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

[Saif]

Israel to decide next steps in Gaza after ceasefire talks collapse

Benjamin Netanyahu will convene his security cabinet this week to decide on Israel's next steps in Gaza following the collapse of indirect ceasefire talks with Hamas, with one senior Israeli source suggesting more force could be an option. Last Saturday, during a visit to the country, US Middle Ea

thefinancialexpress.com.bd

Israel to decide next steps in Gaza after ceasefire talks collapse

REUTERS
Published :
Aug 04, 2025 23:04
Updated :
Aug 04, 2025 23:04

Smoke rises from Gaza as the sun sets, as seen from the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border. Photo : REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun/Files

Benjamin Netanyahu will convene his security cabinet this week to decide on Israel's next steps in Gaza following the collapse of indirect ceasefire talks with Hamas, with one senior Israeli source suggesting more force could be an option.

Last Saturday, during a visit to the country, US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff had said he was working with the Israeli government on a plan that would effectively end the war in Gaza.

But Israeli officials have also floated ideas including expanding the military offensive in Gaza and annexing parts of the shattered enclave.

The failed ceasefire talks in Doha had aimed to clinch agreements on a US-backed proposal for a 60-day truce, during which aid would be flown into Gaza and half of the hostages Hamas is holding would be freed in exchange for Palestinian prisoners jailed in Israel.

After Netanyahu met Witkoff last Thursday, a senior Israeli official said that "an understanding was emerging between Washington and Israel," of a need to shift from a truce to a comprehensive deal that would "release all the hostages, disarm Hamas, and demilitarize the Gaza Strip," - Israel's key conditions for ending the war.

A source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Sunday that the envoy's visit was seen in Israel as "very significant."

But later on Sunday, the Israeli official signalled that pursuit of a deal would be pointless, threatening more force:

"An understanding is emerging that Hamas is not interested in a deal and therefore the prime minister is pushing to release the hostages while pressing for military defeat."

"STRATEGIC CLARITY"

What a "military defeat" might mean, however, is up for debate within the Israeli leadership. Some Israeli officials have suggested that Israel might declare it was annexing parts of Gaza as a means to pressure the militant group.

Others, like Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir want to see Israel impose military rule in Gaza before annexing it and re-establishing the Jewish settlements Israel evicted 20 years ago.

The Israeli military, which has pushed back at such ideas throughout the war, was expected on Tuesday to present alternatives that include extending into areas of Gaza where it has not yet operated, according to two defence officials.

While some in the political leadership are pushing for expanding the offensive, the military is concerned that doing so will endanger the 20 hostages who are still alive, the officials said.

Israeli Army Radio reported on Monday that military chief Eyal Zamir has become increasingly frustrated with what he describes as a lack of strategic clarity by the political leadership, concerned about being dragged into a war of attrition with Hamas militants.

A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) declined to comment on the report but said that the military has plans in store.

"We have different ways to fight the terror organization, and that's what the army does," Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani said.

On Tuesday, Qatar and Egypt endorsed a declaration by France and Saudi Arabia outlining steps toward a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which included a call on Hamas to hand over its arms to the Western-backed Palestinian Authority.

Hamas has repeatedly said it won't lay down arms. But it has told mediators it was willing to quit governance in Gaza for a non-partisan ruling body, according to three Hamas officials.

It insists that the post-war Gaza arrangement must be agreed upon among the Palestinians themselves and not dictated by foreign powers.

Israel's Foreign Minister Gideon Saar suggested on Monday that the gaps were still too wide to bridge.

"We would like to have all our hostages back. We would like to see the end of this war. We always prefer to get there by diplomatic means, if possible. But of course, the big question is, what will be the conditions for the end of the war?" he told journalists in Jerusalem.​

 

[Saif]

Six more die of hunger in Gaza as trucks reach border for rare fuel delivery

Six more people died of starvation and malnutrition in Gaza over the past 24 hours, its health ministry said, underlining the enclave's humanitarian emergency as Egyptian state TV said two trucks were set to make a rare delivery of fuel on Sunday. The new deaths raised the toll of those dying from

thefinancialexpress.com.bd

Six more die of hunger in Gaza as trucks reach border for rare fuel delivery

REUTERS
Published :
Aug 03, 2025 17:57
Updated :
Aug 03, 2025 17:57

Humanitarian aid packages are airdropped over the Gaza Strip, as seen from Israel, August 3, 2025. Photo : REUTERS/Amir Cohen

Six more people died of starvation and malnutrition in Gaza over the past 24 hours, its health ministry said, underlining the enclave's humanitarian emergency as Egyptian state TV said two trucks were set to make a rare delivery of fuel on Sunday.

The new deaths raised the toll of those dying from what international humanitarian agencies say may be an unfolding famine to 175, including 93 children, since the war began, the ministry said.

Egypt's state-affiliated Al Qahera News TV said two trucks carrying 107 tons of diesel were set to enter Gaza, months after Israel severely restricted aid access to the enclave before easing it somewhat as starvation began to spread.

Gaza's health ministry has said fuel shortages have severely impaired hospital services, forcing doctors to focus on treating only critically ill or injured patients. There was no immediate confirmation whether the fuel trucks had indeed entered Gaza.

Fuel shipments have been rare since March, when Israel restricted the flow of aid and goods into the enclave in what it said was pressure on Hamas militants to free the remaining hostages they took in their October 2023 attack on Israel.

Israel blames Hamas for the suffering in Gaza but, in response to a rising international outcry, it announced steps last week to let more aid reach the population, including pausing fighting for part of the day in some areas, approving air drops and announcing protected routes for aid convoys.

United Nations agencies have said that airdrops of food are insufficient and that Israel must let in far more aid by land and open up access to the war-devastated territory where starvation has been spreading.

COGAT, the Israeli military agency that coordinates aid, said 35 trucks have entered Gaza since June, nearly all of them in July.

LOOTED AID TRUCKS

The Hamas-run Gaza government media office said on Sunday that nearly 1,600 aid trucks had arrived since Israel eased restrictions late in July. However, witnesses and Hamas sources said many of those trucks have been looted by desperate displaced people and armed gangs.

More than 700 trucks of fuel entered the Gaza Strip in January and February during a ceasefire before Israel broke it in March in a dispute over terms for extending it and resumed its major offensive.

Palestinian local health authorities said at least 40 people had been killed by Israeli gunfire and airstrikes across the coastal enclave on Sunday. Deaths included persons trying to make their way to aid distribution points in southern and central areas of Gaza, Palestinian medics said.

Among those killed was a staff member of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, which said an Israeli strike at their headquarters in Khan Younis in southern Gaza ignited a fire on the first floor of the building.

The Gaza war began when Hamas killed more than 1,200 people and took 251 hostage in a cross-border attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, according to Israeli figures. Israel's air and ground war in densely populated Gaza has since killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, according to enclave health officials.

According to Israeli officials, 50 hostages now remain in Gaza, only 20 of whom are believed to be alive.​

 

[Bilal9]

Gazans resort to turtle meat in hunt for food

With food scarce in the besieged and war-battered Gaza Strip, some desperate families have turned to eating sea turtles as a rare source of protein...

www.newagebd.net

Gazans resort to turtle meat in hunt for food
Agence France-Presse . Khan Yunis, Palestinian Territories 20 April, 2025, 00:10

With food scarce in the besieged and war-battered Gaza Strip, some desperate families have turned to eating sea turtles as a rare source of protein.

Once the shell has been removed, the meat is cut up, boiled and cooked in a mix of onion, pepper, tomato and spices.

‘The children were afraid of the turtle, and we told them it tasted as delicious as veal,’ said Majida Qanan, keeping an eye on the chunks of red meat simmering in a pot over a wood fire. ‘Some of them ate it, but others refused.’

For lack of a better alternative, this is the third time 61-year-old Qanan has prepared a turtle-based meal for her family who were displaced and now live in a tent in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza largest city.

After 18 months of devastating war and an Israeli blockade on aid since March 2, the United Nations has warned of a dire humanitarian situation for the 2.4 million inhabitants of the Palestinian territory.

Israel has accused Hamas of diverting aid, which the Palestinian militant group denies.

The heads of 12 major aid organisations warned on Thursday that ‘famine is not just a risk, but likely rapidly unfolding in almost all parts’ of the territory.

‘There are no open crossings and there is nothing in the market,’ said Qanan. ‘When I buy two small bags [of vegetables] for 80 shekels, there is no meat.’

Sea turtles are internationally protected as an endangered species, but those caught in Gaza fishermen’s nets are used for food.

Qanan mixes the meat with flour and vinegar to wash it, before rinsing and boiling it in an old metal pot.

‘We never expected to eat a turtle,’ fisherman Abdel Halim Qanan said.

‘When the war started, there was a food shortage. There is no food. So [turtle meat] is an alternative for other sources of protein. There is no meat, poultry or vegetables.’

The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has warned that Gaza is facing its most severe humanitarian crisis since the war began on October 7, 2023, triggered by Hamas’s attack on Israel.

Fighting has raged in Gaza since then, pausing only twice—recently during a two-month ceasefire between January 19 and March 17, and in a previous one-week halt in late November 2023.

The World Health Organization’s regional chief Hanan Balkhy said in June that some Gazans were so desperate that they were eating animal food, grass, and drinking sewage water.

Hamas on Thursday accused Israel of using ‘starvation as a weapon’ against Gazans by blocking aid supplies.

Fisherman Qanan said the turtles were killed in the ‘halal’ method, in accordance with Islamic rites.

‘If there was no famine, we would not eat it and leave it, but we want to compensate for the lack of protein,’ he said.​

Turtle meat is not Halal - but it is allowed during desperate times like this.

My heart goes out to people in Gaza - may Allah give them "Sabr" to bear this test from Allah.

 

[Saif]

Ex-Israeli security chiefs urge Trump to help end Gaza war

Hundreds of retired Israeli security officials including former heads of intelligence agencies have urged US president Donald Trump to pressure their own government to end the war in Gaza.

www.newagebd.net

Ex-Israeli security chiefs urge Trump to help end Gaza war
Agence France-Presse . Jerusalem 04 August, 2025, 23:56

Displaced Palestinians gather to receive aid at a distribution centre run by the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation at the so-called ‘Netzarim corridor’ in the central Gaza Strip on Monday. | AFP photo

Hundreds of retired Israeli security officials including former heads of intelligence agencies have urged US president Donald Trump to pressure their own government to end the war in Gaza.

‘It is our professional judgement that Hamas no longer poses a strategic threat to Israel,’ the former officials wrote in an open letter shared with the media on Monday.

‘At first this war was a just war, a defensive war, but when we achieved all military objectives, this war ceased to be a just war,’ said Ami Ayalon, former director of the Shin Bet security service.

The war, nearing its 23rd month, ‘is leading the State of Israel to lose its security and identity,’ Ayalon warned in a video released to accompany the letter.

Signed by 550 people, including former chiefs of Shin Bet and the Mossad spy agency, the letter called on Trump to ‘steer’ prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu towards a ceasefire.

Israel launched its military operation in the Gaza Strip in response to the deadly October 7, 2023 attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas.

In recent weeks Israel has come under increasing international pressure to agree a ceasefire that could Israeli hostages released from Gaza and UN agencies distribute humanitarian aid.

But some in Israel, including ministers in Netanyahu’s coalition government, are instead pushing for Israeli forces to push on and for Gaza to be occupied in whole or in part.

The letter was signed by three former Mossad heads: Tamir Pardo, Efraim Halevy and Danny Yatom.

Others signatories include five former heads of Shin Bet — Αyalon as well as Nadav Argaman, Yoram Cohen, Yaakov Peri and Carmi Gilon — and three former military chiefs of staff, including former prime minister Ehud Barak, former defence minister Moshe Yaalon and Dan Halutz.

The letter argued that the Israeli military ‘has long accomplished the two objectives that could be achieved by force: dismantling Hamas’s military formations and governance.’

‘The third, and most important, can only be achieved through a deal: bringing all the hostages home,’ it added.

‘Chasing remaining senior Hamas operatives can be done later,’ the letter said.

In the letter, the former officials tell Trump that he has credibility with the majority of Israelis and can put pressure on Netanyahu to end the war and return the hostages.

After a ceasefire, the signatories argue, Trump could force a regional coalition to support a reformed Palestinian Authority to take charge of Gaza as an alternative to Hamas rule.

Meanwhile, Israel said the plight of hostages held in Gaza should top the global agenda, after Palestinian militants released videos showing them looking emaciated, heightening fears for their lives after nearly 22 months in captivity.

Foreign minister Gideon Saar, in a press briefing ahead of the UN Security Council session on the issue, said that ‘the world must put an end to the phenomenon of kidnapping civilians. It must be front and centre on the world stage’.

Of the 251 hostages seized during Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the on-going Gaza war, 49 are still held in the Palestinian territory, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.

The UN session was called after Palestinian militant group Hamas and its ally Islamic Jihad published last week three videos showing hostages Rom Braslavski and Evyatar David appearing weak and emaciated, causing deep shock and distress in Israel.

Hamas’ armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, said it was willing to allow Red Cross access to the hostages in exchange for permanent humanitarian access for food and medicine into all of Gaza, where UN-mandated experts have warned famine was unfolding.

The ICRC said in a statement it was ‘appalled by the harrowing videos’ and reiterated its ‘call to be granted access to the hostages’.

Netanyahu’s government has faced repeated accusations by relatives of hostages and other critics of not doing enough to rescue the captives.

‘Netanyahu is leading Israel and the hostages to ruin,’ said a campaign group representing families of the captives.

Mediation efforts led by Qatar, Egypt and the United States have failed to secure an elusive truce.​

 

[Saif]

Forgive them not, Gaza …

There is an American-enabled Israeli starvation in Gaza.

www.thedailystar.net

Forgive them not, Gaza …

Displaced Palestinian mother Zainab Dakka eats canned beans with her children inside their tent, from the aid she brought back after an aid delivery that entered Gaza through Israel, in Gaza City, August 1, 2025. PHOTO: REUTERS

Last April, I wrote Forgive Me, Gaza—a personal reflection of anguish and helplessness. Today, there is no room for introspection. It is no longer about personal guilt. We are witnessing an Israeli campaign of mass starvation, mass destruction, and mass slaughter made possible only by global indifference.

There is no hunger in Gaza. There is an American-enabled Israeli starvation.

The genocide in Gaza is not the consequence of war. It's pretextual with intent. This is not an opinion, but a documented fact expressed openly by Israeli officials, from the president down to ordinary citizens.

This intent is not the fringe views of a few extremists, as the Zionist-managed media would have you believe. It is the mainstream. An overwhelming 82 percent of Jewish Israelis support the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, with a significant portion openly endorsing the mass killing of civilians. This is the grim reality. This is the Israeli culture, nurtured and sustained by Western powers desperate to atone for their own historical crimes against Jews by imposing a settler-colonial Zionist project in the heart of the Arab world.

A diabolical culture manifests in starving millions by a regime intoxicated by its own impunity. In October 2023, Israeli President Isaac Herzog erased the line between civilians and combatants, announcing, "It is an entire nation out there that is responsible." With that one sentence, he demonised all civilians and handed down the collective death sentence we witness today against 2.3 million people. Last week, he doubled down, claiming that the Israeli siege is "in keeping with … Israeli and Jewish values."

The then defence minister, Yoav Gallant, resonated the same Zionist ideological hate, "We are putting a complete siege … No electricity, no food, no water, no gas." His successor, Defence Minister Israel Katz, was no less brazen in his recent declaration: "No humanitarian aid will enter Gaza."

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich went even further, openly stating that mass starvation was morally justified. With terrifying openness, he advocated ethnic cleansing, describing Israeli "victory" as one in which "Gaza will be entirely destroyed," forcing Palestinians to "leave in great numbers to third countries." His words provide a window into the genocidal mindset guiding Israel's racist leadership and the vast majority of its public.

These are not radical outliers but widely held beliefs. They are the impetus driving Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli state—policies codified into practice by a government rooted in racism and justified by religion, where using food as a weapon to starve an entire population is "justified and moral."

Such policies represent an entrenched, immoral Zionist cult. It is the same moral rot that allows senior Israeli figures to rationalise mass killing in religious and racial terms. Speaking on the genocide in Gaza, Israeli Rabbi Eliyahu Mali, head of a religious school in Yaffa, addressed the students, many of whom serve in the army, stating: "In our mitzvah ... (Jewish Law) not every soul shall live," and urging soldiers to kill "the future generation (children) and those who produce the future generation (mothers), because there is really no difference."

Years earlier, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the then chief Sephardic rabbi, once preached that God created "Goyim … only to serve the People of Israel," comparing the life non-Jews to that of a "donkey." These words are not an aberration. They're authoritative and reflect a toxic ideology embedded in Israeli culture and religious discourse. They are religious pontifications used to justify kosher starvation and slaughtering Palestinian goyim.

According to the World Food Programme, close to one-third of people are "not eating for days." When Israeli leaders juxtapose this reality with claims of morality, they are invoking a religious doctrine that frames such cruelty as a form of divine mitzvot.

This brings us to the shameful enablers of this twisted religious view. Israel cannot starve 2.3 million people without external support. Not without the complicity of the Egyptian regime, which allowed Israel to violate its supplementary Camp David agreement that prohibits Israeli military presence at Gaza's border with Egypt.

Certainly, not without the US funding of the "Gaza Humanitarian Foundation" (GHF), which was denounced by every credible human rights organisation as an Israeli public relations farce. It is a project designed in Tel Aviv, financed in Washington and meant to maintain starvation while shielding Israel from mounting global outrage. Like Biden, President Donald Trump bent the knee to Tel Aviv, feeding the machinery of disinformation and underwriting tools of starvation with American tax dollars and an Iron Dome of political cover.

The latest breakdown of talks to end the Israeli genocide exposed just how far the American administration was willing to bow to Netanyahu's demonic agenda. The talks failed because the US enabled Israel to use starvation as a lever in political bargaining.

What about Europe? Britain and the EU continue to issue hollow statements of "concern," repeatedly warning Israel of so-called consequences, but none of which ever materialise. This is while they continue to supply Israel with the military tools and share intelligence that make this genocide possible.

The Arab world? A complete and utter shame. Regimes have stood by as Gaza plunged into famine, like passive spectators of a dramatic fiction movie, detached and unmoved. Except for Yemen, Arab leaders and people have either remained disgracefully silent or carried on with business as usual with Israel, even as Gaza starves.

I alluded in an opinion piece last week to a plan to revive the food aid airdrops, which started on Sunday, July 27. I argued that the airdrops, much like the floating pier and GHF, were little more than distractions: painkillers for the Israeli-inflicted cancer of starvation. As with GHF's limited distribution, airdrops are constrained, as each C-130 flight can deliver 12,650 meals per trip. To provide just one meal a day for Gaza's 2.3 million residents, 170 flights would be needed daily.

Jordan and the UAE, the feel-good collaborators who are leading the airdrops, have a combined fleet of 18 C-130s. Assuming an extremely generous eight-hour turnaround for loading, flight, and drop and considering that a round-trip flight between the UAE and Palestine alone takes about seven hours, each aircraft could, at best, complete two trips per day. That amounts to no more than 36 total flights daily, delivering the equivalent of just one-fifth of a meal per person per day.

At the same time, there is growing concern that the current, limited easing of starvation is part of a broader strategy—Netanyahu permitting restricted aid in return for Trump's future support in a joint military operation in Gaza to attempt to free the Israeli captives. With the worst images of starvation temporarily subdued, it would be easier for Trump to send American troops in yet another made-for-Israel war.

This could also explain the silence of Israel's racist ministers, Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, who had previously threatened to resign if food aid entered Gaza. Their lack of protest raises questions about what political deal may be in the making behind closed doors.

Israel's "minimum amount of aid" will not stop the growling stomachs or hydrate the parched lips of Gaza's children. It may, however, just extend the suffering of their emaciated bodies before being murdered in the next American war on behalf of Israel.

American officials must end parroting the Israeli talking points and recognise that access to food is a fundamental human right, not a tool of political leverage. As long as Israel dictates the American messaging and controls the minimal flow of food, fuel and medicine, starvation will persist. Meanwhile, the most vulnerable of the population, one million children, are slowly wasting away. Those who survive will bear the burden of irreversible health complications and deep psychological wounds that never heal. Robbed of their childhood, they will carry their physical and emotional trauma forever. They will not forget. And they will not forgive.

Forgive them not, Gaza
Not Europe that denies your children food
Not the Arabs who look away
Not the Trump administration that funds your starvation
Not the world that watches you suffer in vain.

Jamal Kanj is the author of Children of Catastrophe: Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America, and other books. He writes frequently on Arab world issues for various national and international commentaries.​