Israel’s defense minister told a senior adviser to President Biden on Monday that “military action” was “the only way” to end months of cross-border violence between Israel and Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese militia.

The defense minister, Yoav Gallant, met with the adviser, Amos Hochstein, who came to Israel in an attempt to prevent Israel’s long-simmering conflict with the Iranian-backed militia from escalating into a broader war. Mr. Gallant said Israel needed to change the security situation on the northern border, but it was unclear what military action he may be proposing.

The defense minister’s comments appeared to dampen hopes of a diplomatic solution, as the White House has been seeking. Hezbollah and Israel’s military have been trading near-daily fire since last October, when the start of the war in the Gaza Strip prompted the militia to launch rocket attacks on northern Israel in solidarity with Hamas.

The cross-border clashes have intensified in recent months, driving tens of thousands of civilians on both sides of the border out of their homes, and as Israel scales down its assault against Hamas in Gaza it has freed up more of its forces for a possible offensive in the north against Hezbollah.

In a statement after Monday’s meeting, Mr. Gallant said he had told Mr. Hochstein that the window for reaching a diplomatic solution to the conflict was drawing to a close because Hezbollah has decided to “tie itself” to Hamas.

“The only way left to return the residents of the north to their homes is via military action,” Mr. Gallant said. Earlier on Monday, Mr. Gallant said he had delivered the same message to the American defense secretary, Lloyd J. Austin III, in an overnight phone call.

The visit by Mr. Hochstein is part of efforts by the Biden administration to prevent “an escalation and a widening of this conflict,” John Kirby, a White House spokesman, told reporters last week.

“Amos’s travels are very much a continuation of the diplomacy that he’s been conducting now for many months to try to prevent a second front from opening up in the north there,” he said.

On Monday, Mr. Hochstein met with Mr. Gallant and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In a statement after their meeting, Mr. Netanyahu’s office said he had told Mr. Hochstein that “while Israel appreciates and respects the support of the US, it will ultimately do what is necessary to safeguard its security and return the residents of the north securely to their homes.”

Mr. Hochstein, for his part, disputed Israeli officials’ contention that more military action would accomplish Israel’s goal of returning residents to their homes, according to a person familiar with Mr. Hochstein’s meetings on Monday, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.

Mr. Hochstein’s message to Mr. Gallant and Mr. Netanyahu, the person said, was that the United States did not believe a broader conflict in Lebanon would let displaced Israelis return to northern Israel, and that it risked setting off a much broader and protracted regional conflict. A diplomatic solution would be better in the United States’ view, he told them.

The strikes have driven more than 150,000 people in Israel and Lebanon from their homes in the border region.

Those who have fled their homes in Lebanon have received little assistance from the government, which is in the middle of a prolonged financial crisis. In Israel, the government has paid to feed and house evacuees in hundreds of hotels across the country and faced criticism from residents in northern Israel who have not qualified for assistance.

After his meeting with Mr. Hochstein on Monday, Mr. Gallant said on social media that he had told the American envoy that “the only way left for us to return the residents of the north to their homes, will be through military action.”

In remarks on Sunday, Mr. Netanyahu said “we will do whatever is necessary to return our residents securely to their homes.”

Mr. Hochstein has already made at least five trips to Israel and Lebanon since Mr. Biden tasked him with trying to prevent the clashes from expanding into a war that could be even more devastating than the conflict in Gaza.

His mediation efforts have involved repeated rounds of shuttle diplomacy between Beirut and Jerusalem. Because the United States designates Hezbollah a terrorist group, Mr. Hochstein has communicated with it through Lebanese government officials who act as interlocutors.

France — which maintains direct lines of communication with Hezbollah — has been pursuing its own diplomatic solution at the same time. In recent months, Mr. Hochstein has sought to better coordinate efforts with French officials, who have also been vocal about the risk of military escalation.

On Monday, France’s ambassador to Israel, Frédéric Journès, also warned of a wider conflict.

“If a full-scale war starts in Lebanon, it could turn this whole thing into a regional conflict, and then you have a regional conflict in Ukraine and a second regional conflict in the Middle East,” he said at the Haaretz National Security Conference in Israel.

“Nobody wants this war,” he added. “Iran doesn’t want it, Hezbollah doesn’t want it and Israel doesn’t want it, and yet it is very possible that it happens.”

Despite the warnings, the tit-for-tat violence continued on Monday. Israel’s military said that it had struck Hezbollah “infrastructure” in southern Lebanon on Monday after “a number of projectiles” crossed from the country into Israeli territory.

That followed Israeli artillery fire and airstrikes on southern Lebanon over the weekend in response to Hezbollah rockets that had triggered air-raid sirens and sparked brush fires in northern Israel.

Fears of a broader conflagration have risen since an Israeli airstrike in late July killed a senior Hezbollah commander in the Beirut suburbs. Iran threatened to strike Israel over the killing of a Hamas leader on its soil shortly after that.

Israeli officials have taken pains to emphasize their readiness. On Monday, Israel’s defense ministry said it had equipped 97 “rapid response units” in towns along the northern border with Lebanon with “combat and rescue gear, medical supplies, uniforms and protective equipment.”

Hezbollah is not the only Iranian-backed group targeting Israel in solidarity with Hamas as it fights a guerrilla war against Israel in Gaza. The Houthis in Yemen have also been striking commercial ships in the Red Sea since the war in Gaza began last year and, over the weekend, the group launched a missile into central Israel.

On Monday, Iran’s president, Massoud Pezeshkian, at a briefing with reporters denied that Iran had provided Yemen with the missile that was launched at Israel. Still he stood by the Houthis’ actions. “Of course, we and Yemen are related and we do not want Israel to kill people,” he said, condemning Israel. “We want them to respect international laws.”

Here’s what else is happening in the Middle East:

• Polio in Gaza: Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the main U.N. agency that aids Palestinians in Gaza, said on Monday that the first round of a polio vaccination campaign in the Gaza Strip had been successfully completed, with hundreds of thousands of children vaccinated. The next stage of the campaign aims to administer a second vaccine dose to each child by the end of September, he added.

• West Bank Violence: Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian school in the occupied West Bank and wounded seven people, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent and Palestinian new media. In a clip shared widely on X, three men armed with batons and speaking Hebrew are seen beating people in a school courtyard. The Times verified the location of the footage to a school northwest of Jericho in the occupied West Bank. The Israeli military said it had responded to the scene, where “a number of Palestinians were injured.” Since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel and the start of the war in Gaza, attacks by Jewish settlers on Palestinians across the West Bank have surged.

• Netanyahu rival goes to Washington: Yair Lapid, the leader of Israel’s parliamentary opposition, was in Washington on Monday. His office said he had met with Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, and was also scheduled to meet with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken. Mr. Lapid’s office said he had told Mr. Sullivan that Israel faced “the danger of a severe war” and that “anyone who is able to prevent it must invest every effort in doing so.” In a post on social media, Mr. Lapid said he had also told Mr. Sullivan that time was running out for the hostages being held in Gaza and that a deal for their return was urgently needed.

• Hamas’s political chief, Yahya Sinwar, congratulated the Houthi militia in Yemen for its missile attack on central Israel over the weekend in a letter published by the Houthi-run Saba news agency on Monday. It was the third missive from Mr. Sinwar, who is being hunted by the Israeli military in Gaza’s vast tunnel network, to emerge in about a week after an extensive silence. Last week, he wrote to Hezbollah’s chief, Hassan Nasrallah, thanking Hezbollah for its support Mr. Sinwar also wrote to Algeria’s president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, to congratulate him on his re-election.

• A Greek oil tanker burning in the Red Sea has been towed to a safe area without an oil spill, the European Union’s maritime military operation in the Red Sea said on social media on Monday. Houthi militants had attacked the ship in late August and subsequently threatened tugboats trying to salvage the vessel, raising concerns of a potentially catastrophic environmental disaster. The E.U. group will continue to monitor the situation as private companies complete the salvage operation, it said. Houthi militants backed by Iran have been attacking commercial ships in the Red Sea in solidarity with Hamas and its war with Israel in Gaza since last year, disrupting international shipping in one the world’s major waterways.

Reporting was contributed by Patrick Kingsley, Euan Ward, Hiba Yazbek, Ismaeel Naar, Leily Nikounazar and Nader Ibrahim.

Since the Oct. 7 attacks and the start of the war in Gaza, no part of life in the region has been left untouched — least of all, the three great religions whose histories are rooted there.

While Israeli Jews struggle to celebrate holidays or even find common ground with one another, Palestinian Muslims and Christians are struggling to reach their holy sites at all.

Israel this year introduced some of the toughest restrictions on Ramadan prayers at Al Aqsa Mosque, one of the holiest structures in the Islamic faith. Al Aqsa, which sits atop an ancient plateau in Jerusalem that is sacred to Jews and Muslims, has long been a point of contention.

For decades, Israel’s government prevented Jews from praying on the grounds to avoid stoking tensions, and officially, it still does so. But as Israel has exerted tighter control over the site, right-wing politicians and settler groups have repeatedly entered the area to pray, a move widely seen as provocative to Palestinian Muslims.

Palestinian Muslims, particularly those coming from the West Bank, have faced routine restrictions on access to Al Aqsa for years. The Israeli agency overseeing policy for the territory, responding to a question from The New York Times about the number of Palestinians granted entry since October, said that it had issued no permits to West Bank residents, even for access to the mosque, except for “specific laborers.”

Israel is also placing tighter restrictions on the roughly 50,000 Christians who live in the West Bank.

During Easter, Israel limited access to what is known as the celebration of the Holy Fire, when a flame is taken from what is believed to be Jesus’ tomb at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem and used to light the candles of visitors. Israel cited safety reasons for the change, but Palestinians accused Israeli officials of curbing the centuries-old tradition as part of efforts to push them out of their ancestral lands.

In the West Bank city of Bethlehem, Christian celebrations have also been forced to break with tradition. In April, a procession of Easter worshipers that usually winds through the streets of central Bethlehem was canceled and held inside the Church of the Nativity instead.

The growing tensions between Israelis and Palestinians are mirrored within Israeli society, in particular in the divide between secular Jews and the ultra-Orthodox, a group that is now about 13 percent of Israel’s population.

In Bnei Brak, a city east of Tel Aviv that is considered Israel’s ultra-Orthodox capital, the photographs of Israeli hostages captured on Oct. 7 that are ubiquitous in more secular areas are notably absent. And some of the ultra-Orthodox celebrating Passover this year clashed with the police over another traditional ritual: the burning of all the bread in their homes before the holiday begins.

Instead of burning their bread in trash bins, as legally required, many defied the police and went to do so on nearby hillsides, aggravating the risk of forest fires that are already plaguing northern Israel amid the daily strikes exchanged between forces in the country’s north and militants across the border in Lebanon.

For Palestinians, there is no retreat from the post-Oct. 7 landscape. Many have lost jobs they once had in Israel, and those employed by the Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the West Bank, have seen their salaries cut as Israel has halted or slowed transfers of the funds that finance the territory’s operations.

The changes to the cultural and religious practices of Bethlehem’s Christians have not just dampened the mood but also devastated the economy. Tourism, which accounts for a major part of the town’s income, particularly during the holiday season, has plummeted since the start of the war.

Pilgrims no longer crowd Bethlehem’s cobblestone streets. Squares that echoed with the voices of butchers shouting out prices for their slabs of meat, or bakers selling holiday pastries, now are more likely to be silent.

During Ramadan, Laylat al-Qadr, or the Night of Power, is one of the most important dates in the Islamic calendar. For Muslims, it marks the night when the Quran was sent down from heaven to the world.

In years past, families would shop for treats and clothes ahead of that night. This spring, many residents met at their local mosque empty-handed but eager to preserve the tradition of family gatherings of prayer, while children played late into the night.

On Eid al-Fitr, the celebration at the end of Ramadan, families in the West Bank city of Nablus filled graveyards to offer early-morning prayers for loved ones there. When local fighters went to one cemetery to try to shoot guns in honor of their own dead, the families quietly asked them to move away, to avoid a potential crackdown by the authorities.

In the absence of visitors from the West Bank, many of those who traveled to Jerusalem for April’s holy days were Christian pilgrims from abroad. Yet their numbers, too, were much depleted, since tourism to Israel has plummeted more than 70 percent since the start of the war in Gaza.

While the devout of all religions push on determinedly with the practice of their faith, any feeling of celebration has struggled to survive. Those who come to Jerusalem find the long, ancient shopping thoroughfares that stretch through the city’s ancient quarters eerily empty.

At least 17 people were dead and several others missing on Monday after days of flooding in Central Europe. Thousands were displaced, and with heavy rains continuing in some places, officials feared there could be more destruction ahead.

The floodwaters have ravaged towns, destroyed bridges and breached dams since intense rainfall from Storm Boris — a slow-moving, low-pressure system — began last week. Emergency workers have made daring rescues of people and even pets as officials assessed the scale of the damage.

For some, the disaster recalled the devastating floods that struck the region in July 1997, killing more than 100 people and driving thousands of others out of their homes.

“This was a very traumatic one for Poland — the one that is remembered,” Hubert Rozyk, a spokesman for Poland’s Ministry of Climate and Environment, said of that disaster. “And in some places, the situation is even worse than in 1997.”

Here’s what we know about the destruction in some of the worst-hit countries.

Romania

Seven people have died in Romania, Dr. Raed Arafat, the head of the Department for Emergency Situations in the Ministry of Internal Affairs said in a phone call on Monday.

All of the deaths occurred overnight from Friday to Saturday and all in Galati County, he said, which is on the eastern border with Moldova. A preliminary evaluation found that about 5,500 households in Galati were affected by floods. In Vaslui County, which is directly to the north, about 120 households were affected, he said.

He said it was “one of the worst floods in recent memory especially for that area.”

Romania’s environment minister, Mircea Fechet, told The Associated Press that some areas had received more than 42 gallons of rainfall per square meter. “What we are trying to do right now is save as many lives as possible,” he said.

Poland

At least five people have died, Piotr Blaszczyk, a spokesman for the government security center, wrote in an email on Monday. He said the government had not yet confirmed if their deaths were “directly connected to the catastrophic flooding,” but that initial reports suggested that they were found in “areas severely impacted by rising water levels.”

Even though the storm has passed, “many rivers are still swollen, and water levels remain precariously high, threatening additional damage to infrastructure, homes, and agricultural land,” he wrote.

Some flood barriers held; others were breached to devastating effect. Dams have been damaged or breached, including in Stronie Slaskie, a southwestern town on the Morawka River, said Anna Szumanska, a spokeswoman for Poland’s infrastructure ministry. “Water began to flow uncontrolled,” she wrote in an email.

The ground is so saturated and the water levels are so high in some rivers that there is still a risk of further flooding, Mr. Blaszczyk said.

Polish officials were meeting on Monday to decide whether to declare a national disaster and Mr. Blaszczyk said that temporary shelters have been erected in schools and community centers. Many officials have been working for days with little rest, Mr. Rozyk, the climate ministry spokesman, said from Opole, a city in the flooded region.

“The situation is still not under control in all the places,” he said. “However, the rain stopped, so that’s good news.”

Czech Republic

David Schön, a spokesman for the Czech police, said that at least two people had been killed in the floods and 12 were missing.

He said in an email that more than 12,000 people had been evacuated in the Moravian-Silesian region, the Olomouc region and the South Moravian region, all in the east.

Austria

At least three people have been killed in Austria, according to Paul Eidenberger, a press officer for the interior ministry. One, a volunteer firefighter, died when he slipped on the stairs while pumping water out of a basement, Mr. Eidenberger said in an email. Two older men also died, apparently after being trapped inside their homes, he said.

The flooding has affected communities throughout the country, but “the most significant problems, damage, and flooding” are in Lower Austria, the state that surrounds Vienna, he said.

Vienna, which has about two million people, has also been hard hit. Public transit has been suspended or severely restricted, and the river “has become a raging torrent — normally, it carries only a few centimeters of water,” Mr. Eidenberger wrote.

Hundreds of people have been rescued from rooftops by helicopter. Mr. Eidenberger said that tens of thousands of volunteers had been deployed across the country, about 20,000 in Lower Austria alone.

Dams are still threatening to overflow. “That’s the most difficult situation right now,” said Markus Duerauer, a liaison officer of the Lower Austrian Fire Brigade Association.

And the rain is still coming down hard. “Relief is not expected to come before tomorrow, and more likely, the day after,” Mr. Eidenberger wrote Monday morning.

Judson Jones contributed reporting.

The race to lead São Paulo, Latin America’s largest city, has been transformed in recent weeks by the brash candidacy of a right-wing self-help coach who has soared in the polls while getting under his opponents’ skin with harsh and sometimes misleading attacks.

In a live, televised mayoral debate between six candidates on Sunday, that candidate, Pablo Marçal, was at it again, calling José Luiz Datena, an anti-crime television journalist, a vulgar insult and bringing up sexual harassment accusations against him that were later dropped.

“You crossed the debate stage recently to slap me,” Mr. Marçal said, referring to an earlier debate, in which Mr. Datena got close to Mr. Marçal. “You’re not even man enough to do that.”

He then looked to his right and, from offscreen, Mr. Datena came swinging an iron chair, striking Mr. Marçal over his back.

It was a stunning moment even for the often outrageous political antics of Brazil — one candidate assaulting another on live television — and a show of political violence that was likely to reorder the country’s biggest election this year.

Mr. Marçal quickly capitalized, posting multiple videos on social media after the attack, including a dramatized clip of him being rushed to the hospital and breathing with the help of an oxygen mask. He also posted from the hospital, clad in a hospital gown with an arm sling.

Although the facility did not release details about his injuries, Mr. Marçal’s team initially said that he was believed to have broken a rib and had difficulty breathing. A video from inside the debate hall after the attack showed him and Mr. Datena standing and yelling at one another.

Mr. Marçal has shaped his political style in the mold of other brazen right-wing leaders like Donald J. Trump and former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. On Sunday night, he also posted an image of the chair attack alongside photos of July’s assassination attempt against Mr. Trump and a stabbing that Mr. Bolsonaro suffered during his 2018 campaign. “Why all the hate?” he wrote.

He initially called the incident “attempted murder.” But as he left the hospital on Monday morning, he said that he had suffered just a “bump.”

Mr. Marçal’s team said it had filed a police report about the incident.

One Instagram follower asked Mr. Marçal in a comment whether it was worth being attacked to run for mayor. “It will be worth it,” he replied.

Mr. Marçal is locked in a three-way tie for first place in the polls to lead São Paulo, one of the world’s largest cities, with 11.5 million people. The first round of voting is scheduled for Oct. 6.

Mr. Datena, a centrist who became famous for hosting a television show that reports on crime across Brazil, is in fifth place, with just 7 percent of voters saying they intend to cast ballots for him.

The other leading candidates include the current right-wing mayor, Ricardo Nunes, who was endorsed by Mr. Bolsonaro; and Guilherme Boulos, a leftist congressman endorsed by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Following the episode, Mr. Datena said that “he lost his cool,” but stopped short of apologizing and said he would remain in the race. “I made a mistake, but I don’t regret it in any way,” he said.

Thierry Breton, France’s commissioner to the European Union, resigned on Monday, criticizing Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, for what he called “questionable governance.”

Mr. Breton’s surprise move came a day before Ms. von der Leyen, a conservative German politician who secured a second term in July, was expected to announce her new team to lead the European Union’s executive arm over the next five years.

The resignation adds to the difficulties she has encountered forming a top team. The bumpy start is a measure of the challenges Ms. von der Leyen faces, especially in areas such as defense and the economy, as the European Union deals with the fallout of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its still weak post-pandemic economy.

It also reflects the more complicated political landscape in Europe, where elections in June gave harder-right forces more power in the European Parliament and have sown domestic divisions in significant countries like France and Germany.

Ms. von der Leyen has already pushed back her announcement of the 27 commissioners to make up the European Commission, with each E.U. member state getting one leadership slot. The commissioners act almost like a national cabinet, with each leader overseeing a policy area, including climate, trade and migration.

She had asked member countries to nominate both men and women for commission roles. After most countries nominated only men, several countries, under pressure from Ms. von der Leyen, in recent weeks switched their nominations to female candidates. Slovenia, embroiled in a domestic political dispute, has not yet named a commissioner.

President Emmanuel Macron of France had nominated Mr. Breton to serve as the country’s commissioner. But in a resignation letter posted on social media, Mr. Breton, who served as the E.U.’s internal markets commissioner, said that Ms. von der Leyen had pressured France to nominate another candidate in exchange for a stronger portfolio.

Arianna Podestà, a European Commission spokeswoman, declined to comment on what Mr. Breton had written in his resignation letter.

Relations were known to be frosty between Ms. von der Leyen and Mr. Breton, who has a reputation in Brussels for being outspoken and not always toeing the party line. On Monday Mr. Macron nominated Stéphane Séjourné, his close ally and France’s departing foreign minister, to replace Mr. Breton.

“In light of these latest developments — further testimony to questionable governance — I have to conclude that I can no longer exercise my duties in the College,” Mr. Breton wrote, referring to the commission.

Mujtaba Rahman, the managing director for Europe at Eurasia Group, a consultancy, said that having to go back to the drawing board and name another candidate was a clear sign of France’s new weakness within the E.U. and Mr. Macron’s weakened standing at home.

Far-right forces came out on top in France’s elections in June for the European Parliament, prompting the French president to call snap legislative elections that resulted in months of political paralysis.

“It’s very rare for a country to propose a candidate and then to be asked to send a second candidate to be considered,” Mr. Rahman said. “The fact there was a bit of friction over the personality and the mandate does raise a question about why that happened and what that tells us about the agency Macron is currently enjoying in Europe.”

Ian Lesser, the head of the German Marshall Fund in Brussels, said that there had been resentment in some quarters of Ms. von der Leyen’s cabinet, including from Mr. Breton, toward her centralized style of leadership.

“Strong, capable figures in the European system are inevitably less comfortable with strong centralized direction from the top,” he said. Still, her leadership style was key to her effectiveness over the past five years, he said.

Last month, Mr. Breton sent Elon Musk, the owner of the social media platform X, a letter warning him about the spread of hateful content and disinformation on his site ahead of Mr. Musk’s live-streamed interview with the 2024 Republican presidential candidate, Donald J. Trump.

Mr. Breton had not informed the European Commission in advance that he would be publishing that letter, according to a Commission spokesman, and E.U. officials had been concerned that the letter came across as interfering with the U.S. election.

The letter only added to the longstanding animosity between Mr. Breton and Ms. von der Leyen, said Susi Dennison, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations in Paris.

The Élysée said on Monday that Mr. Séjourné had met all required criteria for the job and thanked Mr. Breton for his contribution. Under his leadership, the E.U. had begun an investigation into the potentially addictive effects that Instagram and Facebook, owned by the tech giant Meta, have on children. E.U. regulators could ultimately fine Meta up to 6 percent of its global revenue and require other changes.

Simone Tagliapietra, a senior fellow at the Bruegel Institute, a European research institute, said that Mr. Séjourné could bring new perspective to the European Commission, particularly if he’s more collaborative than Mr. Breton.

Mr. Tagliapietra said Mr. Breton had been a heavy weight, meddled in many areas, spoke his mind and challenged Ms. von der Leyen “often in a very assertive way that Brussels is not used to.” His resignation “could spell good news” for her, he added.

Adam Satariano contributed reporting from London, and Aurelien Breeden from Paris.