. al-Bahabsa said, referring to the currency used in Israel and Gaza. “I already lost my house, but I do not want to lose any of my children.”

Across town, Malak Barbakh, 38, was trying to gather her eight children as her husband packed their belongings. But her elder son had run off somewhere, she said, after telling them he did not want to leave Rafah after sheltering there for so long.

“What scares me most is the unknown,” Ms. Barbakh said. “I am so fed up with this nasty life.”

To make things easier, she said, the family planned to return to their house in the city of Khan Younis, even though they know it is gone.

“I hope we can build our tent over the rubble of our house,” she said.

The evacuation order came as a shock to Mahmoud Mohammed al-Burdeiny, 26. He said he thought Israel had been using the idea of a Rafah invasion only as a bluff to get a better deal from Hamas in cease-fire talks.

That meant he had made no plan to leave his house in southeastern Rafah. But now he felt the danger was real, and he had spent the morning watching neighbors flee.

“I saw the long road by the beach full of trucks, vans and cars,” said Mr. al-Burdeiny, who worked as a taxi driver before the war. He said the sight made him feel “infected with the disease of leaving, like the others.”

So Mr. al-Burdeiny and his wife began to pack their belongings and plan for the worst. They could take the doors of their house with them to use as shelter, they realized. And they could take apart their furniture to use as firewood, too.

Otherwise, Mr. al-Burdeiny feared, it would all end up looted or buried beneath the rubble of an airstrike.

“I do not want to see what happened to the people in Gaza City and in the north happen again in Rafah,” he said. “I am really so worried about my whole family.”

In a defiant speech, Netanyahu asserts Israel’s right to fight its enemies.

But Mr. Netanyahu has remained defiant.

On Sunday, he spoke at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, to mark the national Holocaust remembrance day. Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, he said, was not a “Holocaust” — not because Hamas did not have the intention to destroy Israel but because of its inability to do so. About 1,200 people were killed and more than 200 were taken hostage that day, Israeli authorities say. Hamas’s intention, Mr. Netanyahu said, was the same as that of the Nazis.

In his speech, which lasted for about 15 minutes and was largely in Hebrew, Mr. Netanyahu rejected accusations that Israel was committing genocide in the Gaza Strip. Since the beginning of the war, Gazan authorities say Israeli troops have killed more than 34,000 people, many of them women and children, though the statistics do not differentiate between civilians and combatants.

Mr. Netanyahu said that Israel’s military does everything it can to avoid harming civilians and that it has allowed aid to flow through to Gaza to avoid a humanitarian crisis. A United Nations official recently said that parts of Gaza are experiencing “full-blown famine.”

Mr. Netanyahu made a point to say a few words in English that were aimed at the international community. He invoked the Holocaust in asserting Israel’s right to defend itself, with or without international support.

“If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone,” he said. “But we know we are not alone because countless decent people around the world support our just cause. And I say to you, we will defeat our genocidal enemies. Never again is now!”

On Monday morning after his speech, the Israeli military gave the strongest signal yet that it was going to invade Rafah as it asked tens of thousands of Gazans to evacuate from the city.

Houthi attacks are forcing more global shipping delays, Maersk says.

Since late last year, the Houthis have been attacking ships in the Red Sea, which cargo vessels from Asia have to travel through to reach the Suez Canal. This has forced ocean carriers to avoid the sea and take a much longer route to Europe around the southern tip of Africa. But in recent weeks, the Houthis have been trying to strike ships making that longer journey in the Indian Ocean.

Because going around Africa takes longer, shipping companies have had to add more vessels to ensure that they can transport goods on time and without cutting volumes.

The threat to vessels in the Indian Ocean has only added to the difficulties. “This has forced our vessels to lengthen their journey further, resulting in additional time and costs to get your cargo to its destination for the time being,” Maersk said.

The company estimated that putting extra ships and equipment onto the Asia-to-Europe route would result in a 15 percent to 20 percent drop in industrywide capacity in the three months through the end of June.

That said, shipping companies have plenty of capacity available because they have ordered many new ships in recent years.

Maersk said on Monday that customers should expect higher surcharges on shipping invoices as a result of the higher costs borne by the shipping line, which include a 40 percent increase in fuel use per journey.

The cost of shipping a container from Asia to a northern European port was $3,550 last week, according to Freightos, a digital shipping marketplace, down from a recent high of $5,492 in January and well below rates that climbed above $14,000 when global shipping became snarled during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Houthis, who are backed by Iran, have said their attacks are in response to Israel’s war in Gaza.

Biden warns Netanyahu against an offensive in Rafah.

“The president doesn’t want to see operations in Rafah that put at greater risk the more than a million people that are seeking refuge there,” said John F. Kirby, a White House National Security Council spokesman.

Mr. Kirby said that Mr. Biden asked Mr. Netanyahu about the plans to keep people in Rafah safe, and that the United States was questioning Israel about its intentions.

“Are we curious about the timing and the intent and where they’re going? Yes, absolutely,” Mr. Kirby said. “And the president expressed our curiosity about that on the call today.”

Shortly after the call, Hamas announced that it had accepted a deal proposed by Qatar and Egypt. But even as negotiations continued, Israel announced that it had conducted targeted strikes against Hamas in Rafah, and its war cabinet voted unanimously to move forward with the ground offensive there.

Mr. Biden has been pressing for a cease-fire deal before Israel can begin its assault on Rafah, an operation that he and his advisers fear could thwart any short-term chances for peace. But Mr. Netanyahu has repeatedly rebuffed Mr. Biden’s warnings, and in an address on Sunday he reiterated his vow to protect Israel against its “genocidal enemies.”

Also Monday, Mr. Biden met at the White House with King Abdullah II of Jordan, a key Middle East ally who has been a forceful voice in the global push for a cease-fire in Gaza. The meeting was described by White House officials as a private meeting, rather than an official state visit.

According to a summary of the meeting, released by the White House on Monday night, the two leaders discussed the latest developments in Gaza, including the release of Israeli hostages and desire for a “sustainable cease-fire,” which would allow humanitarian aid into Gaza. The summary said the two also discussed their shared commitment to “achieving a durable, lasting peace to include a pathway to a Palestinian state, with security guarantees for Israel,” as well as the importance of stability in the West Bank.

When the two leaders met earlier this year, they were united in denouncing the Rafah invasion. At a joint news conference in February, Mr. Biden said Israel should not proceed with a major ground offensive in Rafah without a “credible plan.” King Abdullah said an Israeli invasion of Rafah was “certain to produce another humanitarian catastrophe” and demanded an immediate cease-fire.

On Monday, the Israeli military began warning more than 100,000 people in eastern Rafah to evacuate as Mr. Netanyahu vowed to move forward with the invasion in order to defeat Hamas, which killed more than 1,200 people and took more than 200 hostages in its Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

Since the beginning of the war, according to Gazan authorities, Israel’s bombardment and ground invasion have killed more than 34,000 people, many of them women and children, although the statistics do not differentiate between civilians and combatants.

On Sunday, King Abdullah’s wife, Queen Rania, described “outrage” in Jordan, where much of the population is ethnically Palestinian, and frustrations throughout the Arab world over Washington’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza.

In an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Queen Rania said that Jordan saw the United States as an “enabler” of Israel’s war tactics and that Washington was sending “mixed messages” about the limits of international and humanitarian law.

“So, the next time a country breaks rules, you know, and the U.S. comes and tries to apply moral authority, those countries are going to say, Well, you made an exception here,” she said. “So why apply to us?”

In response to the criticism, Mr. Kirby said that “two things can be true at once.”

“Israel has a right and a responsibility to defend itself, and we’re going to continue to provide for their security to help them with that,” he said. “And at the same time, they have a right and obligation to be careful about civilian casualties, and getting more humanitarian assistance in, and that’s why we’re working so hard on this hostage deal.”

Media experts condemn Israel’s move against Al Jazeera.

But invoking national security as the basis for barring a news organization from operating in a country is “incredibly vague” and “way outside the bounds of democratic norms,” said Joel Simon, director of the Journalism Protection Initiative at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York.

Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said that closing off a country to information, news and ideas from abroad has long been a hallmark of repressive governments.

“The legitimacy of any democracy turns in part on its citizens having unrestricted access to foreign media,” Mr. Jaffer said.

Some free speech advocates acknowledged that the United States seems to be pulling back from its role as a champion of information freedom. Washington is moving to ban TikTok, the popular social media app with a Chinese parent company, unless it is sold to American investors.

But Israel, they said, is a different case. Shutting down Al Jazeera is the latest step in “a broad attack on press and speech freedom” by the Israeli government, said Genevieve Lakier, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School who writes about freedom of speech. Israel’s actions, she added, are “inconsistent with a commitment to democratic values.”

Carlos Martinez de la Serna, program director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said in a statement that Israel’s move “sets an extremely alarming precedent for restricting international media outlets working in Israel.” He called on the Israeli government to reverse course and “allow Al Jazeera and all international media outlets to operate freely in Israel, especially during wartime.”

But there are concerns that Israel may go in the other direction. “Is Al Jazeera a test case?” asked Seth Stern, director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation. “Will Israel start going after other news outlets that are not to the government’s liking?”

Here are the latest developments.

A White House spokesman, John F. Kirby, said that the negotiations were at a “sensitive stage” and that “there should be no reason why they can’t overcome those remaining gaps.” Analysts said Israel’s incursion into Rafah might either ratchet up the pressure on Hamas to make a deal or sabotage the talks.

The Israeli military said it had gone into the city to destroy Hamas infrastructure used in an attack that killed four Israeli soldiers over the weekend near another border crossing, this one from Israel into Gaza.

The move did not appear to be the full ground invasion of Rafah that Israel has long been threatening and its allies working to avert. The Israeli military called it “a very precise” counterterrorism operation.

Here’s what else to know:

• The head of a hospital in Rafah said that 27 bodies and 150 wounded people had been brought to his facility since the start of the Israeli incursion on Tuesday, and humanitarian agencies said that no aid was passing through the Rafah crossing. United Nations officials said that Israeli troops had now “choked off” both the Rafah crossing with Egypt and the Kerem Shalom crossing, the two main routes for getting aid into Gaza, and warned that the humanitarian crisis in the enclave would worsen.

• International officials condemned the incursion. Egypt’s foreign ministry called it a “dangerous escalation” while Josep Borrell Fontelles, the top E.U. diplomat, said he feared it would cause “a lot of casualties.”

• U.N. officials said Tuesday that the area Israel has designated as a safe zone for Gazans asked to evacuate Rafah was neither safe nor equipped to receive them. On Monday, Israel told more than 100,000 Gazans in eastern Rafah to flee ahead of airstrikes.

• Hamas’s armed wing claimed it again fired on Israeli soldiers in the Kerem Shalom area of Israel near the border with Gaza on Tuesday morning. Israel’s military said that four mortar shells and two rockets had been launched toward Kerem Shalom from Rafah but that no injuries or damage were reported.

Andrés R. Martínez, Vivian Yee and Adam Rasgon contributed reporting.