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

[Saif]

Famine looming in north Gaza

Famine is looming in the northern Gaza Strip amid increased hostilities and a near-halt in food aid, a UN-backed assessment said on Saturday.

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Famine looming in north Gaza
Agence France-Presse . Rome 10 November, 2024, 22:26

Displaced Palestinian children eat bread dipped in lentil soup in front of a tent at the al-Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on Sunday, amid the on-going war between Israel and the Hamas group. | AFP photo

Famine is looming in the northern Gaza Strip amid increased hostilities and a near-halt in food aid, a UN-backed assessment said on Saturday.

Israeli forces have intensified their operations in large swathes of devastated northern Gaza since early October, where evacuation orders are in place.

Aid shipments allowed to enter the Gaza Strip were now lower than at any time since October 2023, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification report.

The alert from the Famine Review Committee warned of ‘an imminent and substantial likelihood of famine occurring, due to the rapidly deteriorating situation in the Gaza Strip’.

On October 17, the body projected that the number of people in Gaza facing ‘catastrophic’ food insecurity between November and April 2025 would reach 3,45,000, or 16 per cent of the population.

The IPC report classified that figure as Phase 5 — a situation when ‘starvation, death, destitution and extremely critical acute malnutrition levels are evident’.

Since that report, conditions have worsened in the north of Gaza, with a collapse of food systems, a drop in humanitarian aid and critical water, sanitation and hygiene conditions, the committee said.

‘It can therefore be assumed that starvation, malnutrition, and excess mortality due to malnutrition and disease, are rapidly increasing in these areas,’ it read.

The Israeli military on Saturday questioned the UN-back report’s credibility.

‘To date, all assessments by the IPC have proven incorrect and inconsistent with the situation on the ground,’ the army said in a statement, denouncing ‘partial, biased data and superficial sources with vested interests’.

Access to food continues to deteriorate, with prices of essentials on the black market soaring. Cooking gas rose by 2,612 per cent, diesel by 1,315 per cent and wood by 250 per cent, it said.

‘Concurrent with the extremely high and increasing prices of essential items has been the total collapse of livelihoods to be able to purchase or barter for food and other basic needs,’ said the alert.

The body expressed concern over Israel’s cutting ties last month with the UN aid agency for Palestinians, warning of ‘extremely serious consequences for humanitarian operations’ in Gaza.

The United States — Israel’s biggest supporter — has given Israel until November 13 to improve the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip or risk the withholding of some American military assistance.​

 

[Saif]

Gaza aid far from enough, UN warns

The UN warned yesterday that already low levels of aid trickling into Gaza had dwindled further, with the situation in the besieged north especially “catastrophic”.

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Gaza aid far from enough, UN warns
14 Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes

Palestinians displaced from shelters in Beit Hanoun cross the main Salaheddine road into Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip following Israeli army evacuation orders yesterday. Photo: AFP

The UN warned yesterday that already low levels of aid trickling into Gaza had dwindled further, with the situation in the besieged north especially "catastrophic".

The warning from UNRWA, the United Nations agency supporting Palestinian refugees, came as Israel said it was opening an additional aid crossing into Gaza on the eve of a US-imposed deadline to improve humanitarian conditions in the war-ravaged territory.

Asked about whether there were signs the situation had improved ahead of yesterday's deadline, Louise Wateridge, an UNRWA emergencies officer, highlighted that "aid entering the Gaza Strip is at its lowest level in months".

Speaking to a Geneva media briefing via video-link from Gaza, Wateridge said that "the average for October was 37 trucks a day into the entire Gaza Strip... That is for 2.2 million people".

Death toll in Palestinian enclave rises to 43,665

"Children are dying. People are dying every day," she said, stressing that "people here need everything".

Meanwhile, Gaza's civil defence agency said yesterday that at least 14 people were killed in Israeli strikes on the Palestinian territory.

Israel's military campaign has levelled much of Gaza and killed at least 43,665 Palestinians since the offensive began in October last year, Gaza health officials said.

Wateridge also said that testimonies from the north painted "an endlessly horrific" picture that was becoming "more critical" by the hour.

"Hospitals have been bombed, the doctors inform us that they have run out of blood supplies, they have run out of medicine... there are bodies in the streets," she added. No food was permitted to enter besieged northern Gaza for an entire month, Wateridge said, adding that UN requests to access the area have been repeatedly denied.​

 

[Saif]

Mideast peace requires end to Israeli occupation

Arab and Muslim leaders demanded on Monday that Israel withdraw from occupied Palestinian territories as a precondition for regional peace, while denouncing ‘shocking’ Israeli crimes in war-ravaged Gaza.

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Mideast peace requires end to Israeli occupation
Agence France-Presse . Riyadh 12 November, 2024, 22:29

AFP photo

Arab and Muslim leaders demanded on Monday that Israel withdraw from occupied Palestinian territories as a precondition for regional peace, while denouncing ‘shocking’ Israeli crimes in war-ravaged Gaza.

A summit meeting in the Saudi capital Riyadh gave the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation’s 57 nations a chance to speak with one voice on turmoil engulfing the region, more than a year into the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.

It came less than a week after Donald Trump secured a second term as president of the United States, Israel’s top military backer.

The summit’s closing statement said that ‘a just and comprehensive peace in the region cannot be achieved without ending the Israeli occupation of all occupied Arab territories to the line of June 4, 1967,’ referring to the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem as well as Gaza and the Golan Heights.

The statement mentioned UN resolutions which have called on Israel to withdraw from these areas, and the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, in which Arab nations offered Israel normalised ties in return for a two-state agreement with the Palestinians along the 1967 lines.

The international community should ‘launch a plan with specific steps and timing under international sponsorship’ to make a sovereign Palestinian state a reality, the statement said.

Hamas later urged Arab and Muslim nations to back up those pledges with action.

‘The establishment of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital would require more immediate efforts and practical solutions to force (Israel) to stop its aggression and genocide against our people,’ Hamas said in a statement.

The hard-right Israeli government of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains opposed to Palestinian statehood and Israel’s new foreign minister, Gideon Saar, dismissed the prospect as not ‘realistic’.

Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich later Monday vowed to push for annexation of parts of the West Bank in 2025.

The Riyadh summit reiterated regional leaders’ call for Palestinian territories — including Gaza, which is separated from the West Bank by Israeli territory — to be grouped together in a future state.

The leaders also condemned ‘horrific and shocking crimes’ by Israel’s army, saying they occurred ‘in the context of the crime of genocide’.

The war began with Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7 last year, which resulted in 1,206 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed more than 43,600 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.

Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, which like Hamas is backed by Iran, began firing on Israel after the October 7 attack, in stated support of its Palestinian ally.

The regular cross-border exchanges escalated in late September. Israel has intensified its air strikes and later sent ground troops into southern Lebanon.

Addressing Monday’s summit, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said the world must ‘immediately halt the Israeli actions against our brothers in Palestine and Lebanon’ and condemned Israel’s campaign in Gaza as ‘genocide’.

Prince Mohammed, the Gulf kingdom’s de facto ruler, also called on Israel not to attack Iran, highlighting improving ties between Riyadh and its regional rival Tehran.

Lebanon’s prime minister Najib Mikati warned that his country was suffering an ‘existential’ crisis and hit out at countries meddling in its internal affairs — a thinly veiled swipe at Iran.

Trump’s election last week for a second term in the White House was likely on leaders’ minds, said Anna Jacobs, senior Gulf analyst for the International Crisis Group think tank.

‘This summit is very much an opportunity for regional leaders to signal to the incoming Trump administration what they want in terms of US engagement,’ she said.

Iranian first vice president Mohammad Reza Aref said in his remarks that ‘the world is waiting’ for Trump ‘to immediately stop the war against the innocent people of Gaza and Lebanon’.

The final statement included a call for a ban on the export and transfer of weapons to Israel.

Despite criticism of the impact Israel’s military campaign has had on Gaza civilians, outgoing US president Joe Biden has ensured that Washington remains Israel’s most important military backer during more than a year of fighting.

In his first term, Trump defied international consensus with a series of moves praised by the Israeli government but condemned by Palestinians.

He recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, moving the US embassy there, and endorsed Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, which are illegal under international law.​

 

[Saif]

Destruction in north Gaza widespread

Palestinians displaced from northern Gaza said Israeli forces had inflicted widespread destruction on their home districts in their latest six-week-old offensive and a rights group raised concerns Israel might put some areas permanently off-limits.

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Destruction in north Gaza widespread
Say displaced Palestinians as rights group warns some may never return

Palestinians displaced from northern Gaza said Israeli forces had inflicted widespread destruction on their home districts in their latest six-week-old offensive and a rights group raised concerns Israel might put some areas permanently off-limits.

Jabalia, one of the largest of Gaza's eight historic refugee camps, as well as the towns of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun and nearby villages, were among the first targets of Israel's ground offensive in October 2023 after Hamas members attacked Israel.

Tanks have gone in several more times in what Israel says are necessary operations against Hamas fighters there who still pose a threat. Yesterday, it said its troops had killed dozens of "terrorists" and found a large quantity of weapons.

Former construction contractor Abu Raed, who was displaced from Jabalia, said Israeli forces were blowing buildings up remotely after booby-trapping them or sending in robots.

Palestinian health ministry officials said Israel's latest airstrikes killed at least 15 people across the enclave, including four at Gaza City's Salahudeen School, which shelters displaced families. At least 43,736 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's offensive on Gaza since Oct 7, 2023.

The Human Rights Watch report was the latest to warn about the dire humanitarian situation. "Forced displacement has been widespread, and the evidence shows it has been systematic and part of a state policy. Such acts also constitute crimes against humanity," it said.

It said the displacement "is likely planned to be permanent in the buffer zones and security corridors".​

 

[Saif]

Hamas says ‘ready for ceasefire’ as Israel presses Gaza campaign

A senior Hamas official on Friday said the group is ‘ready for a ceasefire’ in Gaza, urging US president-elect Donald Trump to ‘pressure’ Israel as it continued to pound the Palestinian territory.

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Hamas says ‘ready for ceasefire’ as Israel presses Gaza campaign
Agence France-Presse . Jerusalem 16 November, 2024, 00:54

A man reacts as he sits in a heavily damaged building following an Israeli strike in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on Friday. | AFP photo

A senior Hamas official on Friday said the group is ‘ready for a ceasefire’ in Gaza, urging US president-elect Donald Trump to ‘pressure’ Israel as it continued to pound the Palestinian territory.

It comes nearly a week after Qatar, which hosts much of the Palestinian group’s political bureau, announced it was suspending its role as a mediator in the war and urging all parties to show ‘seriousness’.

‘Hamas is ready to reach a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip if a ceasefire proposal is presented and on the condition that it is respected’ by Israel, Doha-based Hamas political bureau member Bassem Naim said.

‘We call on the US administration and Trump to pressure the Israeli government to end the aggression.’

On Saturday, Qatar announced it was suspending its role as a mediator in indirect talks towards a ceasefire and hostage release deal in the Gaza war that has ground on for more than a year.

‘Qatar would resume those efforts when the parties show their willingness and seriousness,’ Doha’s foreign ministry spokesman Majed Al Ansari said in a statement.

Friday’s announcement by Hamas came as Israel continued to strike Gaza, with residents of the central city of Deir el-Balah searching through the rubble of their destroyed homes after overnight strikes.

‘I woke up to the bombing at 2:30am and was surprised by the rubble and glass falling on me and my children,’ said Mohamed Baraka, one of the residents, adding that the strike ‘resulted in three martyrs and 15 injuries’.

‘Put an end to this war because there are innocent people who are losing defenceless children who have nothing to do with this,’ he said.

The war erupted with Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel which resulted in 1,206 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed 43,764 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.

Militants also kidnapped 251 hostages during the attack, 97 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 34 whom the Israeli military says are dead.

Earlier Friday, the Hamas-allied militant group Islamic Jihad released a new clip of Israeli hostage Sasha Trupanov, after issuing a first video earlier this week.

Trupanov, 29, is a dual Russian-Israeli citizen who was abducted with his girlfriend, Sapir Cohen, from the Nir Oz kibbutz near the Gaza border.

Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called for the release of Trupanov and another hostage, Maxim Herkin, in comments made before the release of the latest clip.

Fears surged over the fate of the hostages after Qatar announced its withdrawal from mediating talks — the latest blow in a protracted negotiation process that has hit repeated impasses.

Israel on Friday also continued to strike Lebanon, where it intensified in September its air offensive and later sent in ground troops following a year of low-intensity cross-border exchanges with the Iran-backed Hezbollah group.

A building in Beirut’s southern suburbs collapsed in a gigantic cloud of smoke and dust, an AFP photographer reported, as two strikes attributed to Israel hit the Hezbollah bastion.

A series of images from the strike captures a falling projectile slamming into the lower floors of the building, which erupt in a huge fireball, causing the structure to collapse.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported a ‘heavy raid carried out by aircraft of the Israeli enemy’ in the Ghobeiri area of southern Beirut.

It said the raid had been preceded by two missile strikes on the same target by an Israeli drone.

The strikes followed a call by the Israeli military to evacuate the area. The evacuation call posted on X by Israeli army spokesman Avichay Adraee told residents to leave, warning of imminent strikes.

‘All residents in the southern suburbs, specifically in the Ghobeiri area, you are located near facilities and interests affiliated with Hezbollah,’ Adraee said in an Arabic-language post on X.

‘For your safety and the safety of your family members, you must evacuate these buildings and those adjacent to them immediately.’

Later in the morning, a second strike hit the Bourj al-Barajneh area of the southern suburbs, an AFP journalist reported.

NNA said two missiles had been fired by an ‘enemy aircraft’.

Lebanese authorities say more than 3,380 people have been killed since October last year, when Hezbollah and Israel began trading fire.​

 

[Saif]

Critical race theory, Euro-American pride and the genocide in Gaza

Proponents of CRT believe that racist practices are not individual or idiosyncratic, but are inherent in institutions, policies and structures of governance.

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Critical race theory, Euro-American pride and the genocide in Gaza

Photo: Reuters

The critical race theory (CRT) emerged in the United States between the 1970s and 1980s and gained momentum in academic circles in the late 1990s. The theory addresses racial inequalities and injustices and explicates how racism operates in society and is normalised. Ideas of legal scholar Derrick Bell, who became the first tenured black professor at Harvard University in 1971, are considered instrumental in expanding this theory. He was once "arrested for using a Whites-only phone booth in Jackson" in Mississippi.

The CRT took a discursive form in Bell's 1970 book Race, Racism, and American Law, which argues that White supremacy is an integral part of US institutions. He argued that victories of the civil rights movement in the US "were not a sign of moral maturation in White America but a reflection of its geopolitical pragmatism." At 28 years old, Barack Obama introduced Bell to a rally at Harvard and said, "[Bell's] scholarship has opened up new vistas and new horizons and changed the standards of what legal writing is about."

The 1995 anthology of essays titled Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement articulated the principal arguments of CRT and gave it a wider scope. Subsequently, the 1619 Project was launched in the US in 2019 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of first African slaves in North America. It sought to relook at the country's history by rediscovering the contributions of African-Americans to American society from colonial Virginia to the present day. The project created an urgency to understand the long and enduring legacy of slavery in the US and thus increased the importance of CRT.

In 2020, in the aftermath of the killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd by White police officers in the US, protest marches under the banner of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement broke out in cities around the world. As a result, critical race theory came to prominence again as an emancipatory discourse. Its proponents felt vindicated that such killings "were not anomalies but evidence that the system was functioning as it was designed to." Especially in the US, academics gave CRT renewed attention to address racial disparities through the education system and put its opponents on the ropes.

Proponents of CRT believe that racist practices are not individual or idiosyncratic, but are inherent in institutions, policies and structures of governance. While persistence of discrimination and oppression is looked at through the prism of slavery and racial segregation in the US, in Europe the focus is on colonialism and the slave trade.

Emboldened and stoked by political demagogues both in Europe and the US, opponents of the critical race theory have mounted resistance under the pretext of defending positive images of their countries that were involved in colonialism, slavery and other forms of oppression. They view it as an attempt to "cannibalise" Euro-American countries. For instance, an anti-CRT commentator in the US complained that CRT teaches "young people to hate the country they are going to inherit."

Critics also argue that CRT leads to the indoctrination of students into anti-White stereotyping and the perpetuation of a struggle between Black and White people. Cynics among its detractors characterise the theory as "Black-supremacist racism, false history, and the terrible apotheosis of wokeness." Many US states have banned CRT or any discussion that characterises the US society as inherently racist and segregationist. However, many agree with Derrick Bell and believe that critical race theory "means telling the truth, even in the face of criticism."

Critics of critical race theory don't deny that people of colour endured unspeakable injustice in the past through racism, colonialism, transatlantic slavery and other systems of exploitation. Nor do they seemingly suggest that such discriminatory practices should continue. They tend to focus on the here and the now and seek to herald a new beginning. Diverse groups of people rally around this idea of emphasising the present and the future.

For example, in the run up to the Commonwealth Summit (October 25-26, 2024) in the small island country of Samoa, there was a row between some member countries and former coloniser Britain on the question of reparation for slavery and colonialism. Although the British PM acknowledged that the slave trade was "abhorrent," he was unwilling to discuss the question of reparation in the summit. He expressed a desire to be "forward-looking" and to address "today's challenges." In this respect, the British government is not alone; other former colonial and slave-owning powers would perhaps make similar statements when they are forced to address the question of reparation.

Against this backdrop, the ongoing genocide in Gaza stares in the face of Western governments. It belies their assertion that they really "abhor" historical injustices for which repair and reckoning are being demanded. Their complicity in the killings in Gaza don't prove that they are opposed to injustices or committed to a just world where apartheid and ethnocentric arrogance are unacceptable.

Without the continuous supply of deadly weapons and ammunition from—and diplomatic coverups by—the US, Britain, Germany and some other former colonial countries, Israel would not have been able to continue its ongoing genocide in Gaza for over a year. This sponsorship of genocide is making it impossible for citizens of these powerful countries to throw off their sense of guilt. Rather, it is adding more reasons for them and for their future generations to be ashamed of the actions of their governments.

Since October 7, 2023, tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian babies, children, women and men have been killed in Gaza. This is robbing the conscientious people of genocide-enabling countries of their national pride. What's more, decades and centuries down the road, it will bring shame on citizens of the countries that have abetted it. Their future generations may not feel proud to know that their countries stood by a genocide-perpetrating regime even when it was slaughtering hundreds of healthcare providers and journalists so no one can treat the injured or report its massacres.

In these circumstances, can one really say that critical race theory is irrelevant in today's world?

Dr Md Mahmudul Hasan is a professor in the Department of English Language and Literature, International Islamic University Malaysia.​

 

[Saif]

Israeli strikes kill 20 Palestinians in Gaza

Israeli military strikes across the Gaza Strip killed 20 Palestinians yesterday, including six people who were killed in attacks on tents housing displaced families, medics said.

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Israeli strikes kill 20 Palestinians in Gaza
Say medics; Lebanon ceasefire hopes rise

Israeli military strikes across the Gaza Strip killed 20 Palestinians yesterday, including six people who were killed in attacks on tents housing displaced families, medics said.

Four people, two of them children, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a tent encampment in the coastal area of Al-Mawasi, designated as a humanitarian zone, while two others were killed in temporary shelters in the southern city of Rafah and another in drone fire, health officials said.

In Beit Lahiya town in northern Gaza, medics said an Israeli missile struck a house, killing at least two people and wounding several others. On Sunday, medics and residents said dozens of people were killed or wounded in an Israeli airstrike on a multi-floor residential building in the town.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said at least 43,922 people have been confirmed killed since the offensive erupted on October 7, 2023.

Meanwhile, the US official overseeing contacts to secure a ceasefire between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon is due to visit Beirut today, sources in Lebanon said yesterday, with Beirut expected give its response to a US truce proposal.

Israel continued to pound Lebanon, killing eight more paramedics in an air raid on central Beirut yesterday. The Israeli campaign has uprooted more than 1 million people in Lebanon.​

 

[Saif]

China's Xi calls for Gaza ceasefire: Xinhua

Chinese President Xi Jinping yesterday called for a ceasefire in Gaza, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported

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China's Xi calls for Gaza ceasefire: Xinhua

Photo: AFP

Chinese President Xi Jinping yesterday called for a ceasefire in Gaza, as he visited Brazil's capital, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

Xi expressed concerns about the spread of the conflict in Gaza, and "called for a ceasefire and an end to the war at an early date," the agency said, as he met with his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

The Chinese president's appeal for a halt to fighting in Gaza -- where Israel is pressing an offensive -- echoed one he and other G20 leaders made during a summit held Monday and Tuesday in Rio.

That summit's joint statement called for a "comprehensive" ceasefire in both Gaza and Lebanon, where Israel is also waging an offensive against the Iran-backed Hezbollah group.

Yesterday, the UN Security Council held a vote on a resolution calling for "an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire" in Gaza, but it was vetoed by Israel's ally the United States, which said it was not linked to a hostage release.​

 

[Saif]

UN chief slams ‘systematic’ looting of Gaza humanitarian aid

The United Nations chief on Tuesday denounced the ‘systematic’ looting of humanitarian aid in Gaza, a day after the territory’s Hamas authorities said 20 people were killed in a security operation targeting such actions...

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UN chief slams ‘systematic’ looting of Gaza humanitarian aid
Agence France-Presse . United Nations 20 November, 2024, 21:38

Displaced people use animal-drawn carts for transportation in al-Zawayda in the central Gaza Strip on Wednesday. | AFP photo

The United Nations chief on Tuesday denounced the ‘systematic’ looting of humanitarian aid in Gaza, a day after the territory’s Hamas authorities said 20 people were killed in a security operation targeting such actions.

‘Armed looting has become systematic and must end immediately. It is hindering life saving aid operations and further endangering the lives of our staff,’ said Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres.

‘However, the use of law enforcement operations must be lawful, necessary and proportionate.’

Israel imposed a total siege on Gaza in the early stages of the war last year, and the UN warned on November 9 that famine was looming in some areas due to a lack of aid.

Aid distribution in Gaza is complicated by shortages of fuel, war-damaged roads and looting, as well as fighting in densely populated areas and the repeated displacement of much of the territory’s 2.4 million people.

Several humanitarian officials have said that almost half the aid that enters Gaza is looted, especially basic supplies.

On Monday, Gaza’s interior ministry said it had carried out a major operation targeting looters.

‘More than 20 members of gangs involved in stealing aid trucks were killed in a security operation carried out by security forces in cooperation with tribal committees,’ the ministry said in a statement.

It said the operation was ‘the beginning of a broad security campaign that has been long planned and will expand to include everyone involved in the theft of aid trucks.’

On Tuesday, the US-based Washington Post newspaper cited a UN memo as saying some of the gangs were receiving ‘passive if not active benevolence’ or ‘protection’ from the Israel Defence Forces.

Dujarric said he was unaware of the memo, but that the allegation was ‘fairly alarming’ if true.

‘The idea that the Israeli forces may be allowing looters or not doing enough to prevent it is frankly, fairly alarming, given the responsibilities of Israel as the occupying power to ensure that humanitarian aid is distributed safely,’ he said.​

 

[Saif]

Israeli strikes kill two Hamas commanders

Israel’s military said yesterday it had killed two Hamas commanders, pressing its north Gaza offensive a day after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants over the offensive.

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Israeli strikes kill two Hamas commanders
Dozens of Palestinians killed or missing as IDF presses its north Gaza offensive

Israel's military said yesterday it had killed two Hamas commanders, pressing its north Gaza offensive a day after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants over the offensive.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said an air strike on the territory's north killed five Hamas members including two company commanders "who participated in the October 7 massacre" last year.

Medics said dozens were killed or missing after an overnight Israeli raid on Beit Lahia and nearby Jabalia, which are among the targets of a sweeping Israeli assault on north Gaza.

A separate air attack targeted the Kamal Adwan Hospital – one of the few partially functioning medical facilities in the besieged territory's north.

Residents claimed that Israeli soldiers yesterday set fire to residential buildings in Beit Lahiya to prevent families from returning to the area.

Israeli gunboats have also fired at a fishing boat off the coast of Gaza City, killing one person and wounding another, report Al Jazeera online.

Biden, in a statement later on Thursday responding to the ICC's arrest warrants for Israeli leaders, called them "outrageous", vowing to "always stand with Israel against threats to its security".

China, which like Israel and the United States is not a member of the ICC, urged the court to "uphold an objective and just position". The Palestinian Authority and Hamas both welcomed the warrants, reports AFP.

However, Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris said yesterday that Netanyahu would be detained if he arrives in Ireland.

The head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards yesterday described the arrest warrant as the "end and political death" of Israel, in a speech.

More than 44,056 people have been killed in Gaza in more than 13 months of offensive.​

 

[Saif]

Hundreds flee Gaza as IDF orders evacuations

The Israeli military issued new evacuation orders to residents in areas of an eastern Gaza City suburb, setting off a new wave of displacement yesterday, and a Gaza hospital director was injured in an Israeli drone attack, medics said.

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Hundreds flee Gaza as IDF orders evacuations

The Israeli military issued new evacuation orders to residents in areas of an eastern Gaza City suburb, setting off a new wave of displacement yesterday, and a Gaza hospital director was injured in an Israeli drone attack, medics said.

The new orders for Shejaia suburb posted by Israeli army spokesperson on X on Saturday night were blamed on Hamas firing rockets from that heavily built-up district in the north of Gaza.

"For your safety, you must evacuate immediately to the south," the military's post said. The rocket volley on Saturday was claimed by Hamas' armed wing, which said it had targeted an Israeli army base over the border.

Footage circulated on social media showed residents leaving Shejaia on donkey carts and rickshaws, with others, including children carrying backpacks, walking.

"I had hoped for a more ambitious outcome – on both finance and mitigation – to meet the great challenge we face. But this agreement provides a base on which to build. It must be honoured in full and on time. Commitments must quickly become cash."— UN chief Antonio Guterres on COP29 deal.

Families living in the targeted areas began fleeing their homes after nightfall on Saturday and into yesterday's early hours, residents and Palestinian media said - the latest in multiple waves of displacement since the offensive began 13 months ago.

In central Gaza, at least 10 Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes on the camps of Al-Maghazi and Al-Bureij since Saturday night.​

 

[Saif]

11 Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes, shelling

Gaza’s civil defence agency said yesterday that 11 people were killed in nighttime Israeli air strikes and artillery shelling across the Palestinian territory.

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11 Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes, shelling
Says Gaza’s civil defence, warns rescue vehicles not working in north of enclave for lack of fuel

Gaza's civil defence agency said yesterday that 11 people were killed in nighttime Israeli air strikes and artillery shelling across the Palestinian territory.

In the northern city of Jabalia, seven people were killed and several others wounded in an air strike on a residential building, civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.

Another person was killed in a strike on a house in nearby Beit Lahia, which along with Jabalia has been the site of an intensive Israeli military operation since October 6.

Two people were killed by artillery shelling on Nuseirat camp in central Gaza, Bassal said. In the southern city of Rafah, an air strike killed one and wounded several, he added.

Israel's campaign has killed 44,249 people in Gaza, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.

Meanwhile, Gaza's civil defence agency warned yesterday that its vehicles had stopped working in the Palestinian territory's north due to a lack of fuel, warning it could not respond to emergencies.

"All our fire, rescue, and ambulance vehicles have stopped working in Gaza governorate due to the Israeli occupation's continued refusal to provide the necessary diesel to operate them," the rescue agency said in a statement.

"Our crews will not be able to respond to citizens' calls until the Israeli occupation allows humanitarian organisations to bring in the necessary quantities of diesel," it added.

The UN rights chief is gravely concerned over the escalating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon and wants a "permanent ceasefire" there and in war-ravaged Gaza, his spokesman said yesterday.

"The high commissioner reiterates his call for an immediate ceasefire to put an end to the killings and the destruction," Jeremy Laurence, a spokesman for Volker Turk, told reporters in Geneva.​

 

[Saif]

Gazans at long-term risk from war remnants

International humanitarian NGO Danish Refugee Council warned on Monday that Gazans are at long-term risk from unexploded and unused ordnance in the densely populated Palestinian territory...

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Gazans at long-term risk from war remnants
Agence France-Presse . Jerusalem 26 November, 2024, 22:32

Displaced Palestinians wait in line to receive food at a distribution centre in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on Tuesday, amid the on-going war between Israel and Hamas. | AFP photo

International humanitarian NGO Danish Refugee Council warned on Monday that Gazans are at long-term risk from unexploded and unused ordnance in the densely populated Palestinian territory.

‘These remnants of war, which fail to detonate upon impact or may have been abandoned during warfare, pose a long-term threat to civilian populations, often causing injuries and deaths long after the fighting ceases,’ said DRC’s Corinne Linnecar.

The NGO, which has a presence in the Gaza Strip, said in a report that ammunition, exploded or otherwise, can be found in many populated areas of the territory.

The report said 70 per cent of Gazans have returned to areas where there has been active combat, raising the risk of their coming into contact with explosive materiel.

With the territory in the grip of a humanitarian crisis and very little aid getting in, Gazans in desperate need of basic goods have ‘sifted through rubble for essential supplies’ but where they can also encounter munitions.

Longer-term healthcare services are also nearly non-existent, DRC said.

‘Only 19 per cent of explosive ordnance victims receive emergency first aid, and long-term medical support is virtually non-existent,’ the report said, noting that children are especially at risk because they can confuse munitions with toys.

‘Israel is using weapons indiscriminately in civilian areas over and over again, in a way that is in violation of international humanitarian law,’ Linnecar said.

Even before the current war, explosive ordnance was already a problem in Gaza, after repeated Israeli bombardment over the years.

‘The remnants of war will continue to claim lives long after the fighting ceases,’ DRC said.

The war in Gaza erupted after Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign in Gaza has killed at least 44,235 people, most of them civilians, according to data from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, which the United Nations considers reliable.​

 

[Saif]

Anatomy of erasure: The unmaking of Palestine

The Palestinian Genocide is systemic, calculated, a machine of annihilation and there’s no parallel to the country's devastation in world history.

www.thedailystar.net

Anatomy of erasure: The unmaking of Palestine

A Palestinian man carries a wounded girl at the site of Israeli strikes, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on October 14, 2023. FILE PHOTO: REUTERS

"The project of settler colonialism eventually was a simple one. Colonisers wanted the land and everything else the Indigenous people are burdened with daily, the legal or policy or economic or social discrimination the residential schools or gender violence are all part of the machinery that was designed, to create a perfect crime, a crime where the victims were unable to see or name the crime itself as a crime." — Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, an Indigenous scholar from Turtle Island, known to us as Canada.

Every time I open a YouTube video, it's there—ads asking my help, a Palestinian mother, a child, sometimes a girl—framed by rubble. They start to talk: "Don't skip." Or softer: "Skip if you must."

I skip. Quickly.

After dealing with news all day when my midnights march in I feel angry, I don't know at whom; I feel shame, for not listening to the mothers of ruin. I tell myself it's exhaustion. I tell myself I need mindless joy, a brief escape. Everyone has their reasons, I suppose. I know why the algorithm sends me these, I know if I skip enough times it'll stop.

Today is the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. It was established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1977. The interesting thing is the date was chosen as it marks the anniversary of the UN General Assembly's adoption of Resolution 181 in 1947, which proposed the partition of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. The decision that started all this.

The war since then spiralled, seemingly merging into genocide. Lands, as Edward Said once described, "lived on and owned by others," are stripped away under the guise of right, erasing histories etched into the soil. The denial from the West is not accidental, it is deliberate, woven into the fabric of imperial complicity. What unfolds is not chaos, but a design—a slow, systematic unmaking of a people.

Using law as a weapon of subjugation, Palestine has become a grim textbook: "Genocide for Dummies," an oral chronicle of annihilation. In Bethlehem, Eid, Christmas, and Hanukkah now share a shroud—wrapped in kafon, the white cloth of the dead. Last year, Christmas was cancelled in Gaza, and oh goody another one is coming up!

Statistics lay bare the scale of a tragedy, yet I am exhausted by the endless numbers—the steady, grim count of lives lost as time in Palestine flows only to measure death. What's the point of anything anymore, if the slaughter of thousands of children cannot extinguish the flames of violence? Must it fall upon Palestinian mothers to cry the fire away with their tears?

Since October 7, 17,000 children have been killed, including 700 infants under the age of one, as reported by the UN. What do you call it if not extermination? When 700 babies, still learning to coo, are killed before they can crawl—how do you process that? What do you do with 17,000 childless mothers? How do they carry on knowing that their crawling babies were deemed dangerous to an Israeli existence?

Nothing exemplifies gross human rights violations more starkly than the reality of Palestinian women, stripped of their dignity and subjected to unimaginable horrors. But where is the West's indignation now? These same voices, so quick to condemn and paint Muslim men as oppressors who apparently all cover their women in burqas, are deafeningly silent when Palestinian women are raped, murdered, and buried in shrouds. Is it more palatable to drape them in kafons than burqas? But I guess one has to be in a hurry to judge, but slow to act when the perpetrators of violence do not fit their convenient narrative of barbarism.

I shouldn't have to seek the West's condemnation, nor wait for permission to call the deaths what they are—genocide! I shouldn't need anyone's approval to count my own loss. I can see with my own eyes that my mothers and brothers are gone. Yet this is the world we live in, where the veto-wielding powers must grant me the right to mourn my unbloomed sisters, my brothers who will never fulfil their potential.

Under the scorching Gazan sun, a body decomposes—does it rot slowly or swiftly? How many passersby stop to look each day? Isn't it "nice," this grotesque ease with which a human is reduced to an "it," stripped of names?

This abandonment is emblematic of a world that thrives on deliberate chaos—a human-made catastrophe designed with precision. Patterns of violence replicate geometrically, spreading like a virus. Mass arrests without charge or trial—because what greater crime exists than being Palestinian? That alone is charge enough. This isn't collateral damage; it's sacrifice on the altar of supremacy. And chaos, as we know, is a ladder.

In March 2024, Francesca Albanese, an international lawyer and expert in Middle Eastern human rights serving as the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights since 2022, presented her fourth report to the United Nations, titled, "Anatomy of a Genocide." Supported by three prominent Israeli scholars of genocide and the Holocaust—Professors Raz Segal, Amos Goldberg, and Omar Bartov—the report concluded that Israel is committing genocide. The challenge lies not merely in acknowledging that genocide is taking place but in proving it to a world that demands evidence while turning a blind eye to the atrocities unfolding.

Simply labelling these acts as "crimes against humanity" is insufficient now, that term has echoed ineffectively since 1949, long before the recent surge in violence.

The erasure of suffering is no accident, it is essential to sustaining the colonial and imperial systems. If we cannot see it, we cannot confront it. This is not just a genocide—it is a settler-colonial genocide, built on breaking the people to take the land. And yet, for those of us who have been reduced to "it" in the past, it is all too easy to see the pattern. The machinery of power dehumanises and disposes, ensuring that many more will become "it" in the future under the guise of neoliberal progress. The erasure is the weapon, the silence is its accomplice, and the land its ultimate prize.

Francesca said accurately in a lecture that contrary to the somewhat detached and logical Western mind thinking land is where people live, to the Easterners the land is who they are.

Capitalism, in its imperial form, doesn't just exploit, it erases. It forces us into the conditioned acceptance of the unthinkable—turning atrocities into mere statistics, suffering into background noise.

And as I think all struggles are interconnected, bound by the same system, I can look at my own country and trace the parallels. I see and understand the pain of Palestinians—one once colonised to another still enduring the chains of colonisation.

Holocaust survivor Primo Levi said that at the root of everything is "a colossal cowardice which masks itself as worrying virtue, love of country and faith in an idea." What should be the idea of our future? Standing in the Global South, can we dream that future for ourselves?

A murderer is an individual, but genocide? Genocide is systemic, calculated, a machine of annihilation. And there's no parallel to the devastation of Palestine in world history. Leaders change, names shift, but policies remain the same. And I see no difference between Trump, Biden, and Obama when it comes to the issue of Palestine. It's all a revolving door of empty talk, their "concern" wrapped in pretty language that means nothing. The truth is clear: words are powerless against the weight of history when action never follows.

As Gaza has been turned into an Israeli wasteland, how do you even begin to mourn 17,000 children? I can barely process the loss of the children killed in our July-August uprising. All these lives stolen—how do you grieve without being consumed by guilt? I feel it—an unbearable, gnawing guilt that cuts deeper than the crashing sadness I once felt for Palestine. It's more than grief now. I feel complicit, part of the machine that lets this happen. This survivor's guilt is a weight I can't shed, it's not washable and is pointless.

I'm done trying to process any of it anymore. We're already drowning in this endless saga of death that defines our time. So, let's just let Ghassan Kanafani speak for us, shall we?

"I wish children didn't die. I wish they would be temporarily elevated to the skies Until the war ends. Then they would return home safe, And when their parents ask them: 'Where were you?' They'd say: 'We were playing with the clouds.'"

Sumaya Mashrufa is sub-editor at The Daily Star.​

 

[Saif]

Israeli strikes kill 15 in Gaza

Israeli military strikes killed at least 15 Palestinians in Gaza yesterday, medics said, as Israeli forces kept up bombardments across the enclave and blew up houses on its northern edge.

www.thedailystar.net

Israeli strikes kill 15 in Gaza
Cairo holds fresh talks with Hamas to reach a ceasefire deal

Israeli military strikes killed at least 15 Palestinians in Gaza yesterday, medics said, as Israeli forces kept up bombardments across the enclave and blew up houses on its northern edge.

As fighting raged almost 14 months into the offensive, the head of the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) said it had to halt aid deliveries through one crossing a day after armed gangs inside Gaza seized food from a convoy of trucks.

"This difficult decision comes at a time hunger is rapidly deepening," UNRWA's Philippe Lazzarini said in a post on X.

In the central Gaza camp of Nuseirat, an Israeli airstrike killed six people in a house, and another attack killed three in a home in Gaza City, medics said.

Two children were killed when a missile hit a tent encampment in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, while four other people were killed in an airstrike in Rafah, near the border with Egypt, medics told Reuters.

Residents said the military blew up clusters of houses in the northern Gaza areas of Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun, where Israeli forces have operated since October this year.

Israel's military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 44,429 people and displaced nearly all of the enclave's population, Gaza officials said yesterday. In Cairo yesterday, Hamas leaders held talks with Egyptian security officials to explore ways to reach a deal with Israel that could secure the release of hostages in return for Palestinian prisoners. The visit was the first since the US announced on Wednesday it would revive efforts in collaboration with Qatar, Egypt and Turkey to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza.​