Despite a U.S. deadline to allow more aid into Gaza, Israel was still letting significantly less food and supplies into the territory than in the months before the warning, according to official Israeli figures.

In an Oct. 13 letter signed by Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, the Biden administration gave Israel 30 days to increase the flow of aid or face a possible cutoff in military assistance. It warned that aid shipments into Gaza in September had reached their lowest level at any time since the early months of the war.

More trucks began to enter Gaza in the past several weeks, and in the days before the American deadline, Israel announced a handful of policy changes. But the total amount of aid and commercial goods into Gaza since Oct. 13 has been substantially lower than what the Biden administration had demanded, and far lower than it was even in September.

Despite that, the Biden administration said on Tuesday it did not plan to follow through on its threat to cut military assistance after the deadline expired.

Vedant Patel, a State Department spokesman, said on Tuesday that Israel had instituted important changes but that “there needs to be more progress.” He added that the administration had not assessed Israel to be in violation of U.S. law.

The sharp decline in the entry of food, medical supplies and other necessities coincided with an Israeli decision in early October to block commerce into the territory, arguing that Hamas was profiting off the trade. Israel recently launched a major offensive against Hamas in North Gaza that has driven tens of thousands from their homes.

Israeli officials say they do not restrict the amount of humanitarian aid that can enter Gaza and argue that aid agencies should be doing more. But the Israeli decision to bar commercial goods was a blow.

According to data made publicly available by the Israeli military, the amount of what it calls “humanitarian goods” entering Gaza — including donated aid and commercial goods sold in markets — fell to 52,000 metric tons from Oct. 1 through Nov. 10 from about 87,000 metric tons in the month of September.

“Things were looking much better,” said Muhannad Hadi, a top United Nations relief official in Jerusalem. “But now, suddenly, everything has collapsed.”

A United Nations-backed panel warned last week that famine was imminent in the northern Gaza Strip, saying that 13 months of war had created “an imminent and substantial likelihood of famine” because of the “rapidly deteriorating situation in the Gaza Strip.” Israel has criticized that report as based on “partial, biased data and superficial sources.”

Before Israel’s latest offensive in the north, Gazans across the enclave had begun to see nearly forgotten luxuries like fresh fruit and frozen chicken appear in local markets, albeit at inflated prices, mostly imported by businessmen in Israel and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Ayed Abu Ramadan, who leads the Gaza Chamber of Commerce, recalled that a pound of apples could cost as little as $1.60 in late September. But when Israel halted the flow of commercial goods, the markets quickly emptied.

“Now, almost nothing is left,” he said. “And anything that remains is mind-bogglingly expensive.”

Israel has not offered a public explanation for the ban on commercial goods. But an Israeli official, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity to comply with Israeli policy, said the authorities banned trade with Gaza because Hamas had been making money by extorting Palestinian importers. Hamas has denied those claims in the past.

Israel has decimated Hamas’s rule in Gaza, but Israel’s soldiers do not enforce law and order. As the price of goods has skyrocketed, so has the profit to be made by pillaging aid convoys, with trucks that ferry valuable commodities emerging as a key target for organized gangs, according to Israeli officials, aid organizations and Gazan civilians and businessmen.

Israeli forces sometimes target Hamas militants seeking to divert aid, but they do not conduct military operations against criminal gangs, the Israeli official said.

Izzat Aqel, a Gazan businessman with a trucking company, said his drivers were increasingly unwilling to work the perilous routes. This month, one of his convoys in southern Gaza was attacked by armed men who shot out the wheels of the vehicles, forcing them to grind to a halt, before stripping them of their aid, he said.

With no way forward, what little aid has entered the Gaza Strip is often stuck at crossings into the enclave.

Aid officials and many donor governments, among them the United States, have blamed Israel for putting up obstacles to providing aid, including by blocking essential items and imposing a byzantine assortment of security restrictions at nearly every stage of the process. Delays have also come from Egypt, where some of the aid is collected before being sent on to Gaza.

In a statement last month, the Israeli military said it “does not restrict the entry of civilian supplies” into Gaza, but requires permits for items that it considers “dual use,” civilian products and supplies that it says can also be used for military purposes, “given Hamas’s deliberate diversion of such goods from civilian to military applications.”

In its Oct. 13 letter, the Biden administration asked Israel to take 16 concrete steps in Gaza, including enabling the entry of at least 350 aid trucks per day. It also called for Israel to remove restrictions, including rules about what kinds of trucks can be used to deliver aid and what items are considered dual use; and to ensure that humanitarian groups have “continuous access” to northern Gaza.

Mr. Blinken and Mr. Austin wrote that Israel had managed to facilitate the vaccination of more than 560,000 children in Gaza against polio. Israeli had “recently demonstrated,” it said, “what is possible and necessary to ensure” civilians receive assistance.

Israel had fulfilled some of the American demands, including opening a new border crossing at Kissufim, in central Gaza, on Tuesday for the first time since 2005. It also expanded an Israeli-designated humanitarian zone in central Gaza, another U.S. stipulation meant to allow displaced Gazans sheltering there to move farther inland ahead of the rainy winter.

Israel has also admitted some convoys into northern Gaza, including what the military agency overseeing the aid effort said was hundreds of food and water packages on Tuesday.

But Israel’s military still tightly restricts access to northern Gaza, citing the continuing fighting. The Israeli official also said that Israel would not immediately comply with other requests, such as easing restrictions on what trucks can be used, citing security reasons. According to Israeli military data, 1,789 trucks were let into Gaza in October and 961 in the first 10 days of November.

“Continuous access” to the north has not been permitted, and the areas most affected by the fighting have been off-limits to aid workers for weeks, Louise Wateridge, a spokeswoman for the main U.N. agency that assists Palestinians, UNRWA, said last week.

According to an internal U.N. report compiled last week, meat, fish and fruit are now largely unavailable in Gaza. The vegetables available were on sale for extremely high prices: The price of cucumbers has risen 650 percent since the start of the war, the price of tomatoes by 2,900 percent and the price of onions by 4,900 percent.

In interviews, Gazans said they struggled with a lack of goods, but also with the runaway inflation, for which they blamed unscrupulous businessmen and armed gangs.

“We are sitting here day after day just waiting on those trucks,” said Taghreed al-Barawi, 31, who lives in the southern city of Khan Younis. “People say they are on their way.”

Bilal Shbair contributed reporting from Deir al Balah in Gaza, and Lauren Leatherby from London.

Technology company executives could be held personally liable for allowing illegal knives to be advertised on their platforms, under new British government plans to combat a recent rise in crime with weapons, some of which are readily available online.

Under the proposals, the police could gain the power to issue notices to bosses of digital firms ordering them to remove content, possibly within just two days. Those who fail to comply could face significant fines.

Holding social media executives personally liable for content from an advertiser or seller would represent a shift in regulation of the internet. Company leaders have largely been shielded from responsibility for the words, picture, videos and other content hosted on their platforms.

While the plans are still some way from becoming law, the initiative is part of a government commitment to fight growing cases of knife crime.

Although such crimes are below prepandemic levels, they increased 4 percent in the 12 months before March 2024 in England and Wales, with a much larger rise of 13 percent in robberies involving knives. There were 225 homicides in England and Wales in the 12 months to June 2024, according to one charity.

Earlier this year and before he became Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer gave his personal commitment to the families of victims of knife crime, meeting with several of them, including Pooja Kanda, whose son, Ronan, 16, was murdered in 2022 with a weapon bought online.

In a statement she said she was “very relieved that today the government have kept their promise to proactively ban the ninja sword that killed my son and protect others from having the same fate.”

Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, said that “the epidemic of knife crime that has grown over the last decade is devastating families and communities right across the country,” adding that she wanted to halve knife crime over the next decade.

As a first step the British government will consult on its proposals before likely embarking on a legislative process. Knife crime in Britain is concentrated in big cities and with 30 percent of all offenses recorded by London’s Metropolitan Police Service and 10 percent by the West Midlands Police, whose region includes the cities of Birmingham and Coventry.

In September the government added to the list of prohibited weapons machetes and “zombie knives” — weapons which are over eight inches in length and often have a serrated edge, spikes or more than two sharp points.

Britain’s proposal is part of a wider global trend of governments ramping up pressure on social media companies. In France, Telegram founder Pavel Durov was arrested in August on charges including complicity in criminal activity that occurred on his platform.

In Brazil, X was blocked for over a month, starting in late August, when the company refused to remove certain content. In Australia, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese last week proposed a ban on social media for people under 16 years old.

The proposal comes at a time of intense global debate about regulation of the internet and free expression. Many policymakers, particularly those in Europe, want companies like X, Meta, Google and TikTok to police their platforms more aggressively.

But in the United States, President-elect Donald J. Trump and his supporters like Elon Musk, the owner of X, have said such rules often target conservative voices and undercut free speech.

Russia ramped up its deep strikes into Ukraine on Wednesday with a volley of missiles aimed at Kyiv and a northeastern border area, ending a more than two-month pause in such attacks on the capital, the Ukrainian air force said.

The missile bombardment came as Russian forces sought to press their advantage in both soldiers and firepower across the eastern front. Ukraine’s military on Wednesday reported a wave of aerial bombing targeting its troops holding a pocket of Russian territory near the northern border that was captured last summer.

As air raid alerts wailed in Kyiv around 6 a.m. and civilians headed for hallways or basements for safety, the Ukrainian air force said it was tracking 96 aerial targets entering the country’s airspace. That included missiles, ending an unusual 73-day pause in Russia’s use of missiles to strike civilian and military targets in the capital.

The air force said four missiles were aimed at Kyiv and two were short-range missiles fired into the northeastern border area.

The city has in that period come under numerous drone attacks. Scores of drones were also used in the attack on Wednesday, the air force said.

Across Ukraine, the past few months have also seen a longer than usual break from large-scale missile attacks. The last major missile attack came on Sept. 3, with a strike on a military academy in the eastern Ukrainian city of Poltava that killed more than 50 people.

Military analysts had speculated that Russia was stockpiling missiles for use after the onset of freezing weather, which can wreak additional havoc in a city after a strike if heating is knocked out and water pipes freeze. The season’s first snowstorm swept over central Ukraine on Wednesday.

Explosions rang out in Kyiv early Wednesday and the authorities said air defense systems were firing at incoming missiles and drones.

In the attack, Russia synchronized the arrival in the capital of fast-flying ballistic missiles and slower-moving cruise missiles, a common tactic. The Kyiv city military administration initially said North Korean-made Hwasong ballistic missiles, which Pyongyang has provided to Russia, may have been used. But Ukraine’s air force later reported that two Russian-made Iskander-M ballistic missiles were shot down.

In Kyiv on Wednesday, falling debris started fires in the city’s suburbs and wounded one person, local authorities reported. Two short-range S-300 air defense missiles that had been repurposed by Russia for ground attack were also fired over Ukraine’s northeastern border, the air force said. It provided no details on what they targeted.

Russia also launched 90 drones, including Iranian-designed Shahed one-way attack drones.

The pause in missile strikes had left residents of the capital on edge, as they anxiously waited for them to resume. The last significant damage from missiles in Kyiv came in July, when they hit a children’s hospital and a maternity clinic.

On the country’s northeastern border with Russia, Ukraine has been bracing for a combined North Korean and Russian ground offensive after at least 11,000 North Korean soldiers arrived in the area in recent weeks, joining Russian infantry units to create a combined force of about 50,000 soldiers, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, who was in Brussels on Wednesday for meetings with NATO and European officials to discuss Ukraine’s war against Russia, addressed the issue of the North Korean troops. They had been “injected into the battle,” he said, “which demands and will get a firm response.”

The troops assembled by Russia are expected to try to dislodge the Ukrainians from a pocket of Russian turf captured last summer. Ground assaults and aerial bombardments against Ukrainian positions have begun. On Tuesday, Russia dropped 50 guided bombs on the Ukrainian-controlled area, Col. Vadym Mysnyk, a military spokesman, told Ukrainian media.

The missile bombardment of the capital also came as Russia presses attacks in eastern Ukraine, with much of the most ferocious fighting concentrated in the Donetsk region.

Russian troops are now threatening to encircle the Ukrainian garrison in the industrial town of Kurakhove, having reached the eastern edge of the city, according to soldiers, volunteers and combat footage.

On Monday, the Russians tried an amphibious assault on the town across the freezing waters of a reservoir, using small inflatable boats, but were repulsed, according to the 46th Airmobile Brigade. The attack coincided with a mechanized assault. The brigade released video showing the destruction of three tanks and six infantry fighting vehicles. The extent of the fighting and reported damage could not be independently verified.

The Russians are close to cutting off the main road supplying Ukrainian forces in the area, threatening large groups of soldiers who are defending the town. The approach to Kurakhove is lined with burned-out cars and the town itself has been steadily blasted into oblivion.

The blowing up of a dam on the northwestern edge of the reservoir, which Ukraine blamed on Russian forces, is now complicating efforts to evacuate the civilians in villages downstream, as floodwaters steadily rose this week.

But even without rising waters, the drones that saturate the skies increasingly made all movement in and around the town deadly, people in the area said.

“They strike anywhere,” said Yaroslav Chernyshov, a 20-year-old volunteer with the charity Children New Generation, who was helping to evacuate civilians in the area. “Civilian cars are just as shattered as military ones.”

He said he recently lost a colleague in a drone attack during a mission to pick up a woman with a 2-month-old baby.

A colleague in a second car was hit by a drone and died, he said. “We tried to resuscitate him and managed to get him to a stabilization point alive, but sadly, he didn’t make it.”

President-elect Donald J. Trump’s nominees to serve as top diplomatic envoys to Israel and the Middle East have little, if any, official policy experience in the region. But there is not much question about where their support lies.

Mike Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas who was tapped on Tuesday to be the next U.S. ambassador to Israel, has said that “there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian” and argued that all of the West Bank belonged to Israel.

His selection, which requires Senate confirmation, was widely welcomed by Israeli officials who oppose a Palestinian state, a longstanding U.S. goal.

Steven Witkoff, who was named on Tuesday as the incoming administration’s Middle East envoy, raised a vast amount of money for Mr. Trump’s campaign — including from Jewish voters after the Biden administration stopped shipping some bombs to Israel.

Mr. Trump has presented himself as Israel’s strongest ally, and analysts believe he is likely to make U.S. foreign policy more favorable to Israel. “These appointments are all Palestinians should need to understand what is coming their way,” said Nour Odeh, a Palestinian political analyst.

Here is a look at two of the men who will lead the Trump administration’s efforts in the Middle East.

Mike Huckabee

Mr. Huckabee, a Southern Baptist minister and politician who appeals to evangelical voters and cultural conservatives, twice ran unsuccessfully for president, in 2008 and 2016. He hosts a talk show on Trinity Broadcasting Network and has led religious tours to Israel, including one scheduled for February.

In an interview broadcast in Israel on Wednesday morning, Mr. Huckabee was careful to not give specifics on how he might represent the Trump administration in Jerusalem.

“I won’t make the policy,” Mr. Huckabee said in the interview with Israeli Army Radio. “I will carry out the policy of the president.”

But how he views the region was detailed in old video clips that circulated on social media shortly after his nomination was announced.

“There is no such thing as a West Bank,” Mr. Huckabee said during a visit to Israel in January 2017, adding: “There’s no such thing as a settlement — they are communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities. There’s no such thing as an occupation.”

Israeli opponents of Palestinian statehood argue that giving land to Palestinians in the West Bank could pose a security threat to Israel in the future. Hard-liners in Israel’s settler community oppose conceding all or parts of the West Bank because they believe it was promised to Jews by God.

Earlier, during his 2008 presidential campaign, Mr. Huckabee said in video published by BuzzFeed that “there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian,” and that any independent Palestinian state should be defined within the boundaries of neighboring Arab states like Egypt, Syria or Jordan — not Israel.

Mr. Huckabee’s nomination drew congratulations and words of welcome from a host of Israeli government officials. Bezalel Smotrich, the right-wing finance minister and a settler activist, wrote on social media on Wednesday that he looked forward to working with Mr. Huckabee on “the unquestionable historical belonging of the whole land of Israel to the people of Israel.”

It also drew condemnation from J Street, a liberal pro-Israel advocacy group. “The mask is off,” the group wrote on social media. It said Mr. Huckabee’s appointment “is further proof that ‘pro-Israel’ for Trump is totally disconnected from Jewish values, safety or self-determination.”

Steve Witkoff

Mr. Witkoff, a real estate developer who has been a golf partner of the president-elect, was a donor to Mr. Trump’s political action committee and helped connect him to the entrepreneurs leading his cryptocurrency venture.

In May, when the Biden administration paused the shipment of 2,000-pound bombs, Mr. Witkoff used it as a fund-raising opportunity for Mr. Trump. He reported raising “six-figure and seven-figure donations” for the Trump campaign from Jewish donors as a result, he told The Bulwark, a podcast and analysis site.

“Every one of my friends started calling and asking, ‘What can I do for Donald Trump?’” Mr. Witkoff said.

When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel addressed Congress in July, Mr. Witkoff was in the audience.

“It was a privilege to be there,” Mr. Witkoff told Fox Business at the time. “We were standing every five seconds, because that crowd was so for him and so for the messaging.”

Mr. Witkoff testified at the former president’s civil fraud trial this year as expert witness in real estate development and was playing golf with Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago when a gunman was arrested nearby.

Announcing Mr. Witkoff on Tuesday as his Middle East envoy, Mr. Trump said that “Steve will be an unrelenting Voice for PEACE, and make us all proud.”