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

[Saif]

When did Hamas commit war crimes?

Israel and Hamas committed war crimes: UN

Report says Israel's actions also constituted crimes against humanity because of the immense civilian losses

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Israel and Hamas committed war crimes: UN
Report says Israel's actions also constituted crimes against humanity because of the immense civilian losses

PHOTO: REUTERS

A UN inquiry found on Wednesday that both Israel and Hamas had committed war crimes in the early stages of the war in Gaza, and that Israel's actions also constituted crimes against humanity because of the immense civilian losses.

The findings were from two parallel reports by the UN Commission of Inquiry (COI), one focusing on the October 7 attacks and another on Israel's response.

Israel, which did not cooperate with the commission, dismissed the findings as the result of anti-Israeli bias. Hamas did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The war began on October 7 when militants led by Hamas, the Islamist group ruling Gaza, killed 1,200 Israelis and took more than 250 hostage, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel's military retaliation has caused the deaths of more than 37,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's health ministry, displaced most of Gaza's population of 2.3 million, caused widespread hunger, and devastated housing and infrastructure. Negotiators from the US, Egypt and Qatar have been trying for months to mediate a ceasefire and free the hostages, more than 100 of whom are believed to remain captive in Gaza.

Izzat al-Rishq, a member of Hamas' political bureau, said its formal response to a US ceasefire proposal outlined by US President Joe Biden on May 31 was "responsible, serious and positive" and "opens up a wide pathway" for an accord.

But an Israeli official said on Tuesday, on condition of anonymity, that Israel had received the answer via the mediators and that Hamas "changed all of the main and most meaningful parameters" and "rejected the proposal for a hostage release".

The proposal outlined by Biden envisages a ceasefire and phased release of Israeli hostages in Gaza in exchange for Palestinians jailed in Israel, ultimately leading to a permanent end to the war.​

 

[Saif]

I stand for humanity, Coca-Cola ad only part of professional work: Zibon

A new advertisement by Coca-Cola Bangladesh added fuel to the fire of this movement.

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I stand for humanity, Coca-Cola ad only part of professional work: Zibon

Photo: Collected

Israel's genocide in Palestine has led to many Muslim countries, including Bangladesh, calling for boycott of 'Israel-backed' products. There is an ongoing social media call to boycott Coca-Cola, as users believe it to be the aforementioned type.

A new advertisement by Coca-Cola Bangladesh added fuel to the fire of this movement. The advertisement, starring Saraf Ahmed Zibon and Shimul Sharma, two popular artistes from the series "Bachelor Point," faced massive criticism on social media. People even assumed that the show's director, Kajal Arefin Ome, directed the advertisement, which he later clarified to the media that he has never directed commercials.

Later on, netizens discovered that actor and filmmaker Zibon directed the advertisement, which led to massive trolling and criticism of him on social media.

Zibon finally broke his silence, posting a status where he defended his involvement in the advertisement.

The actor shared his personal beliefs and the context of making the advertisement. Zibon stated, "I am known to everyone as a director and actor. For the past two decades, I have been involved in showbiz. Recently, Coca-Cola Bangladesh hired me to direct and act in one of their commercials. I only presented the commercial based on the information and data provided by their agency."

He then addressed the negative response following the advertisement's airing.

"After the advertisement aired, I have been receiving a lot of mixed reactions from my fans. With all due respect, I would like to reiterate that this work is only a part of my professional life," stated the actor.

In response to netizens condemning him for allegedly supporting genocide against the people of Palestine, the actor clarified that he does not support anything that goes against human rights.

"In my personal life, I have always stood against any aggression against human rights, and have been respectful of your feelings and opinions. Nowhere in this ad have I taken Israel's side, and I have never been pro-Israel. My heart has always been, and always will be, on the side of justice and humanity," concluded Zibon.

Coca-Cola's recent advertisement in Bangladesh is a stark reminder of the importance of well-executed crisis communication.
Coca-Cola Bangladesh aimed to highlight through the commercial that Coca-Cola is not an Israeli product, showcasing that it has been consumed by people in 190 countries, including Bangladesh, for 138 years.​

 

[Saif]

Hezbollah attacks 9 Israeli military sites with rockets

Lebanon’s Hezbollah said yesterday it had launched rockets and weaponised drones at nine Israeli military sites in a coordinated attack, ramping up hostilities on Lebanon’s southern border for the second consecutive day.

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Hezbollah attacks 9 Israeli military sites with rockets

Lebanon's Hezbollah said yesterday it had launched rockets and weaponised drones at nine Israeli military sites in a coordinated attack, ramping up hostilities on Lebanon's southern border for the second consecutive day.

The attacks were made in retaliation for an Israeli strike on Tuesday that killed a senior Hezbollah field commander.

The group said in a statement it had fired volleys of Katyusha and Falaq rockets at six Israeli military locations. Its Al-Manar television reported more than 100 rockets fired at once.

Hezbollah's statement said it had also launched attack drones at the headquarters of Israel's northern command, an intelligence headquarters and a military barracks.

A security source told Reuters that involved firing at least 30 attack drones at once, making it the group's largest drone attack to date in the eight-month-old Israeli offensive in Gaza.

The group said yesterday's attack was in response to the killing. It had already carried out at least eight attacks on Wednesday in retaliation.

Israeli strikes have killed more than 300 Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon - more than it lost in 2006, when the sides last fought a major war, according to a Reuters tally.​

 

[Saif]

Battles rage in Rafah

Israeli helicopters struck Gaza’s Rafah on Thursday, residents said, with Hamas militants reporting street battles in the southern city after top US diplomat...

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Battles rage in Rafah
Agence France-Presse . Palestinian Territories 14 June, 2024, 00:18

| AFP photo

Israeli helicopters struck Gaza's Rafah on Thursday, residents said, with Hamas militants reporting street battles in the southern city after top US diplomat Antony Blinken said a truce was still possible.

But the war raged on, and tensions soared on Israel's northern border with more attacks by Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah forces targeting military positions.

Israel, which has traded near-daily fire with Hamas ally Hezbollah since the start of the Gaza war, said it would respond 'with force'.

Israeli ground forces have been operating in Rafah since early May, despite widespread alarm over the fate of Palestinian civilians there, including in a ruling by the International Court of Justice later that month.

Western areas of Rafah came under heavy fire on Thursday from the air, sea and land, residents said.

'There was very intense fire from warplanes, Apaches (helicopters) and quadcopters, in addition to Israeli artillery and military battle ships, all of which were striking the area west of Rafah,' one told AFP.

Hamas said its fighters were battling Israeli troops on the streets in the city, near the besieged Gaza Strip's border with Egypt.

The Gaza war began after Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attack on southern Israel which 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 military offensive has left at least 37,232 people dead in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-ruled territory's health ministry.

The latest toll includes at least 30 more deaths over the previous day, it said.

Efforts to reach a truce stalled when Israel began ground operations in Rafah, but US president Joe Biden in late May launched a new effort to secure a deal.

On Monday the UN Security Council adopted a US-drafted resolution supporting the plan.

Blinken, in Doha on Wednesday to promote Biden's ceasefire roadmap, said Washington would work with regional partners to 'close the deal'.

Hamas responded to mediators Qatar and Egypt late Tuesday. Blinken said some of its proposed amendments 'are workable and some are not'.

Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan said the group sought 'a permanent ceasefire and complete withdrawal' of Israeli troops from Gaza, demands repeatedly rejected by Israel.

The plan includes a six-week ceasefire, a hostage-prisoner exchange and Gaza reconstruction.

It would be the first truce since a week-long November pause in fighting saw hostages freed and Palestinians released from Israeli jails.

Blinken said Israel was behind the plan, but Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government has far-right members strongly opposed to the deal, has not publicly endorsed it.

Blinken expressed hopes that an agreement could be reached.

'We have to see over the course of the coming days whether those gaps are bridgeable,' he said.

A UN investigation concluded Wednesday that Israel had committed crimes against humanity during the war, while Israeli and Palestinian armed groups had both committed war crimes.

The independent Commission of Inquiry's report is the first in-depth investigation by UN experts into Gaza's bloodiest-ever war.

Israel's foreign ministry dismissed it as 'biased and tainted by a distinct anti-Israeli agenda'.

The war has led to widespread destruction, with hospitals out of service and the UN warning of famine.

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

 

[Saif]

Israeli strikes hit Gaza as truce talks fail to progress

Israeli strikes hit Gaza on Friday as truce talks with Hamas members failed to progress and tensions surged on Israel’s northern border with...

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Israeli strikes hit Gaza as truce talks fail to progress
Agence France-Presse . Palestinian Territories 15 June, 2024, 00:27

Women search the rubble of a destroyed dress shop in a residential building hit by Israeli bombardment, in the Daraj neighbourhood in Gaza City on Friday, amid the on-going conflict between Israel and Hamas. | AFP photo

Israeli strikes hit Gaza on Friday as truce talks with Hamas members failed to progress and tensions surged on Israel's northern border with Lebanon.

Witnesses reported the strikes in various parts of the Gaza Strip in the morning, particularly the centre.

At Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah, men gathered over the body of an 11-year-old boy who died during bombardment of nearby Bureij refugee camp.

In a black singlet, the child lay on a floor smeared with fresh blood, a white bandage covering the top half of his face, AFP images showed.

Israel's military on Friday said troops continued operations in central Gaza, where warplanes had struck a militant cell and 'military structure' in the Zeitun area.

After projectiles were fired from northern Gaza into southern Israel on Thursday night, artillery and aircraft hit the launch sites, the army said.

The war began after Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attack on southern Israel which 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 military offensive has left at least 37,232 people dead 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, launching waves of rockets against Israeli military targets on Wednesday and Thursday.

Hezbollah said the strikes were retaliation for the Israeli killing of one of its commanders.

Sirens sounded on Friday morning in northern Israel, where police said munitions had fallen in the Kiryat Shmona area, with no immediate sign of victims.

Since the Gaza war began, Hezbollah and Israeli forces have exchanged near-daily cross-border fire, which have escalated.

During a Middle East trip this week to push a Gaza ceasefire proposal, 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'.

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

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

In Jerusalem on Thursday, a student-led protest near Israel's parliament urged the government to secure an agreement to bring the remaining hostages home.

'Ceasefire now,' read one banner.

Similar demonstrations have regularly occurred in Tel Aviv.

Biden's roadmap for the first truce since a week-long pause and hostage-prisoner release in November includes a six-week ceasefire, an exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners, and Gaza's reconstruction.

On Monday, the United Nations Security Council adopted a US-drafted resolution supporting the plan.

The World Health Organisation said more than 8,000 children aged under five in Gaza had been treated for acute malnutrition.

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

 

[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.

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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.

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[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...

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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....

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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

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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

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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".

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[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...

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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.

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​

 

[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.

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[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.

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