World leaders are pushing for a cease-fire agreement. Protesters are taking to the streets across Israel. And families of hostages are pleading with their country’s leader to just make a deal for their release.

The pressures are piling up on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of his scheduled visit to Washington next week. His speech before a divided Congress figures to be contentious, particularly if he cannot close a deal with Hamas to end the war before he travels.

On Thursday, Mr. Netanyahu visited Israeli troops in Gaza, near the border with Egypt, and told them that continued military pressure on Hamas was “helping us, together with the steadfast insistence on our just demands, to advance the hostages deal.”

Yair Lapid, the leader of Israel’s parliamentary opposition, has called on Mr. Netanyahu to cancel his speech to Congress on July 24 unless he planed to announce an agreement.

“He needs to declare a hostage deal without inventing conditions or raising obstacles every 10 minutes,” Mr. Lapid said on Israeli news radio, alluding to reports that Mr. Netanyahu had complicated the negotiations by adding conditions that Hamas would most likely resist.

Mediators in Qatar and Egypt have been negotiating over a framework for a deal that would stop the fighting and return about 120 people — it is not clear how many are alive — taken hostage in the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel, among other terms.

But on Wednesday, Mr. Netanyahu told the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, that applying more military pressure on Hamas would yield more concessions in negotiations, suggesting that a deal was not imminent.

The Hostages Families Forum, which represents relatives of the abductees, organized rallies at 30 locations across Israel on Wednesday, urging Mr. Netanyahu to close a deal.

“Bring everyone back before you fly off for political tours in other countries,” Ella Ben-Ami, whose father, Ohad Ben-Ami, is a hostage, said at the rally in Tel Aviv, video released by the family group showed.

Mr. Ben-Ami is a dual Israeli and German citizen who was taken from Kibbutz Be’eri on Oct. 7 with his wife, Raz Ben-Ami, who was released as part of a temporary cease-fire deal in November.

“Start here at home,” Ella Ben-Ami said. “Earn your citizens’ trust and make this deal happen.”

Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister, told some families of hostages on Monday that no security considerations stood in the way of an agreement and that it was crucial to “exhaust all efforts” before Mr. Netanyahu’s trip to Washington, according to the Hostages Families Forum. “Afterward, it will be much more difficult and complicated,” Mr. Gallant told the families.

Some in Mr. Netanyahu’s governing coalition have urged him to oppose a deal with Hamas.

On Thursday, one coalition member, Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right national security minister, pressed his opposition to a deal during a visit to Jerusalem’s most contested holy site. The hilltop, revered by Muslims as the Aqsa Mosque compound and by Jews as the Temple Mount, has long been a tinderbox for Israeli-Palestinian tensions. Several states, among them France, Turkey and Jordan, which called it “a provocative act.”

Mr. Ben-Gvir said he had gone to the site to pray for the hostages to return home “without a bad deal, without surrender” to Hamas, and called on the government “to add more military pressure” and bar shipments of fuel to Gaza “until victory.”

Mr. Netanyahu’s grip on power relies on the support of two far-right parties, including Mr. Ben-Gvir’s, that oppose any agreement that would leave Hamas in power in Gaza. Critics say this has made him wary of committing to a deal that might lead to the collapse of his government and early elections that polling suggests he would lose.

Others in Mr. Netanyahu’s governing bloc have called on him to resist the political pressures against a cease-fire agreement. The ultra-Orthodox Shas party sent a letter to Mr. Netanyahu on Wednesday telling him “not to fear the voices within the coalition who oppose the deal.”

Some of the most persistent pressure for a cease-fire deal has come from world leaders, health organizations and human rights groups, which have condemned Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza. The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people and led to widespread hunger and disease, according to the Gazan health authorities.

At a briefing in Washington on Wednesday, a State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, told reporters that, given the scale of Palestinian suffering in Gaza, reaching a cease-fire agreement was an “urgent priority.”

Some Democratic lawmakers have said they plan to skip Mr. Netanyahu’s speech in Congress to signal discontent with his government. And the speech has highlighted the divides over Mr. Netanyahu’s leadership at home.

A group of 500 Israeli academics sent the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, the Louisiana Republican who had invited Mr. Netanyahu, a letter this week asking him to disinvite the prime minister, saying he “has demonstrated his indifference to the ongoing hell endured by the hostages.” And while some relatives of the hostages planned to travel to the United States to protest the address to Congress, others are expected to accompany the prime minister.

Dani Elgarat, whose brother, Itzik, was kidnapped from his home in Kibbutz Nir Oz, urged one rescued hostage, Noa Argamani, not to go forward with her reported plans to join Mr. Netanyahu in Washington. Mr. Elgarat said her presence might undermine the chances of bringing home more hostages.

Mr. Elgarat said he hoped that he and other relatives traveling to the United States to protest Mr. Netanyahu would not find themselves in the “absurd situation” of also being in conflict with a freed hostage accompanying him.

Many countries, including the United States, have argued that any hope for a lasting peace in the region depends on the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

But on Thursday, lawmakers in the Knesset approved a resolution declaring that a Palestinian state would pose an “existential threat” to Israel, embracing Mr. Netanyahu’s position on the issue. The resolution passed with 68 votes in the 120-member body. Benny Gantz, an opposition leader who quit Mr. Netanyahu’s emergency cabinet in June, citing disagreements over the conduct of the war, backed the measure.

Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.

After more than 100 years in the rainforest, Varî Vãti Marubo walks with a stick and, as she always has, barefoot.

So when her Indigenous tribe, the Marubo, gathered for meetings this year in a village that would require a 13-mile hike across streams, fallen logs and dense forest to reach, everyone knew it would be difficult for her to attend.

But, as she has for a century, Varî Vãti dealt with the elements. She caught a ride on the only transportation available: her son’s back.

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After months of waiting, Fida Ghanem was granted a permit by Israel and Egypt to leave Gaza for urgent lymphoma treatment in the spring. But the next morning, Israeli forces seized the only border crossing from Gaza to Egypt, in Rafah, as part of a military offensive against Hamas in the area.

Ms. Ghanem, 42, died one month later in early June. The border was still shut.

“She should have been allowed to leave as soon as they found the cancer,” said her husband, Maher Ghanem. “But it was delay after delay.”

For nearly all Gazans, the southern Rafah crossing has been the only way out since the war began nine months ago. But since Israel captured it in early May, it has been closed to all civilians and Israeli, Egyptian and Palestinian officials have been unable to agree on the terms to reopen it.

Aid workers and doctors have warned that the prolonged closure is endangering some of Gaza’s most defenseless, including children with severe burns, cancer patients and people needing heart surgery. More than 10,000 people need immediate medical treatment outside the enclave, according to the World Health Organization.

“The most vulnerable residents of Gaza — its children, sick, and elderly — are paying the highest price,” said Tania Hary, who directs Gisha, an Israeli human rights group that advocates freedom of movement for the more than two million Palestinians in Gaza.

The closure also severed a vital route for humanitarian aid into Gaza, and at least for a time, significantly reduced the quantities going in to a population already struggling with widespread hunger.

The Gaza side of the Rafah crossing had been administered by Hamas since the group took full control of the territory in 2007 and until Israel captured it in May. Egypt, which closely coordinates with Israel on security, often used the crossing to exert pressure on Hamas, including by enforcing a joint blockade of Gaza with Israel for 17 years.

To address the aid disruption after the crossing was shut down, Egypt agreed to divert some trucks ferrying food and medicine into the enclave via a different route, through Kerem Shalom, an Israeli-controlled gateway.

Ordinary Gazans are often forced to pay thousands of dollars to go-betweens to obtain permission to cross the border. Dual nationals, whose exit is arranged by their embassies in Cairo, and the critically ill, who leave in coordination with the Egyptian authorities, generally do not have to pay.

Israel controls all other routes out of Gaza.

The Kerem Shalom crossing connects Gaza only to Israel, but there is a separate border point with Egypt about 25 miles south, outside the Israeli village of Nitzana. Last month, Israel and Egypt allowed about 20 sick and wounded children from Gaza to leave through Kerem Shalom and enter Egypt at Nitzana to test the feasibility of that route.

But thousands more who desperately need treatment are still stuck in Gaza.

Muna Abu Holi, a college professor from central Gaza, said she survived explosions that killed one of her daughters and left two others with deep shrapnel wounds. The surviving daughters, Lama and Malak, need surgery and obtained permits to leave through Rafah on May 7. But they are still waiting to get out.

“We’re grasping for any possible hope,” Ms. Abu Holi said. “Every piece of news we hear, we cling to.”

The United States has pressured Egypt, Israel and the Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the West Bank and administered Gaza before the Hamas takeover in 2007, to reopen the Rafah crossing.

But Israeli, Egyptian and Palestinian officials cannot agree on how to do that.

Egypt demands a full Israeli withdrawal, according to Egyptian state media. Israel says it will not allow Hamas to control the crossing again, charging that it used Rafah to smuggle arms into Gaza.

In private, Israeli officials have sought to persuade the Palestinian Authority to send employees to informally run the crossing under Israeli security control, according to Palestinian officials and diplomats who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.

The Palestinian Authority rejected the idea, refusing to take over the border unless it was part of a broader push for full Palestinian sovereignty over Gaza — which Israel opposes. Israel similarly approached a mission of European Union border observers who were present at the crossing until 2007, but they refused to work there without the Palestinian Authority, diplomats said.

By late June, photos revealed that much of the Rafah crossing had been destroyed, another obstacle to any speedy reopening.

Israel’s government has mostly rebuffed taking responsibility for the sick and wounded Gazans. This week, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, shot down a proposal by his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, to build a field hospital for Gazan children along the border with the enclave.

Even before the war, the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza crippled the enclave’s health sector, forcing many to seek treatment in Israel or the West Bank. Basic equipment such as X-ray machines could take years to arrive, if at all, and the toll led some doctors to emigrate.

After the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack that triggered the war, Israel stopped allowing Gazans to enter for medical care. Gaza’s hospitals were overwhelmed by the mass deaths and wounded, as well as by tens of thousands seeking safety from the Israeli offensive.

Already underequipped doctors struggled to cope amid shortages of medicine and of fuel for hospital generators. And Israeli forces stormed some medical facilities that they said Hamas used for military purposes, including in tunnels underneath some hospitals. Hamas and Gaza health officials denied those claims.

In November, Egypt, in coordination with Israel, began allowing a handful of urgent cases, such as those of children with cancer, to leave through Rafah. Most of the evacuees were ferried to Egyptian hospitals; others were sent to Qatar, the United Arab Emirates or several European countries. A few were treated in the United States.

Early in the war, just 10 sick and wounded Gazans were permitted to leave daily, which expanded to roughly 50 by early May, before the crossing closed, said Dr. Shannon Barkley, a senior World Health Organization official for Gaza and the West Bank who is based in Jerusalem.

But demand has always outstripped those limits.

According to W.H.O. figures, Gaza officials have submitted at least 12,760 requests for people to leave for medical care since the war started. About 46 percent were approved, many after delays of weeks or months.

Both Israeli and Egyptian security agencies vet the lists of those who can leave, according to Dr. Barkley. They rarely approve requests to transfer sick or wounded men aged 19 to 60, according to the W.H.O.

“The medical need is enormous because the health system has been decimated,” Dr. Barkley said.

Mr. Ghanem, a former officer in the Palestinian Authority security forces, said he buried his wife in June without a proper funeral because there was an Israeli offensive in central Gaza. She, too, was a victim of the war, he said.

For one Gaza boy, even an unusual opportunity to circumvent the border closure came too late.

Nabil Kuheil, 5, was diagnosed with acute leukemia in mid-April, with the war in full swing, as his once well-to-do family was living in a camp for displaced Palestinians in Rafah.

“We were living in tents, flies descending in the daytime and mosquitoes at night,” said his mother, Aya Kuheil, 28. “Suddenly, he was covered in bruises that turned first red, then purple. His stomach swelled; they told me there was growth in his spleen and liver.”

On May 6, Nabil’s name appeared on a list of evacuees who could leave the following day alongside a note indicating that his case was urgent. But by the next morning, Israel had launched its offensive in Rafah and seized the crossing.

For weeks, the family waited.

In late May, Ms. Kuheil received surprising news: Israel had approved Nabil for treatment at Augusta Victoria, a Palestinian-run hospital in East Jerusalem — a rare occurrence during this war.

The next morning, feverish and quaking, he was taken in an ambulance to the Kerem Shalom crossing, said his mother, who accompanied him.

Israel never publicized his evacuation, possibly fearing backlash at home. Some Jewish Israelis, including members of the governing coalition, have voiced opposition to humanitarian aid for Gazans.

Nabil “was in severe pain, with a high fever, dirty and covered in blue discolorations,” said Dr. Khadra Salami, the pediatric oncologist who treated him in Jerusalem.

“It was clear that the leukemia had infiltrated all his organs,” she said.

Two days later, Nabil died from a drug-resistant infection he had picked up in Gaza. Dr. Salami said the three-week wait after the closure of Rafah probably cost him his life.

“Every day of the delay mattered,” she said.

They may have chosen a contemplative life of prayer, detached from world affairs, but last month a small community of Benedictine monks threw a very big bash for the opening of their new monastery on a hill overlooking the central Italian town of Norcia, where St. Benedict was born.

After a Mass and a seated dinner for 1,000 — about half of them Norcia residents — the monks officially settled in, eight years after a devastating earthquake upended a sizable part of Norcia and destroyed their previous space.

At the festivities, they served “Nursia,” their craft beer whose sales supported the restoration of the 16th-century capuchin monastery that the community had bought after returning to Norcia 25 years ago, following a two-century hiatus. The celebration was also a moment of hope for an area struggling to revive itself after the earthquake compounded years of depopulation.

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