[🇧🇩] Israel and Hamas war in Gaza-----Can Bangladesh be a peace broker?

As Gaza nears erasure, will the world still keep looking away?
Palestine’s plight demands immediate global actions


VISUAL: STAR

The world has likely never witnessed horrors of the kind we are now seeing in Palestine—not, at least, since the end of World War II. According to Gaza's health ministry, over 56,300 people have died in Gaza since Israel launched its latest campaign against the Palestinians in October 2023. But even that figure appears to be greatly understated, according to the Israeli daily Haaretz. The newspaper estimates that nearly 100,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's genocidal war on Gaza, which represents about four percent of its population.

According to Haaretz, in addition to the high number of deaths directly caused by Israeli attacks, many have also died from indirect effects such as hunger, cold, and disease amid the collapse of Gaza's healthcare system. Earlier, the World Health Organization reported that at least 94 percent of all hospitals in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed as a result of Israel's continued aggression. There is, therefore, every reason to believe that the death toll is much higher than the ministry's estimate.

Only last week, 400 people were killed and over 3,000 wounded during an "aid" operation. As starving civilians gathered for aid in massive numbers, Israeli troops opened fire, killing dozens as they tried to collect a few kilos of flour or canned goods. Palestinians have dubbed this "the hunger games." That people are willing to risk their lives to collect aid, despite knowing the brutality that awaits them, is an indication of the level of desperation and destitution they have been reduced to.

The Haaretz report was based on a study conducted by Prof Michael Spagat, a leading expert on mortality in violent conflicts. His findings suggest that 56 percent of those killed have been either children under the age of 18 or women—an exceptional figure compared to almost every other conflict since World War II. Moreover, while the overall number of war victims in Syria, Ukraine, and Sudan may be higher in absolute terms, Gaza appears to rank first both in the ratio of combatants to non-combatants killed, and in the death rate relative to population size. These are staggering findings that clearly reveal the severity of the war crimes being committed by Israel against the Palestinians.

It is apparent that Israel is on the verge of completely eradicating—or displacing—the remaining population from Gaza and, perhaps eventually, from the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories. While this is unfolding, US President Donald Trump recently stated that he believes a ceasefire could be reached within a week. The unfortunate reality, however, is that we have heard such rhetoric many times before. The fact remains that Israel has continued its genocidal campaign with both direct and indirect support from the West, including the US. This must stop.

The West must abandon its double standards regarding whose human rights matter, and compel Israel to end its aggression. A permanent solution to the Gaza crisis must be found by recognising and ensuring full autonomy for a Palestinian state.​

Israeli forces kill over 50 as ceasefire calls mount, Gaza rescuers say

Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 56,531 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The United Nations considers these figures to be reliable.

AFP Gaza City, Palestinian Territories
Published: 01 Jul 2025, 08: 31

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli forces killed at least 51 people on Monday, including 24 at a seafront rest area, as fresh calls grew for a ceasefire in the war-ravaged Palestinian territory.

The swift resolution of Israel’s 12-day war with Iran has revived hopes for a halt to the fighting in Gaza, where more than 20 months of combat have created dire humanitarian conditions for the population of more than two million.

US President Donald Trump has recently urged Israel to “make the deal in Gaza”, while key mediator Qatar said Monday that “momentum” had been created by the truce with Iran last week.

But on the ground, Israel has continued to pursue its offensive across the Palestinian territory in a bid to destroy the militant group Hamas.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said 51 people had been killed by Israeli forces on Monday, including 24 in a strike on a rest area on Gaza City’s seafront.

“The place is always crowded with people because the rest area offers drinks, family seating and internet access,” eyewitness Ahmed Al-Nayrab, 26, told AFP, recalling a “huge explosion that shook the area”.

“I saw body parts flying everywhere, and bodies cut and burned... It was a scene that made your skin crawl.”

Another eyewitness, Bilal Awkal, 35, said “blood covered the ground and screams filled the air”.

“Women and children were everywhere, like a scene from a movie about the end of the world.”

Approached for comment by AFP, the Israeli army said it was “looking into” the reports.

The Hamas government media office reported that photojournalist Ismail Abu Hatab was among those killed in the strike.

Israeli restrictions on media in Gaza and difficulties in accessing some areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify the tolls and details provided by rescuers and authorities in the territory.

‘Targeting was deliberate’

Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that 27 others were killed by Israeli strikes or fire across Gaza, including 11 near aid points in the centre and south.

Eyewitnesses and local authorities have reported repeated killings of Palestinians near distribution centres in recent weeks, after Israel began allowing in a trickle of aid at the end of May.

Samir Abu Jarbou, 28, told AFP by phone that he had gone with relatives to pick up food in an area of central Gaza around midnight.

“Suddenly the (Israeli) army opened fire, and drones started shooting. We ran away and got nothing,” he said.

In the southern city of Khan Yunis, the dead and wounded were rushed to a hospital in an open-top trailer after aid seekers said they were fired on by Israeli forces in Rafah.

“The targeting was deliberate, aimed at people as they were leaving,” eyewitness Aboud al-Adwi told AFP.

“There was no one among us who was wanted or posed any threat. We were all civilians, simply trying to get food for our children,” he added.

AFP footage from Nasser Hospital showed the wounded being treated on a blood-stained floor.

The Israeli military did not immediately provide comment when asked by AFP about the civil defence reports.

‘No longer any benefit’

Netanyahu had said on Sunday that Israel’s “victory” over Iran had created “opportunities”, including for freeing hostages.

Opposition leader Yair Lapid, meanwhile, called for an end to the fighting in the territory on Monday, saying there was “no longer any benefit” to the war.

“We now face the completion of the campaign in Gaza, to achieve its objectives -- foremost among them, the release of all hostages and the defeat of Hamas,” Defence Minister Israel Katz said during a meeting with Netanyahu and the army’s general staff.

Trump had said on Friday that he was hoping for a new ceasefire in Gaza “within the next week”. Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer is in Washington this week for talks with US officials.

Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari told journalists on Monday that “momentum” had been created by the Iran-Israel ceasefire on 24 June, but that “we won’t hold our breath for this to happen today and tomorrow”.

Israel launched its campaign in response to Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack, which resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Of the 251 hostages seized during the assault, 49 are still held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 56,531 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The United Nations considers these figures to be reliable.​

Trump hopes for Gaza ceasefire ‘sometime next week’
Agence France-Presse . Washington 02 July, 2025, 00:16

The United States is pushing for a truce in Gaza by ‘sometime next week,’ US president Donald Trump said Tuesday.

The Republican leader was asked by reporters if a ceasefire in the devastating war between Israel and Palestinians could be in place before a visit by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House, set for July 7.

‘We hope it’s going to happen, and we’re looking for it to happen sometime next week,’ Trump responded as he departed Washington for Florida.

The swift resolution of Israel’s 12-day war with Iran has revived hopes for a halt to the fighting in Gaza, where more than 20 months of combat have created dire humanitarian conditions for the population of more than two million.

Trump has previously urged Israel to ‘make the deal in Gaza,’ but on the ground, Israel has continued to pursue its offensive across the Palestinian territory.

Israel’s military said Tuesday that it had expanded its operations in Gaza, where residents reported fierce gunfire and shelling.

Israel’s campaign to destroy the Palestinian group Hamas has continued unabated, however, with Gaza’s civil defence agency reporting Israeli forces killed 17 people on Tuesday.

In response to reports of deadly strikes in the north and south of the territory, the Israeli army said it was ‘operating to dismantle Hamas military capabilities’.

Separately, it said Tuesday morning that in recent days it had ‘expanded its operations to additional areas within the Gaza Strip, eliminating dozens of terrorists, and dismantling hundreds of terror infrastructure sites both above and below ground’.

Raafat Halles, 39, from the Shujaiya district of Gaza City district, said ‘air strikes and shelling have intensified over the past week’, and tanks have been advancing.

‘I believe that every time negotiations or a potential ceasefire are mentioned, the army escalates crimes and massacres on the ground,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why.’

Amer Daloul, a 44-year-old resident of Gaza City, also reported fiercer clashes between Israeli forces and militants in recent days, telling AFP that he and his family were forced to flee the tent they were living in at dawn on Tuesday ‘due to heavy and random gunfire and shelling’.

In the southern city of Rafah, resident Mohammed Abdel Aal, 41, said ‘tanks are present’ in most parts of town.

Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said that eight people were killed near aid distribution sites in central and southern Gaza Tuesday, in the latest in a long-running spate of deadly attacks on those seeking food.

One person was killed and 50 wounded when tanks and drones opened fire as crowds were waiting to collect aid near the Wadi Gaza Bridge in the middle of the territory, Bassal said.

The civil defence said another six people were killed nearby while trying to reach the same aid centre.

Asked for comment, the Israeli military said its forces ‘fired warning shots to distance suspects who approached the troops’, adding it was not aware of any injuries but would review the incident.

At least one more person was killed near another aid centre in Rafah, the civil defence said.

Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties in accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify the tolls and details provided by rescuers.

A group of 169 aid organisations called Monday for an end to Gaza’s ‘deadly’ new US- and Israeli-backed aid distribution scheme, which they said forced starving civilians to ‘trek for hours through dangerous terrain and active conflict zones, only to face a violent, chaotic race’ for food.

They urged a return to the UN-led aid mechanism that existed until March, when Israel imposed a full blockade on humanitarian assistance entering Gaza during an impasse in truce talks with Hamas.

The new scheme’s administrator, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, has distanced itself from reports of aid seekers being killed near its centres.

The Israeli army said it had also opened a review into a strike on a seafront Gaza cafe on Monday that it said had targeted militants.

The civil defence agency reported that the attack killed 24 people.

Maher Al-Baqa, 40, the brother of the owner of the cafe, said that several of his relatives including two nephews were killed in the strike.

‘It’s one of the most well-known cafes on the Gaza coast, frequented by educated youth, journalists, artists, doctors, engineers and hardworking people,’ he said.

‘They used to feel free and safe there — it was like a second home to them.’

The military maintained it had taken steps ‘to mitigate the risk of harming civilians using aerial surveillance’.

Hamas official Taher al-Nunu said the group is ‘ready to agree to any proposal if it will lead to an end to the war and a permanent ceasefire and a complete withdrawal of occupation forces’.

‘So far, there has been no breakthrough.’​

Gaza’s hunger games
Chris Hedges 02 July, 2025, 00:00

ISRAEL’S weaponization of starvation is how genocides always end. I covered the insidious effects of orchestrated starvation in the Guatemalan Highlands during the genocidal campaign of General Efraín Ríos Montt, the famine in southern Sudan that left a quarter of a million dead — I walked past the frail and skeletal corpses of families lining roadsides — and later during the war in Bosnia when Serbs cut off food supplies to enclaves such as Srebrencia and Goražde.

Starvation was weaponized by the Ottoman Empire to decimate the Armenians. It was used to kill millions of Ukrainians in the Holodomor in 1932 and 1933. It was employed by the Nazis against the Jews in the ghettos in World War II. German soldiers used food, as Israel does, like bait. They offered three kilograms of bread and one kilogram of marmalade to lure desperate families in the Warsaw Ghetto onto transports to the death camps. ‘There were times when hundreds of people had to wait in line for several days to be “deported”,’ Marek Edelman writes in ‘The Ghetto Fights.’ ‘The number of people anxious to obtain the three kilograms of bread was such that the transports, now leaving twice daily with 12,000 people, could not accommodate them all.’ And when crowds became unruly, as in Gaza, the German troops fired deadly volleys that ripped through emaciated husks of women, children and the elderly.

This tactic is as old as warfare itself.

The report in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, that Israeli soldiers are ordered to shoot into crowds of Palestinians at aid hubs, with 580 killed and 4,216 wounded, is not a surprise. It is the predictable denouement of the genocide, the inevitable conclusion to a campaign of mass extermination.

Israel, with its targeted assassinations of at least 1,400 healthcare workers, hundreds of United Nations workers, journalists, police and even poets and academics, its obliteration of multi-story apartment blocks wiping out dozens of families, its shelling of designated ‘humanitarian zones’ where Palestinians huddle under tents, tarps or in the open air, its systematic targeting of UN food distribution centres, bakeries and aid convoys or its sadistic sniper fire that guns down children, long ago illustrated that Palestinians are regarded as vermin worthy only of annihilation.

The blockade of food and humanitarian aid, imposed on Gaza since March 2, is reducing Palestinians to abject dependence. To eat, they must crawl towards their killers and beg. Humiliated, terrified, desperate for a few scraps of food, they are stripped of dignity, autonomy and agency. This is by intent.

Yousef al-Ajouri, 40, explained to Middle East Eye his nightmarish journey to one of four aid hubs set up by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. The hubs are not designed to meet the needs of the Palestinians, who once relied on 400 aid distribution sites, but to lure them from northern Gaza to the south. Israel, which on Sunday again ordered Palestinians to leave northern Gaza, is steadily expanding its annexation of the coastal strip. Palestinians are corralled like livestock into narrow metal chutes at distribution points which are overseen by heavily armed mercenaries. They receive, if they are one of the fortunate few, a small box of food.

Al-Ajouri, who before the genocide was a taxi driver, lives with his wife, seven children and his mother and father in a tent in al-Saraya, near the middle of Gaza City. He set out to an aid hub at Salah al-Din Road near the Netzarim corridor, to find some food for his children, who he said cry constantly ‘because of how hungry they are.’ On the advice of his neighbour in the tent next to him, he dressed in loose clothing ‘so that I could run and be agile.’ He carried a bag for canned and packaged goods because the crush of the crowds meant ‘no one was able to carry the boxes the aid came in.’

He left at about 9pm with five other men ‘including an engineer and a teacher,’ and ‘children aged 10 and 12.’ They did not take the official route designated by the Israeli army. The massive crowds converging on the aid point along the official route ensure that most never get close enough to receive food. Instead, they walked in the darkness in areas exposed to Israeli gunfire, often having to crawl to avoid being seen.

‘As I crawled, I looked over, and to my surprise, saw several women and elderly people taking the same treacherous route as us,’ he explained. ‘At one point, there was a barrage of live gunfire all around me. We hid behind a destroyed building. Anyone who moved or made a noticeable motion was immediately shot by snipers. Next to me was a tall, light-haired young man using the flashlight on his phone to guide him. The others yelled at him to turn it off. Seconds later, he was shot. He collapsed to the ground and lay there bleeding, but no one could help or move him. He died within minutes.’

He passed six bodies along the route who had been shot dead by Israeli soldiers.

Al-Ajouri reached the hub at 2am, the designated time for aid distribution. He saw a green light turned on ahead of him which signalled that aid was about to be distributed. Thousands began to run towards the light, pushing, shoving and trampling each other. He fought his way through the crowd until he reached the aid.

‘I started feeling around for the aid boxes and grabbed a bag that felt like rice,’ he said. ‘But just as I did, someone else snatched it from my hands. I tried to hold on, but he threatened to stab me with his knife. Most people there were carrying knives, either to defend themselves or to steal from others. Eventually, I managed to grab four cans of beans, a kilogram of bulgur, and half a kilogram of pasta. Within moments, the boxes were empty. Most of the people there, including women, children and the elderly, got nothing. Some begged others to share. But no one could afford to give up what they managed to get.’

The US contractors and Israeli soldiers overseeing the mayhem laughed and pointed their weapons at the crowd. Some filmed with their phones.

‘Minutes later, red smoke grenades were thrown into the air,’ he remembered. ‘Someone told me that it was the signal to evacuate the area. After that, heavy gunfire began. Me, Khalil and a few others headed to al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat because our friend Wael had injured his hand during the journey. I was shocked by what I saw at the hospital. There were at least 35 martyrs lying dead on the ground in one of the rooms. A doctor told me they had all been brought in that same day. They were each shot in the head or chest while queuing near the aid centre. Their families were waiting for them to come home with food and ingredients. Now, they were corpses.’

Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) is a Mossad-funded creation of Israel’s defence ministry that contracts with UG Solutions and Safe Reach Solutions, run by former members of the CIA and US Special Forces. GHF is headed by Rev Johnnie Moore, a far-right Christian Zionist with close ties to Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. The organisation has also contracted anti-Hamas drug-smuggling gangs to provide security at aid sites.

As Chris Gunness, a former spokesperson for the United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA) told Al Jazeera, GHF is ‘aid washing,’ a way to mask the reality that ‘people are being starved into submission.’

Israel, along with the US and European countries that provide weapons to sustain the genocide, have chosen to disregard the January 2024 ruling by the International Court of Justice which demanded immediate protection for civilians in Gaza and widespread provision of humanitarian assistance.

Haaretz, in its article headlined ‘It’s a Killing Field’: IDF Soldiers Ordered to Shoot Deliberately at Unarmed Gazans Waiting for Humanitarian Aid’ reported that Israeli commanders order soldiers to open fire on crowds to keep them away from aid sites or disperse them.

‘The distribution centres typically open for just one hour each morning,’ Haaretz writes. ‘According to officers and soldiers who served in their areas, the IDF fires at people who arrive before opening hours to prevent them from approaching, or again after the centres close, to disperse them. Since some of the shooting incidents occurred at night — ahead of the opening — it’s possible that some civilians couldn’t see the boundaries of the designated area.’

‘It’s a killing field,’ one soldier told Haaretz. ‘Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day. They’re treated like a hostile force — no crowd-control measures, no tear gas — just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars. Then, once the centre opens, the shooting stops, and they know they can approach. Our form of communication is gunfire.’

‘We open fire early in the morning if someone tries to get in line from a few hundred metres away, and sometimes we just charge at them from close range. But there’s no danger to the forces,’ the soldier explained, ‘I’m not aware of a single instance of return fire. There’s no enemy, no weapons.’

He said the deployment at the aid sites is known as ‘Operation Salted Fish,’ a reference to the Israeli name for the children’s game ‘Red light, green light.’ The game was featured in the first episode of the South Korean dystopian thriller Squid Game, in which financially desperate people are killed as they battle each other for money.

Israel has obliterated the civilian and humanitarian infrastructure in Gaza. It has reduced Palestinians, half a million of whom face starvation, into desperate herds. The goal is to break Palestinians, to make them malleable and entice them to leave Gaza, never to return.

There is talk from the Trump White House about a ceasefire. But don’t be fooled. Israel has nothing left to destroy. Its saturation bombing over 20 months has reduced Gaza to a moonscape. Gaza is uninhabitable, a toxic wilderness where Palestinians, living amid broken slabs of concrete and pools of raw sewage, lack food and clean water, fuel, shelter, electricity, medicine and an infrastructure to survive. The final impediment to the annexation of Gaza are the Palestinians themselves. They are the primary target. Starvation is the weapon of choice.

ScheerPost.com, June 30. Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper.​