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

[Saif]

https://www.thedailystar.net/news/world/israels-attack-on-palestine/news/no-respite-gazans-ahead-eid-day-3635161

No respite for Gazans ahead of Eid day
Tensions soar as Hezbollah launch rockets, drones at Israel; US targets Houthi assets

Smoke rises following Israeli strikes during an Israeli military operation in Rafah, as seen from Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, May 28, 2024.

Israel bombed and shelled Gaza on Saturday, witnesses and first responders said, with fallout from the war bringing a resurgence of tensions to the Lebanon border and Yemen.

As Muslims worldwide prepare to mark Eid al-Azha starting tomorrow, Gazans lamented the shortages of essential goods and lack of an Eid spirit amid raging violence

In the ninth month of war between Palestinian Hamas militants and Israeli forces, the Civil Defence agency in Gaza City, in the territory's north, reported 10 bodies recovered from Israeli strikes on three separate homes.

In Rafah, in Gaza's far south near Egypt, witnesses reported clashes between militants and Israeli troops in the city's west and artillery fire towards a refugee camp in the city centre. AFPTV images showed streets largely deserted.

The United Nations says about one million people have been displaced from Rafah since early May, when Israel began ground operations in pursuit of Hamas militants.

Israel's military has also been operating in central Gaza, where on Friday at a hospital in Deir al-Balah city a middle-aged man wept over the body of a younger man. Blood soaked through a white cloth around his neck.

Since October 7, Israel's offensive has killed at least 37,266 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory.

Fears of a broader Middle East conflict have surged again, with Lebanon-based Hezbollah fighters, who are backed by Iran and allied with Hamas, launching waves of rockets and drones against Israeli military targets.

Hezbollah said intense strikes since Wednesday were retaliation for Israel's killing of one of its commanders.

Israeli forces responded with shelling, the military said, also announcing air strikes on Hezbollah infrastructure across the border.

Two women were killed in a strike on Jannata in southern Lebanon, village official Hassan Shur said, the latest deaths in near-daily exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and the Israeli military since the Gaza war began.

On Friday plumes of smoke still billowed over the village.

French President Emmanuel Macron said this week that his country and the United States would work separately with Israeli and Lebanese authorities to ease tensions.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant rejected the initiative, decrying "hostile policies against Israel" by France, which last month had barred Israeli firms from an arms trade show.

The Israeli prime minister's office and senior foreign ministry officials distanced themselves from Gallant's comments.

During a Middle East trip this week to push a Gaza truce plan, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said "the best way" to help resolve the Hezbollah-Israel violence was "a resolution of the conflict in Gaza and getting a ceasefire".

That has not happened.

At a summit of the G7 group of advanced economies in Italy, US President Joe Biden called Hamas "the biggest hang-up so far" to reaching a Gaza truce and hostage release deal.

Hamas has insisted on the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and a permanent ceasefire -- demands Israel has repeatedly rejected.

To read the rest of the news, please click on the link above.​

 

[Saif]

Israel bombs Gaza as 8 soldiers killed

Israeli forces bombed and shelled Gaza on Saturday while they conceded fall of eight soldiers.

www.newagebd.net

Israel bombs Gaza as 8 soldiers killed
Agence France-Presse . Palestine 16 June, 2024, 00:41

Israeli forces bombed and shelled Gaza on Saturday while they conceded fall of eight soldiers.

The Israeli military said eight soldiers were killed in southern Gaza Saturday 'in operational activity' while they were in an armoured vehicle, in one of the deadliest incidents since the war broke out on October 7.

Israeli media reported the troops died in the city of Rafah when their armoured vehicle exploded.

The military said in a statement that Captain Wassem Mahmud, 23, and seven other soldiers 'fell during operational activity in southern Gaza'.

The military confirmed to AFP that the incident occurred inside a Namer armoured vehicle.

The latest fatalities take the military's toll to 306 in the Gaza military campaign since Israel began its ground offensive in the Palestinian territory on October 27.

In the ninth month of war between Palestinian Hamas militants and Israeli forces, the Civil Defence agency in Gaza City, in the territory's north, reported 10 bodies recovered from Israeli strikes on three separate homes.

In Rafah, in Gaza's far south near Egypt, witnesses reported clashes between militants and Israeli troops in the city's west, and artillery fire towards a refugee camp in the city centre. AFPTV images showed streets largely deserted.

The United Nations says about one million people have been displaced from Rafah since early May, when Israel began ground operations in pursuit of Hamas militants.

Israel's offensive has killed at least 37,296 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory.

Fears of a broader Middle East conflict have surged again, with Lebanon-based Hezbollah fighters launching waves of rockets and drones against Israeli military targets.

Israeli forces responded with shelling, the military said, also announcing air strikes on Hezbollah infrastructure across the border.

French President Emmanuel Macron said this week that his country and the United States would work separately with Israeli and Lebanese authorities to ease tensions.

At a summit of the G7 group of advanced economies in Italy, US President Joe Biden called Hamas 'the biggest hang-up so far' to reaching a Gaza truce and hostage release deal.

Hamas has insisted on the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and a permanent ceasefire—demands Israel has repeatedly rejected.

Blinken has said Israel backs the latest plan, but prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose far-right coalition partners are strongly opposed, has not publicly endorsed it.

The Gaza war's only truce, one week in November, saw hostages freed and Palestinian prisoners held by Israel released.

World Food Programme deputy executive director Carl Skau said that 'with lawlessness inside the Strip... and active conflict', it has become 'close to impossible to deliver the level of aid that meets the growing demands on the ground'.

'More than anything, people want this war to end,' he said after a two-day visit to Gaza.

The United States, Israel's close ally, imposed sanctions Friday on an Israeli group whose activists have blocked aid convoys bound for Gaza, where the UN has warned of famine.

'Individuals from Tzav 9 have repeatedly sought to thwart the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza, including by blockading roads, sometimes violently,' the US State Department said.

'They also have damaged aid trucks and dumped life-saving humanitarian aid onto the road.'

The US military said a pier it built to help bring aid into Gaza would be temporarily moved to an Israeli port to protect it from expected high seas.

The platform had only been reattached to Gaza's shore a week before, after storm damage.

To read the rest of the news, please click on the link above.​

 

[Saif]

Israel is dragging world into darkness

ISRAEL does not belong in the modern world. It is the child of European colonialism and Europe’s genocidal anti-Semitism, imposed by force and...

www.newagebd.net

Israel is dragging world into darkness
by Susan Abulhawa 16 June, 2024, 00:11

| — The Electric Intifada/APA images/Omar Ashtawy

ISRAEL does not belong in the modern world. It is the child of European colonialism and Europe's genocidal anti-Semitism, imposed by force and fire and Western guilt on a land already inhabited by an indigenous people.

Israel is a contemporary trespass of that old world's colonial ethos that justified genocide, ethnic cleansing, wholesale plunder, endless theft and destruction of indigenous peoples in the name of settlement and divine entitlement of a superior group of humans.


But the modern world has moved on with incremental moral evolution. It long ago repudiated, at least in principle, the racist and violent impulses that powered the genocidal colonial engines of old.

One can hear Israel's anachronistic nature in the rhetoric of its leaders and citizens. Benjamin Netanyahu points to America's nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to justify Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Zionists, especially those in settler-colonial nations like the United States and Australia, love to remind us that these countries were founded on the genocide and ethnic cleansing of indigenous peoples.

And from these reminders come their accusations of double standards and hypocrisy. 'You're living on stolen land, why don't you leave?' so their rhetoric goes.

Implicit in their accusations is an admission of sameness with the violent and racist settler-colonial force that created the United States.

In other words, while humanity has tried and continues to strive to prevent and right the wrongs of the past, Israel points to these base moments in human history, not in the context of 'never again,' but as precedents it should be free to emulate.

As we still today uncover mass graves in 'Indian schools' where Indigenous children were ripped from their families and tortured to death in boarding schools, Israel demands the right to create more mass graves of Palestinians in the name of 'self-defense.'

While we engage in discourse to push for acknowledgement and reparations, much as the world did for European Jews, Israel demands an entitlement to ethnically cleanse indigenous Palestinians, steal their lands, plunder resources and raze their cities and farmlands.

While we imagine and endeavour to create a post-colonial reality of revolutionary universalism, inclusion, equity and understanding, Israel demands the right to Jewish exclusivity and Jewish entitlement at the expense of non-Jews.

Invoking American settler-colonialism to justify its own version of the same is no different than invoking America's industrialised enslavement as a precedent to emulate.

Rules-based order?

WESTERN governments have long touted their values as beacons of democracy and idealism toward which modernity must aim. How they love to lecture the world about law and rules-based order; about freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of this and that.

But look how quickly they denounce, veto and attack any courts, human rights organisations and UN protocols when the institutions they helped create do not serve their imperial interests. Look how quickly they shut down speech and sic their police on their own citizens trying to exercise those freedoms.

They do this because Israel is antithetical to democratic values. It is antithetical to human rights and the so-called rules-based order.

The West must therefore choose between Israel and the ideals it claims to uphold. And thus far, it is choosing Israel.

To read the rest of the news, please click on the link above.​

 

[Saif]

Israeli army announces ‘tactical pause’ in southern Gaza

The Israeli army announced on Sunday that it would implement a daily ‘tactical pause of military activity’ in part of the southern Gaza Strip during daylight hours to facilitate the delivery of aid....

www.newagebd.net

Israeli army announces 'tactical pause' in southern Gaza
Agence France-Presse . Jerusalem, Undefined 16 June, 2024, 10:36

A Palestinian woman stands in the partially destroyed apartment, looking down at the demolished building where Israeli hostages were purportedly being held and rescued during an Israeli military operation a week ago, in the Nuseirat refugee camp, in the central Gaza Strip on June 15, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas group. | AFP photo.

Israel's military said on Sunday that it would 'pause' fighting around a south Gaza route daily to facilitate aid deliveries, following months of warnings of famine in the besieged Palestinian territory.

The announcement of a 'local, tactical pause of military activity' during daylight hours in an area of Rafah came a day after eight Israeli soldiers were killed in a blast near the far-southern city and three more troops died elsewhere, in one of the heaviest losses for the army in its war against Hamas militants.

UN agencies and aid groups have repeatedly sounded the alarm of dire shortages of food and other essentials in the Gaza Strip, exacerbated by overland access restrictions and the closure of the key Rafah crossing with Egypt since Israeli forces seized it in early May.

Israel has long defended its efforts to let aid into Gaza including via its Kerem Shalom border near Rafah, blaming militants for looting supplies and humanitarian workers for failing to distribute them to civilians.

'A local, tactical pause of military activity for humanitarian purposes will take place from 8:00 am (0500 GMT) until 7:00 pm (1600 GMT) every day until further notice along the road that leads from the Kerem Shalom crossing to the Salah al-Din road and then northwards,' a military statement said.

A map released by the army showed the declared humanitarian route extending until Rafah's European Hospital, about 10 kilometres (six miles) from Kerem Shalom.

The announcement came as Muslims the world over mark Eid al-Adha, or the feast of the sacrifice.

'This Eid is completely different,' said Umm Muhammad al-Katri in northern Gaza's Jabalia refugee camp.

'We've lost many people, there's a lot of destruction. We don't have the joy we usually have,' she told AFP.

Instead of a cheerful holiday spirit, 'I came to the Eid prayers mourning. I've lost my son.'

AFP correspondents in Gaza said there were no reports of strikes, shelling or fighting on Sunday morning, though the military stressed in a statement there was 'no cessation of hostilities in the southern Gaza Strip'.

The military said the pause was already in effect and part of efforts to 'increase the volumes of humanitarian aid' following discussions with the UN and other organisations.

The United States, which has been pressing close ally Israel as well as Hamas to accept a ceasefire plan laid out by President Joe Biden, on Friday imposed sanctions on an extremist Israeli group for blocking and attacking Gaza-bound aid convoys.

The military said the eight soldiers killed Saturday were hit by an explosion as they were travelling in an armoured vehicle near Rafah, where troops were engaged in fierce street battles against Palestinian militants.

Military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said the blast was 'apparently from an explosive device planted in the area or from the firing of an anti-tank missile'.

Separately, two soldiers were killed in fighting in northern Gaza and another succumbed to wounds inflicted in recent fighting.

To read the rest of the news, please click on the link above.​

 

[Saif]

Netanyahu disbands war cabinet as pressure grows on Israel's northern border

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dissolved the six-member war cabinet, an Israeli official said on Monday, in a widely expected move following the departure from government of centrist former general Benny Gantz

www.thedailystar.net

Netanyahu disbands war cabinet as pressure grows on Israel's northern border

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convenes the weekly cabinet meeting at the Defence Ministry in Tel Aviv, Israel, January 7, 2024. Photo: Reuters

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dissolved the six-member war cabinet, an Israeli official said on Monday, in a widely expected move following the departure from government of centrist former general Benny Gantz.

Netanyahu is now expected to hold consultations about the Gaza war with a small group of ministers, including Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer who had been in the war cabinet.

The move was announced as US special envoy Amos Hochstein visited Jerusalem, seeking to calm the situation on the disputed border with Lebanon, where Israel said tensions with the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia were bringing the region close to a wider conflict.

The Israeli military said on Monday it had killed a senior operative in one of Hezbollah's rocket and missile sections in the area of Selaa in southern Lebanon.

The military also said its operations were continuing in the southern parts of the Gaza Strip, where its forces have been battling Hamas fighters in the Tel Sultan area of western Rafah, as well as in central areas of the enclave.

Hochstein's visit follows weeks of increasing exchanges of fire across the line between Israel and Lebanon, where Israeli forces have for months been engaged in a simmering conflict with Hezbollah that has continued alongside the war in Gaza.

Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from their homes on both sides of the so-called Blue Line that divides the two countries, leaving eerily deserted areas of abandoned villages and farms hit by near-daily bombardment.

"The current state of affairs is not a sustainable reality," government spokesperson David Mencer told a briefing.

Netanyahu had faced demands from the nationalist-religious partners in his coalition, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, to be included in the war cabinet. Such a move would have intensified strains with international partners including the United States.

The forum was formed after Gantz joined Netanyahu in a national unity government at the start of the Gaza war in October. It also included Gantz's political partner Gadi Eisenkot and Aryeh Deri, head of the religious party Shas, as observers.

Gantz and Eisenkot both left the government last week, over what they said was Netanyahu's failure to form a strategy for the Gaza war.

PROTESTS

An agreement to halt the fighting in Gaza still appears distant, more than eight months since the October 7 attack on Israel led by Hamas fighters that triggered Israel's military offensive in the Palestinian enclave.

The October 7 attack killed some 1,200 people and about 250 were taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies. Israel's offensive has killed more than 37,000 Palestinians, according to Palestinian health ministry figures, and destroyed much of Gaza.

Although opinion polls suggest most Israelis support the government's aim of destroying Hamas, there have been widespread protests attacking the government for not doing more to bring home around 120 hostages still being held in Gaza.

Along the northern border on Monday, the second day of the Muslim Eid celebration, was relatively quiet compared with previous days, when rocket fire set off widespread brush fires in heatwave conditions.

A survey for the Jewish People Policy Institute, a Jerusalem-based think tank, found 36% of respondents favouring an immediate strike against Hezbollah, up from 26% a month earlier.

To read the rest of the news, please click on the link above.​

 

[Saif]

Israel may have violated laws of war in Gaza, UN rights office says

Israeli forces may have repeatedly violated the laws of war and failed to distinguish between civilians and fighters in the Gaza conflict, the UN human rights office said on Wednesday

www.thedailystar.net

Israel may have violated laws of war in Gaza, UN rights office says

Displaced Palestinians, who fled their houses due to Israeli strikes, shelter at a tent camp, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, June 19, 2024. Photo: Reuters

Israeli forces may have repeatedly violated the laws of war and failed to distinguish between civilians and fighters in the Gaza conflict, the UN human rights office said on Wednesday.

Separately, the head of a UN inquiry accused the Israeli military of carrying out an "extermination" of Palestinians.

In a report on six deadly Israeli attacks, the UN human rights office (OHCHR) said Israeli forces "may have systematically violated the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precautions in attack".

"The requirement to select means and methods of warfare that avoid or at the very least minimise to every extent civilian harm appears to have been consistently violated in Israel's bombing campaign," UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said.

Israel's permanent mission to the United Nations in Geneva characterised the analysis as "factually, legally, and methodologically flawed". "Since the OHCHR has, at best, a partial factual picture, any attempt to reach legal conclusions is inherently flawed," it said.

In a separate meeting of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, the head of a UN Commission of Inquiry, Navi Pillay, said perpetrators of abuses in the conflict must be brought to account.

She repeated findings from a report published last week that both Hamas militants and Israel have committed war crimes but said that Israel alone was responsible for the most serious abuses under international law known as "crimes against humanity".

She said the scale of Palestinian civilian losses amounted to "extermination".

"We found that the immense numbers of civilian casualties in Gaza and widespread destruction of civilian objects and infrastructure were the inevitable result of an intentional strategy to cause maximum damage," Pillay, a former UN rights chief and South African judge, told the meeting.

Israel, which does not typically cooperate with the inquiry and alleges an anti-Israel bias, chose the mother of a hostage to speak on its behalf and criticised the report on the grounds that it did not give due attention to hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7.

"We can do better for them. The hostages need us," Meirav Gonen, the mother of 23-year-old hostage Romi Gonen, said in a tearful appeal.

HEAVY WEAPONRY

Israel's air and ground offensive has killed more than 37,400 people in the Hamas-ruled Palestinian territory, according to health authorities there.

Israel launched its assault after Hamas fighters stormed across the border into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing around 1,200 people and taking more than 250 people hostage, according to Israeli tallies.

The UN rights office report details six incidents that took place between Oct. 7 and Dec. 2, in which it was able to assess the kinds of weapons, the means and the methods used in these attacks.

"We felt that it was important to get this report out now, especially because in the case of some of these attacks, some eight months have passed, and we are yet to see credible and transparent investigations," said Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the UN human rights office.

She added that in the absence of transparent investigations, there would be "a need for international action in this regard".

To read the rest of the news, please click on the link above.​

 

[Saif]

Fighting continues to rock Rafah

Israeli air strikes and clashes between troops and Palestinian militants rocked Gaza on Wednesday, as Israel’s army warned it had readied an ‘offensive’ against the...

www.newagebd.net

Fighting continues to rock Rafah
Agence France-Presse . Palestinian Territories 20 June, 2024, 01:13

Palestinians rush during Israeli bombardment in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Wednesday, amid the on-going conflict in the Palestinian territory between Israel and Hamas. | AFP photo

Israeli air strikes and clashes between troops and Palestinian militants rocked Gaza on Wednesday, as Israel's army warned it had readied an 'offensive' against the Lebanese Hezbollah movement on the country's northern front.

Witnesses and the civil defence agency in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip reported Israeli bombardment in western Rafah, where medics said drone strikes and shelling killed at least seven people.

The Israeli military has announced a daily humanitarian 'pause' in fighting on a key road in eastern Rafah, but a UN spokesman said days later that 'this has yet to translate into more aid reaching people in need'.

More than eight months of war, sparked by Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, have led to dire humanitarian conditions in the Palestinian territory and repeated UN warnings of famine.

The Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt has been shut since Israeli troops seized its Palestinian side in early May, while nearby Kerem Shalom on the Israeli border 'is operating with limited functionality, including because of fighting in the area', said UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq.

He told reporters that in recent weeks, there had been 'an improvement' in aid reaching northern Gaza 'but a drastic deterioration in the south'.

'Basic commodities are available in markets in southern and central Gaza. But it's unaffordable for many people.'

The war has sent tensions soaring across the region, with violence involving Iran-backed Hamas allies.

The Israeli military, which has traded near-daily cross-border fire with Lebanon's Hezbollah since October, said late Tuesday that 'operational plans for an offensive in Lebanon were approved and validated'.

On Wednesday the military said its warplanes had struck Hezbollah sites in southern Lebanon overnight, while reporting a drone had infiltrated near the border town of Metula in an attack claimed by Hezbollah and targeting troops.

The Iran-backed group also announced the death of two of its fighters.

Lebanon's official National News agency reported Israeli strikes on several areas in south Lebanon on Wednesday morning, including on the border village of Khiam, where an AFP photographer saw a large cloud of smoke.

The army's announcement that its plans for an offensive in Lebanon had been approved, along with a warning from foreign minister Israel Katz of Hezbollah's destruction in a 'total war', came as US envoy Amos Hochstein visited the region to push for de-escalation.

Syrian state media said an Israeli strike on military sites in the country's south killed an army officer on Wednesday. Israel has not commented on the report.

In Gaza, Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian armed group that has fought alongside Hamas, said its militants were battling troops amid Israeli shelling of western Rafah.

Witnesses reported seeing Israeli military vehicles enter the city's Saudi neighbourhood, followed by nighttime gun battles.

Parts of central Gaza also saw fighting overnight, with witnesses reporting artillery shelling and heavy gunfire in Gaza City's Zeitun neighbourhood.

The October 7 attack that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,194 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

The militants also seized 251 hostages. Of these, 116 remain in Gaza, although the army says 41 are dead.

Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed at least 37,396 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the territory's health ministry.

At least 24 people died over the past day, the ministry said.

To read the rest of the news, please click on the link above.
​

 

[Saif]

The stakes are too high for the world to fail Palestine

Realising the stakes of the failure to address the current Gaza genocide, millions of people have been coming to the streets to protest.

www.thedailystar.net

The stakes are too high for the world to fail Palestine

A man gestures as Palestinians search for casualties a day after Israeli strikes on houses in Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, on November 1, 2023. PHOTO: REUTERS

Martin Luther King Jr said that injustice anywhere threatens justice everywhere. That warning has never been so relevant as today, when the global powers are themselves violating the rule-based world order established after the World War II, with goals to avoid wars, maintain peace, uphold human rights, and assure security and justice to every nation-state and every people in this global society.

The horrible genocide in Gaza has slaughtered over 37,000 people—two-thirds of them women and children, injured over 85,000, and buried alive countless people under the 220,000 collapsed buildings in the tiny strip of land just 25 miles long and about five miles wide. This ethnic cleansing, and the crimes against humanity are being carried out with the full military and political support of none other than the US—once the architect, founder, and supposedly the de facto defender of the international rule of law. Such a monstrous injustice to a defenceless and long-persecuted people who endured ethnic cleansing by the settler colonial state, Israel, for the last 75 years under the patronage of the West, especially of the superpower of our time, is undoubtedly giving messages to the entire world that the "might is right" policy of the dark ages is back, and no one is safe.

The Rohingya genocide occurred in Myanmar in 2017 while the global powers watched. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and inflicted scorched earth destruction, mass murders, and inhuman atrocities. There are other examples of massive human rights violations by global powers. If the global community does not take measures to hold them accountable, the ultimate victim of this dangerously irresponsible pattern will be humanity in its entirety.

Washington's polished mask is removed, and its ugly and rotten state is exposed to the world as it repeatedly counters and vetoes resolutions at the UN General Assembly and the Security Council, cares little about world opinion, undermines the verdicts of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and opposes the International Criminal Court's requests for arrest warrants against top Israeli officials including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. These actions are sending alarms to the rest of the world that the world order based on universal principles is becoming dysfunctional. It is utterly disgraceful that the US Congress has invited Netanyahu to speak before a joint session.

Realising the stakes of the failure to address the current Gaza genocide, millions of people have been coming to the streets to protest. They know that politicians and decision-makers operate in a socio-political environment that must be changed by the people.

It is a dangerous signal to many states and non-state actors who struggle peacefully and within the law because they believe the international community will effectively address their issues. However, as they see the present hopeless state of affairs, these people and organisations often resort to illegal and violent means, abandoning peaceful resistance.

To read the rest of the news, please click on the link above.​

 

[Saif]

Hezbollah fires rockets at Israel after fighter killed

Hezbollah retaliates with rocket fire on Israel following deadly strike in south Lebanon, escalating tensions in the region

en.prothomalo.com

Hezbollah fires rockets at Israel after fighter killed
AFP Beirut
Published: 21 Jun 2024, 10: 25

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah Reuters file photo

Hezbollah said it fired "dozens" of rockets into northern Israel on Thursday in retaliation for a deadly strike in south Lebanon, a day after a fiery speech from the group's leader.

Israel and Hezbollah, a powerful Lebanese movement allied with Hamas, have traded near-daily cross-border fire since the Palestinian militant group's 7 October attack on Israel which triggered war in the Gaza Strip.

Fears of a regional war surged after Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah warned on Wednesday that "no place" in Israel would be spared in the event of all-out war against his group, and threatened the nearby island nation of Cyprus if it opened its airports to Israel.

Hezbollah on Thursday said that "in response to the assassination that the Israeli enemy carried out in the village of Deir Kifa", fighters targeted an Israeli barracks "with dozens of Katyusha rockets".

Lebanon's official National News Agency (NNA) had reported one dead after an "enemy drone" struck a vehicle in south Lebanon's Deir Kifa area.

Hezbollah announced that one of its fighters was killed. A source close to the group, requesting anonymity, told AFP he was killed in the Deir Kifa strike.

The Israeli military said an air strike "eliminated" a Hezbollah operative in the Deir Kifa area, saying he was "responsible for planning and carrying out terror attacks against Israel and commanding Hezbollah ground forces" in south Lebanon's Jouaiyya area.

Elsewhere, Israeli fighter jets struck "a Hezbollah surface-to-air missile launcher that posed a threat to aircraft operating over Lebanon", the army statement added.

Hezbollah claimed several other attacks on Israeli troops and positions on Thursday, while the NNA reported further Israeli strikes in south Lebanon.

'Stop the firing'

The exchanges between the foes, which last went to war in 2006, have escalated in recent weeks, and the Israeli military said Tuesday that "operational plans for an offensive in Lebanon were approved and validated".

After the Hezbollah leader's threats against Cyprus, Lebanon's foreign ministry said on Thursday that "relations between Lebanon and Cyprus are based on a rich history of diplomatic cooperation".

Contacts and consultations continue between the two countries "at the highest levels", a foreign ministry statement said, without making specific reference to Nasrallah's remarks.

In a conversation with his Cyprus counterpart, foreign minister Abdallah Bou Habib expressed "Lebanon's constant reliance on the positive role that Cyprus plays in supporting regional stability", the NNA reported.

Lebanese prime minister Najib Mikati and British foreign secretary David Cameron discussed bilateral relations "and the situation in Lebanon and the region" in a telephone call, the premier's office said in a statement.

Also on Thursday, the United Nations special coordinator for Lebanon Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert said there was "no inevitability to conflict" as she visited UN peacekeepers deployed in the Lebanese border town of Naqura.

"It is crucial for all sides to stop the firing and for the parties to commit to sustainable solutions in line with Security Council Resolution 1701," she said in a statement.

The resolution ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah and called for the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers to be the only armed forces deployed in the country's south.

The cross-border violence since October has killed at least 479 people in Lebanon, most of them fighters but also including 93 civilians, according to an AFP tally. Israeli authorities say at least 15 soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed in the country's north.​

 

[Saif]

Israel bombs Gaza as fears grow of wider war

Israel bombed Gaza on Friday as exchanges of fire and threats over the Lebanon border raised fears of wider war.

www.newagebd.net

Israel bombs Gaza as fears grow of wider war
Agence France-Presse . Palestinian Territory 22 June, 2024, 01:01

Israel bombed Gaza on Friday as exchanges of fire and threats over the Lebanon border raised fears of wider war.

Five municipal workers died 'during an Israeli bombing' of a garage in Gaza City, said Mahmud Basal, spokesman for the civil defence agency in the Hamas-ruled Palestinian territory.

In southern Gaza, AFPTV captured an overnight strike on a residential district of Khan Yunis city. A ball of fire and sparks flared, followed by grey smoke before residents inspected damage in the dusty darkness.

Just before midnight Thursday, Israel's army said it had 'successfully intercepted a suspicious aerial target that crossed from Lebanon'.

Early Friday, Lebanese official media reported fresh Israeli strikes in the country's south.

This came after Lebanon's powerful Hezbollah movement said it fired dozens of rockets at an Israeli barracks in northern Israel on Thursday in retaliation for a deadly air strike in south Lebanon.

One of the group's operatives was killed in that strike, Israel said.

Hezbollah claimed several other attacks on Thursday.

The Israeli military said its jets had struck Hezbollah sites and had fired artillery 'to remove threats in multiple areas in southern Lebanon'.

Experts are divided on the prospect of a wider war, almost nine months into Israel's campaign to eradicate Iran-backed Hezbollah's ally Hamas, the Palestinian militant group in Gaza.

Exchanges between Hezbollah and Israel have escalated in recent weeks and the Israeli military said Tuesday that plans for an offensive in Lebanon 'were approved and validated'.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said 'no place' in Israel would 'be spared our rockets' in a war, and also threatened nearby European Union member Cyprus.

The United States has appealed for de-escalation.

Deadly violence on the Lebanon border began after the October 7 attack by Hamas militants from Gaza against southern Israel. That attack resulted in the deaths of 1,194 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

The militants also seized hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza although the army says 41 are dead.

Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed at least 37,431 people, also mostly civilians, according to Gaza's health ministry.

The war has destroyed much of Gaza's infrastructure and left residents short of food, fuel and other essentials.

On June 16 the army said it would implement a daily 'tactical pause of military activity' in a southern Gaza corridor to facilitate aid delivery.

But on Friday Richard Peeperkorn, of the World Health Organisation, said 'we did not see an impact on the humanitarian supplies coming in'.

Israel's military on Friday identified two more soldiers killed during fighting in the territory, bringing to more than 310 the military toll since ground operations began.

The Gaza war's regional fallout has also impacted Yemen, whose Iran-backed Huthi rebels have for months attacked ships on vital trade routes surrounding the Arabian Peninsula country.

The Huthis and Hezbollah say they are acting in response to Israel's actions in Gaza.

The United States on Thursday again hit back. US Central Command said its forces had destroyed several Huthi drones, both sea-based and aerial.

US officials say a deal to curb fighting in Gaza would by extension help resolve the Hezbollah-Israel violence, but mediation efforts have not produced a deal.

To read the rest of the news, please click on the link above.​

 

[Saif]

Israeli strikes kill at least 42 in Gaza

At least 42 people were killed in Israeli attacks on districts of Gaza City in the north of the Palestinian enclave on Saturday, the director of the Hamas-run government media office said. One Israeli strike on houses in Al-Shati, one of the Gaza Strip's eight historic refugee camps, killed 24 peo

thefinancialexpress.com.bd

Israeli strikes kill at least 42 in Gaza
Published :
Jun 22, 2024 21:30
Updated :
Jun 22, 2024 21:30

At least 42 people were killed in Israeli attacks on districts of Gaza City in the north of the Palestinian enclave on Saturday, the director of the Hamas-run government media office said.
One Israeli strike on houses in Al-Shati, one of the Gaza Strip's eight historic refugee camps, killed 24 people, Ismail Al-Thawabta told Reuters. Another 18 Palestinians were killed in a strike on houses in the Al-Tuffah neighbourhood.

The Israeli military released a brief statement saying: "A short while ago, IDF fighter jets struck two Hamas military infrastructure sites in the area of Gaza City."

It said more details would be released soon.

Hamas did not comment on the Israeli claim to have hit its military infrastructure. It said in a statement the attacks targeted the civilian population and vowed in a statement "the occupation and its Nazi leaders will pay the price for their violations against our people."

Footage obtained by Reuters showed dozens of Palestinians rushing out to search for victims amid the destroyed houses. The footage showed wrecked homes, blasted walls, and debris and dust filling the street in Shati refugee camp.

Israel's ground and air campaign in Gaza was triggered when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct 7, killing around 1,200 people and seizing more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

The offensive has left Gaza in ruins, killed more than 37,400 people, of whom 101 were killed in the past 24 hours, according to Palestinian health authorities, and left nearly the entire population homeless and destitute.

More than eight months into the war, Israel's advance is now focused on the two last areas its forces had yet to seize: Rafah on Gaza's southern edge and the area surrounding Deir al-Balah in the centre.

Residents said Israeli tanks deepened their incursion into western and northern Rafah areas in recent days. On Saturday Israeli forces bombed several areas from air and the ground, forcing many families living in areas described as humanitarian-designated zones to leave northwards.

The Israeli military said forces continued "precise, intelligence-based" targeted operations in Rafah, killing many Palestinian gunmen and dismantling military infrastructure.

On Friday, the Gaza health ministry said at least 25 Palestinians were killed in Mawasi in western Rafah and 50 wounded. Palestinians said a tank shell hit a tent housing displaced families.

The Israeli military said that the incident was under review. "An initial inquiry conducted suggests that there is no indication that a strike was carried out by the IDF (Israel Defence Forces) in the Humanitarian Area in Al-Mawasi," it said.​

 

[Saif]

Food piles up at Gaza crossing in south

Days after Israel announced a daily pause in fighting on a key route to allow more aid into Gaza, chaos in the besieged Palestinian territory has left vital supplies piled up and undistributed in the searing summer heat.

www.thedailystar.net

Food piles up at Gaza crossing in south
Aid agencies say they are unable to work due to continued Israeli strikes, breakdown of public order

Palestinians carry a casualty outside the headquarters of UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) following an Israeli strike in Gaza City yesterday. Israel's offensive since October 7 has left Gaza in ruins, killed almost 37,600 people, according to Palestinian health authorities, and left nearly the entire population homeless and destitute. Photo: REUTERS

Days after Israel announced a daily pause in fighting on a key route to allow more aid into Gaza, chaos in the besieged Palestinian territory has left vital supplies piled up and undistributed in the searing summer heat.

More than eight months of offensive have led to dire humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip and repeated UN warnings of famine.

Desperation among Gaza's 2.4 million population has increased as fighting rages, sparking warnings from agencies that they are unable to deliver aid.

Israel says it has let supplies in and called on agencies to step up deliveries.

"The breakdown of public order and safety is increasingly endangering humanitarian workers and operations in Gaza," the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, said in a briefing later on Friday.

"Alongside the fighting, criminal activities and the risk of theft and robbery has effectively prevented humanitarian access to critical locations."

But Israel says it has allowed hundreds of trucks of aid into southern Gaza, trading blame with the United Nations over why the aid is stacking up.


It shared aerial footage of containers lined up on the Gazan side of the Kerem Shalom crossing and more trucks arriving to add to the stockpile.

With civil order breaking down in Gaza, the UN says it has been unable to pick up any supplies from Kerem Shalom since Tuesday, leaving crucial aid in limbo.

A deputy UN spokesman this week said the crossing "is operating with limited functionality, including because of fighting in the area".

William Schomburg, International Committee of the Red Cross chief in Rafah, said arranging lorries from the Egyptian side in particular was complicated.​

 

[Saif]

Israeli forces tie injured Palestinian to jeep in raid

Israeli army forces strapped a wounded Palestinian man to the hood of a military jeep during an arrest raid in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin on Saturday.

www.thedailystar.net

Israeli forces tie injured Palestinian to jeep in raid

Israeli army forces strapped a wounded Palestinian man to the hood of a military jeep during an arrest raid in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin on Saturday.

A video circulating on social media and verified by Reuters showed a Palestinian resident of Jenin, Mujahed Azmi, on the jeep that passes through two ambulances.

The Israeli military in a statement said Israeli forces were fired at and exchanged fire, wounding a suspect and apprehending him.

Soldiers then violated military protocol, the statement said. "The suspect was taken by the forces while tied on top of a vehicle," it said.

The military said the "conduct of the forces in the video of the incident does not conform to the values" of the Israeli military and that the incident will be investigated and dealt with.

The individual was transferred to medics for treatment, the military said. Reuters was able to match the location from corroborating and verified footage shared on social media that shows a vehicle transporting an individual tied on top of a vehicle in Jenin. The date was confirmed by an eyewitness interviewed by Reuters.

According to the family of Azmi, there was an arrest raid, and he was injured during the raid, and when the family asked for an ambulance, the army took Mujahed, strapped him on the hood and drove off.​

 

[SamaK]

'Your Lord has proclaimed, 'Call upon Me, I will respond to you',' Allah says in Surah Ghafir, verse 60.

 

[Saif]

Israel’s offensive shatters Palestinian pupils’ dream

Teenagers across the Gaza Strip should have been taking their final exams this month, a last hurdle before university and lifelong dreams, but the Israeli offensive in the Palestinian territory has crushed those hopes.

www.thedailystar.net

Israel's offensive shatters Palestinian pupils' dream
85pc of educational facilities are out of service in Gaza

Children look on from a damaged building at al-Bureij refugee camp in the Gaza Strip yesterday. Photo: AFP

Teenagers across the Gaza Strip should have been taking their final exams this month, a last hurdle before university and lifelong dreams, but the Israeli offensive in the Palestinian territory has crushed those hopes.

According to the education ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, 85 percent of educational facilities in the territory are out of service because of the offensive.

"I was eagerly awaiting the exams, but the offensive prevented that and destroyed that joy", said Baraa al-Farra, an 18-year-old student displaced from Khan Yunis in southern Gaza.

"At first we were waiting in the hope that the offensive would end and we would catch up," he said.

But "we don't know how long it will last or how many years it will deprive us of our educational lives."

The Education Cluster, a UN-backed organisation, estimated in a report this month that more than 75 percent of Gaza's schools would need full reconstruction or major rehabilitation to reopen.

Many have been turned into shelters for Gaza's displaced and others have been damaged in bombardment.

Liliane Nihad, an 18-year-old displaced to Khan Yunis from Gaza City, in the territory's north, said she and her fellow students had "been waiting 12 years to take these exams and pass and feel happy and enter university... but we have been deprived of all that by this damned offensive".

Nihad said she had been hoping to study English and to get a doctorate, "but all of that has evaporated".

Displaying their anger at the situation, dozens of students and teachers held a protest in Gaza City's Al-Rimal neighbourhood on Saturday. "We demand our right to take high school exams" and "We want books, not bombs" they chanted, while empty chairs were laid out to symbolise those students killed in the offensive.

In the West Bank, violence has further escalated since the start of the Gaza offensive. According to the Palestinian official news agency Wafa, 20 high school students are among the hundreds of Palestinians killed there.

Wafa reported that 89,000 students from Gaza and the West Bank had been expected to take high school exams this year. Back in Gaza, however, there will be no exams at all.

The UN, citing the Palestinian ministry of education, said about 39,000 high school students in Gaza are unable to take their tests.

Sulaf Mousa, an 18-year-old from Al-Shati Camp west of Gaza City, hit by a deadly air strike on Saturday, said he had hoped to study medicine and become a doctor.

"Now, we hope we will survive the offensive and not lose more than we have already lost," Mousa said.​

 

[Saif]

‘There are no safe centimetres left in Gaza’

A UN humanitarian worker described the suffering she witnessed first-hand in Gaza, where she saw children mutilated and families bombed out of their homes, in an emotional testimony Tuesday.

www.thedailystar.net

'There are no safe centimetres left in Gaza'
UN aid worker narrates trauma of desperate civilians

Palestinian children gather to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen, amid food scarcity, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip yesterday. Photo: REUTERS

A UN humanitarian worker described the suffering she witnessed first-hand in Gaza, where she saw children mutilated and families bombed out of their homes, in an emotional testimony Tuesday.

Speaking to journalists in Geneva following a three-month stint in the territory, Yasmina Guerda of the UN humanitarian agency OCHA described the desperation from the viewpoint of civilians under the Israeli military's assault.

"You have 10-15 minutes to evacuate your building because it's going to be bombed. Your little kids are sleeping... You wake them up," she said. "You take one last look at your room and say a permanent goodbye, because you know it will be dust."

As horrifying as that sounds, she stressed that this is the "best-case scenario", since many others are not warned before an attack.

Guerda met people whose homes were destroyed by Israel's operation in the Nuseirat refugee camp to secure the release of four hostages earlier this month. Gaza's health ministry said at least 274 Palestinians were killed during the operation.

The next day at a hospital, Guerda met children who lost limbs in the attack. "Many of whom reminded me of my own two little toddlers. They were staring into the void, too shell-shocked to produce a sound or a tear," she said.

For Guerda, there are no "living conditions" there. "What they have... are survival conditions, and barely. They are holding on by a thread."

She said aid workers were trying to "quantify the suffering with figures", looking at the total number of displaced people, the litres of water they get per day, or the truckloads of aid that make it across the border.

"But it doesn't matter," she said. "Those numbers, they're never near enough ... (for) a population that has lost nearly everything."

The fighting has displaced much of Gaza's 2.4 million population. "There are no safe centimetres left in Gaza," Guerda added.​

 

[Saif]

Battles in Rafah as US warns Israel over Lebanon

Fighting raged on Wednesday between Israeli troops and Palestinian militants in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, witnesses said, as fears grow of a wider regional war drawing in Lebanese Hamas ally Hezbollah...

www.newagebd.net

Battles in Rafah as US warns Israel over Lebanon
Agence France-Presse . Palestinian Territories 27 June, 2024, 01:00

Fighting raged on Wednesday between Israeli troops and Palestinian militants in Gaza's southern city of Rafah, witnesses said, as fears grow of a wider regional war drawing in Lebanese Hamas ally Hezbollah.

Israel's bombardment of the Gaza Strip however appeared to ease days after prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested the 'intense phase' of the war was nearing its end, and as his defence minister visited Washington for crisis talks.

As the war in Gaza nears its 10th month, Israel's top ally the United States warned it of the risk of a major conflict against Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon following an escalation in cross-border fire.

'Another war between Israel and Hezbollah could easily become a regional war, with terrible consequences for the Middle East,' US defence secretary Lloyd Austin told his visiting Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant.

'Diplomacy is by far the best way to prevent more escalation,' Austin said.

Top Israeli officials including Netanyahu have suggested they were open to a diplomatic resolution of the border tensions, though Gallant said Israel should be ready for 'every possible scenario'.

Israel's military said last week plans for an offensive in Lebanon were 'approved and validated', prompting fresh threats from Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah.

In Beirut on Tuesday, German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock warned that any 'miscalculation' could trigger all-out war and urged 'extreme restraint'.

Canada's foreign minister Melanie Joly meanwhile told her country's citizens in Lebanon to protectively leave 'while they can'.

On the ground in Rafah, on Gaza's border with Egypt, witnesses reported clashes during the night, and the Israeli military said its air force struck a rocket launch site.

UN agencies said 10 Gazan children a day are losing one or both legs and half a million Palestinians in the besieged territory suffer 'catastrophic' hunger.

The civil defence agency in Hamas-run Gaza and hospital medics said at least four people, including three children, were killed in a strike early on Wednesday targeting a house in Beit Lahia, in the north.

Aside from that strike, agency spokesman Mahmud Basal said, 'there have been almost no attacks' and 'the rest of the areas in the Gaza Strip are calm compared to yesterday'.

An air raid on Tuesday killed Fadi al-Wadiya, an employee of medical charity Doctors Without Borders who the Israeli military said was a 'significant operative' for Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian militant group which has fought alongside Hamas.

MSF said on social media platform X that it was 'outraged' by Wadiya's killing in a strike in Gaza City.

'The attack killed Fadi, along with five other people including three children while he was cycling to work near the MSF clinic where he was providing care,' the charity said.

The military said the slain man had 'developed and advanced the terrorist organisation's rocket array'.

'He is just another case of terrorists in Gaza exploiting the civilian population as human shields,' it said in response to MSF's post.

UN and humanitarian agencies have repeatedly warned that aid workers are not safe in Gaza, impeding their desperately needed efforts delivering aid for Gaza's 2.4 million people.

Earlier in the war, Israel accused about a dozen workers of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, of links to 'terrorist' activity and of involvement in Hamas's October 7 attack.

The Israeli claims have led several major donors to suspend funding for UNRWA, which has been key to humanitarian efforts, though most have since resumed it. An independent review said Israel failed to provide evidence to support its accusations.

The bloodiest ever Gaza war started with Hamas's October 7 attack on southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

The militants also seized about 250 hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza although the army says 42 are dead.

Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed at least 37,658 people, also mostly civilians, Gaza's health ministry said.

The deaths include 10 members of Qatar-based Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh's family, including his sister, who Palestinian officials said were killed in a Tuesday strike.

UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini warned of the war's dire impact on children.

'We have every day 10 children who are losing one leg or two legs on average,' Lazzarini told reporters, with amputations often taking place 'in quite horrible conditions' and sometimes without anaesthesia.

'Ten per day, that means around 2,000 children after the more than 260 days of this brutal war.'

Meanwhile the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification partnership said its March warning of imminent famine in north Gaza had not materialised, but around 4,95,000 people still face 'catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity'.

'The situation in Gaza remains catastrophic and there is a high and sustained risk of famine across the whole Gaza Strip,' it said in a report.

Netanyahu on Sunday said 'the war in its intense phase is about to end in Rafah', which the Israeli military sees as Hamas's last stronghold, with some troops to be redeployed to the northern border with Lebanon.

Mairav Zonszein, an analyst for the International Crisis Group, said the military would likely 'move to rolling operations' in Gaza and 'always keep some troops on the ground' in strategic areas of the territory.​

 

[Saif]

US health workers sound alarm on Gaza medical crisis

Patients in Gaza’s few standing hospitals are dying in droves from infections resulting from a lack of protective gear and soap, even when they survive their horrific blast injuries.

www.thedailystar.net

US health workers sound alarm on Gaza medical crisis

Palestinian families flee the Tuffah neighbourhood in the east of Gaza City following an Israeli military operation yesterday. Heavy fighting, artillery shelling and helicopter fire were also reported around northern Gaza's Shujayia market. Photo: AFP

Patients in Gaza's few standing hospitals are dying in droves from infections resulting from a lack of protective gear and soap, even when they survive their horrific blast injuries.

And health workers are facing agonising decisions, like giving up on a seven-year-old boy with extensive burns because bandages are in short supply and he'd have probably died anyway.

These are just some of the horrors witnessed by American doctors and nurses returning from the besieged Palestinian territory, who are now on a mission to spread the word about what they saw and apply pressure on Israel to allow in more life-saving supplies.

"Whether or not a ceasefire happens, we have to get humanitarian aid. And we have to get it in sufficient volumes to meet the demands," Adam Hamawy, a former US army combat surgeon, tells AFP in an interview after a medical mission to Gaza's European Hospital last month.

"You could give all you want, you can donate," says the reconstructive plastic surgeon from New Jersey. "But if these borders don't open up to allow that aid to get in, then it's just useless."

Hamawy has volunteered in war-torn and natural disaster-hit countries for the past 30 years, from the siege of Sarajevo to the Haiti earthquake.

"But the level of civilian casualties that I experienced was beyond anything I'd seen before," says the 54-year-old, who helped save the life of Senator Tammy Duckworth when she lost both of her legs to a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) attack on the helicopter she was flying in Iraq.

"Most of our patients were children under the age of 14," he stressed. "This has nothing to do with your political views."

Hamawy and other medics told AFP they are convinced that for now their energy is better spent lobbying the halls of power to stop the offensive and require Israel to comply with international law by letting in more aid.

Israel denies allegations of international law violations during its invasion.

On a hot June afternoon in the capital Washington, Monica Johnston, a 44-year-old ICU nurse from Portland, Oregon said she conveyed specific lists of what was needed in meetings she had held with White House officials and lawmakers on Capitol Hill.​

 

[Saif]

Israel’s stated goals are an epic lie

WHEN you’re in Gaza and see the destruction firsthand, the clearest conclusion is that Israel’s stated goals are an epic lie, on a par with ‘a people without a land for a land without a people’, packaged and sold to the world...

www.newagebd.net

Israel's stated goals are an epic lie
Susan Abulhawa 30 June, 2024, 00:00

Twelve buildings are destroyed every hour in Gaza. | Dissident Voice/APA/Hadi Daoud

WHEN you're in Gaza and see the destruction firsthand, the clearest conclusion is that Israel's stated goals are an epic lie, on a par with 'a people without a land for a land without a people', packaged and sold to the world.

The Israelis are not targeting Hamas, nor are they interested in returning their captives, who pose tremendous liability upon their release, as they often have good things to say about their captors.

Math is useful to prove what I'm saying. So, here are some numbers to start.

Destroyed buildings

AS OF April 2024, approximately 360,000 buildings have been destroyed, of which are 405 schools and universities, 700 hospitals and health facilities, 290 mosques and three churches. Given the estimation by the United Nations monitoring group OCHA that 12 buildings are destroyed every hour in Gaza, the adjusted number to account for May and June is 377,280 buildings.

Death and injuries from direct fire

THE reported number of martyrs on Wednesday this week was 37,718. It's important to note that this number only includes martyrs who have been identified by name and civil ID number through the beleaguered health ministry in Gaza. Given the breakdown of reporting systems due to heavy destruction of infrastructure and personnel, this number, even with its limited parameters, is a gross underestimation. Based on more accurate figures of approximately 370 people killed daily, multiplied by 264 days of genocide, the actual number is closer to 97,680 martyred. (Per OCHA estimate of 15 martyrs per hour: Over the course of 264 days, which amounts to 6,336 hours, this number would roughly be 95,040).

The adjusted estimate of martyrs is 260 per cent more than the stagnant reported number. It is reasonable to adjust the number of injured (currently 86,377) by the same percentage, bringing that value to 224,580. (Per OCHA estimate of 35 injured per hour, this number comes to 221,760).

Death from lack of medications, chronic conditions

IMPORTANTLY, the number above does not include the thousands of unidentified martyrs, some of whom were uncovered from mass graves; those who arrived headless or in impossible pieces; those who were buried by their loved ones without going through the hospital system; those who have died of starvation; those who have died from lack of access to critical medications; those who have died from infections or communicable diseases.

Taking into account 1,100 dialysis patients, 2,000 cancer patients and 341,000 individuals who depend on medication to manage chronic illnesses (45,000 cardiovascular disease, 71,000 diabetes, 225,000 hypertension), the extreme shortage of life-saving medication has and will continue to lead to deaths from Israel's withholding of supplies. If a very conservative estimate of 5 per cent of these patients die as a result (if they have not already), that's an additional 17,050 people.

However, a more accurate all-cause mortality rate for unmanaged diabetes is 13.6 per cent (putting mortality at 9,869 people); 37 per cent for uncontrolled hypertension (translating to 83,250 people); untreated dialysis and cancer patients will have a high mortality rate. A conservative estimate for this group is 30 per cent or 930 patients.

Taken together, this is 94,049 people (I didn't consider cardiovascular disease alone, since patients tend to have co-morbidities and there would be natural overlap in these numbers).

Dead or dying from starvation

ACCORDING to a recent UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification report, approximately 495,000 Palestinians in Gaza are facing 'catastrophic' hunger, which means they suffer extreme lack of food leading to acute malnutrition in young children, imminent risk of starvation and death. If we make a conservative 5 per cent estimate of death from starvation among this population, that's 24,750 people dead or dying from starvation.

Data-driven mortality for acute malnutrition is approximately 20 per cent. However, the current classification has not yet reached full-blown famine levels, making the current estimate reasonable.

Missing, presumed dead or kidnapped

APPROXIMATELY 21,000 children are missing and unaccounted for. Some are trapped under the rubble, some have been kidnapped by Israeli soldiers, while others are simply lost in the chaos. Given the relative equal ratio of adults to children in Gaza, it is safe to assume the same number of adults are likewise unaccounted for, doubling this number to 42,000 people missing overall.

Death from disease

DUE to the destruction of water and sanitation infrastructure, coupled with restrictions on aid entering Gaza, Israel's assault has led to the spread of communicable and water-borne diseases such as acute jaundice (due mostly to hepatitis A), acute diarrhea (with bloody stool), scabies and lice, skin rashes, smallpox and acute respiratory infections, which totaled 1,440,805 cases as of 10 June. If only 1 per cent of these patients succumb to these serious conditions, that's 14,408 people likewise killed indirectly by Israel's bombing and siege of Gaza.

Mortality for acute jaundice or hepatitis A is low (2.5 per cent in adults and less than 1 per cent in children; thus a 1 per cent mortality estimate is appropriate for this category, or 817 people); mortality for diarrhea ranges from 4.27 per cent to 12 pe rcent (20,722-58,238 people); smallpox mortality is 1-30 per cent, depending on strain (854-2,561 people); mortality rates for acute respiratory disease range from 27 per cent to 45 per cent depending on severity (or 233,592-389,320 people). Taken together, adjusted for scientific data, the range for this category of martyrs is 255,985-450,936 people.

Estimate summaries

BASED on these estimates, both conservative and data-driven, respectively, the actual figures are likely as follows:

— 377,280 buildings destroyed completely or partially

— 95,040-97,680 martyred

— 221,760 injured

— 24,750 dead or dying from starvation

— 42,000 missing (presumed dead, kidnapped by Israel's occupying forces or possibly trafficked).

The following ranges represent conservative estimate or lower range of data-driven population estimates:

— 17,050-94,049 with chronic illnesses dead from lack of medication

— 14,408-255,985 dead from epidemics resulting from Israel's assault

This means the actual number of dead is closer to 194,768-511,824 people, with 221,760 injured. And counting.

This does not include the thousands who have been kidnapped and are being tortured in Israel's gulags, at least three dozen of whom have been tortured to death or died from harsh conditions.

Some lives matter

THE estimates here are reasonable but on-the-ground studies must be conducted immediately. International institutions must urgently assess the actual all-cause mortality resulting directly and indirectly from Israel's assault on Gaza.

Thus far, of the 240 Israeli captives in Gaza, Israel has allegedly killed 50 of their own, both directly (shooting them) and indirectly (bombing the buildings they are in) and secured the release of 112 captives, 105 through negotiated agreements with Hamas, and seven via "rescue" missions.

The most recent direct 'rescue' mission resulted in the release of four captives in Nuseirat refugee camp, central Gaza. A total of 274 Palestinians and several Israeli captives were killed in the same operation.

At least one US lawmaker believes sacrificing hundreds of Palestinians for four Israelis is worth it, because, it seems, only some lives matter.

I'll leave it to readers to do the math to see the level of death and destruction inflicted on Gaza per captive or per Hamas fighter.

There can be only one of two conclusions. Either the Israeli military is the most incompetent force to ever walk this planet — and has no reliable intelligence gathering capability — or Israel is a sadistic nation intent on genocide of the indigenous population, much as all settler colonial projects have been throughout history.

DissidentVoice.org, June 28. Susan Abulhawa is a writer and activist. Her most recent novel is Against the Loveless World.​

 

[Saif]

Hospital generators to run out of fuel in 48 hrs

Gaza’s few functional hospitals and health facilities could lose power in 48 hours if they don’t receive fuel, causing life-saving medical equipment to stop working.

www.thedailystar.net

Hospital generators to run out of fuel in 48 hrs
Warns Gaza health ministry as much of electricity infrastructure decimated by Israeli attacks

A Palestinian woman bakes unleavened bread in a makeshift oven while sitting on the rubble of buildings destroyed in the Israeli bombardment, as some residents return to the city of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip yesterday. Photo: AFP

Gaza's few functional hospitals and health facilities could lose power in 48 hours if they don't receive fuel, causing life-saving medical equipment to stop working.

"We appeal to all relevant, international and humanitarian institutions to intervene quickly to bring in the necessary fuel," the Hamas-run health ministry said in a statement.

With much of Gaza's electricity infrastructure decimated by Israeli attacks, hospitals are largely dependent on generators, powered by fuel, for life-saving operations.

Recurring fuel shortages have frequently caused hospitals to go dark, putting patients' lives at serious risk.

Meanwhile, explosions, air strikes and gunfire rattled northern and southern Gaza yesterday, the fourth day of an Israeli military operation that has uprooted tens of thousands of Palestinians.

Mohammed Harara, 30, said he and his family fled their home in Shujaiya with nothing, "due to the bombardment by Israeli planes, tanks and drones", reports AFP.

The United Nations humanitarian agency OCHA estimated that "about 60,000 to 80,000 people were displaced" from the area this week.

At least 1,15,000 Palestinians from Gaza have fled to Egypt during the Israeli bombardment.

The number includes several thousand sick and wounded Palestinians who were medically evacuated, Al Jazeera reports according to The Washington Post, who cited the Palestinian embassy in Cairo.

The rest reached Egypt with assistance from foreign embassies or through a private Egyptian travel agency, which charges large sums to coordinate their exit, The Post added.

"Most remain in limbo, with no legal status and nowhere else to go," it reports. "They are members of a new diaspora of Palestinians, a people already haunted by memories of displacement."

In a separate development, Saudi Arabia's foreign ministry has issued a statement expressing the kingdom's condemnation and denunciation of the Israeli decision to "expand blatant settlement activity in the West Bank", Al Jazeera reports.

The ministry said Saudi Arabia "firmly rejects the continuous Israeli violations of international law and resolutions of international legitimacy".

The Israeli action poses "severe consequences", given the "lack of international accountability mechanisms," the statement said, adding that "these transgressions undercut the prospects for peace and exacerbate conflicts, destabilising regional and international security and stability".

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich's plans to recognise five illegal settler outposts in the occupied West Bank.

In addition to recognising the outposts, Smotrich's plan removes civilian powers related to construction and zoning in one-fifth of the occupied West Bank, in what is known as "Area B".​