Patience, Rahm Emanuel likes to say, is a waste of time.

The former congressman, chief of staff to President Barack Obama and mayor of Chicago is brash, a touch cocky and frequently profane. Above all, he wants to get things done. Yesterday.

As the United States ambassador to Japan, a country where change typically follows a long process of quiet consensus-building referred to as “nemawashi,” Mr. Emanuel, 65, was initially seen as an unorthodox appointment. But maybe, he suggests, he was just what Japan needed.

“I think on a lot of things, Japan was ready to go,” said Mr. Emanuel, referring to a recent cascade of bold revisions to the country’s defense policy. In the past three years, Japan has doubled the amount earmarked for military spending, acquired Tomahawk missiles from the United States and, in a reversal of postwar restrictions on weapons exports, agreed to manufacture American-designed Patriot missiles to sell to the U.S. government.

Although he acknowledged the groundwork was laid before he arrived, Mr. Emanuel said these changes didn’t simply coincide with his term as American envoy to Tokyo.

“While I was here, they did more, went faster and farther and deeper than I think they themselves originally thought,” he said during an interview late last month in the library of his residence in Tokyo. “Did I contribute to that?” Mr. Emanuel said. “Uh, yeah.”

Just how much credit should go to Mr. Emanuel is a matter of perspective.

“Ambassador Emanuel shared various ideas with me and offered advice,” the former prime minister, Fumio Kishida, who left office in early October, said in an interview late last month in his parliamentary office in Tokyo. But “it was the Japanese government that made the decisions.”

Mr. Emanuel plans to leave Japan early next year before Donald J. Trump’s second presidential inauguration, and said he hopes to “figure out something in public service.”

He demurred on specifics, saying only that he was consulting with family and friends. His long career in politics and a stint in banking have left him with a wide network he is not afraid to tap. He sat for this interview in a wood-paneled room lined with a collection of books bought with donations from high-placed friends, including $50,000 from Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase.

Whereas previous ambassadors, like former Vice President Walter F. Mondale or the three-term Senator Howard H. Baker Jr., landed in Tokyo after retiring from politics, Mr. Emanuel and his future ambitions made him “eager to make achievements” for the alliance between the United States and Japan, said Keiko Iizuka, a senior political writer at the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s largest newspaper.

As much as anything, Mr. Emanuel was a vociferous cheerleader for Japan when rising competition from China and the wars in Ukraine and Gaza were drawing the most attention in Washington. He frequently bashed China on social media, unsettling some American colleagues who found his tenor inconsistent with official messaging, but “he was a fierce defender of Japan,” said Kurt M. Campbell, the deputy secretary of state.

Mr. Campbell said the ambassador called “every single day” to talk about a Japan-related agenda item. “Do I like that all the time?” Mr. Campbell said. “I do not. But it is relentless, and it is effective.”

Mr. Emanuel said he came to realize the importance of Japan’s leadership in the Pacific, particularly in Southeast Asia, where the country has spent decades on diplomatic outreach and investment. He was impressed, he said, when Japan successfully lobbied several countries in the region to support the United Nations resolution in March 2022 to condemn Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

Japan should “get full, 100 percent credit,” Mr. Emanuel said. “I mean, that’s not something we could have done.”

Takeo Akiba, Japan’s national security adviser and a frequent visitor to the ambassador’s residence, said Mr. Emanuel understood how both governments were “aiming at the same goal.” But he dismissed the “easy thinking” of regarding the ambassador’s success as “the U.S. side putting pressure on Japan.”

In a culture where formal niceties smooth many interactions, Mr. Emanuel was blunt and dogged. He can be self-effacing about his style, joking that he has never sent dead fish while in Japan, as he is reported to have done once to a political rival. “They have them everywhere,” he said. “It doesn’t carry the big punch.”

Minoru Kihara, the defense minister from September 2023 until this fall, said Mr. Emanuel called or visited the minister’s office more than any other country’s ambassador. “We were able to get straight to the point in the limited time we had,” Mr. Kihara said. “Yet still not be rude to each other.”

Mr. Kihara credited Mr. Emanuel with helping Japan purchase Tomahawk missiles ahead of schedule and collaborating on an agreement to allow American naval ships to be repaired in Japan.

The full blast of Mr. Emanuel’s personality emerged on social media, where he broadcast his trips to various prefectures, often with his wife, Amy Rule, or poked at Russia or China.

His gibes at China on X were often aggressive and sarcastic. “The PRC won’t be winning a People’s Choice Award anytime soon,” Mr. Emanuel wrote in one typical post. “The world just isn’t buying its ‘friendly neighbor’ and ‘reliable partner’ spin.” He made such remarks, he said, “to create a space for our allies to have the confidence.”

When China banned Japanese seafood imports to protest the release of treated radioactive wastewater from the ruined Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, Mr. Emanuel visited Fukushima, posting photographs with fishermen and eating sashimi with a mayor. He served seafood from Fukushima to guests at his residence and persuaded the U.S. military to buy scallops from the prefecture.

That kind of publicity “was a great help to Japan,” Mr. Akiba said.

Mr. Emanuel also relished the nitty-gritty of diplomatic compromise.

In one instance in 2022, he recalled, the Japanese government asked the U.S. military to curtail planned exercises near Okinawa in the weeks preceding an upper house parliamentary election. Mr. Emanuel said he helped broker a deal with the Japanese government to keep the bulk of the exercises on schedule, while the American military restricted some night flights.

Adm. John C. Aquilino, a retired commander of the United States Indo-Pacific Command, said Mr. Emanuel was “my first call” to resolve such situations. “Without his interaction, they could have turned into a crisis,” he said.

A spokesman from Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined to comment on the specifics of the operational coordination.

Mira Rapp-Hooper, the senior director for East Asia and Oceania at the National Security Council, said Mr. Emanuel could handle “extremely granular and technical” details alongside broad strategy. “Working with Rahm was like having the most powerful of guided weapons in our corner,” she said.

Mr. Emanuel’s deal-making ability — and political necessity — helped him work with colleagues across the aisle in Congress to secure the nomination to the ambassador’s post despite opposition from progressives in the Democratic Party.

Senator Dan Sullivan, Republican of Alaska, said he had agreed to support Mr. Emanuel if he would promote Alaskan efforts to export natural gas to Japan. As ambassador, Mr. Emanuel hosted summits and wrote an opinion essay in The Wall Street Journal supporting natural gas, dismaying environmentalists. He “kept his word,” Mr. Sullivan said.

Critics in Japan denounced Mr. Emanuel for overstepping diplomatic boundaries, such as when he organized a group of ambassadors to nudge Japan to embrace L.G.B.T.Q. rights as a bill was pending in Japan’s Parliament, or when he boycotted the annual peace memorial ceremony in Nagasaki to mark the day the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city because Israel had not been invited.

“If you only want to do big things that nobody disagrees with,” said Mr. Emanuel, “they’re not going to be very big.”

As he prepares to leave Japan, Mr. Emanuel acknowledged the fragility of some of the agreements — like stronger trilateral cooperation between Japan, the United States and South Korea — that he helped shepherd.

“Are the bones there? Is the blueprint there?” he asked. “Yeah, but you need a commitment to it.”

As for his legendary impatience? “I’ve been here three years,” he said. “But for the Japanese, it has felt like 30.”

Kiuko Notoya contributed reporting.

Every fall, when farmers across the rolling, red dirt hills of Idlib Province in northern Syria harvest their olive crops, they routinely find at least one representative of the local tax authority stationed at any oil press.

The tax collector takes at least 5 percent of the oil, and farmers grouse that there are no exceptions, even in lean harvest years.

The collectors work for the civilian government established under Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the rebel movement that just spearheaded the swift overthrow of the 54-year Assad dynasty. The Islamist group has administered much of opposition-held Idlib Province since 2017.

Measures like the olive oil tax, introduced in 2019, have prompted protests and even occasional armed clashes and arrests.

Yet the Syrian Salvation Government, as the Idlib administration was known, persisted. It taxed goods entering its territory and generated revenue by selling fuel and running a telecom company. It also controlled the local economy through licensing regulation programs that looked a lot like a conventional government’s and proved that it was fairly adept at managing those finances to build up its military operations and provide civil services.

The portrait of the rebel group detailed in this article was gleaned from interviews with experts, representatives of humanitarian or other organizations working in the territory under its control, local residents and reports by the United Nations or think tanks.

Since 2017, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its affiliated organizations, driven by a hunger for broader power, created a certain level of stability in Idlib, governing with pragmatism and discipline. While the group retained overall control, it governed through a civilian authority with 11 ministries, which allowed it to concentrate on rebuilding its militia as a more structured force.

In Idlib, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham maintained a robust internal security force to confront other military factions and domestic critics, prompting regular protests against what were seen as authoritarian methods and against harsh jail conditions.

The primary question is whether these rebels, who are now trying to form a national government, can scale up what they achieved in Idlib, a poor, agrarian region with a relatively small population.

In Idlib, ministers who dealt with outside aid organizations could never make a decision on the spot, they always had to consult first with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham leaders, according to one representative of a humanitarian organization who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of aid operations in the area. Such tight control might work in a small governorate, but could prove unwieldy in a large country.

With its roots in the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham modified and moderated its own jihadist orientation starting around 2016. While it enforced some conservative Islamic practices, they did not resort to the strictures imposed by the Islamic State terrorist group when it ruled parts of Syria.

Still, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham remains designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the United Nations, Turkey and others. Because that designation blocked overt outside support, the group found new ways to sustain itself financially and militarily.

It levied fees on all kinds of goods and enterprises, including crops, border crossings, construction, trade, shopkeeping and craftwork. In addition, companies linked to the group enjoyed a monopoly on providing fuel, electricity, water and garbage collection.

“H.T.S. exemplifies adaptability in conflict economics,” said Mark Nakhla, the chief research officer at Kharon, an open-source analytics firm that advises companies on complying with sanctions against armed groups and other hostile actors.

He has been tracking Hayat Tahrir al-Sham since its jihadist days, and has watched it go through what he called a “strategic rebranding” and a shift from relying financially on wealthy foreign donors to sustaining military and civilian operations through local taxation and governance.

It has largely driven more extremist groups out of the Idlib region, while still fighting and sometimes killing their members, according to a recent report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington research institute.

The group also abandoned some previously used terrorist methods, like suicide bombings against military targets, said Orwa Ajjoub, a doctoral candidate at Malmo University in Sweden who studies Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

Throughout its history, the group has been pushed and pulled between practical and more hard-line elements in its ranks, a tension that is likely to continue as it expands its rule.

“The hard-liner elements in the group have been sidelined,” Mr. Ajjoub said. “They want to rule and they are Islamists, but they are very pragmatic and really ready to interact with local communities.”

As the rebel fighters headed south toward Damascus, Syria’s capital, in their offensive that toppled Mr. al-Assad, their commanders gave them rousing speeches about reclaiming Syria, not about creating an Islamic state, said Charles Lister, the director for Syria and Countering Terrorism & Extremism at the Middle East Institute in Washington.

Training and a sense of mission seemed to instill an esprit de corps among the group’s mostly young fighters, experts said, while regular pay assured loyalty while minimizing looting or other shakedowns.

“For them, discipline and respect is a key piece of their worldview,” said Aaron Y. Zelin, an expert on jihadist groups with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the author of a book about Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

Raising Funds Like a Government

Because the national government in Damascus tried to isolate rebel-controlled areas in the north, those regions had to rely on Turkey for basic services like water, electricity and cellular transmissions. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham set up ostensibly private distribution companies, but the owners were closely linked to the organization, according to aid groups and experts.

Their key source of revenue, however, was likely customs duties and other fees collected at the Bab al-Hawa border crossing, the main gateway into northwestern Syria from Turkey. The group did not publish figures, but humanitarian organizations working in Idlib and others estimate it may have generated $15 million or more per month.

In some cases, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham encouraged local residents to start businesses, including some that competed with its own telecom and energy companies.

Hussam Twilo, an Idlib entrepreneur, told The New York Times that he started a company, Syriana LTE, in 2016 and began putting up cellular towers in areas that did not get coverage from established companies. After Hayat Tahrir al-Sham took power, it gave Syriana a license to operate, he said in a phone interview.

Now, Syriana competes with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s Syria Phone telecom company, Mr. Twilo said, without friction.

“Their mentality is to support the private sector,” he said. However, he said he was bracing for major changes, including more taxation, once the former rebel group begins exercising nationwide control.

Something Akin to a Regular Army

When it came to military strategy, Ahmed Hussein al-Shara, the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham who previously went by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, abandoned the ideology that his group should concentrate on fomenting a global jihad against the West.

Instead, he focused on freeing Syria of the Assads, a goal that started in 2011 with the anti-government uprisings across the country that jihadist groups soon came to dominate.

In 2021, he made one of his most important moves by establishing what was called simply the Military College. Officers who had defected from the Syrian military helped mold his fighters and other ragtag groups of militiamen from around Syria into something akin to a regular army with an established chain of command.

“They became much closer to being an army than just a bunch of armed groups,” said Jerome Drevon, a senior analyst on jihad and modern conflict with the International Crisis Group.

They studied manuals of Western military doctrine posted online by various armed forces and tried to largely follow the British model, he said.

Their main source of weapons was what they captured from Syrian military bases or in battles with other militias, and over the years, that provided the core of their arsenal, experts said. Corrupt officers from the Assad regime also sold them arms, while Turkey provided trucks and light weapons to allied militias in northern Syria.

Some Turkey-backed militias joined forces with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in the offensive that overthrew the government. Turkey was believed to have held a certain amount of sway over the group’s military campaigns with at least 10,000 troops in Idlib Province and many more nearby, Mr. Devon said.

Now Turkey is emerging as one of the main beneficiaries of Mr. Assad’s ouster on the international stage.

Like any guerrilla movement, the group’s main need was for light weapons or artillery as well as transport vehicles, and Mr. Lister of the Middle East Institute said the group even manufactured its own rudimentary armored vehicles.

Experts estimated the overall numbers of fighters in Hayat Tahrir al-Sham ranged from 10,000 to 60,000. But the core was probably around 10,000 to 15,000 with about an equal number of reservists.

“They decided to totally restructure the way that they were organized,” Mr. Drevon said. “Their brigades were formed as specialized units with different functions like infantry, mortars, etc. In addition, it was much more centralized.”

The group’s most remarkable development was the assembly of a drone unit. The rebels said they acquired some of the drones and manufactured others themselves.

How the Rebels Governed in Idlib

In terms of its methods of control, the rebel group frequently left local authorities in place, especially in villages controlled by religious minorities.

Syria is a complicated patchwork of diverse hamlets. A predominantly Sunni Muslim nation of more than 23 million people, it has considerable minorities of Shiite Muslims, Christians and Druse, as well as the Alawite sect that dominated Syria under the Assads. In Idlib, the prewar population of 1.5 million swelled to 3.5 million with displaced people from around Syria mostly living in tent camps, according to U.N. figures.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham did not use the brutal methods used by more extremist groups to enforce Islamic practice.

The Islamic State, for example, was intolerant of any deviance from what it considered Islamic law. Some violators were executed, while convicted thieves had a hand amputated.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham does not fit into that box.

Buying and selling alcohol was banned, but residents said the group did not try to root out drinkers, and people were allowed to smoke in public. The group did not field morality police to enforce strict social codes.

In a conservative society, they did maintain elementary schools segregated by sex. The rebels also set up a chain of free Koranic schools called the House of Revelation, which teach both theology and regular subjects like math and English.

At one point, hard-liners objected that a new shopping mall built under Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s auspices was sinful because it allowed men and women to mingle in public, said Mr. Ajjoub, the doctoral candidate.

But the Idlib leaders overruled them.

Raja Abdulrahim contributed reporting from Idlib Province, Syria.

Israel announced on Sunday that it was closing its embassy in Dublin in light of what it described as “the extreme anti-Israel policies of the Irish government.”

The decision came days after Ireland announced that it would file an intervention in support of South Africa’s case against Israel in the International Court of Justice in The Hague. South Africa has accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, a charge Israel vehemently rejects.

Israeli officials said shuttering the embassy in Ireland did not mean that Israel was severing diplomatic relations with Ireland. Officials from both countries noted that Ireland’s embassy in Tel Aviv will continue to function.

But the move indicated a more muscular diplomatic policy led by Gideon Saar, Israel’s conservative foreign minister who was appointed to the post last month, as Israel faces mounting international criticism of the conduct of its war in the Gaza Strip.

“Ireland has crossed every red line in its relations with Israel,” Mr. Saar said in a statement on Sunday, adding: “Israel will invest its resources in advancing bilateral relations with countries worldwide according to priorities that also take into account the attitudes and actions of these states toward Israel.”

Illustrating his policy of rewarding countries considered friendly toward Israel, Mr. Saar also announced on Sunday that Israel would be opening a new embassy in Moldova, a country that already maintains an embassy in Israel.

“The relations between Israel and Moldova are friendly and both countries seek to expand and deepen them,” Mr. Saar said.

The prime minister of Ireland, Simon Harris, described Israel’s decision to close its embassy as “deeply regrettable” in a statement posted on social media. He added, “I utterly reject the assertion that Ireland is anti-Israel. Ireland is pro-peace, pro-human rights and pro-international law.”

Israel’s relations with Ireland have been rocky for months. Israel recalled its ambassador to Ireland in May, as well as its ambassadors to Spain and Norway, after the three countries each recognized a Palestinian state.

Ireland’s deputy prime minister and minister for foreign affairs, Micheál Martin, said in a statement that Ireland and Israel would “continue to maintain diplomatic relations. Inherent in that is the right to agree and disagree on fundamental points.”

With that, he denounced the continuation of Israel’s war in Gaza, triggered by the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led terrorist attack on Israel that officials said killed about 1,200 people, as “simply unacceptable.”

Criticizing what he called “the collective punishment of the Palestinian people in Gaza,” Mr. Martin said, “We need an immediate cease-fire, the release of all hostages and a surge of humanitarian aid into Gaza.”

Israel has come under increasing international censure over the high death toll and the humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian enclave.

More than 44,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023 in Gaza, according to the local health authorities, which do not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Israel estimates that its forces have killed about 17,000 combatants.

Ireland said that it was intervening in the case against Israel in The Hague to ask the top international court “to broaden its interpretation of what constitutes the commission of genocide by a state.”

Some criticism of Mr. Saar’s decision to close the embassy came from within Israel. Yair Lapid, the centrist leader of Israel’s parliamentary opposition, wrote in a social media post on X: “The decision to close the Israeli embassy in Ireland is a victory for anti-Semitism and anti-Israel organizations. The way to deal with criticism is not to run away, but to stay and fight!”

Gabby Sobelman and Myra Noveck contributed reporting.

Israel struck Syrian weapons depots and air defenses overnight, a group monitoring the conflict said Sunday, in what appeared to be part of an effort Israel says is aimed at depriving “extremists” of military assets after rebels seized power in Syria.

In all, Israel struck its neighbor 75 times in attacks that began Saturday night near the Syrian capital, Damascus, and the cities of Hama and Homs, according to the group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based organization that has long tracked the conflict in Syria. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Israel has struck Syria more than 450 times since the collapse of the Assad regime a week ago, according to the Observatory, destroying Syria’s navy and dozens of air bases, ammunition depots and other military equipment.

Israel’s military has also seized and occupied an expanse of territory in Syria over the de facto border between the two countries, including on the Syrian side of the strategic Mt. Hermon. Israel has given no timeline for its departure, apart from saying that it would stay until its security demands were met.

The head of the group leading the rebel coalition that now governs Syria, Ahmed al-Shara, said in an interview on Saturday with Syria TV, a pro-opposition channel, that Israel was using pretexts to justify its “unwarranted” territorial seizures in Syria. Still, he said, Syria could not afford any further conflict.

“Syria’s war-weary condition, after years of conflict and war, does not allow for new confrontations,” he said, adding that he was focused on diplomatic solutions. “The priority at this stage is reconstruction and stability, not being drawn into disputes that could lead to further destruction.”

The Observatory reported on Sunday that Israeli forces in Syrian territory had asked residents of the countryside in western Daraa Province to surrender their weapons, as they had done in other villages in the area Israel now occupies.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military about its latest strikes in Syria.

Neither the previous Syrian government, led by President Bashar al-Assad, nor the new authorities in Damascus have attacked Israel, and Arab countries and France have called on Israel to withdraw and respect Syria’s sovereignty.

Israeli officials, however, say that the raids are necessary to secure the border and to keep Syria’s weaponry from falling into the hands of extremists while the country remains unstable. American officials have echoed those statements, with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken saying on Thursday that Israel had told the Biden administration that its presence in Syria was “a temporary move” to ensure “that this vacuum isn’t filled by something bad.”

With the Assad regime ousted, some fear a security vacuum that could allow the Islamic State or other extremist groups to exploit the situation.

The group now in power in Damascus, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, has long been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States and other Western countries for its roots in extremist movements such as Al Qaeda.

But the group has installed a technocratic administration in Damascus and promised moderate, tolerant governance. That has led some countries to consider lifting the terrorist designation to establish relations with Syria’s new leaders.

Visiting Israeli troops in the Golan Heights on Friday, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, Israel’s military chief of staff, insisted that his country was acting to secure its frontier and its citizens even as it crossed the lines established by a cease-fire agreement between Syria and Israel in 1974. Israel had no intention of interfering in the future of a post-Assad Syria, he said.

“There was a country here that was an enemy state, its army collapsed, and there is a threat that terrorist elements could reach here,” Lieutenant General Halevi said in remarks released by the military on Saturday.

“We moved forward so that these terrorist elements will not establish themselves — extremist terrorists will not establish themselves right next to the border,” he said. “We are not intervening in what is happening in Syria. We have no intention of managing Syria. We are unequivocally intervening in what determines the security of Israeli citizens here.”

The overnight airstrikes lasted for about eight hours, according to the Observatory, which said that weapons and ammunition depots as well as bases in the mountains and countryside outside Damascus had been struck.

It said Israel had also targeted warehouses in the countryside outside Homs, air defenses at the airport in Hama and other sites.

Other foreign powers were also maneuvering to preserve their interests in the post-Assad era, including Russia, which in previous years had helped Mr. al-Assad stay in power, partly to hold onto its two military bases in Syria — springboards for its expanding military presence in Africa.

Journalists for The New York Times saw a convoy of dozens of Russian vehicles traveling west of Homs on the road to Tartus. The vehicles included fuel tankers, buses and trucks with antiaircraft guns, many with Russian flags.

Russia has not said what will happen with its forces in Syria.

While there were reports of Russian military planes leaving Syria, the Turkish defense minister, Yasar Guler, told reporters on Sunday that Russia was simply reshuffling its military assets within Syria.

“Right now, I don’t think they are going to leave,” he said in comments reported by Turkish media and confirmed by the foreign ministry. “They’ll do everything they can to stay.”

Russia was in talks with the new Syrian leadership in Damascus about its presence in the country, he added, and Turkey had offered to “provide necessary support to them in that process.”

Turkey has long had tacit links with the Syrian rebels who marched on Damascus and is believed to have strong channels of communication with the group.

Mr. al-Shara, who is better known by his nom de guerre, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, was equivocal in his Saturday interview about Russia’s future in Syria, saying only that the relationship should be re-evaluated “in a way that serves common interests.”

In Damascus, the authorities led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham said they were trying to re-establish security and public services that would enable the country to return to some semblance of normalcy.

The transitional administration announced on Telegram that all schools and universities were to start classes again on Sunday, and institutions in Aleppo, Idlib, Damascus and other provinces did so.

Questions remained about how the new authorities would handle sectarian tensions between Syria’s Sunni Muslim majority, to which Hayat Tahrir al-Sham belongs, and minorities, including the Alawites, a Shiite Muslim offshoot sect that includes the Assad family and many of its strongest supporters. Scattered acts of retribution and threats against Alawites and Shiites continued to be reported in Syria, despite the new administration’s repeated calls for minorities to be respected.

On Saturday, without giving a reason, it announced that it was opening centers in Latakia Province, a former al-Assad stronghold, where people associated with the deposed regime would be required to register.

Isabel Kershner contributed reporting from Jerusalem, Rania Khaled from Cairo, Safak Timur from Istanbul, Anton Troianovski from Berlin and Ben Hubbard from outside Homs, Syria.

Israel’s military said it carried out strikes and raids in northern Gaza on Sunday after days of deadly bombardments across the territory.

The military said in a statement that it had targeted a “terrorist meeting point” in the northern town of Beit Hanoun, among other actions.

Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s news agency, reported that Israeli forces had raided a school building in the town and forced displaced families sheltering there to evacuate in unsafe conditions, killing and wounding several amid bombardment and gunfire. Israel’s military did not directly address the report but said it had struck dozens of terrorists from the air and ground, and seized additional terrorists.

In central Gaza, one Israeli strike killed a Palestinian cameraman who worked for Al Jazeera and other media outlets, Al Jazeera reported on Sunday. The cameraman, Ahmad Baker al-Louh, was killed in a strike in the Nuseirat refugee camp, the news agency said, along with five members of the Palestinian Civil Defense.

Al Jazeera Media Network in a statement on Sunday condemned the strike and said Mr. al-Louh had been covering the civil defense forces’ “rescue operations of a family that was severely injured in an earlier bombing.”

In its own statement, the Israeli military said that its air force had “conducted a precise strike on Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists who were operating in a command and control center embedded in the offices of the ‘Civil Defense’ organization in Nuseirat.” It said that the center had been used to “plan and carry out an imminent terror attack” against Israeli troops, and that “numerous steps” had been taken to mitigate harm to civilian harms.

The Israelis, too, named Mr. al-Louh as among the dead, and described him as a Palestinian Islamic Jihad platoon commander. Avichay Adraee, the Israeli military’s chief Arabic spokesman, said on social media that the strike killed a member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad who was also a cameraman affiliated with Al Jazeera. Israel offered no evidence to back its claim.

Since October, Israel’s military has conducted some of its most devastating attacks in northern Gaza in an effort to crush what it says is a resurgence of the Hamas militant group in the area. The military has called on civilians in much of northern Gaza to evacuate, but many feel they have nowhere safe to go and have not left. The United Nations has warned of dire conditions and the risk of famine for some 400,000 civilians there.

The raids and bombings on Sunday came after several days of intense bombardment across Gaza.

Israel’s military said it struck a school building in Gaza City on Saturday, describing it, too, as a command and control center where militants were operating and planning attacks. The Palestinian Civil Defense, the main emergency service in Gaza, said in a statement on Saturday that seven people had been killed and 12 others were wounded when a school building sheltering displaced families was hit.

Late on Thursday, an attack on a residential block in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza killed at least 31 people and wounded 90 others according to a spokesman for Al Awda Hospital near Jabaliya, a major medical center in northern Gaza, where the majority of the casualties were taken. Photographs taken by news agencies in the days after the strike showed people walking through the debris of severely damaged buildings. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the strike.

Israel’s military issued evacuation orders for parts of central and southern Gaza on Saturday, where it said that its forces were striking Hamas targets. The evacuation orders urged Palestinians in areas of central Gaza and the southern city of Khan Younis to leave ahead of an imminent attack that it said was aimed at Hamas militants who were firing rockets from the area. The orders drove hundreds of people to flee on foot carrying few belongings, Wafa reported on Sunday.

Amid the fighting, and after months of stalled negotiations, cease-fire talks appeared to have picked up some momentum. The White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said last week that his goal was to be able to secure a deal this month between Israel and Hamas for a cease-fire in Gaza and the release of hostages who had been captured during the Hamas-led assault on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Iyad Abuheweila contributed reporting from Istanbul.

President Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment and suspension from office has left South Korea, one of the United States’ most important allies, without a strong​ elected leader to tackle challenges like a belligerent North Korea and a deepening political polarization at home.​

By voting to impeach Mr. Yoon on Saturday, the National Assembly delivered a crushing vote of no confidence in a leader who had been unpopular through his term. ​Outside the legislature, people danced in the streets, celebrating Mr. Yoon’s peaceful removal from office less than two weeks after his declaration of martial law as proof of the resilience of the country’s democracy.

Yet, despite their euphoria, the political turmoil and uncertainty unleashed by Mr. Yoon’s botched attempt on Dec. 3 to place his country under military rule for the first time in 45 years remained unresolved.

His impeachment has created a political vacuum at the top. Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, the No. 2 official in the government hierarchy, has stepped in as the interim leader, but he has no electoral mandate. A new government cannot be born until the Constitutional Court decides whether to reinstate or formally oust Mr. Yoon.

The court’s deliberations could take up to six months. When the court deliberated on the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye in 2016, it needed three months to reach its conclusion and remove her. This time, the nine-member court has the additional problem of having three vacancies to fill. In the coming days, the National Assembly is expected to name three justices, asking Mr. Han to formally appoint them. Only two of the existing six justices were appointed by Mr. Yoon’s progressive predecessor, Moon Jae-in.

If Mr. Yoon is formally removed, South Korea will need another two months to elect a new president.

Mr. Yoon said he would “never give up” the fight to return to office. But he also faces investigations by the police and prosecutors on charges including insurrection, which could lead to ​his arrest. Prosecutors said they asked Mr. Yoon to present himself on Sunday for questioning, but he did not show up. They said they would summon him again.

The impeachment bill accused Mr. Yoon of perpetrating an insurrection when he declared martial law, because he sent troops into the National Assembly to block it from voting down his martial law, as it is allowed to do under the Constitution, and to detain his political opponents. Senior officials in the government, police and military have been arrested on charges of helping him carry out an insurrection.

The political turmoil will make it harder for South Korea to navigate the uncertainty around the incoming Donald J. Trump administration. Mr. Trump has described the alliance with South Korea as a terrible bargain for the United States and said that he would get along well with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un. Mr. Trump has threatened to make South Korea pay more for the 28,500 American troops based on its soil and to impose bigger tariffs on South Korean exports to the United States.

“We won’t have strong leaders who can actively negotiate with the Trump administration to sort these things out,” said Sung Deuk Hahm, a professor of political science at Kyonggi University, west of Seoul.

The challenge for Mr. Han, the interim leader, will be to keep the government functioning through this crisis. Though Mr. Han has been a career bureaucrat since the early 1970s, serving in posts that include trade negotiator, finance minister and ambassador to the United States, he lacks political clout because prime minister is not an elected post.

“The acting president’s role is to maintain the status quo,” said Lim Ji-bong, a professor of law and expert on the Constitution at Sogang University in Seoul. “Enforcing a significant new policy is considered beyond his power.”

Mr. Han and both the country’s finance and foreign ministers have faced questions over their roles in Mr. Yoon’s declaration of martial law, further limiting their mandate, according to some legal scholars and opposition lawmakers. Mr. Han said he and other ministers opposed Mr. Yoon’s martial law decree but could not persuade him out of it.

Mr. Han is viewed more as an even-keeled caretaker than as a charismatic leader, in some ways complementing Mr. Yoon, who has been criticized as impulsive and a braggart. When Mr. Yoon came under fire for inadequate preparations for the World Scout Jamboree last year that left hundreds ill from heat exhaustion, it was Mr. Han who traveled to the campsite to personally clean the public bathrooms there.

Such acumen served him well in his bureaucratic career. Now he will need to draw on all his skills to steer his country through a constitutional crisis and other intractable problems, including a widening income gap, mounting household debt and simmering gender and generational tensions.

One of the first things he did as acting president on Saturday was to call the National Security Council to check on the country’s military preparedness. On Sunday, he called President Biden to emphasize the importance of the alliance. Matthew Miller, spokesman of the U.S. State Department, said that the alliance remained “ironclad.”

“I consider this my last and most important mission in my long career in the public sector,” Mr. Han, 75, said about his new role. “I will do the best I can.”

The main opposition Democratic Party had at first threatened to impeach Mr. Han for his role in Mr. Yoon’s martial law. But on Sunday, the party retracted the threat and its leader, Lee Jae-myung, proposed establishing a consultative body comprising members of the political parties and the government to help stabilize the country. He also urged the Constitutional Court to reach its conclusion as soon as possible. Mr. Lee is favored to win if a presidential election were to be held now.

“The most urgent thing is to normalize the country,” Mr. Lee said at a news conference on Sunday.

In a defiant speech on Thursday, Mr. Yoon said he would “fight to the end” the attempt to unseat him — a message that political analysts said was a battle cry for his supporters and was expected to deepen political polarization. Mr. Yoon has die-hard supporters among right-wing South Koreans. A long line of wreaths and messages of support for him stretched along the street leading to his office.

Mr. Yoon had won plaudits in Washington and Tokyo by aligning his country more closely with the United States and Japan to deter China and North Korea. But at home, his two-and-a-half years in office have been marked by a near-constant clash with the opposition, allegations of corruption and abuse of power involving him and his wife, and accusations that he used state prosecutors to silence unfriendly journalists and political dissidents.

Most South Koreans would rather live with the temporary political uncertainty than keep in office the unpopular president whom they see as having hurt their country’s image as a vibrant Asian democracy with global cultural appeal.

Mr. Yoon’s misjudged martial law also damaged his image abroad by creating questions about the South Korean conservative elites’ commitment to democratic norms and the integrity of the country’s military, analysts say.

“He blew away his foreign policy achievements — which could have been his most important legacy — through his self-destructing terror,” said Prof. Hahm.

The skies were quiet the other night in the northwestern town of Tel Rifaat, Syria, and relief was palpable among fighters and civilians who have lived for years under the constant threat of bombardment.

A man named Ali, 48, guarded the northern entrance to town, sitting in a chair on the road next to a wood stove at an old police post. He gave only his first name for security reasons. But there was no danger of attack, he said, and no bombing.

As night fell in the courtyard of a primary school, Syrian rebel fighters from the town — who helped recapture it from government-allied forces less than two weeks ago — knelt for the evening Muslim prayer. They were still elated by their victory, which ended their own lives of displacement, spent in tents, and those of many families from the town, who were already coming home.

“The people of Tel Rifaat really wanted to return to their town,” said Firas Alito al-Ageid, 40, commander of the rebel unit. “This was the most important thing. They had the desire to return.”

A farming town of some 50,000 people before the civil war that erupted in 2011, Tel Rifaat was first controlled by forces opposed to the government of President Bashar al-Assad, who fled to Russia this month. It was well known as a rebel stronghold — surrounded by many towns loyal to the government — and almost every family contributed fighters to the opposition.

But in 2016, Tel Rifaat was captured by Syrian Kurdish fighters who backed the Assad regime and who then jointly controlled the town with the government. Most residents fled their homes.

For the past eight years, rebel fighters had been trying to regain territory in this pocket of northwestern Syria, including in Tel Rifaat. Late last month they succeeded.

On Friday, rebel fighters and commanders — part of the opposition Syrian National Army, an umbrella group backed by Turkey that earlier was known as the Free Syrian Army — tried to explain how their lives, and their struggle against the government of Mr. al-Assad, had turned around so suddenly and unexpectedly.

“It was a surprise,” said Muhammad Alito, 33, one of the fighters. “It was impossible. It is from God that we are back in our land.”

Mr. Alito’s unit had entered the town at night and fought for just half an hour before victory came and the last fighters holding the city pulled out, he said. He showed a video he took on his cellphone as he and other fighters drove through the town’s dark, empty streets on Dec. 1.

The commander of Mr. Alito’s unit, Mr. al-Ageid, had another explanation. The rebel offensive was well prepared and benefited from a joint command that coordinated all the various rebel units, making the operation more effective than previous efforts, he said.

And, Mr. al-Ageid added, the rebels encountered fewer airstrikes than usual, and there was a new and notable weakness on the side of the Assad government. Its soldiers withdrew from their post in the town before the main fighting started, as they risked being encircled by the rebel advance, he said.

Hezbollah and Iranian militias, which had supported the Syrian government and held frontline positions several miles from Tel Rifaat, had already reduced their presence in recent months.

Kurdish fighters remained in Tel Rifaat to the end but could not hold it, Mr. al-Ageid said. The rebels attacked from four directions, leaving an escape route open toward the east, and after three days of fighting, the Kurdish militias retreated.

No planes came to help them, he said.

“There were very few airstrikes,” Mr. al-Ageid said. “And when they did bomb, they hit civilian targets. They did not hit the front lines.”

The town is badly damaged from the years of fighting, with houses flattened in places from airstrikes by the government eight years ago when it recaptured Tel Rifaat. But civilian life is returning. Displaced families were clearing rubble and cementing a roof on Friday. Children played in alleyways as fighters embraced friends and relatives on the streets and sat in plastic chairs drinking coffee.

The northern part of the town is especially badly scarred because the Kurdish fighters had dug extensive tunnels under houses, leaving mounds of earth and stone behind. The tunnels provided safe routes to and from the front line.

A Syrian National Army fighter, Raed al-Nomer, 30, found one under his grandfather’s house and said that he went down it, discovering that it led to a school 500 yards away.

Fighters from Tel Rifaat have remained temporarily on duty, occupying a former Kurdish militia base in the primary school and guarding checkpoints on the edge of town. Few of the fighters carry rifles, and no heavy weapons or armored vehicles were visible.

The main fighting force moved on to other battlefronts as soon as the town was recaptured on the evening of Nov. 30, Mr. al-Ageid said. Rebels seized most of the city of Aleppo the same day and the city of Hama a few days later.

A family reunion was underway in one house as Asma Haj Ali, 54, welcomed two of her daughters and their children. After eight years of separation, the daughters had come from opposite parts of the country to see one another at last.

One daughter, Fatime Haj Ali, 30, lives in Aleppo, which was under Syrian government control until two weeks ago.

Another daughter, Rube Haj Ali, 33, an English teacher whose husband is a rebel fighter, was displaced to tented encampments near the Turkish border. “A lot of crying, a lot of feelings,” she said about their reunion.

Her sister Fatime struggled to find words: “It’s like I’m drunk.” She grimaced when asked how life had been in Aleppo.

Their mother had fled with Rube in 2016 but could not bear living in a tent and returned to Tel Rifaat. She lived among Kurdish fighters and displaced families just half a mile from the front line.

She said the Kurdish militia had maintained tight security but had not bothered the residents.

When the end came, there was no fighting inside the city, she said. The Kurdish fighters left without warning.

Then, also without warning, the rebels arrived, and soon after civilians came too, she said.

“I knew nothing until my son knocked on the door,” she said. She knew the exact moment. “It was 6 in the evening, Nov. 30,” she said.