Zelensky Offers Terms to Stop Fighting, Assuring U.S. That Ukraine Wants Peace
Zelensky Offers Terms to Stop Fighting, Assuring U.S. That Ukraine Wants Peace
“We are working on all possible scenarios to protect Ukraine,” said President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose country was looking to European allies for support.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on Tuesday offered a course of action that he said could end the war, while trying to assure the Trump administration that his government was dedicated to peace.
“Our meeting in Washington, at the White House on Friday, did not go the way it was supposed to be,” Mr. Zelensky wrote on X. “It is regrettable that it happened this way. It is time to make things right.”
He was referring to an explosive meeting at the White House last week in which President Trump berated Mr. Zelensky and called him ungrateful. Mr. Trump followed up on Monday by announcing that he was pausing all U.S. military aid to Ukraine.
The Ukrainian leader said he was ready to release Russian prisoners of war, stop long-range drone and missile strikes aimed at Russian targets, and declare a truce at sea immediately — moves that he said would help establish a pathway to peace.
Only, however, “if Russia will do the same,” he added.
Mr. Zelensky’s proposal seemed clearly designed to shift the burden for ending the war onto Russia, which launched its invasion three years ago. The White House has claimed that the Ukrainian leader is the main obstacle to peace.
In his post, Mr. Zelensky offered effusive praise for American support, noting specifically “the moment when things changed when President Trump provided Ukraine with Javelins.”
“We are grateful for this,” he wrote. “Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer,” he added. “My team and I stand ready to work under President Trump’s strong leadership to get a peace that lasts.”
There was no immediate reaction from the Kremlin to Mr. Zelensky’s proposal. Despite the ferocity of the fighting, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has shown a willingness to do side deals with Ukraine. The two countries have conducted numerous prisoner-of-war exchanges, and Russia and Ukraine had been set to participate in talks in Qatar last August about halting strikes on each other’s energy infrastructure. Moscow pulled out of the meeting after Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region.
In recent weeks, however, Mr. Putin has offered no hint of being willing to de-escalate the war before winning major concessions from the West and Ukraine — like ruling out Ukrainian NATO membership, reducing the alliance’s footprint in Europe, limiting the size of Ukraine’s military and giving Russia influence over Ukraine’s domestic politics.
“There is no evidence that Russia would be prepared to accept a deal, and what that would be,” said Malcolm Chalmers, deputy director general of the Royal United Services Institute, a research group in London. He said the decision by the United States to pause military aid would only encourage Putin to ask for more — including Ukrainian demilitarization and neutrality.
Mr. Zelensky sought to strike a careful balance in his statement. Aware of Mr. Trump’s stated desire to get a quick deal, he said Ukraine was “ready to work fast to end the war.”
At the same time, he suggested a staged process, similar to an idea raised by the French government, that could start immediately.
“We are ready to work fast to end the war, and the first stages could be the release of prisoners and truce in the sky — ban on missiles, long-ranged drones, bombs on energy and other civilian infrastructure — and truce in the sea immediately, if Russia will do the same,” he wrote. “Then we want to move very fast through all next stages and to work with the US to agree a strong final deal.”
His statement came as leaders in Kyiv assessed the political and military impact of the Trump administration’s decision to suspend aid, with military officials weighing how long Ukraine’s own stockpiles would last before the situation led to critical gaps on the front.
An emergency meeting in the Ukrainian Parliament was convened on Tuesday to assess the impact of the latest pressure from the Trump administration while soldiers in the trenches woke up to the news that an already grueling war could become even more challenging, and brutal.
Mr. Zelensky did not comment directly on the aid suspension but he convened senior civilian and military leaders to discuss “special issues concerning our national resilience.”
In the streets and in the halls of Ukraine’s government on Tuesday, there were cries of betrayal at the American decision to pause the aid. Some Ukrainians passed around clips online of old speeches from previous American presidents vowing to stand by Ukraine, including offering protection in return for its decision to give up nuclear weapons under the Clinton administration.
But more than anger there was a sense of sadness and disbelief.
The first thing that came to mind upon hearing the news was President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s phrase that “this date will go down in infamy,” Oleksandr Merezhko, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in Parliament, said in an interview. “It was a kind of Pearl Harbor, a political Pearl Harbor, for us.”
It is all the more painful, Mr. Merezhko said, “when it comes not from your enemy, but from whom you consider to be your friend.”
European leaders — who will convene in Brussels on Thursday to discuss both support for Kyiv and the urgent need for Europe to build up its own military capabilities — were quick to rush to Ukraine’s defense Tuesday morning.
Ursula von der Leyen, who heads the executive arm of the 27-nation European Union, said: “This is Europe’s moment and we must live up to it.”
Appearing in Brussels, she proposed a new program that would make loans valued at 150 billion euros (about $158 billion) to member states to fund defense investment.
The Kremlin, not surprisingly, rejoiced at the suspension of aid.
“It’s obvious that the United States has been the main supplier of this war,” Dmitry S. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, told reporters. “If the U.S. stops those supplies, this will be the best contribution to peace, I think.”
However, some Ukrainians and Western military analysts said that rather than speeding the end of the war, the move could give Moscow even more incentive to keep fighting, since Mr. Trump is not applying any pressure on Russia to stop. They noted that it was Mr. Putin who started the war and whose army is on the offensive, albeit slowly.
The pause will halt the delivery of interceptor missiles for Patriot and NASAMS air defense systems, which have saved an untold number of lives as they provide the best shield for Ukrainian cities and critical infrastructure from missile and drone attacks.
While military analysts and Ukrainian officials have said that Kyiv is in a better position to sustain its war effort than it was in late 2023, when Congress suspended assistance for months, the move would have cascading effects that will grow with time.
A former official in the Biden administration said Ukraine had enough key munitions to last into the summer because of the surge in deliveries the United States made before President Biden left office — shipments that included artillery rounds, rockets and armored vehicles to Ukraine. The official insisted on anonymity to discuss private arrangements.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Mr. Zelensky, said that the country had weathered suspensions of U.S. military aid in the past and that Ukraine was engaging in a comprehensive audit of its stockpiles, “examining what we have, what can be produced through partnerships, and what can be replaced.”
Despite the increasing tension with the Trump administration, Ukraine did not give up hope that the relationship between Kyiv and Washington could be salvaged.
The Ukrainian Parliament issued a statement directed at Mr. Trump, offering effusive praise and gratitude while imploring his administration to not abandon their country as it fights for its survival as an independent nation.
“We are convinced that the security and stable development of our nation are ensured by the unwavering support of the United States and reflect the values that have been the foundation of America’s historic success, inspiring millions of Ukrainians,” the lawmakers wrote.
Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, said his government would do everything to maintain diplomatic ties with Washington and was prepared to sign an agreement granting America extraordinary access to Ukraine’s natural resources.
“This agreement has been approved by the government of Ukraine,” he said at a news conference. “We are ready to begin this cooperation at any moment.”
Ukraine worked diligently during the Biden administration to maintain bipartisan support in the United States, hoping that the courtship would influence Mr. Trump.
But soldiers and civilians alike have been bracing for this moment.
“Just as we start wearing them down, our weapons supplies get cut off,” said Jr. Lt. Oleh, a soldier fighting around Chasiv Yar in eastern Ukraine. Referring to the United States, he added: “This has happened before. For some reason, they don’t want to let Russia lose this war.”
Reporting was contributed by Anton Troianovski, Robert Jimison, Liubov Sholudko, Kim Barker, Jeanna Smialek and Stephen Castle.
In Face of Trump’s Tariffs, Mexico Embraces Its President and Nationalism
In Face of Trump’s Tariffs, Mexico Embraces Its President and Nationalism
Before the tariffs went into effect, approval ratings for President Claudia Sheinbaum rose and companies began marketing “Made in Mexico” products.
Claudia Sheinbaum, the president of Mexico, stood underneath a giant Mexican flag and before troops at a military installation in Mexico City. It was Flag Day last month and she used her speech as an opportunity to, figuratively and literally, rally around it.
“Mexico must be respected,” she said, adding later: “Its people are brave. We know that when our people unite around their history, their country and their flag, there is no force in the world that can break their spirit.”
Times had changed, she said: Mexico would not bow down to foreign governments.
Given the circumstances — President Trump’s steep tariffs against Mexico went into effect in the first minutes of Tuesday — Ms. Sheinbaum’s optics were fitting. As Mr. Trump once again targeted Mexico, using the hammer of tariffs as a negotiating tool, a sense of Mexican nationalism has been strengthened.
The Mexican government and businesses have rekindled a “Made in Mexico” campaign. Some Mexicans have called for boycotts of U.S. companies and products, while others have put together lists of Mexican stores and brands to support instead of American ones.
Ms. Sheinbaum is frequently featured on the front page of local newspapers with members of the country’s military or in front of a giant Mexican flag. Private companies have taken out nationalistic advertisements, one featuring the president leading the masses and carrying a banner saying, “Mexico united, never defeated!”
And Ms. Sheinbaum, who has been trying to balance a pro-Mexico drumbeat while advocating cooperative dialogue with American officials, has seen her approval ratings rise as high as 80 percent, according to one poll. She has not only succeeded a popular president, Andres Manuel López Obrador, who reshaped Mexican politics and was her mentor, but has come into her own at a time of global upheaval under Mr. Trump.
“There’s a lot of support for the president now,” said Juan Manuel Sánchez, 57, an artisan in Mexico City who also praised Ms. Sheinbaum’s crackdown on drug trafficking.
During his first term, Mr. Trump used tariffs to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement and strike a new U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement, which he signed in 2020. He has used similar tactics now against Mexico and Canada, while arguing that too many illegal drugs and migrants are flowing from the two countries into the United States.
A month ago, Mr. Trump signed an executive order calling for 25 percent tariffs on Mexican imports. But less than a day before they were to go into effect, Mr. Trump and Ms. Sheinbaum spoke on the phone and announced an agreement to delay them for 30 days.
Under the terms of that deal, Mexico posted an additional 10,000 Mexican National Guard troops on the border to help stem the flow of fentanyl and migrants into the United States. In return, Ms. Sheinbaum said, the U.S. government would work to stop the flow of guns into Mexico.
Even though the number of migrant crossings at the southern border has dropped to once unthinkable levels since Mr. Trump took office in January, Mexican officials were significantly deterring migration to the United States months before. Last week, Mexico sent nearly 30 top cartel operatives wanted by American authorities to the United States, one of the largest such handovers in the history of the drug war.
“There’s a lot of unity in the country in the face of what is happening,” including Mr. Trump’s economic threats, Ms. Sheinbaum said on Monday, hours before the tariffs took effect.
Although Mr. Trump insisted on Monday that the tariffs would begin the next day, the cloud over Mexico from the north has loomed since his most recent presidential campaign. It led to uncertainty and frustration but also boosted national pride.
Agustin Barrios Gómez, a former Mexican congressman and a founding member of the nonprofit Mexican Council on Foreign Relations, said that even Mexicans who didn’t vote for Ms. Sheinbaum “understand that right now, Mexico’s national interest — beyond party politics — is to rally around our president.”
One reason for the surge in support for her, Mr. Barrios Gómez said, was to ensure Ms. Sheinbaum has enough political capital within the country to be in a stronger negotiating position with Mr. Trump come what may.
Nationalism is complicated in Mexico, Mr. Barrios Gómez said, because it is so intricately intertwined with the United States geographically, culturally and economically, as well as with immigration and security.
“We are not neighbors, we’re roommates,” he said. In other words, analysts said, the U.S. tariffs against Mexico will hurt both economies, as would the reciprocal tariffs suggested by Ms. Sheinbaum. (Mr. Trump is also threatening separate 25 percent tariffs on global steel and aluminum imports, which would affect Mexico.)
For Mexico, the tipping point against the United States has not been reached, Mr. Barrios Gómez said late last week before the tariffs went into effect, but “if you call someone your enemy enough, you might just turn them into one.”
The specter of a trade war between the countries has changed the perception in Mexico of Mr. Trump and of its relationship with the United States.
According to the Mexican polling firm Buendía & Marquéz, the number of respondents in Mexico who believed the relationship between Ms. Sheinbaum and Mr. Trump was at least good dropped significantly between last November and February, while the number of respondents who have a negative opinion of Mr. Trump jumped to 80 percent in mid-February from 66 percent in early January.
Mr. Trump has nevertheless praised Ms. Sheinbaum as a “marvelous woman” while mocking Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau. Mr. Trudeau, who has become increasingly unpopular at home, is entering his final days in office while Ms. Sheinbaum’s popular foundation is stronger. She resoundingly won election last summer and began her six-year term in October.
During her Monday morning news conference, Ms. Sheinbaum once again called for calm ahead of Mr. Trump’s tariffs deadline and said she hoped to strike a last-minute deal, which did not materialize. “Obviously we don’t want there to be tariffs,” she said, adding that her government would respond.
Since before Mr. Trump’s inauguration, her administration has been promoting what it calls “Plan Mexico,” a strategy meant to diversify its economy to make it less dependent on the United States, to reinvigorate Mexican manufacturing and propel the country to become one of the world’s top 10 economies. (It is currently the 15th largest, according to the International Monetary Fund.)
As part of that effort, Ms. Sheinbaum’s administration started the “Made in Mexico” drive, in which an official seal is placed on products made in the country that meet certain requirements. The seal, with an illustration of a Mexican eagle, was created in 1978 to promote Mexican goods and has been revived by presidents over the years.
As the threatened U.S. tariffs were paused a month ago, Mexico’s secretary of economy, Marcelo Ebrard, told companies that the government wanted to once again push the “Made in Mexico” seal.
Last week, Walmart Mexico, the largest private employer in the country with 200,000 workers, unveiled its efforts to put the “Made in Mexico” seal — with the added word “proudly” — in the aisles of its 3,000 stores throughout the country. Although Walmart is an American brand, Javier Treviño, Walmart Mexico’s senior vice president of corporate affairs, said the company wanted to show customers that it is a Mexican entity and that most of the products it sells are made within the nation.
The campaign “is very important for us because we have to strengthen investment and confidence in Mexico and ensure that the economy can grow, because the environment is not easy,” Mr. Treviño, a former Mexican congressman, said in an interview.
Other big companies have joined Ms. Sheinbaum’s push, including Grupo Modelo, the brewing giant that makes Corona and Modelo beers, which announced it would put new “Made in Mexico” caps on bottles.
On Saturday, Mr. Sánchez, the Mexico City artisan, was at his neighborhood market, which, he said, proved that he prefers to shop locally. Before Mr. Trump’s tariffs went into effect, he said he might consider boycotting U.S. companies and products if they did.
Unlike in Canada, where locals have been shunning American products and buying more Canadian flags since Mr. Trump threatened the tariffs, Mr. Sánchez said that Mexicans were already nationalistic and that most had a flag.
“But when something very serious happens here,” he said, “we all unite.”
Maria Abi-Habib contributed reporting from Mexico City.
Conservatives Hobble Iran’s Moderate President, Stoking a Political Crisis
Iran’s conservatives have ousted two high-profile officials, throwing President Masoud Pezeshkian’s new, moderate government into turmoil and raising questions about its survival.
The showdown comes as Iran faces a multitude of crises, including energy shortages, skyrocketing inflation, a free-falling currency, the military defeat of most of its regional allies and the return of President Trump and a more hostile U.S. policy.
On Sunday, in the space of a few hours, the Parliament impeached Minister of Finance Abdolnaser Hemmati and the judiciary forced out Mohammad Javad Zarif, the well-known former foreign minister, from his post as vice president of strategy.
The current Parliament and judiciary are controlled by the conservatives, who have warned more impeachments will follow. In Iran’s theocratic system, while there is an elected government, appointed bodies dominated by clerics disqualify candidates they deem unacceptable, which contributed to very low turnout in recent parliamentary elections, and they can block legislation.
Mr. Pezeshkian reacted to the ouster of two of his top allies by delivering an unusually scathing public speech in Parliament on Sunday. He appeared flabbergasted and angry, at times raising his voice and waving his hands, and said Iran was engaged in “a full-fledged war” with external enemies.
“From the day we took over the government, we were confronted with deficiencies in energy, water and power, and on the other hand extreme debts on payments to the agriculture sector for wheat, the health and medical sector, and retirement salaries and so on,” Mr. Pezeshkian said, according to videos and texts of his speech.
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At the Trump Pizza Station in Kyiv, where the internet password is “TrumpLovesYou,” one woman burst into tears when she learned that the United States was suspending military aid to Ukraine. Another sipped a cappuccino with banana milk and lamented that the whole world seemed to be abandoning her country.
Most people at the neighborhood pizza and coffee joint on Tuesday morning agreed that it was time for the Trump Pizza Station to change its name, citing the losses they had suffered in three years of war.
Anastasiia Berehovenko, 24, who is studying to be an obstetrician-gynecologist, stood in line for a bottle of water and counted off the people she knew who had been killed by the Russians on her fingers: Her brother, a childhood friend, her neighbors.
Then she stopped.
“Honestly, I don’t even think I have enough fingers to count everyone I know who has died,” she said. “I think this is all very sad for us, for Ukrainians. It only means one thing — that even more Ukrainians may die.”
In recent weeks, every day feels like a fresh punch in the gut to Ukraine, whose cities have been under assault by Russian forces since the full-scale invasion of February 2022.
Under Joseph R. Biden Jr., the United States was Ukraine’s biggest ally. But since President Trump took power in January, the United States has done an about-face on its foreign policy, making good relations with Russia a priority over those with Ukraine.
Mr. Trump has called President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine a dictator and falsely blamed his country for starting the war. U.S. officials held initial peace talks with senior Russian officials in Saudi Arabia — without inviting Ukraine. And then on Friday, a meeting between Mr. Zelensky, Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance turned spectacularly hostile. The leaders failed to sign a deal on critical minerals as they had been expected to do.
Since then, all Ukraine seems to have been holding its breath. Many people had been hoping for the resurrection of the minerals deal, so that the United States would continue to support Ukraine in return for a share of profits from its resources.
But on Tuesday morning, those hopes were dashed — at least for now — when news spread that the United States was temporarily suspending military aid.
Aliona Khrul, 24, a lawyer, didn’t see the news before going to the Trump Pizza Station to get a coffee and a tuna sandwich. When she heard about the U.S. decision, she started crying.
“I feel like we are being abandoned, just abandoned by everyone,” said Ms. Khrul, who like everyone else here, said she had lost people in the war, including a classmate and a close friend. Last week, she attended the funeral of a good friend of her boyfriend who was killed fighting at the front.
She added: “And in the end, what was the point of all the fighting, of all the people who died? I don’t know what to do.”
Across the country, from the occupied territories in the east to cities in western Ukraine, people said they were shocked and upset about what the U.S. decision might mean. Some said Ukraine would have to make the best of a bad peace; others said Ukraine would keep fighting, hopefully with European support.
Artem Kholodevych, 33, a lieutenant colonel in the military who lost his right leg at the front, said he believed that Ukraine had enough stockpiles of weapons to hold out until European allies could increase aid deliveries.
“If U.S. aid does not resume throughout Trump’s entire presidency, it will be an unpleasant and challenging period for us,” he said. “But in that case, European security will face an even greater threat, which is why I am confident that our allies in Europe will respond accordingly and significantly increase their support for Ukraine.”
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In Crimea, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014, one woman, who spoke anonymously by phone because she was worried about retaliation from Russia, said she felt Mr. Trump was trying to get Ukraine to accept a bad deal by temporarily suspending aid.
“Ukraine now has very little room to maneuver,” she said.
Members of Mr. Trump’s team were not politicians, but political entrepreneurs, she said. “They perceive Ukraine as a weak competitor in this marketplace, one that must accept the conditions set by the market leader and submit.”
She added: “Unfortunately, humanitarianism is absent from U.S. politics. They do not care about Ukraine’s casualties, its tragedies, or the war crimes committed by Russia against Ukraine.”
Many Ukrainians had hoped that Mr. Trump would bring peace.
In the months after the U.S. election in November, they said that Mr. Trump’s unpredictable style might actually help Ukraine. Some Ukrainians spoke positively about Mr. Trump’s business acumen and had hoped that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia — rather than Mr. Zelensky — might rub Mr. Trump the wrong way.
After Mr. Trump’s 2016 election, one Ukrainian businessman even created two cafes named after Mr. Trump, including what is now the pizza place.
The Trump Pizza Station used to be the Trump White Coffee Bar but decided to add pizza to the menu in January. The pizzas have English names, and the restaurant’s soundtrack features a lot of ZZ Top, including the song “Breakaway,” a song about a potential breakup.
One pizza, the Trumpino, has red sauce, prosciutto, artichoke hearts, mushrooms and Grana Padano cheese. On some of the signage, the letter “u” in Trump has been made to look like a half-filled coffee cup.
Volodymyr Pynzenyk, 31, a risk management consultant, was eating at the cafe on Tuesday afternoon and pointed out that Ukraine had started producing its own weapons.
“Nothing much changes for us. We have always had to be in the position that we are independent, for ourselves,” he said. He added: “Perhaps the situation is not as critical as it seems.”
Many people here complained about the cafe’s name. Here was one thing they could change, something tangible, when everything else felt so out of control.
“I don’t think this place will survive with that name here,” said Dasha Holomoz, 21, a college student who complained there were no other cafes nearby.
Over the past month, people started asking the cafe’s employees about the name, sometimes aggressively, according to the manager, Serhii, 37, who didn’t want his last name used so that he would not be targeted by online critics in Russia.
Serhii, who wore a T-shirt with the colors of the Ukrainian flag and the word “Unbreakable” on the front, said he was against changing the name — they had been building the Trump coffee brand for the past five years, after all. But the owner has caved.
Soon, he said, the Trump Pizza Bar will be known as the Frank Pizza Station — “frank” as in honest and forthright. By Tuesday night, the cafe had already changed its social media profile to feature the new name.
Oleksandra Mykolyshyn, Liubov Sholudko and Evelina Riabenko contributed reporting from Kyiv, and Yurii Shyvala from Lviv, Ukraine.
Arab countries countered President Trump’s proposal to expel Palestinians from Gaza and transform it into a beachfront destination with their own vision on Tuesday, endorsing a plan to keep the population there, rebuild the territory and turn it into part of a future Palestinian state, without Hamas in government.
The contours of the counterproposal emerged from an emergency summit in Cairo, where Arab countries approved an Egyptian plan to spend $53 billion to rebuild Gaza but not, as Mr. Trump has suggested, moving Palestinians out of the enclave.
Leaders across the Middle East have come under significant pressure to come up with a workable blueprint for reconstructing, securing and governing Gaza at a time when the Israel-Hamas cease-fire is teetering and Israel, buoyed by Mr. Trump’s backing, increasingly appears to hold the upper hand in negotiations.
The Arab plan “sets a path for a new security and political context in Gaza,” Ahmed Aboul Gheit, the Arab League secretary general, said at a news conference. He emphasized the importance of finalizing the Gaza cease-fire agreement.
Yet Israel’s foreign ministry quickly dismissed the Arab proposal on social media, calling its ideas “outdated” and saying it failed to recognize the threat Hamas posed to Israel and the region. Hamas, for its part, said the Arab leaders’ reconstruction plan and support for keeping Palestinians in Gaza were “welcome.”
There was no immediate response from the Trump administration.
Even as Arab leaders presented a unified front against Mr. Trump’s idea, at least one took care to praise the American president for backing the cease-fire — the kind of intervention Arab leaders would happily take more of.
The cease-fire agreement “would not have been possible without the contributions of President Trump and his administration, which we hope will continue,” President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt said in a speech at the summit. He and other speakers rejected forcibly displacing Palestinians, but did not directly criticize Mr. Trump.
The Egyptian framework envisions putting a committee of technocrats and other figures unaffiliated with Hamas in charge of Gaza for an initial period.
Hamas officials have said they would be willing to hand over control of civilian affairs to a governing committee of which the group was not a part, as long as Gaza’s postwar future was determined by Palestinian “national consensus,” according to a Tuesday statement.
The Egyptian plan also calls for the United Nations Security Council to deploy an international peacekeeping force to secure Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, but does not specify which countries might supply troops.
The plan sidesteps one of the thorniest questions of all: whether and how to disarm Hamas, which after 15 months of war remains the most powerful force in Gaza.
Though a number of Arab countries would like to see its armed wing disband, Tuesday’s declaration does not outright call for Hamas to lay down its arms. The language was left somewhat murky, proposing that security and weaponry should be managed by “legitimate Palestinian institutions” based on the principles of a single armed force and a single legitimate authority.
Hamas has rejected demilitarization, with an official Hamas media outlet reporting on Tuesday that “the resistance’s weapons are a red line.” But Israel and the Trump administration have demanded exactly that — a seemingly irreconcilable difference.
Any agreement would also have to get around a more fundamental issue. While Arab leaders will support only a framework that would include at least a nominal path toward Palestinian statehood, Israeli leaders oppose embarking on any path that would lead to Palestinian sovereignty.
Arab countries have scrambled in recent weeks to come up with an alternative to Mr. Trump’s February proposal to force Palestinians from Gaza into Egypt and Jordan. Much of the world has rejected his plan, with some saying it would be tantamount to ethnic cleansing.
Egypt, Jordan and other Arab allies of the United States have pushed back hard on it, saying it would destroy any remaining hope of a Palestinian state and destabilize the region.
Mr. Trump appeared to soften his position recently, saying he was “not forcing” his Gaza idea on anyone. But he also shared an A.I.-generated video depicting a “Trump Gaza,” and with Israel’s hard-line government embracing his proposal, the Arab world remains deeply concerned.
Adding to those worries is the uncertainty surrounding the Gaza cease-fire, which has paused the bloodshed for six weeks and seen Israel and Hamas exchange Palestinian prisoners for Israeli hostages.
In the latest crisis to shake the agreement, Israel began blocking all aid and goods from entering Gaza on Sunday, attempting to strong-arm Hamas into extending the first phase of the truce and swapping more prisoners for hostages without moving toward a permanent end to the war.
Israel also recently drove tens of thousands of Palestinians from their homes in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and ruled out allowing them to return, intensifying Arab fears that an emboldened Israel will attempt to annex the territory.
Israel says it is responding to a rising threat of militancy from the West Bank. The Israeli military denies any forced evacuations, but has said it ordered people to leave buildings close to what it called militant hide-outs.
The Cairo summit included representatives of all 22 Arab League members as well as the U.N. secretary general and the European Council president. But the leaders of two of the most powerful Gulf nations — Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — skipped it and sent representatives instead, raising questions about whether there is unified Arab support for Egypt’s plan.
The only Gulf heads of state who did attend were from Bahrain and Qatar.
According to the proposal approved on Tuesday, the transitional governing committee would pave the way for the Palestinian Authority, the internationally recognized body that administers parts of the West Bank, to “return” to Gaza. The authority administered Gaza until Hamas, which had won parliamentary elections in 2006, seized control of the strip by force in 2007.
Arab officials argue that Gaza and the West Bank should be united as one state, and must be linked in any conversations about Gaza. The Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, has so far appeared reluctant to give his blessing to any governing arrangement that does not put him fully in control of Gaza.
On Tuesday, Mr. Abbas said at the summit that his administration was ready to run Gaza again and also suggested he might hold long-delayed Palestinian elections. Mr. Abbas offered amnesty to members of his party whom he had expelled, a possible attempt to show skeptical Arab leaders that he could reunify the fractured Palestinian political landscape.
Mr. Abbas’s leadership has been seen at home as both ineffectual at ending Israeli rule over Palestinians and harshly repressive when it comes to internal dissent. He has little support in Gaza.
The Arab declaration approved on Tuesday was largely based on an Egyptian draft proposal, which suggests that armed Palestinian resistance would only disappear once Palestinians secure statehood and rights. It says the issue could be resolved “if its causes are removed through a clear horizon and a credible political process that ensures the legitimate rights of Palestinians.”
The Arab countries also endorsed a detailed proposal for Gaza’s reconstruction.
Palestinians in Gaza would stay in temporary housing units made of shipping containers on seven sites throughout the territory, with an average of six people living in each, according to a draft of the plan that Arab diplomats shared with The New York Times.
In the first phase, which would last six months and cost $3 billion, rubble and unexploded ordnance would be cleared, 1.2 million people would be moved into prefabricated temporary housing units, and 60,000 partly destroyed housing units would start to be rehabilitated.
In the next phase, which Egypt estimates would cost $20 billion and last until 2027, utilities and permanent housing would be rebuilt, and rubble would be used to expand Gaza’s surface area into the sea. Industrial zones, a fishing port, a seaport and an airport would be built during a final phase costing $30 billion and lasting until 2030, according to the draft.
Under this framework, oil-rich Gulf nations would likely pay for Gaza’s reconstruction, though Egyptian officials have suggested Europe could also contribute funds. On Tuesday, the summit’s attendees agreed to convene a donor conference in Cairo to drum up funding and investments “as soon as possible.”
Natan Odenheimer and Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting from Jerusalem, and Rania Khaled from Cairo.
Ever since the Berlin Wall fell and the country reunited, Germans could be expected to keep budget deficits relatively low, military spending even lower, and politics at a plodding pace.
The next German government is smashing all those traditions before it even takes office.
Friedrich Merz, the leader of the center-right Christian Democrats and the man almost certain to be Germany’s next chancellor, and leaders of his likely coalition partners, the center-left Social Democrats, said on Tuesday that they had agreed to relax limitations on German borrowing to increase military and infrastructure spending by hundreds of billions of dollars.
The agreement, which is subject to approval in Parliament, is a rapid-fire attempt to counter the fears that stalk mainstream German political parties: a surge in the far right domestically, an aggressive Russia on Europe’s doorstep, and the abrupt withdrawal of America’s guarantees for German security.
The deal also represents a first step toward an assertive early agenda for Mr. Merz that breaks with his more fiscally conservative campaign promises — but that aspires to show voters that the centrist coalitions that have long governed Germany can shed a culture of political sluggishness at an urgent moment.
Its centerpiece is a pair of measures meant to circumvent Germany’s limits on federal borrowing, known as the “debt brake,” which have proved an obstacle to its attempts to beef up its military and to spark growth in a stagnant economy.
“In view of the threat to our freedom and to peace on our continent, the mantra for our defense has to be, ‘whatever it takes,’” Mr. Merz said in a Tuesday evening news conference.
The question of whether mainstream parties can quickly come together to bolster defense, stoke economic growth and address voter worries about immigration could be a defining one for the years ahead, both in Germany and throughout Europe.
Mainstream parties across the continent increasingly view Mr. Trump’s rapid foreign policy shifts and the rise of the far right as existential threats, which will require them to act boldly to solve large and difficult problems at home and abroad.
Political leaders and outside analysts increasingly say Europe will be vulnerable to aggressor nations like Russia if it does not quickly increase military spending and rebuild its capacities to produce weapons of war, given Mr. Trump’s threats to pull back America’s longstanding security blanket for Europe.
They warn that many hard-right parties making inroads with European voters aim to undercut democratic institutions, like independent media, and that if given power, they would seek to reshape governance along more authoritarian lines, in the mold of Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Hungary.
Many analysts also say voters are turning to those parties, in part, out of frustration with the slow pace of change — especially in Berlin.
“Germany’s federal structure rewards delay and least-common-denominator politics,” said Andrew B. Denison, the director of Transatlantic Networks, a foreign policy consultancy based in Königswinter, Germany. “Everyone has leverage to protect their vested interests, no one wants to be liable if something goes wrong.”
Among voters, he added, “there is a reason for frustration, and the more intractable the problems, the more attractive the radical solutions.”
However, several ideas on the table in Germany’s coalition talks would appear to be radical by the standards of Europe’s largest economy, including the ones agreed to by the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats on Tuesday. They include:
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Spending hundreds of billions of euros to crank up German military readiness, to help rebuild a defense capacity that has long been outsourced to the United States.
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Spending more than $500 billion over the next decade to help industry and to modernize domestic infrastructure, potentially including a federal records system that still relies heavily on physical paper and a national rail system that struggles to keep its trains running on time. Mr. Merz said that such spending would help to revitalize a German economy that shrank slightly last year.
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Relaxing the debt brake, so all that money can be spent without cutting social benefits. Mr. Merz said the parties would propose a motion that exempted military spending in excess of 1 percent of gross domestic product from the debt limitations.
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Doing all of that in a lame duck session of Parliament, likely next week, before Mr. Merz officially takes over as chancellor.
Mr. Merz did not promise anything that aggressive in the parliamentary campaign. He stressed deregulation and tax cuts to stoke growth, and a series of measures to tighten border security and limit migration. He entertained calls to relax the borrowing limit to fund military spending, but said he would rather find the money by cutting other government spending.
Late in the campaign, though, two events seemed to light a fire under Mr. Merz.
In January, an asylum seeker from Afghanistan with mental health issues killed a toddler and an adult in a Bavarian park, one of a string of attacks by immigrants over the past year. Mr. Merz immediately pushed a series of migration restrictions in Parliament, even though he knew the bills could pass only with the support of the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD. That move broke a decades-long taboo in German politics against working with parties labeled extreme to pass bills.
The bigger development was Mr. Trump’s inauguration. It was quickly followed by administration threats to withdraw troops from Germany, an embrace of Russia in talks over ending the war in Ukraine and an admonition by Vice President JD Vance that Europeans must allow parties like the AfD into government.
Mr. Merz denounced the moves and openly questioned whether America would remain a democracy. He began treating Mr. Trump as a catalyst for efforts to borrow money and spend more on defense.
The deal Mr. Merz and the Social Democrats announced on Tuesday amounts to a sort of grand bargain, agreeing to more borrowing for defense — Mr. Merz’s big priority — coupled with more borrowing for domestic measures like infrastructure — the priorities of the center left. It’s a much larger version of the sort of deal that President Barack Obama cut with Republican congressional leaders a decade ago, for a slight relaxation in spending caps to give each side something it wanted.
In Parliament, a supermajority vote is necessary to relax the debt brake. Even then, rival parties like Die Linke, which opposes increased military spending, have threatened to sue to block the change.
Undaunted, Mr. Merz said the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats would continue to negotiate over reducing certain government welfare payments, limiting crime and restricting immigration.
“We are aware of the scale of the tasks ahead of us,” he said.