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

[Saif]

UNGA calls for unconditional Gaza ceasefire

he UN General Assembly on Wednesday overwhelmingly adopted a resolution calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in Gaza, a symbolic gesture rejected by the United States and Israel...

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UNGA calls for unconditional Gaza ceasefire
Agence France-Presse . United Nations, United States 12 December, 2024, 06:15

The UN General Assembly on Wednesday overwhelmingly adopted a resolution calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in Gaza, a symbolic gesture rejected by the United States and Israel.

The resolution –– adopted by a vote of 158-9, with 13 abstentions –– urges ‘an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire,’ and ‘the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages’ –– wording similar to a text vetoed by Washington in the Security Council in November.

At that time, Washington used its veto power on the council –– as it has before –– to protect its ally Israel, which has been at war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip since the Palestinian militant group’s October 7, 2023 attack.

It has insisted on the idea of making a ceasefire conditional on the release of all hostages in Gaza, saying otherwise that Hamas has no incentive to free those in captivity.

Deputy US ambassador Robert Wood repeated that position Wednesday, saying it would be ‘shameful and wrong’ to adopt the text.

Ahead of the vote, Israel’s UN envoy Danny Danon said, ‘The resolutions before the assembly today are beyond logic. (...) The vote today is not a vote for compassion. It is a vote for complicity.’

The General Assembly often finds itself taking up measures that cannot get through the Security Council, which has been largely paralysed on hot-button issues such as Gaza and Ukraine due to internal politics, and this time is no different.

The resolution, which is non-binding, demands ‘immediate access’ to widespread humanitarian aid for the citizens of Gaza, especially in the besieged north of the territory.

Dozens of representatives of UN member states addressed the Assembly before the vote to offer their support to the Palestinians.

‘Gaza doesn’t exist anymore. It is destroyed,’ said Slovenia’s UN envoy Samuel Zbogar. ‘History is the harshest critic of inaction.’

That criticism was echoed by Algeria’s deputy UN ambassador Nacim Gaouaoui, who said, ‘The price of silence and failure in the face of the Palestinian tragedy is a very heavy price, and it will be heavier tomorrow.’

The war between Israel and the Hamas that began in October 2023 killed 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures. That count includes hostages who died or were killed while being held in Gaza.

Militants abducted 251 hostages, 96 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed at least 44,805 people, a majority of them civilians, according to data from the Hamas-run health ministry that is considered reliable by the United Nations.

‘Gaza today is the bleeding heart of Palestine,’ Palestinian UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour said last week during the first day of debate in the Assembly’s special session on the issue.

‘The images of our children burning in tents, with no food in their bellies and no hopes and no horizon for the future, and after having endured pain and loss for more than a year, should haunt the conscience of the world and prompt action to end this nightmare,’ he said, calling for an end to the ‘impunity.’

After Wednesday’s vote, he said, ‘we will keep knocking on the doors of the Security Council and the General Assembly until we see an immediate and unconditional ceasefire put in place.’

The Gaza resolution calls on UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to present ‘proposals on how the United Nations could help to advance accountability’ by using existing mechanisms or creating new ones based on past experience.

The Assembly, for example, created an international mechanism to gather evidence of crimes committed in Syria starting from the outbreak of civil war in 2011.

A second resolution calling on Israel to respect the mandate of the UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees –– UNRWA –– and allow it to continue its operations was passed Wednesday by a vote of 159-9 with 11 abstentions.

Israel has voted to ban the organisation starting January 28, after accusing some UNRWA employees of taking part in Hamas’s devastating attack.​

 

[Saif]

Israeli strike kills 22 in Gaza

Gaza’s civil defence agency said on Wednesday that an overnight Israeli air strike in the northern part of the Palestinian territory killed at least 22 people, including women and children...

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Israeli strike kills 22 in Gaza
Agence France-Presse . Palestinian Territories 11 December, 2024, 22:36

Two boys sit on plastic chairs amidst debris near the rubble and remains of a collapsed building in Gaza City on Wednesday amid the on-going war in the Palestinian territory between Israel and Hamas. | AFP photo

Gaza’s civil defence agency said on Wednesday that an overnight Israeli air strike in the northern part of the Palestinian territory killed at least 22 people, including women and children.

‘At least 22 people were martyred in the massacre committed by the occupation military after it bombed a house belonging to the Abu al-Tarabish family near Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza,’ agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said.

Bassal said that an Israeli jet had fired three missiles at the house around midnight, adding the strike completely destroyed the three-storey structure.

More than 50 people were living in the house, he said, with many still under the rubble.

‘Rescuers were unable to evacuate the martyrs or the wounded until this morning,’ said Jaber Alian, 30, who witnessed the strike from a house near the hospital.

He said there were several other bombings across the northern parts of the territory during the night.

The Israeli military confirmed it carried out a strike in the Jabalia area near the Kamal Adwan hospital on Tuesday night.

‘According to an initial examination, the number of casualties resulting from the strike published in the media is inaccurate and does not align with the information held by the Israeli military,’ it said in a statement.

‘The military is continuing to examine the incident.’

It did not give a toll of its own from the strike.

For several weeks, the Israeli military has been engaged in a sweeping operation in northern Gaza, particularly in Jabalia, where it says Hamas militants had been regrouping.

In another strike in central Gaza on Wednesday morning, at least seven people were killed when an Israeli warplane struck the house of the Al-Bayoumi family in Nuseirat refugee camp, Bassal said.

The military, meanwhile, said two projectiles crossed from central Gaza into Israel on Wednesday, but were intercepted by the air force.

The war in Gaza broke out after Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7 last year, resulting in the deaths of 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

The count includes hostages who died or were killed while being held in Gaza after they were seized by Palestinian militants during the attack.

Militants abducted 251 hostages, 96 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed at least 44,805 people, a majority of them civilians, according to data from the Hamas-run health ministry that is considered reliable by the UN.​

 

[Saif]

Israeli strikes on Gaza kill 36

At least 36 Palestinians were killed early yesterday in Israeli bombings of various areas in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.

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Israeli strikes on Gaza kill 36

Children, women among casualties; Israel, Palestinians explore truce with US envoy

At least 36 Palestinians were killed early yesterday in Israeli bombings of various areas in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.

Children and women were among seven killed when a residential building in Gaza City's al-Jalaa Street was bombed, WAFA said. Another 15 were killed in the bombing of a house where displaced people were taking shelter, west of Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip, the agency added.

In the western area of Rafah city, south of the Gaza Strip, 13 Palestinians were killed and others were injured, according to WAFA, in a strike that hit people providing aid.

Earlier, medics said at least 30 people were also wounded in the Rafah attack, with several in critical condition.

In the city of Khan Younis, another group of men tasked with security for aid shipments was hit by a separate Israeli airstrike that wounded several of them, medics said. At least 44,835 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's offensive on Gaza since October 7, 2023.

Meanwhile, Israelis and Palestinians are signalling new efforts to forge a ceasefire deal, their first in a year, to pause the fighting in Gaza and return to Israel at least some of the 100 hostages still held in the Palestinian enclave.

The guarded optimism emerges as US President Joe Biden's national security adviser Jake Sullivan held talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel yesterday before heading to Egypt and Qatar, co-mediators with the US on a deal.​

 

[Saif]

Israeli strikes kill 20 in Gaza

Israeli troops killed at least 20 Palestinians, most of them in the northern Gaza Strip, on airstrikes and other attacks on targets that included a school sheltering displaced Gazans, medics and residents said yesterday.

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Israeli strikes kill 20 in Gaza
Troops raid school sheltering displaced Palestinians in Beit Hanoun

Israeli troops killed at least 20 Palestinians, most of them in the northern Gaza Strip, on airstrikes and other attacks on targets that included a school sheltering displaced Gazans, medics and residents said yesterday.

They said at least 11 of the dead were killed in three separate Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City houses. The others were killed in the towns of Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and Jabalia camp.

Residents said clusters of houses were bombed and some set ablaze in the three towns. The Israeli army has been operating in the towns for over two months.

In Beit Hanoun, Israeli forces besieged families sheltering in Khalil Aweida school before storming it and ordering them to head towards Gaza City, the medics and residents said.

Medics said several people were killed and wounded during the raid on the school while the army detained many men. The number killed was not immediately clear.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli army. Since October last year, Israel's offensive in Gaza has killed almost 45,000 people, mostly civilians, according to authorities in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, displaced nearly the entire population and left much of the enclave in ruins.

Palestinians accuse Israel of carrying out ethnic cleansing to depopulate the areas at the northern edge to create a buffer zone. Israel denies it and says the campaign targets Hamas members and aims to prevent them from regrouping.

A bid by Egypt, Qatar and the United States to reach a truce has gained momentum in recent weeks, yet there has been no news of a breakthrough.​

 

[Saif]

Israeli strikes kill 40 Palestinians

Qatar-based news channel Al Jazeera said its cameraman Ahmed al-Louh was killed ‘in an Israeli bombardment’ that targeted Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza...

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Israeli strikes kill 40 Palestinians
Agence France-Presse . Palestine 16 December, 2024, 04:22

Gaza civil defence agency said that Israeli strikes across Palestine on Sunday killed at least 40 people, including several children, an Al Jazeera TV cameraman and three rescuers.

Qatar-based news channel Al Jazeera said its cameraman Ahmed al-Louh was killed ‘in an Israeli bombardment’ that targeted Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.

Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal confirmed Louh was killed in the strike that ‘targeted the Civil Defence site’ in Nuseirat camp, also killing three members of the rescue agency.

The Israeli military confirmed in a statement that it killed Louh, claiming that he was an Islamic Jihad member and ‘previously served as a platoon commander’ for the militant group which has fought alongside Hamas in Gaza.

The military said the civil defence site was being used as a ‘command and control centre’ by Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Israel’s military has repeatedly accused Al Jazeera journalists of links to Hamas or its ally Islamic Jihad.

Al Jazeera has fiercely denied the accusations and said Israel -- which has passed a law to ban the network -- has systematically targeted its employees in Gaza.

Louh is the fifth Al Jazeera journalist to be killed since the war in Gaza began, and the network's office in the territory has been bombed.

Later on Sunday, Bassal told AFP that an Israeli strike on a school used as shelter by displaced Palestinians in southern Gaza’s main city killed at least 12 people, including a number of children.

‘One missile hit the third floor of the school’ in Khan Yunis, also injuring 35 people, Bassal said.

Contacted by AFP, the Israeli military said it was looking into the report.

Another strike on a house in Shujaiya, east of Gaza City, killed six people, according to the civil defence spokesman.

Bassal earlier told AFP that rescuers working through the night recovered the bodies of 18 people, including three children.

He also reported more dead in a strike on a house in central Gaza City and another that his a tent sheltering dozens of displaced people in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.

AFP images showed distraught relatives mourning the bodies of loved ones at a hospital in Gaza City. Some corpses lay on the floor covered in blankets.

On Sunday, the military confirmed it had carried out strikes in the northern Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia areas.

‘The troops struck dozens of terrorists from both the air and ground and additional terrorists were apprehended’ in Beit Hanoun, it said.

‘In Beit Lahia, troops eliminated terrorists and located and dismantled large quantities of weapons, including explosives and dozens of grenades,’ Israel’s military said.

The statement did not specify when these operations took place.

The military also said it targeted a clinic in northern Gaza, accusing Hamas of using it as a ‘command and control centre’ and storage site for weapons.

The war was sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Since then, Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 44,976 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.

The violence has displaced the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million population, with many people forced to flee multiple times.

The Israeli military has been conducting a large-scale operation in northern Gaza for several weeks, stating that its objective is to prevent Hamas fighters from regrouping.

In early December, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres highlighted the devastating toll of the conflict and the urgent need for international action.

‘Malnutrition is rampant... Famine is imminent. Meanwhile, the health system has collapsed,’ Guterres said.

Medics in Gaza report severe shortages of medicines in hospitals amid the ongoing military assault.

‘We are suffering from a shortage of medical staff as a result of the targeting and the martyrdom of a large number of doctors and nurses,’ said Hossam Abu Safiyeh, director of Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza, in a statement o journalists.

He said Israeli air strikes and shelling continued to target the hospital and surrounding areas, exacerbating the crisis and endangering both patients and staff.

Israel’s military has denied targeting the hospital directly.​