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

[Saif]

D-8 urges world to up pressure on Israel

An alliance of mostly Muslim-majority countries including Turkey, Egypt and Iran on Saturday demanded full Palestinian membership of the United Nations and greater...

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D-8 urges world to up pressure on Israel
Agence France-Presse . Istanbul 09 June, 2024, 01:02

An alliance of mostly Muslim-majority countries including Turkey, Egypt and Iran on Saturday demanded full Palestinian membership of the United Nations and greater international pressure on Israel amid the Gaza war.

The D-8 Organization for Economic Cooperation, which also includes Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria and Pakistan, called for an immediate ceasefire in the devastated Palestinian territory, where Israel has been battling Hamas militants for more than eight months.

Foreign ministers from the group meeting in Istanbul called on the United States to lift its veto on full Palestinian UN membership and on all countries to "exert diplomatic, political, economic and legal pressure" on Israel.

They also urged states to ensure Israel complies with the International Court of Justice's decisions, withdraws from the southern Rafah governorate and guarantees the safe entry of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Denouncing an "ongoing genocide and grave violations of international law", the group called on states to contribute to and join legal proceedings against Israel at international courts.

The eight countries also demanded an end to arms and ammunition deliveries to Israel and that all measures be taken to protect Palestinian civilians, rejecting any attempted forced displacement.

They advocated a two-state solution based on 1967 borders with east Jerusalem as a Palestinian capital and a guarantee mechanism to protect a future settlement.

The Gaza war was sparked by 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.

Militants from Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups also took 251 hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza, including 41 the army says are dead.

Israel's retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 36,801 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry.​

 

[Saif]

UN official blasts West’s double standards

The UN’s special rapporteur on the right to housing has rebuked countries he accused of bias on Israel’s offensive on Gaza following a deadly attack by Tel Aviv on the Nuseirat refugee camp in the enclave.

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ISRAEL'S DEADLY ATTACK ON GAZA REFUGEE CAMP
UN official blasts West's double standards

The UN's special rapporteur on the right to housing has rebuked countries he accused of bias on Israel's offensive on Gaza following a deadly attack by Tel Aviv on the Nuseirat refugee camp in the enclave.

"Countries that celebrate the release of four Israeli hostages without saying a word about the hundreds of Palestinians killed and thousands held in arbitrary detention by Israel, have lost moral credibility for generations and don't deserve to be on any UN human rights body," Balakrishnan Rajagopal said on X about the attack that took place on Saturday.

Earlier, the Israeli army announced that it had launched attacks on various locations in the central part of the Gaza Strip and had successfully rescued four captives alive from two different areas.

Citing a US official, CNN reported that an American unit in Israel aided the efforts to rescue the hostages.

US President Joe Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz were among leaders who greeting their release even as they have also called for a truce.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell welcomed the hostage release and said reports "of another massacre of civilians are appalling... the bloodbath must end immediately".

The Gaza-based Government Media Office said that at least 274 Palestinians were killed and more than 400 injured on Saturday in severe Israeli airstrikes targeting Nuseirat refugee camp, areas east of Deir al-Balah, and al-Bureij and al-Maghazi camps in central Gaza, coinciding with a sudden incursion of vehicles east and northwest of Nuseirat.

More than 37,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the offensive began on October 7, according to local health authorities.

Eight months into the Israeli offensive, vast tracts of Gaza lay in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water, and medicine, reports Middle East Monitor Online.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, whose latest ruling ordered Tel Aviv to immediately halt its operation in the southern city of Rafah, where over a million Palestinians had sought refuge.

"My child was crying, afraid of the sound of the plane firing at us," said one Gaza woman, Hadeel Radwan, 32, recounting how they fled the intense combat as she carried her seven-month-old daughter.

"We all felt that we wouldn't survive," she told AFP. Israel's top diplomat rejected unspecified accusations "of war crimes" in the operation.​

 

[Saif]

UN Security Council backs plan for Israel-Hamas ceasefire

The United Nations Security Council on Monday adopted a US-drafted resolution backing a proposal outlined by President Joe Biden for a ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas in the Gaza Strip

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UN Security Council backs plan for Israel-Hamas ceasefire
Israel attack on Rafah

Smoke rises after an Israeli strike as Israeli forces launch a ground and air operation in the eastern part of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip on May 7, 2024. FILE PHOTO: REUTERS

The United Nations Security Council on Monday adopted a US-drafted resolution backing a proposal outlined by President Joe Biden for a ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Russia abstained from the vote, while the remaining 14 council members voted in favor. The US had finalised its text on Sunday after six days of negotiations among the council.

Biden laid out a three-phase ceasefire plan on May 31 that he described as an Israeli initiative. Some Security Council members questioned whether Israel had accepted the plan to end the fighting in Gaza.

The resolution welcomes the new ceasefire proposal, "which Israel accepted, calls upon Hamas to also accept it, and urges both parties to fully implement its terms without delay and without condition."

"We're waiting on Hamas to agree to the ceasefire deal it claims to want," US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the council before the vote. "With every passing day, needless suffering continues."

The resolution also goes into detail about the proposal, and spells out that "if the negotiations take longer than six weeks for phase one, the ceasefire will still continue as long as negotiations continue."

The council in March demanded for an immediate ceasefire and unconditional release of all hostages held by Hamas.

For months, negotiators from the US, Egypt and Qatar have been trying to mediate a ceasefire. Hamas says it wants a permanent end to the war in the Gaza Strip and Israeli withdrawal from the enclave of 2.3 million people.

Israel is retaliating against Hamas, which rules Gaza, over an October 7 attack by its militants.

More than 1,200 people were killed and over 250 taken hostage by Hamas on October 7, according to Israeli tallies. More than 100 hostages are believed to remain captive in Gaza.

Israel launched an air, ground and sea assault on the Palestinian territory, killing more than 37,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities.​

 

[Saif]

Many in Gaza back to eating ‘one meal per day’

Israel’s relentless bombardment and obstruction of humanitarian efforts are making it nearly impossible for aid agencies to reach starving Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

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ISRAELI OFFENSIVE IN PALESTINIAN ENCLAVE
Many in Gaza back to eating 'one meal per day'

Israel's relentless bombardment and obstruction of humanitarian efforts are making it nearly impossible for aid agencies to reach starving Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

The flow of aid into Gaza has remained scarce, with many people now eating "only one meal per day", said Al Jazeera reporter Hind Khoudary.

"This is not only in the south, but also in the north" of Gaza, said Khoudary, adding that markets are largely empty and what food available is hard to afford for most people.

Khoudary has sent an update from Deir el-Balah's Al-Aqsa Hospital, where she said an extra emergency department has been opened to deal with the massive influx of injured patients.

The hospital, running on just one generator, remains flooded with sick and injured patients, and is performing surgeries on an "hourly basis", she said.

Israeli forces have withdrawn from the eastern part of Deir el-Balah, but civil defence teams were able to bring the bodies of five people who were killed in the area.

Israeli forces take a position in a street during a raid in the al-Faraa camp for Palestinian refugees near Tubas city in the occupied West Bank yesterday. Photo: AFP
There have been a couple of air strikes in the area after the Israeli forces withdrew, as well as intensive artillery shelling throughout the night.

Al Jazeera's Hani Mahmoud has spoken to residents of the Nuseirat refugee camp who witnessed the Israeli military's operation there on Saturday that killed and injured hundreds of Palestinians.

Anaas Alayan, one resident of the camp, said Israeli special forces committed mass "executions" on the street. "I went down to the street and found bodies everywhere," he told Al Jazeera.

The military, which rescued four Israeli captives during the operation, killed at least 274 Palestinians, including at least 64 children during the day-time assault, according to Gaza's Health Ministry.

The camp is now left with a "trail of destruction", according to Mahmoud.

With many of Gaza's water wells and pipelines destroyed in the offensive, accessing water has become a daily struggle for Palestinians in the coastal enclave.

Anas al-Jamal, a pregnant woman in the enclave, tells Al Jazeera she has to leave her home every day to search for water to carry home. "The water scarcity is severely affecting me because I'm supposed to rest and avoid strenuous physical activity," al-Jamal told Al Jazeera. "We're really struggling."

Israel's military offensive has killed at least 37,124 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the territory's health ministry.

The toll includes at least 40 deaths over the past 24 hours, the ministry said yesterday.

The offensive has brought widespread devastation to Gaza and displaced most of its 2.4 million inhabitants, reports AFP.​

 

[Saif]

Baby Ahmad was beheaded by Israel, with a US bomb

AHMAD Al-Najjar was a happy one-year old child from Gaza. He loved trampolines, balls, and cats. Born as the youngest of his four siblings, his father liked to call him ‘bobba’ or ‘baby.’..

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Baby Ahmad was beheaded by Israel, with a US bomb
11 June, 2024, 00:00

Photo of 18-month-old Ahmad Al-Najjar (right), photo of his father holding up his beheaded corpse (left) (screenshot). | Scheerpost.com

On Sunday night, May 26, Ahmad became the symbol of the unspeakable horror of genocide in Gaza after Israel bombed his family tent in north Rafah, writes Seraj Assi

AHMAD Al-Najjar was a happy one-year old child from Gaza. He loved trampolines, balls, and cats. Born as the youngest of his four siblings, his father liked to call him 'bobba' or 'baby.'

On Sunday night, May 26, Ahmad became the symbol of the unspeakable horror of genocide in Gaza after Israel bombed his family tent in north Rafah, killing him along with his mother, Faten, his sister, Houda, and his brother, Arkan. Though he was bombed beyond recognition, Ahmad was the most recognisable victim of the tents massacre in Rafah, which burned alive, beheaded, and killed at least 45 Palestinians, most of them women and children, and wounded hundreds others.

Rafah's tents massacre was one of the most heinous assaults on Palestinian civilians in recent memory. International media and Palestinian sources reported that Israel blitzed the camp where displaced Palestinians were sheltering in tents with seven massive US bombs weighing 2,000 pounds each. Meanwhile, weapons experts told CNN and The New York Times that they identified the remains of Boeing-made GBU-39s in the rubble.

The bombarded refugee tents had been designated by Israel as a 'safe area' for civilians. Rafah was described by UNICEF officials as 'a city of children, who have nowhere safe to go in Gaza.' It was believed to be Gaza's last refuge, and the limit of the Biden administration's 'red line' in Gaza. This grim reality, however, did not prevent the Biden administration from shipping thousands of bombs and weapons to Israel, despite Israel's repeated threats to invade Rafah. As Israeli forces were pounding Rafah's refugee camps, US presidential candidate Nikki Haley was in Israel signing 'finish them' on the very US bombs that were used to slaughter children in Gaza.

It is the children of Gaza who are forced to live the most unspeakable horrors while being denied the same outrage that Israel's invented horrors have generated among US and Western politicians

Widely circulated footage from the massacre showed a night of unspeakable horror: bodies burned to ashes, charred and blackened beyond recognition; beheaded children, decapitated and ripped apart by US bombs; parents clutching their dead and burned children, screaming in horror; rescuers pulling people's charred remains from the burning tents; wounded victims transferred to the hospital with horrific and gruesome injuries.

But the most horrifying footage from that night showed a man holding up what appeared to be the body of a small child who had been beheaded. It belonged to Baby Ahmad, who was wearing black pants and an orange shirt that night. His left leg was also severed in the blast. The family never found Ahmad's head, and they buried him without it. He was put in the same body bag with his sister Houda. His mother and brother Arkan were buried in separate body bags.

His surviving brothers, Muhammad and Yamin, both saw the ravaged body of their little brother that night. In an interview with Al Jazeera, Ahmad's father, Abdel Hafez, and two brothers, the only survivors of the family, speak up about the unspeakable horror they had to endure that night.

'I did not believed he was beheaded in the bombing until I saw it with my own eyes at the Tal As-Sultan clinic,' says Abdel Hafez. 'His head was separated from his body.'

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

 

[Saif]

Hamas accepts UN-backed Gaza truce plan

Hamas accepts a UN resolution backing a plan to end the war with Israel in Gaza and is ready to negotiate details, a senior official of the Palestinian group said on...

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Hamas accepts UN-backed Gaza truce plan
New Age Desk 12 June, 2024, 00:05

Children wait for food being distributed at a camp for internally displaced people where they live due to the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday, amid the on-going conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas group. | AFP photo

Hamas accepts a UN resolution backing a plan to end the war with Israel in Gaza and is ready to negotiate details, a senior official of the Palestinian group said on Tuesday in what America's top diplomat called 'a hopeful sign,' reports The Algemeiner.

Conversations on plans for Gaza after the Israel-Hamas war ends will continue on Tuesday afternoon and in the next couple of days, US secretary of state Antony Blinken said in Tel Aviv after talks with Israeli leaders. 'It's imperative that we have these plans,' he added.

Blinken met Israeli officials on Tuesday in a push to end the eight-month-old Israeli air and ground war against Hamas in Gaza, a day after president Joe Biden's proposal for a truce was approved by the UN Security Council.

Ahead of Blinken's trip, Israel and Hamas both repeated hardline positions that have undermined previous mediation to end the fighting, while Israel has pressed on with its campaign in central and southern Gaza.

The United States on Tuesday promised more than $400 million in new aid for the Palestinians at an emergency summit in Jordan, where world leaders backed a US push for a ceasefire as the only ultimate solution to help war-ravaged Gaza.

Jordan and Egypt called the urgent talks on the Dead Sea as aid groups warned conditions were worse than ever in Gaza, with virtually the whole population of more than two million people relying on sporadic aid deliveries.

On Tuesday, however, senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri, who is based outside Gaza, said the group, which rules the Palestinian enclave, accepted the ceasefire resolution and was ready to negotiate over the details. It was up to Washington to ensure that Israel abides by it, he added.

He said Hamas accepted the formula stipulating the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza and a swap of hostages held in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners jailed in Israel.

'The US administration is facing a real test to carry out its commitments in compelling the occupation to immediately end the war

in an implementation of the UN Security Council resolution,' Abu Zuhri told Reuters.

Blinken said the Hamas statement was 'a hopeful sign' but definitive word was still needed from the Hamas leadership inside Israeli-besieged Gaza. 'That's what counts, and that's what we don't have yet.'

The war began when Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists stormed into southern Israel from Gaza on October 7, killing more than 1,200 people and seizing more than 250 as hostages.

Israel responded with a military campaign in Gaza aimed at freeing the hostages and destroying Hamas' military and governing capabilities.

Biden's proposal envisages a ceasefire and release of hostages in exchange for Palestinians jailed in Israel in stages, ultimately leading to a permanent end to the war.

Israel has said it will agree only to temporary pauses in the war until Hamas is defeated, while Hamas has countered it will not accept a deal that does not guarantee the war will end.

Blinken, speaking to reporters before departing for neighbouring Jordan, said his talks were also addressing day-after plans for Gaza, including security, governance, and rebuilding the enclave.

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