The Israeli military said on Saturday that it had found a number of dead bodies during an operation in the Gaza Strip, asking the Israeli public to refrain from speculation about their identities.

The announcement was widely interpreted in Israel, however, as confirmation that more Israeli hostages had died in captivity, and it quickly amplified calls for an immediate cease-fire in order to free the roughly 100 captives still held, both dead and alive, in Gaza.

Roughly 250 people were captured by Hamas and its allies during their Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which started the war.

The military said in a statement on Saturday that the recently found bodies had yet to be identified and brought to Israel. It did not give further details about how many bodies had been found or where they were discovered, and it would not officially confirm that they were hostages.

Still, the news of the discovery accelerated an increasingly rancorous debate within Israeli society about whether Israel should soften its position during negotiations with Hamas for a cease-fire. Under the terms currently being negotiated, scores of hostages would be released from captivity in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians detained in Israel.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is holding out for a deal in which the country would be able to retain control of strategic parts of Gaza during the cease-fire and restart the war in the future.

That position has angered Israelis who want their leaders to swiftly agree to a deal in order to accelerate the hostages’ release. For months, the families and supporters of the hostages have said that the prolonged negotiations had made it more likely that their relatives would be killed in captivity.

Minutes after the military’s announcement, an umbrella group representing the families of the hostages said in a statement: “Netanyahu abandoned the hostages! This is now a fact.” The statement also called on the public to prepare for new demonstrations starting as soon as Sunday.

More than 100 hostages were freed in an earlier cease-fire in November, while eight have been rescued alive during Israeli rescue operations that have cost the lives of scores of Palestinians. The bodies of several others have also been found and repatriated by the Israeli military. Three were shot and killed in December, after waving a white flag, by Israeli soldiers.

But roughly 100 others are still held in Gaza, about two-thirds of whom are believed to be alive. Mr. Netanyahu’s critics say he is putting those surviving hostages at risk by dragging out the negotiations. Mr. Netanyahu and his allies say that a bad deal would endanger Israel’s long-term security.

President Biden on Saturday evening commented on the Israeli military’s discovery of the bodies in Gaza, but said he did not know the exact number, nor whether the dead were hostages.

There’s a lot of speculation about who they are,” Mr. Biden told reporters, adding that he was “not at liberty to do that at this moment.”

Eight U.S. citizens are among the captives in Gaza, and the United States has sought for months, with Egypt and Qatar, to broker a deal to halt the fighting and exchange hostages and detained Palestinians. Mr. Biden said he was optimistic about those talks, although diplomats have struggled in repeated rounds of talks to settle major disagreements between the parties.

Ronen Bergman and Aishvarya Kavi contributed reporting.

Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who had captured the public’s imagination since 2019 after he was spotted wearing a harness seemingly designed for a camera, was found dead on Saturday in Norway, according to a nonprofit that worked to protect the whale.

Sebastian Strand, the founder of the nonprofit, Marine Mind, said that he saw the dead whale floating near Risavika in southwestern Norway on Saturday afternoon.

Its cause of death was not immediately clear, he said. There were markings around the whale that could have been made by birds or other marine animals.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Mr. Strand said. “He’s touched thousands of people’s hearts just here in Norway.”

Mr. Strand added that he was working to send Hvaldimir to a facility where the carcass could be preserved long enough to try to determine a cause of death.

By some estimates, the whale was close to 14 feet long and about 2,700 pounds.

Hvaldimir, whose name is a combination of “hval,” the Norwegian word for whale, and the name Vladimir, was spotted in northern Norway in 2019, at first alarming fishermen.

Belugas tend to move in groups and typically inhabit remote Arctic areas. Adding to the intrigue around Hvaldimir, he was wearing a harness that identified it as “equipment” from St. Petersburg. There also appeared to be a camera mount.

Some wondered if the whale was on a Russian reconnaissance mission. Russia has never claimed ownership of the whale.

If Hvaldimir was a spy, he was an exceptionally friendly one.

The whale showed signs of domestication, and was comfortable around people. He remained in busier waters than are typical for belugas, prompting concerns from scientists, activists and experts.

“He was completely acclimatized to human culture,” Mr. Strand said, adding that it appeared Hvaldimir had “been in captivity for a lot of his life.”

Mr. Strand and his team worked to educate curious residents and tourists about the whale, to protect it as much as possible as it remained outside of its usual habitat.

Last year, Hvaldimir was seen off the coast of Sweden, a southward journey that took him farther away from food sources and on a path toward more industrial and dangerous harbors.

Mr. Strand said that he had been promoting safety measures for Hvaldimir, who had so far enjoyed a calm year, and had seemed to be in good health on Friday based on reports.

“I’m not sure what’s happened,” Mr. Strand said. “But we’ll find out.”

The giant Olympic rings that were installed on the Eiffel Tower for the 2024 summer Games will become a permanent fixture on the monument, the mayor of Paris revealed on Saturday.

Mayor Anne Hidalgo said that it was a “beautiful idea” to combine a quintessentially French icon, the Eiffel Tower, which was originally built for the 1889 World’s Fair, with a global one. The five interlaced rings of blue, red, yellow, black and green, which represent the different continents, were installed this summer between the tower’s first and second floors, more than 200 feet above the ground.

“I want the two to remain married,” Ms. Hidalgo said in an interview with Ouest-France, a newspaper.

The Eiffel Tower, already one of the most widely recognized monuments in the world, with about seven million visitors per year, has been a prominent symbol of this year’s Olympic Games, which ended earlier this month, and of the Paralympic Games, which will end on Sept. 8.

Medals won by athletes are encrusted with pieces of the famous landmark; Celine Dion made a triumphant comeback by singing from the tower during the opening ceremony; and the monument has become a stunning backdrop for beach volleyball and blind football.

Ms. Hidalgo said that she had written to President Emmanuel Macron of France to notify him, because the Eiffel Tower is “part of our national cultural heritage.”

“But as mayor of Paris, the decision is mine,” she said, adding that she had already secured the agreement of the International Olympic Committee. The city of Paris owns the Eiffel Tower and is a majority shareholder in the company that operates it.

Ms. Hidalgo said that the rings now installed on the monument — 95 feet wide and 43 feet tall — were too heavy to resist winter winds and remain permanently, and would be replaced “as soon as possible” by lighter rings made by ArcelorMittal, the global steel giant that made the current set.

“As long as we can keep these, let’s keep them; then we’ll put up others,” she said.

Ms. Hidalgo also said that the city needed to come up with a system to “mask” the rings when the Eiffel Tower is lit up on special occasions — like to support Ukraine in the war against Russia — because it could run afoul of the I.O.C.’s strict neutrality rules.

The I.O.C. could not immediately be reached for comment.

Ms. Hidalgo, who has been mayor of Paris since 2014, hopes to make Olympic-related achievements — like making the Seine clean enough to swim in — a key part of her legacy, and she said that she wanted the fervor and unity that were fostered by the Games to continue.

“Paris will never again be the same,” she told Ouest-France. Later, she added: “I want to keep this festive spirit alive!”

The fate of the Olympic cauldron, another widely popular landmark in Paris these past few weeks, is more uncertain. Ms. Hidalgo says she hopes to also keep the cauldron, which is lifted into the sky from the Tuileries Gardens every night by a gigantic golden balloon, as hundreds of onlookers ooh and aah.

But the site, next to the Louvre Museum, belongs to the French state, not the city of Paris, and some experts have expressed reservations about keeping the cauldron in an area that is governed by strict heritage rules.

“It’s up to the president to decide,” Ms. Hidalgo told Ouest-France. “But my opinion is that it should stay in the same place, because it’s an inseparable part of the Paris Games.”

As hundreds of Russian missiles and drones streaked across Ukraine on Monday, the Ukrainian fighter pilot known as Moonfish was exactly where he had said he always wanted to be: in the cockpit of an F-16 giving chase.

“The F-16 is a Swiss Army knife,” the pilot, Lt. Col. Oleksiy Mes, told reporters while training on the warplane last fall. “It’s a very good weapon that can carry out any mission.”

Colonel Mes helped lead Ukraine’s intense lobbying effort to secure the F-16 fighter jets, a half-dozen of which joined the fight against Russia earlier this month. And he was among the dozen or so pilots trained to fly the sophisticated warplane in combat.

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There was no castle, nor were there throngs of exuberant crowds to celebrate this royal wedding. Nonetheless, the nuptials on Saturday of a Norwegian princess and an American self-described shaman attracted public fascination at home and a Netflix deal abroad.

The royal involved — Princess Martha Louise, daughter of King Harald V and Queen Sonja of Norway — wed the American, Durek Verrett, after years of often mocking public scrutiny, largely because of Mr. Verrett’s alternative views on health and wellness. The ceremony, a private affair in the remote, picturesque Norwegian village of Geiranger, attracted a gaggle of reporters and a modest crowd of curious residents.

The couple sailed into Geiranger, nestled in the majestic Geirangerfjord, a world heritage site, on the royal yacht on Friday, along with members of the royal family, including King Harald and Queen Sonja, according to an official statement.

The celebrations on Saturday began with brunch, with the option of a spa treatment available for all guests, according to a copy of the program seen by The New York Times. The day’s schedule also included an afternoon tea, early evening cocktails and a gala dinner. At 10:50 p.m., “the party begins,” the program said, promising late night snacks at 1 a.m.

The ceremony itself was held in a marquee on a farm whose meadows overlook the fjords. The couple, stung by the years of critical news coverage, had tried — and failed — to keep the location a secret. The three-day event was privately financed, the royal family said, but that did not stop reporters from speculating about the cost of security arrangements for those attending.

During the couple’s two-year engagement, the media in Norway often made fun of Mr. Verrett’s beliefs in alternative healing — he was even lampooned in an episode of an animated television show. The negative coverage has not, however, deterred the couple from planning to share their wedding with the world.

Last week, Netflix announced that it was producing a documentary about the couple’s love story. The production, as yet untitled, was to be led by Rebecca Chaiklin, who was behind the pandemic-era streaming hit “Tiger King.” To make the show, a crew followed Princess Martha Louise and Mr. Verrett for more than a year as they prepared for their wedding.

The couple also sold their wedding pictures to the British tabloid Hello! in an exclusive deal that saw them pose in matching outfits to greet their guests and dance at a salsa party on Friday night. Apart from the financial rewards for the couple, the deals were also viewed as an attempt to shift the often negative portrayal of their relationship.

That might be a tall order. “I can’t imagine anything less interesting than that wedding,” Mads Hansen, a Norwegian television personality, told a local broadcaster. “The best thing for everyone would have been if no one mentioned it, and it quietly passed by. Ironically, I’m saying this in an interview, which contributes to a story that also adds to this coverage.”

On television and online, the wedding was the story of the day in Norway, despite the attempts to keep proceedings low key. The Norwegian public has become increasingly critical of the country’s monarchy, even if the 87-year-old King Harald remains popular.

A poll in August by the Norwegian public broadcaster NRK showed that 40 percent of respondents had an increasingly negative view of the royal family, with some pointing to the princess’ relationship with Mr. Verrett as one of the reasons. Princess Martha Louise is fourth in line to the throne.

The couple, who met in 2019, have leaned into a brand of alternative healing that has drawn criticism from some medical experts who deride it as pseudoscience, even as it has attracted tens of thousands of online devotees. Mr. Verrett, who says he is a sixth-generation shaman, counts as his clients the actresses Selma Blair and Nina Dobrev, and has described Gwyneth Paltrow as “family.”

Princess Martha Louise, who was previously married and has three daughters, has a long-documented interest in alternative treatments and celestial interactions, and has claimed an ability to communicate with angels and the dead. She once started a center where she encouraged her students to find their “inner source of truth,” and she has co-hosted a tour of healing workshops with Mr. Verrett called “The Princess and the Shaman.”

Two years ago, Princess Martha Louise stepped away from her official responsibilities as the bad press coverage mounted. She and Mr. Verrett were “seeking to distinguish more clearly between their activities and the Royal House of Norway,” the royal family said in a statement at the time.

Still, seeing the royal yacht glide down the fjord on Friday struck a chord with Oyvind Skodje, an engineer in his 30s who lives in a town near Geiranger.

“I think it says a lot about the king and queen,” Mr. Skodje said. “They are down-to-earth and inclusive, and supportive of their children, no matter what choices they make.

As Brazil grappled with a flood of online disinformation around its 2022 presidential election, the nation’s Supreme Court made an unusual and fateful decision: It gave one justice sweeping powers to order social networks to take down content he believed threatened democracy.

That justice, Alexandre de Moraes, has since carried out an aggressive campaign to clean up his country’s internet, forcing social networks to pull down thousands of posts, often giving them a deadline of just hours to comply.

It has been one of the most comprehensive — and, in some ways, most effective — efforts to combat the scourge of internet falsehoods. When his online crackdown helped stifle far-right efforts to overturn Brazil’s election, academics and commentators wondered whether the nation had found a possible solution to one of the most vexing problems of modern democracy.

Then, on Friday, Justice Moraes blocked the social network X across Brazil because its owner, Elon Musk, had ignored his court orders to remove accounts and then closed X’s office in Brazil. As part of the blackout order, the judge said internet users who tried to circumvent his measure in order to keep using X could be fined nearly $9,000 a day, or more than what the average Brazilian makes a year.

It was the judge’s boldest measure yet, and it left even many of his defenders worried that Brazil’s experiment had gone too far.

“I was someone who was very on his side,” said David Nemer, a Brazilian-born media professor who has studied his nation’s approach to disinformation at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.

“But when we saw the X decision, we were like: ‘What the hell? This is too much,’” he said, using an expletive. “It was a warning to all of us.”

Brazil’s yearslong fight against the internet’s destructive effect on politics, culminating in the current blackout of X, shows the pitfalls of a nation deciding what can be said online. Do too little and allow online chatter to undermine democracy; do too much and restrict citizens’ legitimate speech.

Other governments worldwide are likely to be watching as they debate whether to wade into the messy work of policing speech or leave it to increasingly powerful tech companies that rarely share a country’s political interests.

The United States had long largely stayed out of the debate, letting tech companies police themselves and one another. But this year it changed course, passing a law to ban TikTok unless it was sold to a government-approved buyer because of concerns over its parent company’s ties to China. TikTok has sued to challenge the law as unconstitutional.

The European Union approved sweeping legislation in 2022 requiring social networks to adhere to specific rules about what can be posted on their sites. And only days ago, France charged Pavel Durov, the Russian-born entrepreneur who founded the messaging service Telegram, with a wide range of crimes for failing to prevent illicit activity on the app.

But few democratic governments have taken as drastic a step as Brazil’s suspension of X and its threat of fines against people who keep using it.

Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, called the move “absurd and dangerous.”

“The thing that is really disturbing is that increasingly, undemocratic governments can point to democratic ones to justify their actions,” he said. “Where there are narrower ways of addressing privacy concerns or misinformation concerns, governments should use those narrower means.”

Carlos Affonso Souza, a Brazilian internet-law professor, called the order “the most extreme judicial decision out of a Brazilian court in 30 years of internet law.” Yet he added that Brazil had to take some action after Mr. Musk so publicly and explicitly flouted multiple court orders.

“It’s not up to a company to decide if a judicial decision is adequate or not,” Mr. Souza said. “The company must file a complaint in a lawsuit, not just decide to not comply.”

Fábio de Sá e Silva, a professor of Brazilian studies at the University of Oklahoma, said the order was a powerful rebuke of multinational tech companies that sometimes view themselves as above the laws of nations, especially poorer ones.

“The world looks at Brazil now and sees something is being done there to push back,” Mr. de Sá e Silva said. “It might encourage some other countries to do the same.”

Yet there were signs that even Justice Moraes believed he had gone too far. At first on Friday, he ordered Apple and Google to prevent downloads of apps that offer virtual private networks, or VPNs, software that can cause a user’s internet traffic to appear as though it were coming from another country. VPNs are commonly used for privacy and cybersecurity, but can also be used to evade blockades against certain websites or apps.

The measure against VPN apps prompted a swift backlash across Brazil, and three hours later, Justice Moraes amended the order to drop his demand to Apple and Google.

But Justice Moraes retained the threat of fining anyone who continued to use X in Brazil via VPN. That move “is absolutely authoritarian, and there is no explicit legal provision that allows for it,” said Thiago Amparo, a prominent Brazilian lawyer and newspaper columnist who has supported Justice Moraes.

The head of Brazil’s national bar association said on Friday that the organization would ask Brazil’s Supreme Court to review the measure about fines.

Justice Moraes’s support in Brazil has faded as the nation has moved past the acute tensions of the 2022 election. At the time, then-President Jair Bolsonaro was using social media to sow doubts about the integrity of Brazil’s voting systems, despite a lack of evidence, and Justice Moraes was ordering social networks to remove some of his posts.

After Mr. Bolsonaro lost the election, thousands of his supporters blocked highways, camped outside army bases and eventually stormed Brazil’s Congress and Supreme Court in a bid to provoke a military takeover. Justice Moraes responded by ordering social networks to block dozens of prominent accounts that questioned the vote or sympathized with the attempted insurrection, including some belonging to federal lawmakers.

But since then, as the political temperature has cooled, Justice Moraes has kept issuing court orders to social networks to remove accounts. The orders are both secret and lack explanations on how a certain account had broken the law, according to leaked copies of orders.

“Moraes’ actions were very much legitimized by the need to protect the Constitution,” said Mariana Valente, a lawyer and director of Brazil’s InternetLab, a think tank. “But obviously there’s concern that this is continuing.”

She said Brazil’s full Supreme Court should rule soon on Justice Moraes’s order to block X. “That is essential to create legitimacy for a decision that’s very extreme,” she said.

Justice Moraes has continued to use the threat to democracy as a justification for his actions. In his order on Friday, he said Mr. Musk’s refusal to comply with orders to suspend accounts “represents an extremely serious risk to the municipal elections in October” in Brazil.

Justice Moraes has “set up a state of exception,” Mr. Nemer said. “But it’s a permanent state of exception, and that’s not good for any sort of democracy.”

While Israel’s devastating war with Hamas in Gaza attracts the most attention, its military has also been fighting for months on several other fronts, making this one of the most complex periods of conflict in the country’s 76-year history.

In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the military has been raiding and striking militant groups in several Palestinian cities, killing about 600 people since October, in the deadliest campaign in the territory for more than two decades. On Wednesday, Israel began one of its biggest maneuvers in the territory in recent months, simultaneously invading three cities to capture or kill militants.

Along the Israel-Lebanon border, Israel has been exchanging rocket and missile fire with Hezbollah, a militia allied with Hamas and backed by Iran, in fighting that has displaced hundreds of thousands of people on both sides of the border and killed hundreds.

And Israel’s yearslong shadow war with Iran has burst into the open, with each side striking the other directly in April, leading to fears that a relatively contained war in Gaza might end up setting off an all-out war involving Iran, its many proxies across the Middle East and even the United States.

Why are various groups fighting Israel, why is it using force to deal with them, and why is it taking so long for these wars to end?

Why Israel is still fighting in Gaza.

Despite the destruction of much of Hamas’s military infrastructure and tens of thousands of deaths, there is no end in sight to the war in Gaza, partly because Israel has set itself a high threshold for victory: the eradication of the Hamas leadership and the rescue of roughly 100 hostages still held by the group. By contrast, Hamas has a low threshold: It seeks to survive the war intact, a modest goal that allows it to weather a level of devastation that might have caused other groups to surrender.

Hamas’s extensive subterranean tunnel network also makes it hard for Israel to win. Some of the group’s leaders are thought to be deep beneath the ground, surrounded in some cases by Israeli hostages, making it challenging for Israel to find the leaders, let alone attack them without harming its own kidnapped citizens.

Israel’s tactics also make winning more difficult. Its military has swiftly retreated from most of the areas that it has conquered, allowing — in some cases — for Hamas to regroup there and preventing the war from ending in the way that most wars do, with one side capturing the other’s territory.

A cease-fire has also proved elusive, in large part because Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, wants only a temporary truce, while Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader, seeks a complete halt.

Why Israel is raiding West Bank cities.

While Israeli soldiers withdrew from Gaza in 2005, the army retained a wide presence across the West Bank, partly to protect roughly 500,000 Israelis living in settlements that are considered illegal by most of the world.

The Israeli military regularly raids and strikes Palestinian cities in the West Bank to quell armed Palestinian groups, including Hamas, that mount terrorist attacks on Israelis in those settlements and in Israel itself.

Many militant groups oppose Israel’s existence. They have become more active in recent years as Israel’s occupation has grown more entrenched, all but ending the dream of Palestinian statehood and increasing Palestinian resentment of Israelis. Rising violence by settler extremists against Palestinian civilians, coupled with a sense of growing impunity for those extremists and the expansion of their settlements, have also been cited by Palestinian groups to justify their militancy.

Since the war in Gaza began, Israel has increased its attacks on these armed groups, saying they became even more active amid a rise in arms smuggled from Iran. Israel also says that the Palestinian Authority, the institution that administers Palestinian cities in the West Bank, has become too weak to rein in the groups by itself.

It is unclear how effective the Israeli raids have been, as observers dispute the extent to which they are restricting or encouraging Palestinian militancy.

The Israeli military says its campaign has killed several key militant commanders and thwarted many attacks on Israeli civilians. Yet the militants appear to be honing their techniques: This past month, a Palestinian from the West Bank set off a bomb in Tel Aviv. It was the first incident of its kind in years, and was cited by the Israeli military as an example of why it needed to mount the extensive operation on Wednesday.

Why Israel is striking Lebanon.

Hezbollah, a Hamas-allied militia that controls large parts of southern Lebanon, began firing at Israel in solidarity with Hamas shortly after the Oct. 7 attack.

Ever since, Israel and Hezbollah have been exchanging rocket and missile fire across the Israel-Lebanon border, while trying to avoid an all-out ground war that would most likely devastate both countries. Israel’s fighter jets could cripple Beirut, the Lebanese capital, while Hezbollah has thousands of precision-guided missiles that could wreck Israeli cities.

Israel has said it won’t stop targeting Hezbollah assets and operatives until it is safe for the residents of northern Israel, some 60,000 of whom have been displaced by the fighting, to return home. But that is a distant prospect because, in turn, Hezbollah has pledged to carry on firing until the implementation of a lasting cease-fire in Gaza.

With no end in sight in Gaza, the Lebanon battle looks set to drag on, raising the chances of a miscalculation by either side that could cause the conflict to spiral out of control. A Lebanese strike on schoolchildren in July led Israel to kill a top Hezbollah commander in Beirut, leading analysts to predict a major escalation until both sides managed to step back from the brink last Sunday.

Why Israel is fighting with Iran.

For decades, Iran’s leaders have said they sought Israel’s destruction. Both countries have clandestinely attacked each other’s interests and both have built competing regional alliances to deter each other. Israel views Iran’s efforts to build a nuclear weapon as an existential threat and has frequently attempted to sabotage the program.

Until the war in Gaza, both sides tried to maintain plausible deniability for their attacks, mainly to avoid a direct confrontation that could escalate into all-out war. Israel had never claimed responsibility for its assassination of Iranian officials. Iran avoided major public provocations of its own, while encouraging proxies like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen, as well as Palestinian groups in the West Bank, to attack Israel.

The intensity and length of the conflict in Gaza has tempted both sides to be more brazen, bringing their shadow war into the open. In April, Israel struck an Iranian diplomatic compound in Syria, killing several senior Iranian commanders.

Iran responded by firing one of the biggest barrages of cruise and ballistic missiles in military history in the first direct hit on Israel from Iran, raising the specter of a full-on war, but ultimately causing little damage. And when Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, visited Iran in July, Israel took a risk by killing him on Iranian soil, leading Iran to promise another direct strike on Israel.

How Israel explains its use of force.

Israel says it has been left with no choice but to defend itself against an Iran-led regional alliance that aims not only to end Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians, but to destroy Israel itself. Israeli officials highlight how Hamas and Hezbollah attacked Israel first, forcing Israel to respond, and they say that Iran’s support for Hamas and Hezbollah makes it necessary for Israel to attack Iran and its assets.

Many Israelis have also lost hope of using diplomacy to resolve their conflict with the Palestinians. In mainstream Israeli discourse, Israel is perceived as having made many concessions to the Palestinians during a failed peace process three decades ago, only for its best offers to be rejected by the Palestinian leadership.

Israelis often cite their withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 as an example of how Israeli good will fell flat: Hamas won legislative elections in 2006, wrested control of Gaza from Fatah, a rival group, a year later and used Gaza as a platform for attacks on Israel that culminated in the Oct. 7 raid, the deadliest day in Israel’s history. As a result, they see force as the only logical deterrent to groups like Hamas that ultimately seek Israel’s destruction rather than sincere coexistence.

Many Israelis yearn to be accepted within the Middle East without using force, and they see nascent economic and diplomatic ties with a growing number of Arab states as a step toward that goal. For now, though, their historical experience is that force often “works.”

More than diplomacy, it was force that helped the fledgling state survive the wars surrounding its creation in 1948. It was Israel’s strong military that allowed it to overcome three enemy states in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967. And it was the same military that staved off a surprise Syrian and Egyptian attack in 1973, and helped Israel overcome a wave of suicide bombings in the 2000s.

Some Israelis even think their government is showing too much restraint, and should be striking back even more forcefully against Hezbollah and Iran.

How critics perceive Israel’s use of force.

In Gaza, opponents say that Israel displays too little concern for civilian life, accusing it of mounting a genocide, a charge Israel denies. In Lebanon, Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East, Israel’s critics say it has been too provocative in its choice of targets and too reluctant to let diplomacy take its course. For example, some saw Israel’s recent strikes on Mr. Haniyeh and Fuad Shukr, a top Hezbollah commander, as irresponsible interventions that crossed too many red lines and risked turning a relatively contained war with Iran and its proxies into an uncontrolled disaster.

More broadly, Israel is also accused of having brought its predicament on itself by failing to agree to a peace deal with the Palestinians two decades ago.

Critics say that Israel conceded too little in the negotiations. They highlight how the young Palestinian militants who attack Israelis in the West Bank have often spent their whole lives under an occupation that has grown more expansive under the current far-right Israeli government, amid growing attacks by settler extremists and stifling restrictions on Palestinian movement within the territory.

Israel’s opponents also see the Oct. 7 attack in the context of Israel’s enforcement, along with Egypt, of a 17-year blockade on Gaza that prevented many Gazans from traveling abroad, stifled the territory’s economy and blocked access to everyday services like 3G internet and some kinds of complex health care.

Residents of Tulkarm in the Israeli-occupied West Bank assessed the damage on Saturday from a raid by Israeli forces that has chewed up roads, brought sudden bouts of violence and left many Palestinians reeling. Israel’s military pressed on elsewhere in the territory amid signs that fighting with Palestinian militant groups could spread.

Hundreds of Israeli soldiers swept into cities in the northern West Bank this week with columns of armored vehicles and bulldozers, clashing with militants and leaving many people trapped in their homes without running water or internet. One family said that a relative with mental illness was shot dead during the raid, his body left untended for hours during the violence.

In the Nur Shams neighborhood — a focus of the raid — workers and residents cleared away dirt and rubble churned up by Israeli bulldozers searching for improvised explosive devices.

“Cars can’t move through the streets, everyone is making their way on foot, because the dirt is piled up in huge mounds,” said Suleiman Zuhairi, a resident of Nur Shams and a retired official in the Palestinian Authority.

Israeli troops largely pulled back from Tulkarm on Friday, and were continuing their operation in the flashpoint city of Jenin in the northern West Bank, while two episodes farther south prompted fears that the violence was worsening.

At least 22 Palestinians have been killed since the raid started on Wednesday, according to the Palestinian Authority’s Health Ministry, many of whom militant groups have claimed to be members. Israel says that at last 20 militants have been killed.

Late on Friday night, a Palestinian attacker was killed and three Israeli soldiers wounded after a car rigged with an explosive device blew up near a major junction between Jerusalem and Hebron, according to the Israeli authorities. The Israeli military said that another assailant was killed while trying to attack the settlement of Karmei Tzur.

Since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks left about 1,200 dead in Israel, setting off the war in Gaza, Israel has feared a similar attack from the West Bank, where roughly three million Palestinians live under Israeli military occupation. The Israeli military has stepped up raids there in an attempt to head off the threat; more than 600 Palestinians have been killed in West Bank clashes with Israeli forces and civilians since October, according to the United Nations.

The current Israeli raids have targeted Palestinian militants in Jenin and Tulkarm, who the Israeli military says have attempted more than 150 attacks on Israelis over the past year. Earlier this month, Hamas and Islamic Jihad — two major Palestinian armed groups — took responsibility for an attempted bombing in Tel Aviv that moderately injured one passerby and killed the assailant.

The Israeli operation in Tulkarm focused on Nur Shams, which lies on the outskirts of the city. Historically a refugee camp for Palestinians following the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s establishment, it is now a built-up neighborhood and a Palestinian militant stronghold.

Israeli forces have swept through it multiple times since Oct. 7, often for hours on end, tearing up roads and damaging buildings. Israeli drones launched attacks from the air — once rare in the West Bank but now common — targeting militants in cars and houses.

On Friday, one family marched through the area’s streets bearing the body of Ayed Abu al-Heija, an older relative killed during the raid. He lived alone, did not work and suffered from mental illness that left him unable to care for himself without help, his family said.

Haitham Abu al-Heija, a 53-year-old nephew, said he heard a gunshot ring out Wednesday as he huddled in his house, fearing he might be caught in the crossfire. He later peered gingerly out of a window and saw his uncle lying dead, the door of his house ajar, he said.

“He couldn’t understand the danger,” he said in a phone interview.

The following day, Israeli troops raided his own house, forcing him and his family outside, he said. The rattle of gunfire and intermittent explosions terrified his children, he said, as they waited, exposed, for roughly an hour in the open.

Surrounded by soldiers, he turned to see his uncle’s body still lying in the doorway, he said. When the soldiers let them go back inside, they found a massive blast hole in one of the rooms.

“May no one ever have to go through what we did these last few days,” he said.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Ayed Abu al-Heija’s death or his family’s account of the raid on their house. Israeli military officials have said that when they raid people’s homes, they are searching for suspects, weapons or other military functions.

Mustafa Taqatqa, the Palestinian governor in Tulkarm, said the operations undermined efforts by the Palestinian Authority, which administers some West Bank areas under Israeli occupation. The raids also strengthened armed groups who argue Palestinians’ lives will only improve through violence, he added.

“The young generation is seeing their future closed in every direction,” said Mr. Taqatqa. “And so they no longer believe in peace.”

During the raid, Israeli forces successfully killed Muhammad Jaber, a militant commander in Palestinian Islamic Jihad, who had successfully evaded both Israel and the Palestinian Authority’s attempts to seize him for months. The Israeli military said he was responsible for “numerous terror attacks.”

Mr. Jaber had become a local hero for many in Nur Shams, where residents viewed him as striking a blow against the miserable status quo. On Friday, the commander’s relatives held a symbolic funeral for him, although his body is still held by Israel.

“He didn’t accept the humiliation,” said Nayez Zendiq, one of his cousins, referring to Israeli rule.

But Mr. Zuhairi, the former official, said that Palestinians living in the camp had inflated Mr. Jaber into an “icon of struggle,” giving him a reputation that exaggerated his actual activities.

For more than two decades it has been standard practice in Russia: New conscripts doing mandatory military service have not been deployed on the front lines. It is codified in law and embraced by all parents hoping to keep their sons from the carnage of war.

But Ukraine’s lightning incursion into the southwestern Russia region of Kursk has upended that compact.

When Ukrainian troops poured into Russia on Aug. 6, Moscow was caught unawares. Suddenly, the war had come to the conscripts, who were manning lightly guarded positions near the border.

Hundreds of conscripts were captured, while scores are missing and potentially dead.

Military deployment has been a sensitive issue for President Vladimir V. Putin. Moscow’s decision to thrust young, untrained soldiers onto the battlefields of Afghanistan and Chechnya helped to cement domestic opposition that compelled the Kremlin to end those conflicts.

So during the chaotic early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, when it was discovered that several hundred newly drafted soldiers were in units that crossed the border, the president ordered military commanders to send them home.

“Only professional military personnel will carry out the assigned tasks,” Mr. Putin said on national television at the time.

When Ukraine crossed into Kursk, however, the Russian military did not withdraw the conscripts, and indeed some newly minted soldiers from distant regions reported to their families that they were being dispatched to Kursk as reinforcements, according to online posts from parents and independent Russian news reports.

Russian men between 18 and 30 must perform one year of mandatory military service, but under law, they should not be deployed in combat without adequate training, and they cannot be dispatched outside Russia. Although the law sets four months as the minimum training period, the broad public understanding is that conscripts will be kept off the front lines.

Russian women are not subject to conscription, and although they can volunteer, the acceptance level often depends on recruitment needs. Much of the military is a volunteer force, with many soldiers lured from Russian penal colonies and by relatively generous pay.

The unexpected peril for conscripts in Kursk has set off a pitched battle online between proponents of the war, who accuse parents of mollycoddling their sons, and parents distressed that a longstanding tradition has been broken.

One senior Russian special forces commander recorded a screed admonishing parents to stop “sobbing” about their sons having to fight.

If young conscripts do not defend their homeland, Apti Alaudinov, the commander of the Chechen Akhmat special forces, said in a video posted on Telegram, “I have one question for you: What use are you and your children to this country?”

Parents and others were quick to express outrage, criticizing what they said was a lack of proper training, poor equipment and the small number of offspring of the elite who are serving, among other issues.

“Before sending conscripts to combat conditions, teach them how to use guns and provide them with modern means of warfare,” wrote one woman identifying herself as Elena, in a typical comment. “They should not defend the borders of the Motherland with bare hands.”

Russia would require about 30,000 to 40,000 men to expel the Ukrainians from Kursk, military analysts say. The fact that it has been slow to deploy a force of that size is a sign that it lacks the necessary reserves, they said.

The Kremlin has said it is recruiting 30,000 soldiers a month, a number that is likely hugely inflated, the analysts said. Whatever the recruitment numbers, the lack of reserves to deploy in Kursk could indicate that so many troops have been killed or wounded that there is no elasticity in the system, they said.

“Russia faces a lack of manpower,” said Pavel Luzin, a Russian military analyst, questioning the claim by Mr. Putin that the country had deployed almost 700,000 soldiers in eastern Ukraine. “These troops do not exist. That’s why Russia needs to use conscripts.”

Another reason that Russia has not sent more experienced soldiers to Kursk might be its determination to maintain momentum in eastern Ukraine, where it has been advancing with withering assaults. For Mr. Putin, the reward of capturing key territory there might be worth the risk of having families protest the use of conscripts.

The use of conscripts in combat has been considered a third rail in Russian politics, linked to concerns that it would foment a national antiwar movement.

In Soviet times, Russia kept a conscript army of several million men. The families of those dispatched to Afghanistan were told that the soldiers were building schools and planting trees. If they returned in a zinc coffin, the families were ordered not to open it, while the cause of death was usually listed as “fulfilling their international duty.”

In the 1980s, after Mikhail Gorbachev eased the limitations on dissent, protests began to erupt around the country, and he decided to withdraw from Afghanistan. The toll from the decade was 15,000 men killed, far lower than the carnage in Ukraine. Mediazona, an independent Russian news outlet, has documented the deaths of more than 66,000 Russians in Ukraine, acknowledging that its analysis most likely accounts for only about half of the actual death toll.

The Chechen wars, starting in the mid-1990s, spawned some street protests. Untrained conscripts were thrown into bloody urban fighting for which they were completely unprepared, according to reports in the then-independent Russian news media, prompting some parents to travel to Chechnya despite the danger to haul them bodily off the front lines.

Intense pressure from groups like the Union of Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers of Russia not only forced an end to the war, but also pushed the Kremlin to rewrite the rules so as to keep conscripts out of combat.

“The conscript issue is one of those hot-button topics for Putin personally because of Chechnya,” said Dara Massicot, an expert on Russian defense and security issues at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. The Russian leader has been “remarkably consistent” in avoiding using conscripts, she noted, adding that deploying ill-trained conscripts adds considerable political risk with limited military gain.

After the Kursk incursion, more than 12,000 people signed a petition against the use of conscripts, but there have been no reports of street protests.

In general, Russians show far less concern for the fate of former convicts or contract soldiers who are paid around $2,000 a month to fight in Ukraine versus conscripts, who have no choice but to serve and earn about $25 per month, said military analysts.

About 300,000 young men are called up annually, half in the spring and half in the fall.

In addition, the draconian jail sentences meted out to critics of the Ukraine conflict have largely neutered parent groups.

Dozens of mothers who raised questions in online forums about the use of conscripts declined to answer any questions for this article. One who did, a woman named Elmira, said her son, 22, a former medical student, was drafted last December. He belonged in the barracks, not in the trenches, she said in an interview, but would do his “duty” without complaint.

Conscript numbers from Kursk are largely opaque. Russia has not released any. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine’s top military commander, said Tuesday that Ukraine had captured nearly 600 troops in the region. That number could not be independently verified, and it is unclear how many are conscripts.

Last Saturday, Ukraine traded 115 Russian conscripts, some captured in Kursk, for 115 Ukrainian conscripts, according to officials in both countries.

Statements by Mr. Alaudinov, the special forces commander, and Russian military bloggers are a key indication that the Kremlin’s attitude toward using young conscripts in combat may be shifting.

One prominent military blogger, Anastasia Kashevarova, even blamed the conscripts themselves for their fate in Kursk. Those captured looked so relaxed, clean and well-dressed in pictures released by Ukraine that they were probably drunk when the Ukrainians invaded and surrendered without a fight, she wrote.

Few would make such blunt statements if they thought the Kremlin would punish them, analysts said.

Many who endorse using conscripts play to the macho sensibility prevalent in Russian society.

“Let a soldier be a soldier,” wrote one military blogger, while another with tens of thousands of followers on Telegram wrote that “a conscript is not a child.”

Comments written under those remarks indicated that some Russians endorsed that attitude. Mothers should not “make skirt-wearers out of their sons,” wrote one.

The most common reaction, however, was that the Russian state has provided insufficient training, weapons, food or clothing to new soldiers, and hence they should not be shoved into combat. One mother of a conscript mocked the idea that conscripts had been trained: “What can they do against professionals and hired killers? Nothing.”

Andrew E. Kramer contributed reporting.