Trump Administration Live Updates: White South Africans Granted Refugee Status Head to U.S.
Where Things Stand
South Africans: A plane carrying dozens of white South Africans who claim to be victims of discrimination in their country is expected to land at Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia on Monday. Even though the Trump administration has halted virtually all refugee admissions for people fleeing famine and war, he signed an executive order establishing refugee status for Afrikaners, a white ethnic minority that led South Africa’s brutal apartheid regime. Read more ›
Slashing tariffs: The United States and China agreed on Monday to temporarily reduce the punishing tariffs that they had imposed on each other. Representatives for the two countries met in Geneva over the weekend to address the trade war that flared after President Trump imposed a minimum tariff of 145 percent on Chinese imports. Read more ›
Drug prices: Mr. Trump said that he would sign an executive order on Monday aimed at lowering some drug prices in the United States by aligning them with what other wealthy countries pay. Any such plan will most likely be subject to challenges in court, and it is not clear whether it will pass legal muster, especially without action by Congress. Read more ›
Following meetings with Chinese officials in Geneva that resulted in an agreement for the U.S. and China to suspend their respective tariffs for 90 days, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on CNBC that he imagines that there will be more talks in the coming weeks “to get rolling on a more fulsome agreement.” Bessent said that the U.S. does not want a “generalized decoupling from China” but that it does want to move away from China for supplies of necessities such as critical medicines, steel and semiconductors.
Daisuke Wakabayashi and Amy Chang Chien
Daisuke Wakabayashi reported from Seoul and Amy Chang Chien from Taipei, Taiwan.
The United States and China said Monday they reached an agreement to temporarily reduce the punishing tariffs they have imposed on each other while they try to defuse the trade war threatening the world’s two largest economies.
In a joint statement, the countries said they would suspend their respective tariffs for 90 days and continue negotiations they started this weekend. Under the agreement, the United States would reduce the tariff on Chinese imports to 30 percent from its current 145 percent, while China would lower its import duty on American goods to 10 percent from 125 percent.
“We concluded that we have a shared interest,” said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent at a news conference in Geneva where U.S. and Chinese officials met over the weekend. “The consensus from both delegations is that neither side wanted a decoupling,” he said.
The Tit-for-Tat Tariffs
Between the U.S. and China
April 9
145%
President Trump raised tariffs on Chinese
goods multiple times this year before
lowering the rates temporarily while
the two sides negotiate.
April 8
104%
March 26
25% on cars
and parts
Feb. 10
April 2
25% on steel
and aluminum
54%
May 12
30%
March 3
Feb. 1
20%
10% on all goods
April 11
125%
China retaliated against the tariffs with equivalent levies but has also agreed to a pause during ongoing talks.
April 9
84%
April 4
Feb. 4
March 4
10% on U.S. food and agricultural products
10% on natural gas, coal and farm machinery
34%
May 12
10%
The Tit-for-Tat Tariffs
Between the U.S. and China
President Trump raised
tariffs on Chinese goods
multiple times this year
before lowering the rates
temporarily while the
two sides negotiate.
April 9
145%
April 8
104%
March 26
25% on cars
and parts
Feb. 10
April 2
25% on steel
and aluminum
54%
May 12
30%
March 3
20%
Feb. 1
10% on all goods
China retaliated against
the tariffs with equivalent
levies but has also agreed
to a pause during
ongoing talks.
April 11
125%
April 9
84%
March 4
10% on U.S. food and agricultural products
Feb. 4
April 4
10% on natural
gas, coal and farm machinery
34%
May 12
10%
China said it will suspend or revoke countermeasures adopted in retaliation for escalating tariffs. In early April, the Chinese government had ordered restrictions on the export of rare earth metals and magnets, critical components used by many industries, including automakers, aerospace manufacturers and semiconductor firms.
Mr. Bessent said the two countries may discuss purchase agreements of American goods by the Chinese government. Such a deal could help narrow the American trade deficit with China.
The agreement, for now, breaks an impasse that had brought much trade between China and the United States to a halt. Many American businesses had suspended orders, holding out hope that the two countries could strike a deal to lower the tariff rates. Economists have warned that the trade dispute will slow global growth, fuel inflation and create product shortages, potentially tipping the United States into a recession.
“We tried to identify shared interest,” Mr. Bessent said on CNBC on Monday. “We came with a list of problems that we were trying to solve, and I think we did a good job on that.”
The Treasury secretary placed blame on the Biden administration for failing to honor its commitments to the trade deal that Mr. Trump reached with China during his first term. He said that agreement would be a starting point for the current round of talks, which are expected to continue in the coming weeks toward a more “fulsome agreement.”
Chinese factories also experienced a sharp decline in export orders to the United States, heaping additional pressure on a sluggish economy. Chinese producers looked to expand trade to Southeast Asia and other regions to circumvent the U.S. tariffs.
Mr. Bessent said the tariffs had effectively created an embargo, something neither side wanted. The two countries said that ongoing negotiations will involve Mr. Bessent, Mr. Greer and He Lifeng, China’s vice premier for economic policy, who led the weekend talks for the Chinese.
In a research note, Mark Williams, chief Asia economist for Capital Economics, said the agreement was “another substantial retreat from the Trump administration’s aggressive stance,” because it does not include any commitments by China on its currency or trade imbalances. He also noted that there is no guarantee that a 90-day truce will give way to a lasting agreement, especially if the United States continues trying to rally other countries to limit trade with China.
While a temporary reprieve from the shockingly high tariffs is cause for celebration for businesses in both countries, the repercussions will linger. Businesses will likely encounter a flood of pent-up demand, leading to soaring transport prices, as companies race to schedule shipments during the 90-day negotiating window to take advantage of the lower tariff rates.
Global markets jumped on the announcement. The benchmark index in Hong Kong surged 3 percent, about the same amount as S&P 500 stock futures.
Zhiwei Zhang, the president and chief economist of Pinpoint Asset Management, an investment firm in Hong Kong, called the agreement a “good starting point” for both countries.
“From China’s perspective, the outcome of this meeting is a success, as China took a tough stance on the U.S. threat of high tariffs and eventually managed to get the tariffs down significantly without making concessions,” he said.
Mr. Bessent and Jamieson Greer, the United States Trade Representative, said the two countries had substantive discussions on U.S. demands that Beijing crack down on the trafficking of the chemical ingredients used to make fentanyl. Mr. Bessent said the Chinese “understood the magnitude” of the fentanyl crisis in the United States and that there is a “positive path forward.”
Mr. Trump initially added a 20 percent tariff to Chinese exports, accusing the country of not doing enough to stop the flow of fentanyl to the United States. That punitive tariff remains in place. The 10 percent “base line” tariff on nearly every U.S. trading partner, including China, also remains in place.
Mr. Greer said the negotiations were underscored by “mutual understanding and mutual respect,” but noted that China was the only country to retaliate against the United States after President Trump imposed so-called reciprocal tariffs on dozens of countries last month.
Last month, the Trump administration announced a 90-day pause on the reciprocal tariffs that it implemented on most trading partners, with the exception of China. The White House has been racing to strike trade deals before the deadline expires in early July.
The Trump administration has accused China of unfairly subsidizing key sectors of its economy and flooding the world with cheap goods. Mr. Trump has said China has been “ripping off” the United States for decades with unfair trade practices that have decimated America’s manufacturing sector and cost the country jobs.
Wang Wen, dean of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University in Beijing, said the agreement demonstrated the desire for both countries to avert the “worst-case scenario.” He said that China “is better” at dealing with the tempo and style of the second Trump presidency compared to how it dealt with the first Trump term.
In laying out the agreement, Mr. Bessent and Mr. Greer were careful not to antagonize China. Instead, they placed most of the blame for the trade war on the Biden administration, accusing it of neglecting the trade imbalance.
Mr. Bessent suggested that the two countries could help each other by balancing their economies, saying America could restore manufacturing while China could scale back overproduction in its manufacturing sector.
The two sides have sparred in public in recent weeks. The White House repeatedly said it was speaking with Chinese officials, while Beijing denied that such talks were taking place.
Beijing initially took a hard line to Mr. Trump’s punitive tariffs. Last month, Mao Ning, a senior Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, posted on X a video of a speech that Mao Zedong made during the Korean War — known in China as the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea — in which he declared, “No matter how long this war is going to last, we’ll never yield.”
China has carefully framed its involvement in the Geneva negotiations not as a concession to Mr. Trump’s tariffs, but as a necessary step to avoid further escalation. China’s Ministry of Commerce said the agreement was “in the interests of both countries and the common interests of the world" and that it hoped that the United States would “continue to work with China to meet each other halfway.”
Since the tariffs were announced, China has taken many punitive measures against the United States. It suspended imports of sorghum, poultry and bonemeal from American companies and added 27 firms to the list of companies facing trade restrictions.
On Monday, even as China agreed to roll back punitive measures it has imposed over the past month, multiple Chinese agencies, including the Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of State Security, met to discuss how to strengthen export controls of strategic minerals.
In a statement, the European Chamber of Commerce in China said it was “encouraged” by the announcement, but that “uncertainty remains" because the tariffs are only temporarily suspended.
President Jens Eskelund, president of the European Chamber, said it “hopes to see both sides continue to engage in dialogue to resolve differences, and avoid taking measures that will disrupt global trade and result in collateral damage for those caught in the crossfire.”
Before the weekend trade discussions, Mr. Trump seemed to extend an olive branch by suggesting he would be open to lowering the tariffs to 80 percent. He wrote on Truth Social on Saturday that the talks were a breakthrough: “A total reset negotiated in a friendly, but constructive, manner.”
Nick Cumming-Bruce contributed reporting from Geneva, Christopher Buckley from Taipei, and Alan Rappeport and Ana Swanson from Washington.
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President Trump will sign an executive order on Monday aimed at lowering some drug prices in the United States by aligning them with what other wealthy countries pay, he said on Truth Social on Sunday evening.
The proposal he described, which alone cannot shift federal policy, is what he calls a “most favored nation” pricing model. Mr. Trump did not provide details about which type of insurance the plan would apply to or how many drugs it would target, but he indicated that the United States should pay the lowest price among its peer countries.
“Our Country will finally be treated fairly, and our citizens Healthcare Costs will be reduced by numbers never even thought of before,” he wrote in his social media post.
Any such plan will most likely be subject to challenges in court, and it is not clear whether it will pass legal muster, especially without action by Congress.
In his first term, Mr. Trump tried unsuccessfully to enact a version of this idea for Medicare, the health insurance program that covers 68 million Americans who are over 65 or have disabilities. That plan would have applied only to 50 drugs, administered at clinics and hospitals, that are paid for by Medicare. A federal court blocked it, ruling that the administration had skipped steps in the policymaking process.
The pharmaceutical industry bitterly opposes the idea, which would almost certainly cut into its profits, and has been lobbying against it as discussions of the policy have regained steam in Washington in recent weeks. Companies have warned that such a policy would lead them to spend less on research, depriving patients of new medicines.
“Government price setting in any form is bad for American patients,” Alex Schriver, an official at the drug industry’s main lobbying group, PhRMA, said in a statement. He added, “Policymakers should focus on fixing the flaws in the U.S. system, not importing failed policies from abroad.”
Mr. Trump’s embrace of the idea sets him apart from most Republicans, who have tended to be skeptical of government price setting. Democratic lawmakers have proposed versions of the idea.
Ameet Sarpatwari, an expert in pharmaceutical policy at Harvard Medical School, said that Mr. Trump was tapping into an idea that had “populist appeal.”
Mr. Trump has long complained that the United States pays much more than other wealthy countries do for the same drugs. And he is right. In the United States, prices for brand-name drugs are three times as high, on average, as those in peer nations.
That is in spite of the fact that much of the research that leads to new drugs takes place in American laboratories and hospitals.
Drugmakers generate a substantial majority of their worldwide profits from sales in the United States and typically design their business strategy around the U.S. market.
Pharmaceutical companies argue that the higher prices in the United States come with an added benefit: Industry-funded analyses have found that patients in the United States get medicines faster, and with fewer insurance restrictions, than those in other countries.
Erica L. Green and Maggie Haberman
Erica L. Green reported from Washington, and Maggie Haberman from New York.
The families of some of the victims killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks who worked for the bond trading company of Howard Lutnick, now the commerce secretary, are urging him to help extradite a Saudi Arabian national potentially involved in the attacks as he prepares to engage in economic talks with the kingdom.
In a letter to Mr. Lutnick, obtained by The New York Times, the families representing the hundreds of employees at the company, Cantor Fitzgerald, who died in the attack cited recently unsealed evidence showing that Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi intelligence agent, had ties to the attackers.
Mr. Lutnick is himself a relative of a victim of the terrorist attack; his brother, who also worked for Cantor Fitzgerald, died. And Cantor, whose offices spanned the 101st to the 105th floors of the World Trade Center’s North Tower, lost more employees than any other firm affected by the attacks.
The letter comes as Mr. Lutnick plans to accompany President Trump to Saudi Arabia as part of an upcoming trip to the Middle East. The families urged Mr. Lutnick to make the case that Mr. al-Bayoumi be brought to justice in any discussions about strengthening the United States’ economic partnership with the kingdom. The relatives wrote that his appointment “gives us renewed hope” to determine the full truth about the attacks and who was responsible.
“You are in a unique position to emphasize that any such partnership must begin with accountability and justice, ensuring that Omar al-Bayoumi is handed over to the United States to face justice in an American court,” read the letter, which had more than 150 signatories.
“This issue transcends politics; it is a matter of principle,” the letter continued. “It is about honoring the lives we lost, and whether the country that sent them to their tragic deaths will ever be held accountable.”
Commerce Department officials declined to comment. A person with knowledge of Mr. Lutnick’s thinking said he had seen the letter and deeply appreciated the family members’ thoughts.
Mr. Lutnick, who was serving as the firm’s chief executive at the time of the attack, lost 658 employees, including his best friend. In a social media post last year, he recounted how he was dropping his son off for his first day of kindergarten when his phone kept ringing and disconnecting as his brother, Gary, tried to call to say goodbye.
Cantor Fitzgerald continued to support the families affected by the attacks, giving them $180 million. It also paid for their health care for 10 years and set up a relief fund.
“I promised to take care of all the families,” he wrote. “They became part of my family.”
There was dissent within the firm over how a settlement allocation from American Airlines over the aircraft that slammed into the World Trade Center’s North Tower, causing it to collapse, Fox Business reported. Mr. Lutnick told the company’s executives in 2014 that the money was to be largely disbursed among partners at the firm, as opposed to family members of those killed. It is unclear whether that was how the money was ultimately disbursed. Mr. Lutnick declined to comment to Fox Business for its article at the time.
For years, information about Mr. al-Bayoumi’s potential involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks was obscured.
Last summer, a trove of evidence seized by British authorities from the home of Mr. al-Bayoumi tying him to the Sept. 11 Qaeda hijackers was made public for the first time.
More than a week after the attacks, British police officers raided the home of Mr. al-Bayoumi, who had met two of the Sept. 11 hijackers in Los Angeles shortly after they arrived in early 2000. Among the items the officers seized was a pad on which Mr. al-Bayoumi had sketched an airplane in blue ink, above which he had written a mathematical equation.
The British authorities turned the material over to the F.B.I. for its investigation of the attacks. But it remains unclear what happened to the drawing after that. It was not shared with the 9/11 Commission, a bipartisan group of lawmakers and experts responsible for writing the definitive account of the attacks. In its 2004 report, the commission called Mr. al-Bayoumi “an unlikely candidate for clandestine involvement with Islamic extremists.”
None of the new evidence from Mr. al-Bayoumi’s home conclusively proved that the Saudi government enabled the attacks, but it adds to a growing circumstantial case.
The families cited a report broadcast on “60 Minutes” last month, revealing that Mr. al-Bayoumi filmed the Capitol before the attacks.
In the letter, the families pointed out that such information had been in the F.B.I.’s hands weeks after the attack but was withheld from the American public and the Sept. 11 commission for years.
“That betrayal is staggering,” the letter said. “But now we have an opportunity for a fresh start.”
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A U.S.-funded charter plane carrying dozens of white South Africans who claim to have been victims of discrimination in their home country left Johannesburg on Sunday, heading for the United States, where the Trump administration is welcoming them as refugees.
The departure of the white South Africans, who say they have been denied jobs and have been targeted by violence because of their race, was a remarkable development in President Trump’s redefining of U.S. foreign policy.
Mr. Trump has halted virtually all refugee admissions for people fleeing famine and war from places like Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. But he has created an expedited path into the country for Afrikaners, a white ethnic minority that created and led the brutal apartheid regime in South Africa.
The refugee process often takes years. But only three months have passed from the time Mr. Trump signed an executive order establishing refugee status for Afrikaners to the first cohort making its way to America.
Families lining up to check in for the flight on Sunday evening at O.R. Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg waved off questions from reporters, saying that the U.S. Embassy instructed them not to speak with the news media. Parents, with children in tow, pushed trolleys piled high with luggage, and spoke quietly among themselves.
One of the travelers briefly cracked a smile when asked if he would miss rugby, a favorite sport of Afrikaners, and biltong, a popular beef jerky-like snack. But the police occasionally reprimanded journalists, saying they did not want them to antagonize the Afrikaners.
In all, 49 Afrikaners were boarding the flight, according to a spokesman for South Africa’s airport authority.
While administration officials plan to celebrate the Afrikaners upon their scheduled arrival on Monday morning in Washington, aid groups, immigrant rights activists and the South African government and public have criticized the refugee initiative, saying it makes a mockery of a system devised to help the most vulnerable.
Even some leading Afrikaner activists in South Africa have said they would prefer if Mr. Trump provided support for them to build a better life at home.
The Afrikaner refugee program seems to have deepened tensions in an already strained relationship between South Africa and the United States.
While Mr. Trump has equated efforts by the South African government to undo racial inequalities created by apartheid to anti-white discrimination, South African officials have cast the granting of refugee status to Afrikaners as a politically motivated attempt to discredit the country. The Trump administration has criticized the South African government for having a close relationship with Iran and for its strong stance against Israel, including bringing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice over the war in Gaza.
But for many Afrikaners, the descendants of European colonizers who arrived in the country some four centuries ago, this moment goes beyond politics.
“No white person in their right mind would stay in this country,” said Jaco van der Merwe, 52, an Afrikaner living in Johannesburg, adding that he and his wife had been the victims of violent attacks and passed over for jobs because they are white. “I believe South Africa is finished.”
Mr. van der Merwe said he had reached out to the United States Embassy in South Africa to ask about applying for refugee status, but had not yet received a response.
The State Department said in March that it had received inquiries from more than 8,000 people. It is unclear when the government will admit more.
Much of the discontent among Afrikaners centers on their experiences in rural communities and tensions over land ownership that remain unresolved since the end of apartheid more than 30 years ago.
Many Afrikaners farm to make a living. During apartheid, the government denied Black South Africans the right to own prime agricultural land. That meant that almost all of the country’s large-scale commercial farmers were white, and that remains so to this day.
Although white South Africans make up only 7 percent of the population, they own farmland that covers about half of the country. That is indicative of a broader prosperity gap, with white South Africans enjoying much higher employment rates, lower poverty rates and more lucrative wages than their Black counterparts.
The government’s efforts to redistribute land after apartheid have largely fallen flat because of a variety of factors, including corruption, a lack of financial support for Black farmers and the inability to get enough white South Africans to voluntarily sell their land.
This year, South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, signed into law a measure that gives the government the ability to take private property without paying compensation. Although legal experts say uncompensated seizures are subject to strict judicial review and are likely to be rare, Afrikaner community leaders have expressed fears that white farmers will have their land taken from them.
Although there have not been any seizures, Mr. Trump said, inaccurately, on social media in February that the South African government was confiscating land.
Zimasa Matiwane contributed reporting from Johannesburg, and Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Hamed Aleaziz from Washington.
Hamas, the Palestinian armed group, said on Sunday night that it would free the last living American citizen held captive in Gaza, just days before President Trump is expected to arrive in the region for the first major foreign tour of his second term.
Khalil al-Hayya, Hamas’s lead negotiator, said in a statement that Hamas had agreed to free the hostage, Edan Alexander, 21, after talks with the United States. He did not say when Mr. Alexander would be released or what Hamas expected to receive in exchange.
Raised in Tenafly, N.J., Mr. Alexander, an Israeli American dual citizen, moved to Israel to serve in the military after high school. During the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, Palestinian militants abducted him from the military post where he was stationed.
The announcement comes at a pivotal moment in the Middle East, where Mr. Trump is scheduled to land on Tuesday for a round of diplomacy. Mr. Trump is expected to visit Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in the wake of disagreements with Israel over talks with Iran on its nuclear program.
The war in Gaza will hang heavy over Mr. Trump’s visit, even though he is not visiting Israel. The Israeli government is threatening a major military offensive that would displace most people in Gaza unless Hamas surrenders and turns over its remaining hostages. Israel has already been blocking food and other aid to Gaza for more than two months, deepening the enclave’s humanitarian crisis.
Hamas has broadly refused to free more captives, saying that Israel must first commit to a path to ending the war. But in a possible effort to gain favor with Mr. Trump, Hamas agreed to free Mr. Alexander as a gesture of good will, according to the U.S. official and another diplomat briefed on the talks, who spoke anonymously to discuss the sensitive negotiations.
The exact timing and mechanism of Mr. Alexander’s release were still unclear. The Trump administration hoped that he would be freed as soon as Monday, the U.S. official said. Mahmoud Mardawi, a Hamas official, said the release would take place in the next day or two.
During the talks, the United States pledged to undertake “great efforts” to end the war in Gaza, Mr. Mardawi said.
“We were asked to release Alexander and we complied with the request,” he said in a phone interview. The Americans, he said, had conveyed to Hamas that “the war ran its course” and “no longer had any justification.”
Mr. Alexander was one of about 250 people taken hostage during the Oct. 7 attack, which ignited the war in Gaza. The hostages were taken to Gaza for use as bargaining chips in future negotiations with Israel. More than 18 months later, 59 of them remain in the enclave. Dozens of them, including four U.S. citizens, are presumed by the Israeli authorities to be dead.
Mr. Alexander’s parents, Adi and Yael Alexander, have campaigned tirelessly for his release, meeting with officials and speaking at rallies. “We are living this day over and over,” Adi Alexander said in a February interview, referring to the Oct. 7 attacks.
Mr. and Ms. Alexander were traveling to Israel on Sunday night with Adam Boehler, Mr. Trump’s special envoy for hostage response, Mr. Boehler said in a phone call. Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s Middle East envoy, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were instrumental in securing Mr. Alexander's release, he said.
Mr. Alexander’s family, in a statement, called his return “the greatest gift imaginable” and urged the Israeli government to negotiate the release of the remaining captives. “No hostage should be left behind,” they said.
Mr. Trump called news of Mr. Alexander’s impending release “a step taken in good faith towards the United States” and said, “Hopefully this is the first of those final steps necessary to end this brutal conflict.”
This year, the Trump administration broke with a longstanding American policy of boycotting Hamas, which the United States has designated as a terrorist group. Mr. Boehler held direct talks with Hamas leaders in Doha, Qatar, in an attempt to secure Mr. Alexander’s freedom, as well as the bodies of the four dead Americans. But they foundered amid Israeli objections.
In previous rounds of negotiations, Hamas set a clear price for freeing more hostages: Israel must agree to ultimately end the war, withdraw its forces from the Gaza Strip and release large numbers of Palestinian prisoners.
During the two-month cease-fire that began in January, Hamas handed over 30 hostages and the bodies of eight others, while Israel freed more than 1,500 Palestinians being held in its prisons. Israel ended the truce in mid-March, saying talks to secure the next steps in the agreement were deadlocked.
On Sunday night, the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Washington had formally notified Israel that Mr. Alexander’s release would be a “gesture to the Americans” without any “compensations or conditions.” The U.S. official and the diplomat said Hamas had agreed to release Mr. Alexander without specific demands in exchange.
Mr. Netanyahu’s office suggested, however, that Mr. Alexander’s release would not lead Israel to pause its military campaign in Gaza, at least for the time being. “Under Israeli policy, negotiations will take place as fighting continues,” his office said.
The announcement that the United States had secured a promise of freedom for Mr. Alexander prompted hope in Israel. But it also led some Israelis to voice frustration with their own government, which has failed to gain the freedom of the remaining hostages.
Critics of Mr. Netanyahu have called on him to agree to an immediate agreement to end the war with Hamas and free the rest of the hostages. Mr. Netanyahu has held out, arguing that saving the captives is less important than “victory over our enemies.”
“The responsibility lies with the Israeli government,” said the Hostage Families’ Forum, an advocacy group which calls for an agreement with Hamas. “No one should be left behind.”
Isabel Kershner and Fatima AbdulKarim contributed reporting.
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