Israel’s military said on Monday that it had expanded a humanitarian zone it created in southern Gaza. The move came just before the expiration of a Biden administration deadline for Israel to deliver more aid to the enclave or risk a cutoff of military supplies.

In a statement, the Israeli military said that the zone would now include field hospitals, tent compounds, shelter supplies and provisions of food, water, medicine and medical equipment, though it did not specify whether any new additions had been made to the resources already present. The military provided a map showing nine areas added to the zone.

Aid agencies have said that supplies are desperately needed to offset the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, especially in the north, where Israel has stepped up military operations against the militant group Hamas, which led the Oct. 7, 2023, assault in Israel that started the war.

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A Spirit Airlines flight attempting to land in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, was shot at on Monday and forced to divert, marking a sharp escalation in the violence that has gripped the nation.

Flight 951, which took off from Fort Lauderdale for Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince, was diverted to Santiago, in the Dominican Republic, where an inspection revealed what looked like bullet holes, according to Tommy Fletcher, a spokesman for the airline.

The flight landed safely at 11:30 a.m. Two other flights bound for Port-au-Prince were then also diverted, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

“An inspection revealed evidence of damage to the aircraft consistent with gunfire,” Mr. Fletcher said in a statement. “One flight attendant on board reported minor injuries and is being evaluated by medical personnel.”

No passengers were hurt, the airline said. Spirit suspended flights to Port-au-Prince and to the northern Haitian city Cap-Haïtien. The plane was taken out of service.

The gunfire appeared to come from the ground, though it was unclear who fired the shots. Gangs that have inflicted a campaign of violence in Haiti are also known to be active in the area around the airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital.

Videos circulating on social media showed the interior of a plane with what appeared to be several bullet holes, including in an overhead compartment and a panel. The New York Times was not immediately able to verify the videos.

Flight monitoring websites showed a JetBlue plane turning around and heading away from Haiti, as the Port-au-Prince airport was quickly shut down. JetBlue and American Airlines canceled flights to and from Haiti until Thursday afternoon. A JetBlue spokesman said the airline would monitor the situation to determine whether any more flights needed to be called off.

Officials at Haiti’s aviation authority did not return calls seeking more information.

“We could hear ‘clack, clack, clack’ — the metal inside the plane and the plastic just cracking,” a passenger on board, Jean-David Desrouleaux, told The Miami Herald. “A few of us understood what was happening.”

The episode marks the second time in as many months when an aircraft in Haiti has been hit by gunfire. A United Nations helicopter with three crew members and 15 passengers on board was shot at late last month and hit several times as it flew over a gang-controlled neighborhood in the capital.

In recent weeks, social media has been filled with photographs of a U.S. armored vehicle sent to Haiti to help quell the violence engulfed in flames, reportedly set ablaze by a gang. Gangs fired on two U.S. Embassy vehicles traveling in Port-au-Prince last month.

The attack on the Spirit plane comes a day after Haiti’s interim prime minister was fired by the country’s transition presidential council — a board of nine people that is ruling Haiti until elections can be held to select a president.

The prime minister, Garry Conille, was hired in late May to help restore order in Haiti, where a coalition of gangs united earlier this year and wreaked havoc on the capital, attacking neighborhoods, police stations and hospitals.

The airport was closed for several months as violence soared.

Hundreds of police officers from Kenya flew to Haiti in June as part of an international effort to restore peace.

The Kenyan force, known as the MSS -— Multinational Security Support —- helped the country recover at least some minimal semblance of order, which allowed the airport to reopen earlier this year.

Hundreds of homes around the airport were bulldozed to expand the airport’s security perimeter, and to give the gangs fewer places to hide out.

But the gangs have escalated attacks, including outside Port-au-Prince. One gang attacked a community in the rural Artibonite Valley last month, killing more than 100 people.

Godfrey Otunge, the Kenyan police official who is commander of the multinational force, said in a statement that the force was still in the deployment phase and was transitioning to the “decisive operations phase.”

Last week, statements by the multinational force stressed that officers had brought peace back to Pont-Sondé, where the massacre in the valley occurred, and had made important strides, such as opening up roads that had been under gang control.

The deployment “shall strive to ensure that for once local Haitians will enjoy their Christmas festivities in peace,” one recent statement said, adding that it was putting gang members on notice.

“We are coming for them,” the statement said. “We will smoke them from their enclaves and hide-outs and ensure that they face the rule of law. Their time is simply running out.”

As a result of Monday’s plane episode, the president of the Dominican Republic, Luis Abinader, urged U.S. and Haitian authorities to officially designate Haitian gangs as terrorist organizations.

“The Dominican Republic treats and will treat them like terrorists,” Mr. Abinader said during his weekly news conference, noting that the flight was hit seven or eight times.

“It’s a terrorist act.”

David C. Adams and Hogla Enecia contributed reporting.

A Church of England bishop on Monday called for the resignation of the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, days after a report concluded that he had failed to ensure a proper investigation into claims of sadistic abuse decades ago at Christian summer camps.

An independent review last week said that the archbishop had taken insufficient action following reports of “abhorrent” abuse of more than 100 boys and young men starting in the 1970s by John Smyth, a prominent British lawyer.

From July 2013, the Church of England knew at the highest level about the abuse, the report said, while Mr. Welby became aware of the claims against Mr. Smyth around August 2013, months after he became archbishop.

Mr. Smyth could and should have been reported to the police in 2013, the report said, a step that probably would have led to a full investigation, the uncovering of the serial nature of the abuses in Britain, involving multiple victims, and the possibility of a conviction being brought against him. Mr. Smyth died in 2018, in South Africa.

The report criticized the actions of a number of people within the church. “Despite the efforts of some individuals to bring the abuse to the attention of authorities, the responses by the Church of England and others were wholly ineffective and amounted to a coverup,” it said.

In a statement in response to Mr. Makin’s report, the archbishop said: “I had no idea or suspicion of this abuse before 2013. Nevertheless the review is clear that I personally failed to ensure that after disclosure in 2013 the awful tragedy was energetically investigated.” He repeated an apology he had made to the review itself, for “not meeting quickly with victims after the full horror of the abuse was revealed” in a 2017 Channel 4 investigation.

“I promised to see them and failed until 2020. This was wrong,” he said.

On Monday, the Bishop of Newcastle, Helen-Ann Hartley, called on Mr. Welby, the head of the Church of England and the spiritual leader of 85 million Anglicans worldwide, to stand aside.

In a rare public intervention by a senior member of the clergy, she told the BBC that Mr. Welby’s resignation would not “solve the safeguarding problem,” but it would “be a very clear indication that a line has been drawn.”

She added: “I think rightly people are asking the question ‘Can we really trust the Church of England to keep us safe?’ And I think the answer at the moment is ‘No.’”

Mr. Welby, 68, has held his position since early 2013 and is scheduled to retire in 2026.

Last week’s independent report, compiled by Keith Makin, a former social services director, described Mr. Smyth as “arguably, the most prolific serial abuser to be associated with the Church of England.”

Operating in three different countries, Mr. Smyth inflicted physical, sexual and psychological attacks on as many as 130 victims. Mr. Welby said in 2017 that he had met Mr. Smyth but “wasn’t a close friend of his.”

The 2017 report by Channel 4 detailed how Mr. Smyth had groomed boys and young men at Christian summer camps, universities and at Winchester College, a top British private school, before subjecting them to severe beatings.

According to the Makin report, Mr. Smyth told his victims “that the way to Christ was through suffering,” and subjected them to “traumatic physical, sexual, psychological and spiritual attacks.” The report added: “The impact of that abuse is impossible to overstate and has permanently marked the lives of his victims.”

Giles Fraser, a broadcaster and Church of England clergyman, who was attacked as a child by another abuser, also called on the archbishop to stand aside, in an article published online on Monday.

“Welby can’t survive this,” he wrote. “And his resignation should send a necessary shock wave through the Church of England like nothing else could. No Archbishop would ever again treat the whole matter so lightly.”

In his statement, the archbishop said he was “deeply sorry” that the abuse had taken place, adding: “I am so sorry that in places where these young men, and boys, should have felt safe and where they should have experienced God’s love for them, they were subjected to physical, sexual, psychological and spiritual abuse.”

President Donald J. Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear pact between Iran and world powers, imposed tough economic sanctions on Iran and ordered the killing of its top general. And Iran, federal prosecutors said on Friday, plotted to assassinate Mr. Trump before November’s election.

Yet despite that charged history, many former officials, pundits and newspaper editorials in Iran have openly called for the government to engage with Mr. Trump in the week since his re-election. Shargh, the main reformist daily newspaper, said in a front-page editorial that Iran’s new, more moderate president, Masoud Pezeshkian, must “avoid past mistakes and assume a pragmatic and multidimensional policy.”

And many in Mr. Pezeshkian’s government agree, according to five Iranian officials who asked that their names not be published because they were not authorized to discuss government policy. They say Mr. Trump loves to make deals where others have failed, and that his outsize dominance in the Republican Party could give any potential agreement more staying power. That might give an opening for some kind of lasting deal with the United States, they argue.

“Do not lose this historic opportunity for change in Iran-U.S. relations,” wrote a prominent politician and former political adviser to Iran’s government, Hamid Aboutalebi, in an open letter to Iran’s president. He advised Mr. Pezeshkian to congratulate Mr. Trump on winning the election and set a new tone for a pragmatic and forward-looking policy.

Still, critical decisions in Iran are made by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and he banned negotiations with Mr. Trump during his first term. In Iran’s factional politics, even if Mr. Pezeshkian wanted to negotiate with Mr. Trump, he would have to get Ayatollah Khamenei’s approval.

And many conservatives, including some in the powerful Revolutionary Guards Corps, oppose any engagement with Mr. Trump. The U.S. Justice Department has said that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps hacked Mr. Trump’s campaign computers and spread disinformation online in an attempt to influence the presidential election. On Friday, federal prosecutors in Manhattan revealed an effort by Iran to assassinate Mr. Trump.

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, called those charges a “fabricated” scenario in a post on X on Saturday. He said Iran respected the American people’s choice in electing their president and that the path forward for Iran and the U.S. begins with mutual “respect” and “confidence building.”

Reza Salehi, a conservative analyst in Tehran close to the country’s hard-line political faction, said in an interview that negotiation with Mr. Trump would be politically challenging for Iran’s new government. Conservatives have already voiced their disapproval, saying any engagement would be a betrayal of Gen. Qassim Suleimani, whose assassination Mr. Trump ordered in 2020.

Hamshahri, a conservative newspaper run by Tehran’s municipal government, ran front page photos of Mr. Trump in an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs with the headline: “The return of the killer.” Still, even Mr. Salehi said: “I’m going to go against this position and say that Trump will benefit Iran compared to his predecessor.” He added: “He is into making deals; he is into ending wars and against starting new ones.”

Even those who want to engage with Mr. Trump say that the country’s foreign policy for a Trump era will largely depend on how Mr. Trump approaches Iran and the Middle East, as well as who he selects for his administration, according to the five officials. Mr. Trump recently said that he does not seek to harm Iran, and his main demand was that the country not develop nuclear weapons. But at another point during the campaign, he appeared to give Israel a green light to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites. He said that Israel should “hit the nuclear first and worry about the rest later.”

And on Sunday in a video statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he had spoken to Mr. Trump and “we see eye-to-eye on the Iranian threat in all its aspects, and on the dangers they reflect.”

Brian Hook, who served as a representative for Iran during the first Trump administration, told CNN on Thursday that Mr. Trump “has no interest in regime change,” but he also “understands that the chief driver of instability in the Middle East is the Iranian regime.”

One of the first decisions that Iran must make is whether to follow though on promises to launch a massive revenge attack on Israel. Last month, Israel struck missile bases and air defense systems around Iran’s critical energy sites after Tehran launched a wave of ballistic missiles at Israel to avenge the killing of several senior commanders and top regional allies.

Mr. Trump has been a staunch supporter of Israel. A potential war between Iran and Israel could quickly escalate tensions with an incoming Trump administration and derail any chances of better relations.

The five Iranian officials said that many of Mr. Trump’s stated foreign policy goals — ending the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, ending the war in Ukraine and an “America First” agenda — appeal to Iran.

Ending the wars in Gaza and Lebanon could help avert a wider war between Israel and Iran, which supports Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Ending the war in Ukraine could take pressure off Iran for supplying weapons to Russia. And Mr. Trump’s domestic policy could mean less interest in other countries’ affairs.

Mohammad Javad Zarif, the former foreign minister and current vice president for strategic affairs in Iran, said in a statement on X that he hoped Mr. Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance would “stand against war as pledged, and will heed the clear lesson given by the American electorate to end wars and prevent new ones.”

Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a former vice president, said in an interview from Tehran that his advice would be “to turn the threat of Trump into a good opportunity and start active diplomacy.”

“Trump likes to take personal credit for resolving a crisis, and one of the main crises now is the one between Iran and the America,” he said.

Two competing strategies are being discussed in Iran’s policy circles, Mr. Abtahi said. One calls for Iran to proceed defiantly and strengthen its proxy militias in the Middle East to deter the United States and Israel. The other calls for negotiating with Mr. Trump, which is gaining traction among some conservatives, largely because they don’t see an alternative for resolving Iran’s economic problems.

For more than two decades, Iran’s diplomacy with the United States has been predicated on the American political party in office, loosely centered on the idea that Republicans are more hostile to diplomacy while Democrats are more open to it.

Iran refused to engage with Mr. Trump after he imposed a “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran during his first term. The country bided its time, hoping that the next Democratic administration would lift sanctions and return to the nuclear deal that Mr. Trump had abandoned.

Those moves never materialized. The Biden administration and Iran never returned to the deal, and sanctions remained in place.

The five Iranian officials familiar with Iran’s foreign policy planning, two of them from the foreign ministry, said the country’s experience with the Biden administration was frustrating and led many to conclude that a deal with a Republican administration would yield longer lasting results.

The two officials from the foreign ministry said that Iran has been preparing for a potential Trump presidency for months, with the ministry creating an informal working group on the topic as far back as March.

Mr. Pezeshkian has acknowledged that any hope for economic relief is tied to improving relations with the West.

“For us, it does not matter who has won the election in America because we rely on our own internal strength,” Mr. Pezeshkian said on Wednesday, according to Iranian media reports. At the same time, “we will not have a limited and closed outlook in developing our relations with countries,” he added.

Analysts in Iran and the United States said that Mr. Trump would most likely require Iran to stop arming and funding the militant groups fighting Israel as part of any deal to lift sanctions. Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader, has repeatedly said that Iran’s support for those groups will continue.

Rahman Ghahremanpour, an analyst in Tehran, said Iran does not have many options. Maintaining the status quo for another four years is not tenable. The economy is tanking under sanctions and mismanagement, inflation is skyrocketing and domestic discontent remains high.

“We do not want more sanctions and more instability,” Mr. Ghahremanpour said. “But at the same time, a comprehensive deal with Trump has to give us some wiggle room to save face domestically and justify it. That will be the big challenge.”

Leily Nikounazar contributed reporting from Belgium.

The Israeli military issued new evacuation warnings for more than 20 towns and villages in southern Lebanon on Monday, and Hezbollah unleashed a large rocket barrage into northern Israel, the latest indications that the conflict showed few signs of abating.

The widespread warnings across Lebanon’s south, the first in nearly a month, called on civilians to evacuate their homes immediately and move north above the Awali River, farther from the Israeli border. The river effectively demarcates southern Lebanon, which Israel invaded last month in a bid to destroy Hezbollah’s infrastructure and stop it from firing rockets and missiles into Israel.

As that ground offensive continued on Monday, Israel’s new foreign minister, Gideon Saar, signaled that renewed U.S.-brokered diplomatic efforts were now underway to stem the conflict.

“There is progress,” Mr. Saar said at a news conference. “The main challenge eventually will be to enforce what will be agreed.”

Repeated rounds of shuttle diplomacy over the past year, led by the Biden administration, have so far failed to contain the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which began last October when Hezbollah started its cross-border assaults in support of Hamas in Gaza. The violence has significantly escalated in recent weeks. Officials say 3,200 people have been killed in Lebanon and more than a fifth of the population displaced.

Efforts to reach a temporary cease-fire are complicated by the fact that, even if Hezbollah does agree to demilitarize in southern Lebanon, it is unclear how such an agreement would be enforced — and by whom exactly. A U.N. resolution that ended the last major conflict in 2006 also called for Hezbollah to disarm along the border, but has been widely considered a resounding failure.

Ron Dermer, Israel’s minister of strategic affairs and a close confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, visited Russia last week to discuss the possibility of a Russian role in enforcing a truce in Lebanon, according to an official familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Asked about his visit on Monday, Mr. Saar indicated that Russia could “contribute” toward efforts to stop Hezbollah rearming via land routes that pass through Syria, where Russia maintains a military presence. It was unclear how exactly Russia was expected to assist.

The seemingly renewed momentum in recent days behind a diplomatic settlement mirrors a growing confidence among Israeli officials that Hezbollah has been significantly weakened. The hope is that such a settlement, on the back of sweeping Israeli military victories inside Lebanon, will allow the tens of thousands of Israeli civilians displaced along the border to return home.

Following remarks on Sunday by Israel’s new defense minister, Israel Katz, that Hezbollah had been “defeated,” Mr. Saar said during his news conference that the group had “lost the majority” of their missile and rocket stockpiles.

Hours later, however, Hezbollah struck back at those claims, unleashing a large rocket barrage near the northern Israeli city of Haifa. At least three people were injured in the attack, according to Magen David Adom, the Israeli emergency service.

The barrage served as the latest reminder that Hezbollah still poses a formidable threat despite concerted Israeli efforts to stymie the group’s cross-border fire. The Israeli military said that a total of 90 projectiles had crossed the border, not all of which were intercepted by the country’s air defense system.

The head of Hezbollah’s media office, Mohammed Afif, said on Monday that the group had not yet received any proposals on a cease-fire deal in Lebanon, but there had been “contacts between Washington, Moscow, Tehran and other capitals” on the issue since the election of former President Donald J. Trump last week.

“Nothing official has reached Lebanon or us,” Mr. Afif said at a news conference in the Dahiya, the area adjoining Beirut where the armed group holds sway.

Hezbollah, he cautioned, remained “ready for a long war.”

When the civil war in Syria threatened his village more than a decade ago, a farmer and his family fled to neighboring Lebanon.

The farmer, Ali Kheir Khallu, 37, found work there growing oranges and bananas. Life was hard, he said, but at least he felt safe.

That feeling vanished last month as Israel ramped up its war with Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese militia, heavily bombing sites that it said belonged to the group. When the bombs fell near Mr. Kheir Khallu’s house, he packed up his family, left behind the new lives they had built in Lebanon and fled back to Syria, where they are now struggling to start over, yet again.

“You want to make up for all that you have lost,” he said. “But you are still in shock.”

As the war in Lebanon expands, more than 1.2 million people — one-fifth of the population — have been displaced from their homes, the government says.

While most have sought safety in other parts of Lebanon, more than 470,000 people, mostly Syrians, have crossed into Syria in the last six weeks, aid groups say.

Since Syrian rebels tried to topple the government in 2011, President Bashar al-Assad has fought to stay in power, with his forces bombing and besieging opposition communities and repeatedly using chemical weapons. The war drew in Russia, the United States, the jihadists of Islamic State and other forces, displacing about 12 million residents, or more than half the country’s population.

More than 1.1 million Syrians registered as refugees in Lebanon, most of them deeply impoverished and in Lebanese communities that wanted them to leave. Some of these refugees have now decided to try their luck in their own shattered country rather than under the bombs in Lebanon. But they must navigate Syria’s tattered economy, damaged communities and a government long known to trample on human rights.

Mr. al-Assad’s authoritarian government controls most of Syria’s major cities, but large parts of the country are dominated by either Turkish-backed armed groups in the northwest or a Kurdish-led militia supported by the United States in the northeast.

Human Rights Watch warned recently that Syrians returning home could face repression by the government, including forced disappearance and torture.

Mr. Kheir Khallu and other returning refugees spoke to The New York Times in the village of al-Rai in northern Syria during a visit facilitated by the Turkish authorities who oversee the area.

His uncle, Abdel-Majid Dahdou, 48, has also recently returned from Lebanon and said that Syrian war and the passage of time had transformed their village, Celame. Shelling damaged his house and looters cleaned it out, he said, leaving him to now borrow mattresses and blankets for his family.

When he left years ago, rebels were fighting the Syrian government. Now, Turkey supports the local security forces and provides basic services.

But the new Turkish-backed authorities there have refused to recognize his Syrian government identity card, he said, meaning that he cannot enroll his children in school or connect his house to the electric grid. So while trying to figure out how to get a local ID, he charges his cellphone at a relative’s house.

“At night, we sit in the dark,” he said.

Other Syrians said they had also found it hard to return.

Mohammed Najjar, 42, left his home and housewares store in the town of Azaz on the Turkish border in 2013 to go to Lebanon, where he sold clothes at an outdoor market and worked as a day laborer in agriculture. His family registered as refugees with the United Nations, he said, but stopped receiving aid years ago.

Then work grew scarce as Lebanon sank into a deep economic crisis that began in 2019, compounded by the coronavirus pandemic.

So when Israel began bombing near where his family lived, he said, he decided to head home.

“It was war. There was no money, and we worried about the children, how to pay the rent, where we would live,” he said. “So we decided it was safer to come home.”

He returned with his brother’s wife, Hamida Brimo, who had gone to Lebanon at age 10 and come home a 22-year-old mother of three. She got married in Lebanon, but her husband did not make the move to Syria with her and their children, she said, because he feared being forced to serve in the Syrian Army.

She said she didn’t know when she would see her husband again, but she hoped that at least she and her daughters would be safe in Syria.

“We came back, but we don’t know how our lives here will be,” she said. “We have to return and start over.”

Leaders from across the Arab world gathered on Monday in the capital of Saudi Arabia for a summit that came at a delicate moment for the kingdom, which has signaled a rapprochement with Iran after a violent, decades-long rivalry.

The meeting was officially convened to discuss the fighting in Gaza and Lebanon, where Israel’s military is battling Iran-backed militant groups. It takes place amid heightened regional tensions and the prospect of a hawkish Trump administration on Iran.

Saudi Arabia had been preparing to recognize Israel, but the wars in Gaza and Lebanon cooled that prospect. Now, the kingdom and its allies find themselves warming to Tehran. Last month, the foreign ministers of the Gulf states met for the first time as a group with their Iranian counterpart. On Sunday, the Saudi and Iranian military chiefs met in Tehran — further signaling a thaw in relations as Iran considers a response to Israeli attacks on its territory.

Saudi Arabia’s powerful crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, emphasized the relationship in his opening remarks at the event, a joint summit of the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, on Monday.

“We call on the international community to compel Israel to respect Iran’s sovereignty and not to attack its territory,” he told the audience in Riyadh, the Saudi capital.

Saudi Arabia and Iran have been locked in a long battle for regional dominance, a rivalry shaped by the competing branches of Islam that each country embraces. Iran’s network of regional proxies — which includes Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon — has long been a particular source of concern for Saudi Arabia.

While Hamas and Hezbollah have been weakened by the Israeli military’s operations in Gaza and Lebanon, Iran still arms and supports the Houthis in Yemen — a group that has been implicated in attacks on the kingdom.

“The issue that we’ve had, and that was the basis for the divergence in our relationship, was Iran’s regional behavior, which from our perspective has not contributed to stability,” the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, said last week. “We are having very, very clear and honest conversations with the Iranians.”

The vice president of Iran, Mohammad Rez Aref, called what has happened in Gaza and Lebanon a “shameful catastrophe” on Monday in his address to the summit, urging “collective action” to stop Israeli aggression, according to Iranian state news media.

But not everyone in Riyadh appeared keen to pursue further alignment. Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, demanded that countries stop “interfering in its internal affairs by supporting this or that group” — an implicit reference to Iran’s longtime support of Hezbollah.

Analysts said that in addition to signaling greater warmth toward Tehran, Saudi Arabia could also be using the summit in Riyadh as an opportunity to send a message to the incoming Trump administration. President-elect Donald J. Trump has said he will “stop wars” when he takes office, noted Hasan Alhasan, a senior fellow for Middle East policy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

“Saudi Arabia could be trying to position itself as an attractive and credible choice for the Trump administration to work with if Trump follows through with his pledge to broker a deal to end the war, especially given the fact that diplomatic efforts led by other regional mediators, notably Qatar and Egypt, have failed to bear fruit,” Mr. Alhasan said.

Last year’s summit was held not long after Israel launched a war against Hamas in Gaza in response to the militant group’s deadly Oct. 7 attack on its soil. The leaders in attendance at that summit called in their communiqué for an arms embargo against Israel.

In the months since, the death toll in Gaza has climbed above 43,000 people, according to health officials in the enclave. And Israel has launched a ground invasion of Lebanon to fight Hezbollah.

The communiqué issued on Monday at the end of this year’s summit bore many similarities to the one issued a year prior — it condemned Israeli aggression in Gaza, again calling for an arms embargo.

It also warned about the danger of escalation and the expansion of the fighting to Lebanon — along with violations of the sovereignty of Iran.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has requested to delay testifying at his ongoing corruption trial, fueling criticism that he is seeking to drag out the case in order to delay a verdict and, if convicted, a jail term.

A court in Jerusalem has been examining charges of bribery and fraud against Mr. Netanyahu, in a trial that began in 2020 and has been set to reach a crescendo this December with several sessions of testimony from the prime minister. He denies the accusations, which center on claims that he used his influence to help leading businessmen in exchange for gifts and favorable media coverage.

On Sunday night, Mr. Netanyahu’s legal team filed a request with the court to delay his appearance by two and a half months, according to Amit Hadad, one of the prime minister’s lawyers. The prime minister has been too consumed by running the country during wartime and needs more time to prepare his defense, Mr. Hadad said in a brief phone interview.

Critics countered that Mr. Netanyahu had an ulterior motive. The prime minister’s “only interest” is “not to go to jail,” Yair Golan, an opposition leader, said in a radio interview. “Besides that, there is no other real consideration.”

The request came as Mr. Netanyahu battled to rebut separate allegations involving officials in his office.

Investigators are examining whether Mr. Netanyahu’s aides leaked sensitive intelligence materials to the news media and doctored the official records of phone conversations at the start of the war involving the prime minister, according to officials briefed on the cases who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss a sensitive matter. The prime minister has denied the accusations, calling them “fake news” intended to undermine his authority at a sensitive moment in Israel’s wars on several fronts.

The two developments have sharpened a yearslong dispute within Israeli society about Mr. Netanyahu’s integrity, one that helped lead to five elections in less than four years and played a role in years of street protest.

Mr. Netanyahu and his supporters have long argued that the trial is a confected effort to force an elected leader from power on spurious legal grounds instead of at the ballot box.

His critics, including former allies who broke with him over the issue, say that the trial is a legitimate attempt to hold Mr. Netanyahu to account for wrongdoing, and that his decision to remain in power while standing trial means that he has prioritized his personal goals over the national interest.

The recent allegations about Mr. Netanyahu’s aides have given fresh momentum to that criticism.

One aide, who is under arrest, stands accused of helping to leak classified documents to a foreign news outlet, according to six defense officials familiar with the case. The aide is thought to have done so to help build public opposition to a cease-fire in Gaza. Mr. Netanyahu had an interest in stoking that opposition: The prime minister’s coalition could have collapsed if a truce was reached before Hamas was completely defeated, because several far-right lawmakers within the coalition had threatened to quit.

Separately, police officers are investigating a complaint that officials in the prime minister’s office tampered with the records of phone calls made by the prime minister on the first day of the war, according to six defense officials briefed on the case. Records detailing what and when the prime minister knew about Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, could prove important in any inquiry into the failure by Israeli political and military leaders — including the prime minister — to prevent the attack and later stem its consequences.

A former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said his insistence on an independent investigation into such security failures was one of the reasons Mr. Netanyahu fired him from his cabinet post last week. The prime minister has said that an inquiry must wait until the war is over.

Mr. Netanyahu’s office declined to comment for this article but he has publicly denied the claims and presented himself as the victim of double standards.

In a strongly worded statement issued over the weekend, Mr. Netanyahu questioned why the security services do not appear to have investigated what he described as a “tsunami of leaks” made by others throughout the war, including about cabinet meetings, negotiations with Hamas, and political disagreements within the government.

“Hezbollah and Iran receive, at times on live television, transcripts of discussions among us about the plans of action against them and our internal debates,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “On all those, zero investigations have been conducted. Zero.”

He added: “We know exactly what’s going on here. This is an organized manhunt meant to undermine the state’s leadership and weaken us at the height of the war.”

Myra Noveck contributed reporting.

The students would emerge on their bikes, in the tens of thousands, seemingly out of nowhere. Like a flash mob on wheels, they rode for hours in the night, by the light of streetlamps, sometimes bursting into verses of the Chinese national anthem. Some carried Chinese flags.

They were making the 40-mile journey from the Chinese city of Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan Province, to the neighboring city of Kaifeng, a cycling trip that can take up to five hours one-way. Why? For the sake of it.

It isn’t clear when the craze really took off, but by early this month, it was drawing hundreds of riders seemingly every night. At first it had been celebrated online and even by the People’s Daily, the Communist Party mouthpiece, which described the night rides as “a symbol of youthful energy and the joy of shared experiences.”

But over the weekend, after the number of riders swelled to the tens of thousands in a country where officials are increasingly wary of impromptu crowds, local authorities shut it down, citing traffic and safety concerns.

The nighttime escapades started in June when four college friends in Zhengzhou decided to bike to Kaifeng to eat a type of soup dumpling that is the city’s specialty, Chinese news media has reported. Soon, hordes of college students were making the trip, too, helped by easy access to shared bicycles that are cheap and ubiquitous in many Chinese cities.

The students, seemingly attracted by a sense of spontaneity and adventure, posted photos and videos of their own journeys online with the caption: “Youth has no price tag.”

The buzz around the night rides drew Bin Li, a third-year engineering student at a university in Henan who boarded a train to Zhengzhou on Thursday with nothing but the clothes he was wearing.

His leap of faith paid off. Everything he needed — water, food, a bike and even companionship — materialized along the route. At the starting point, he met another college student. They set out just before midnight, and the two strangers became impromptu riding partners for the five-hour journey that followed.

“It didn’t feel that long because I was talking with all these strangers we met along the way,” he said. “When so many people came together to do something as one, there was a real sense of community.”

The night unfolded like a rolling street festival, with cars in adjacent lanes occasionally slowing down to blast music for the riders. Some people even set off fireworks along the route. At one point, a rider appeared with a national flag strapped to his back, spontaneously prompting the crowd to break into the national anthem, “March of the Volunteers.”

“You could hear how exhausted people were, but they were still trying their best to sing,” Mr. Li said. “With the national flag waving in front and everyone singing the anthem behind it, there was this really powerful energy, truly incredible.”

Mr. Li arrived in Kaifeng around 4 a.m. on Friday and followed the crowd to a Song dynasty theme park. The bike Mr. Li rented for the journey cost him 26 yuan, or about $4.

At first, officials had encouraged the craze, which was seen as good for business and tourism. The theme park in Kaifeng and many other popular tourist attractions changed their schedules to open early and offered free admission to students. Volunteers distributed free breakfast at the gate.

The city also set up additional bike docking sites, and traffic police officers were dispatched to escort the students on their journeys. Many students would spend a day or two in Kaifeng, then take the train back, state media has reported.

But the welcome quickly turned into criticism.

On Friday night, photos and videos showed bikes filling up a multilane road between the two cities, with cars squeezed to the sides and the crowd stretching for miles. By then, the trend had spread beyond college students, drawing participants of all ages from cities across the country.

Among them was Fen Shen, a 32-year-old construction contractor in Zhengzhou. Watching the youthful energy sweep through his city, he felt an urge to help even if he did not want to bike himself.

“I felt inspired by the atmosphere,” Mr. Shen said. “It’s just so good to be young — there’s no pressure, you can just pick up and go whenever you feel like it.”

He joined online groups to coordinate rides and help out-of-towners locate available bikes for rent around the city. But his participation was short-lived. By Friday night, many would-be riders gave up after finding that rental bikes were already taken.

The next day, both cities announced that on Saturday night, they would close the lanes for nonmotorized vehicles — that is, bikes — on the road the students had been using. Some bike rental companies that operate in Zhengzhou announced that their bikes would lock if residents attempted to take them out of a designated zone within the city.

When Mr. Shen went to the usual starting point on Saturday, the scene had changed. Police officers and security guards were stationed at several intersections, blocking access to the highway, he said.

“While the youth were carousing, more and more people were beginning to worry about the hidden dangers of the large gathering of bikes,” the Kaifeng Public Security Bureau said in a social media post on Saturday.

What if an ambulance needed to use the road but couldn’t get through, the post asked, or what if a bicyclist in the crowd fell but was unable to escape the congestion?

“You don’t need to bike in a large group or late at night,” the bureau added. “Why not set off during the day?”

The change in tone reflects the delicate balance the Chinese authorities face when managing spontaneous youth movements, said Dali Yang, a professor at the University of Chicago who studies Chinese politics.

On one hand, officials saw the students’ enthusiasm as a way to drive broader excitement about a smaller city like Kaifeng. But they may have underestimated the pent-up energy of young people, Mr. Yang said, including students from other parts of the country, at a time when many are still carrying the emotional weight of the pandemic, when college campuses were locked down.

“Instead of trying to find a way to channel the students’ energy, the stability-obsessed authorities simply decided the easiest way is to limit their access and mobility,” he said.

Mr. Li, the engineering student, said his university was now warning students not to join the night rides.

“These are the only years in my life where I don’t have to worry about other things, so I have to make memories that will last,” he said. “Once I start working, there will no longer be a chance to do this.”

On Chinese social media, people posted messages saying that their universities in Henan were restricting students from leaving campus without permission, but the measures could not immediately be verified.

Some also posted messages and videos saying that the restrictions would not stop them — instead of riding, they would simply walk.

Shawn Paik contributed video production.