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

[Saif]

Gaza belongs to its people

US "taking over" Gaza is an outrageous idea

www.thedailystar.net

Gaza belongs to its people
US "taking over" Gaza is an outrageous idea

VISUAL: STAR

The US may no longer be the beacon of hope it once was, but there are still things expected from the country as a global power. Chief among them is a responsibility to uphold basic human rights and international law. This expectation has been tested time and again, but rarely as starkly as it is now, with Donald Trump's alarming plan for Gaza. On Tuesday evening, at a joint news conference alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the US president proposed "long-term ownership" of Gaza by the United States. This came after he repeatedly called in recent days for the war-ravaged territory's 1.2 million residents to be resettled. While officials later tried to walk back the takeover proposal amid fierce criticism, saying any displacement of Gazans would be temporary, Trump on Thursday restated his vision, suggesting his determination to go ahead with it.

For decades, US foreign policy—despite its inconsistencies—has at least paid lip service to a two-state solution for the peaceful coexistence of Israel and Palestine. Trump's approach obliterates that pretence. If implemented, it would not only mean "ethnic cleansing" in Gaza—as the UN chief has rightly called it—but also set an extremely dangerous precedent where stronger powers might feel emboldened to resolve territorial disputes through mass expulsions.

This should send shivers down the spine of anyone who values justice and human rights. For decades, US foreign policy—despite its inconsistencies—has at least paid lip service to a two-state solution for the peaceful coexistence of Israel and Palestine. Trump's approach obliterates that pretence. If implemented, it would not only mean "ethnic cleansing" in Gaza—as the UN chief has rightly called it—but also set an extremely dangerous precedent where stronger powers might feel emboldened to resolve territorial disputes through mass expulsions. It is also deeply insulting for the Gazans after the genocide and devastation they endured at the hands of Israel over the last 15 months. Suggesting that those still alive should be uprooted, cast aside, and scattered across unwilling nations is outrageous, to say the least.

Naturally, Palestinians and Arab states where Trump and Netanyahu want Gazans to be resettled have rejected the proposal. Similarly, the world must also stand firm against this effort to make the suffering of Gazans permanent by robbing them of their homeland. Reportedly, emboldened by Trump, Israel has already instructed its military to formulate a plan for their "voluntary" departures. In other words, a permanent displacement may already be in motion even though they have only recently begun to return to the rubble they once called home following a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. All nations must come forward to prevent this modern-day holocaust.​

 

[Saif]

Can Trump actually 'take over' Gaza?

International laws can't and won't stop him. So then, what can?

www.thedailystar.net

Can Trump actually 'take over' Gaza?

US President Donald Trump welcomes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the entrance of the White House in Washington DC, on February 4, 2025. PHOTO: REUTERS

Standing beside Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in front of the press in the White House, US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday, "We will take over Gaza. We will own it." He went on to say that Gaza could become "the Riviera of the Middle East," where the "world's people" would live. His statement aligns with that of his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who told an audience at Harvard University last year that Israel should remove civilians while it "cleans up" the Gaza Strip, and that Gaza had very valuable "waterfront property."

Trump's announcement sent shockwaves through the world, including staunch Israeli allies such as Germany. Human rights organisations immediately denounced the proposal as ethnic cleansing of the residents of Gaza, the Palestinians, to neighbouring countries—a plan that was rejected by Jordan and Egypt earlier. Many Democrats, who backed Joe Biden's 15 months of financing the mass murder of approximately 61,000 Palestinians in Gaza, found Trump's plan "insane," and extremely immoral. But, of course, it's morally bankrupt and that's besides the point. To understand Donald Trump's intentions, the man who wrote the book Trump: The Art of the Deal, humanitarian values should be put aside. He views geopolitical relationships and foreign policy as real estate business deals, and realising that can take us closer to understanding whether he actually meant what he said and whether he can, or will, do it.

It's easy to dismiss Trump's remarks as unsurprising White colonisation. It is true that the plan shows a sharp departure from long-standing US policy of symbolic "two-state solution." But it must be noted that we are here today because of decades of double standards of that very US policy in the first place, which unconditionally backed Israeli occupation in Palestinian territories and still talked about "two states" and "peace." Sure, Biden had not suggested a plan so aggressive, but his administration had gone around trying to find an "international coalition" that would temporarily govern Gaza after the war. The fact is, US foreign policy has never intentionally recognised Nakba as a root cause of Palestinian resentment towards Israel, and no government has truly cared about Palestinians' rights to self-determination. US national and geopolitical interests in the Middle East simply lie with strong-arming Israel. One could argue that Trump has replaced "Israel" with "United States" in terms of who will own and govern Palestinian land and Palestinian people.

International law, so to speak, has not really been a force to stop any atrocities in Gaza so far. Israel has openly committed crimes against humanity, and Netanyahu stood in the press conference with the US president despite an arrest warrant against him by the International Criminal Court (ICC). The US government's invasion of Afghanistan, for example—on the premise of self-defence—did kill innocent civilians, despite claims that it was only targeting terrorists and enemy combatants. The US has ratified both The Hague and Geneva conventions that render unjustified killing of innocent civilians or unnecessary destruction of property as a violation of international law (however, they don't constitute war crimes). Though the country ratified both conventions, it repeatedly violated them in Afghanistan. The US government denied many instances of civilian suffering until The New York Times published declassified records. Despite the documentation, none of the US military officials involved in strikes were held accountable. Only the victims paid the price for the US military's "mistake." We have seen Netanyahu use the phrase "tragic mistake" to refer to the deadly fire in refugee tents in Rafah last year, after images of charcoaled bodies and a beheaded child went viral.

As history is laden with unaccountability, it should be clear that laws will not stop Trump's plan. So then, what can? Geopolitical relationships with the Arab states, and especially, Saudi Arabia, the most powerful US ally in the region.

In 2020, Trump managed to persuade UAE and Bahrain to sign his Abraham Accords. UAE's reservation to signing the deal was Palestinian statehood and the condition was suspension of Israeli settlers' plans to annex the West Bank. Trump hit the middle ground between the Israeli far-right and UAE to score the deal. Trump's transactionalism embedded in his foreign policy that predates his outlandish statements presents a few questions: is the plan a calculated move to tame both Hamas and Israeli far-right? Or is it a negotiating tactic with the Arab states, particularly Saudi Arabia? Both are plausible.

For Hamas, Trump's plan applies maximum pressure to give up the control of Gaza and simply maintain a presence there. The flip side of Trump's pressure could be Hamas pulling out of the ceasefire agreement, which jeopardises the Israeli hostages returning, and the second phase of the ceasefire which includes a permanent end to the war and withdrawal of Israeli troops. The latter holds little meaning now as Trump suggests Palestinians should leave their homeland anyways. Hamas, which has been destabilised, might settle for maintaining some sort of presence of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, as it would not be able to endure against US troops. On the other hand, far-right extremist Israelis—specifically those who were unhappy with Netanyahu and threatened to collapse his coalition for the ceasefire deal—positively reacted to Trump's plan. An expulsion of 2.5 million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip has been a fantasy of the Israeli far-right, and Netanyahu has faced criticism for not having a "day after Gaza" plan. When Trump made the announcement, Netanyahu seemed incredibly delighted that Trump's idea could reset his own difficult choices in Israel.

Worldwide uproar followed Trump's statement, and Saudi Arabia's foreign ministry was the first to react to the announcement. They affirmed that the nation's position on the establishment of a Palestinian state is "non-negotiable," firm and unwavering with "no compromise," which could presumably refer to the UAE normalisation deal. The statement added that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman "clearly and unequivocally reaffirmed this stance."

For the past 15 months of Palestinian slaughter in Gaza, many of the Arab states have been on the sideline, with Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia clamping down on pro-Palestinian protests in their own nations. All these nations have authoritarian governments who view grassroots activism as a threat to their regimes. "Arab states today do not like Palestinian nationalism because Palestinian nationalism is a source of popular mobilisation on the Arab street," according to Nader Hashemi, director of the Prince Alwaleed Center for Christian-Muslim Understanding at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. But in order to keep pro-Palestinian sentiments under control, Arab states have catered to public opinion with token gestures to support Palestine against Israel and succumbing to Trump's plan would fuel public anger.

On the geopolitical front, relations with the US have been a source of security aid and financial assistance for some Arab states, and have prevented them from confronting Israel. For Mohammed bin Salman, eliminating Hamas and Hezbollah, who do not exist in Saudi Arabia, has been in his best interest against archrival Iran to maintain his nation's dominance in the Middle East, and to ensure no politicisation of Islam can topple him in his country. Normalising relationships with Israel, too, is in his interest as it's good for business—an ideology he shares with Trump. Mohammed bin Salman wants deals with the US for security and weapons, and Trump has already talked about asking Saudi Arabia to invest $1 trillion in the US economy and lower oil prices. Here, Trump's Gaza plan puts a spanner in the works. Mohammed bin Salman would be careful so as to not anger his citizens by supporting Trump's plan to expel Palestinians from Gaza. Making compromises could risk his position domestically, while losing deals with the US would not serve him geopolitically.

Egypt, on the other hand, needs US money to exist, and also serves as a lynchpin containing a potential powder keg of radical sentiment that, if detonated, would puncture European and US interests. Jordan, as well, is not only a close ally of the US, but dependent on US aid. Trump has already threatened economic blockades for Jordan, and King Abdullah is scheduled to visit the White House next week. But Egypt and Jordan can avert an economic blow if the wealthy Gulf nations unite against Trump's Gaza plan. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has indicated that Jordan can change its position and accept Palestinian refugees from Gaza.

Whether Trump can coerce Arab States to get what he wants remains to be seen. The US president made the statement with the prime minister of Israel beside him, and to analyse it with a reactionary perspective such as the "madman" theory, as David Remnick of the New Yorker has done, only circulates blame games at those who voted for Trump, believing his campaign promise that the US would end all foreign wars, especially in Gaza. Trump has intentions in saying what he said, and determining what they are is difficult; he is the harbinger of potent unpredictability.

The Trump administration has made it clear that the "Riviera of the Middle East" would not be made with US funds, supposedly expecting Arab states to foot the bill. Trump's proposal to play around with the lives of Palestinians could very well be a far-reaching offer on the table in exchange for normalisation, or Gaza's reconstruction funded by wealthy Gulf nations. If we think of it as a deal, it also means that he could soften his position, and settle for less. He could very well not move forward if Arab states offer concessions acceptable to his geo-economic agendas. Donald Trump does not always follow through. But whether he does usually depends on short-term gains that portray him as the winner and the strongman who is "reviving America" as the sole superpower—in other words, making America great again.

Ramisa Rob is in-charge of Geopolitical Insights at The Daily Star.​

 

[Saif]

GREAT MARCH OF HOPE: Gaza’s defiance against erasure

THE return of one million Palestinians from southern Gaza to the north on January 27 felt as if history was choreographing one of its most earth-shattering events in recent memory.

www.newagebd.net

GREAT MARCH OF HOPE: Gaza’s defiance against erasure
by Ramzy Baroud 08 February, 2025, 00:24

THE return of one million Palestinians from southern Gaza to the north on January 27 felt as if history was choreographing one of its most earth-shattering events in recent memory.

Hundreds of thousands of people marched along a single street, the coastal Rashid street, at the furthest western stretch of Gaza. Though these displaced masses were cut off from each other in massive displacement camps in central Gaza and the Mawasi region further south, they sang the same songs, chanted the same chants, and used the same talking points.

During their forced displacement, they had no electricity and no means of communication, let alone coordination. They were ordinary people, hauling a few items of clothing and whatever survival tools they had following the unprecedented Israeli genocide. They headed north to homes they knew were likely destroyed by the Israeli army. Yet, they remained committed to their march back to their annihilated cities and refugee camps. Many smiled, others sang religious hymns, and some recited national songs and poems.

A little girl offered a news reporter a poem she composed. ‘I am a Palestinian girl, and I am proud,’ her voice blared. She recited simple but emotional verses about identifying as a ‘strong, resilient Palestinian girl.’ She spoke of her relationship with her family and community as the ‘daughter of heroes, the daughter of Gaza,’ declaring that Gazans ‘prefer death over shame.’ Her return to her destroyed home was a ‘day of victory.’

‘Victory’ was a word repeated by virtually everyone interviewed by the media and countless times on social media. While many, including some sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, openly challenged the Gazans’ view of their perceived ‘victory,’ they failed to appreciate the history of Palestine — indeed, the history of all colonised people who wrested their freedom from the claws of foreign, brutal enemies.

‘Difficulties break some men but make others. No axe is sharp enough to cut the soul of (someone) armed with the hope that he will rise even in the end,’ iconic anti-apartheid South African leader Nelson Mandela wrote in a letter to his wife in 1975 from his prison cell. His words, written in the context of South Africa’s struggle, feel as if they were written for Palestinians, especially Gaza’s latest triumph against erasure — both physical and psychological.

To understand this better, examine what Israeli political and military leaders said about northern Gaza immediately after the start of the genocidal war on October 7, 2023:

Israel will maintain ‘overall security responsibility’ for the Gaza strip ‘for an indefinite period,’ said Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an interview with the ABC News network in November 2023.

One year later, the Israeli army reiterated the same sentiment. In a statement, Israeli Brigadier General Itzik Cohen told Israeli reporters that there would be ‘no return’ for any residents of northern Gaza.

Finance minister Bezalel Smotrich went further. ‘It is possible to create a situation where Gaza’s population will be reduced to half its current size in two years,’ he said on November 26, stating that Israel should re-occupy Gaza and ‘encourage’ the migration of its inhabitants.

Many other Israeli officials and experts repeated the same notion like a predictable chorus. Settler groups held a conference last June to assess real estate opportunities in Gaza. In their minds, they were the only ones with a say over Gaza’s future. Palestinians seemed inconsequential to the wheel of history, controlled, as the powerful arrogantly believed, by Tel Aviv alone.

But the endless mass of people sang, ‘Do you think you can measure up to the free, measure up to the Palestinians?.. We will die before we surrender our home; they call us the freedom fighters.’

Many media outlets, including Israeli ones, reported a sense of shock in Israel as the population returned en masse to a fully destroyed region. The shock does not end there. Israel failed to occupy the north, ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza, or break their collective spirit. Instead, Palestinians emerged stronger, more determined, and, equally frightening for Israel, with a new objective: returning to historic Palestine.

For decades, Israel invested in a singular discourse regarding the internationally recognised Palestinian Right of Return to their homes in historic Palestine. Almost every Israeli leader or top official since the 1948 Nakba (the ‘Catastrophe’ resulting from the destruction of the Palestinian homeland) echoed this. Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak summarised it in 2000 during the Camp David negotiations, when he drew his ‘bottom line’ in any peace deal with the Palestinians: there would be no right of return for Palestinian refugees.

As Gaza has proven, Palestinians do not take their cues from Israel or even those who claim to represent them. As they marched north, four generations of Palestinians walked together, at times holding hands, singing for freedom and return — not only to the north but further north to historic Palestine itself.

Since the Nakba, Israel has insisted it will write the history of the land between the Jordan River and the sea. But Palestinians continue to prove Israel wrong. They survived in Gaza despite genocide. They remained. They returned. They emerged with a sense of victory. They are writing their own history, which, despite immeasurable and unimaginable losses, is also a history of hope and victory.

Countercurrents.org, February 7. Dr Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the editor of The Palestine Chronicle.​

 

[Saif]

Trump’s Gaza plan derails Saudi-Israel ties: analysts

US president Donald Trump’s plan to take over Gaza will imperil attempts to forge landmark ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel and fuel anti-American sentiment in the oil-rich kingdom, analysts said.

www.newagebd.net

Trump’s Gaza plan derails Saudi-Israel ties: analysts
Agence France-Presse . Riyadh 07 February, 2025, 19:08

Pro-Palestinian protesters attend a rally against US President Donald Trump's recent remarks on Gaza and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Sydney on February 7, 2025. | AFP photo

US president Donald Trump’s plan to take over Gaza will imperil attempts to forge landmark ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel and fuel anti-American sentiment in the oil-rich kingdom, analysts said.

Trump’s proposal to redevelop Gaza and oust the more than two million Palestinians living in the territory prompted a global backlash and enraged the Arab world, making it difficult for the Saudis to consider normalisation.

‘If this is going to be his policy, he shut the door on Saudi recognition of Israel,’ James Dorsey, researcher at the Middle East Institute of the National University of Singapore, said.

Recognition of Israel by Saudi Arabia, home to Islam’s holiest sites, is seen as a grand prize of Middle East diplomacy intended to calm chronic tensions in the region.

But Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter and the Middle East’s largest economy, now faces the spectre of instability on its borders if neighbouring Jordan and Egypt suddenly house large numbers of Gaza exiles.

At the same time, Riyadh must maintain cordial relations with Washington, its long-time security guarantor and bulwark against key regional player Iran.

‘When it comes to security, Saudi Arabia has nowhere to go but to Washington,’ Dorsey said. ‘There’s nobody else. It’s not China. They’re not willing and they’re not able.

‘And post-Ukraine, do you want to rely on Russia?’

The Saudis were engaged in tentative talks on normalisation via the United States until the outbreak of the Gaza war, when they paused the negotiations and hardened their position.

They reacted with unusual speed to Trump’s proposal, made during an appearance with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington.

About an hour after his comments, at around 4:00am Saudi time, the foreign ministry posted a statement on X that ‘reaffirms its unequivocal rejection of attempts to displace the Palestinian people from their land’.

In the same statement, the Saudis rejected Netanyahu’s comment that normalisation was ‘going to happen’, repeating their insistence there would be no ties without a Palestinian state.

Trump’s plan carries real risks for Riyadh, which is throwing everything at an ambitious post-oil economic makeover that relies on stability to attract business and tourism.

If Gazans are displaced to Egypt and Jordan, it ‘will weaken two countries essential to regional stability and particularly to Saudi security’, said Saudi researcher Aziz Alghashian.

‘Trump’s plan, coupled with Netanyahu’s approach, poses major risks for Saudi Arabia.

‘It highlights that they are not true partners for peace in Riyadh’s eyes — especially Netanyahu, who appears to want all the benefits without making concessions.’

Trump’s declarations ‘will further destabilise the region and fuel anti-American sentiment, particularly in Saudi Arabia’, said Anna Jacobs, of the International Crisis Group think tank.

‘He is making Saudi-Israel normalisation harder, not easier.’

Andreas Krieg of King’s College London said Saudi Arabia would not agree meekly to normalisation if ordered by Washington.

Prior to the Gaza war, the Saudis were negotiating for security guarantees and help building a civilian nuclear programme in return for Israeli ties.

‘They are not a US vassal state and so they’re not just taking a diktat from Trump,’ said Andreas Krieg of King’s College London.

‘And I think it will stand firm on their positions, willing to negotiate here and there. But the principal red lines remain.

‘Nobody in Saudi Arabia has an interest in selling out Palestinian statehood. That is the last and the most important bargaining chip that the Saudis have in terms of authority and legitimacy in the Arab and Muslim world.’

But the question is how Saudi Arabia and its 39-year-old de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, will proceed.

‘I don’t think that the Saudis will take any major steps now,’ said Krieg.

‘They obviously have their own levers that they can use for pressure on America, particularly in the energy sector. I don’t think the Saudis will want to use it at this point.’​

 

[Saif]

Hostage families urge Israel to complete Gaza truce deal

An Israeli campaign group urged the government on Friday to stick with the Gaza truce ahead of a fifth hostage-prisoner swap, after explosive comments by US president Donald Trump raised questions over the future of the deal.

www.newagebd.net

Hostage families urge Israel to complete Gaza truce deal
Agence France-Presse . Jerusalem 08 February, 2025, 01:52

An Israeli campaign group urged the government on Friday to stick with the Gaza truce ahead of a fifth hostage-prisoner swap, after explosive comments by US president Donald Trump raised questions over the future of the deal.

The scheduled exchange on Saturday comes after Trump declared that the United States would ‘take over Gaza’ and move Palestinians out of the territory, sparking uproar across the Middle East and beyond.

Israel has since ordered its military to prepare for the ‘voluntary’ relocation of Gazans, while Hamas has rejected Trump’s plans as ‘absolutely unacceptable’.

‘An entire nation demands to see the hostages return home now is the time to ensure the agreement is completed — until the very last one,’ the Hostage and Missing Families Forum said in a statement on Friday.

Since January 19, Israel and Hamas have completed four swaps as part of the first stage of the Gaza ceasefire agreement.

Palestinian militants, led by Hamas, have so far freed 18 hostages in exchange for around 600 Palestinian prisoners released from Israeli jails.

The fragile ceasefire, mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States, aims to secure the release of 33 hostages during the first 42-day phase of the agreement.

The fifth swap is scheduled for Saturday, but as of now, neither side has disclosed how many hostages Hamas will release or how many prisoners Israel will free in return.

Amid the uncertainty triggered by Trump’s remarks, Yaela David, whose brother Evyatar is still being held in Gaza, urged ‘the negotiating team to act today to complete the final details of the deal and ensure the return of all hostages’.

‘This must happen under this deal, and if not, there will remain a huge black stain on the history of our state,’ she said.

Despite regional and international backlash — and initial backtracking by members of his administration — Trump has doubled down on his statement.

‘The Gaza Strip would be turned over to the United States by Israel at the conclusion of fighting,’ he said on his Truth Social platform on Thursday.

‘No soldiers by the US would be needed! Stability for the region would reign!!!’

After Trump first floated the idea, Israeli defence minister Israel Katz announced that he had ordered the military to prepare a plan to allow the ‘voluntary departure’ of Gazans from the territory ‘to any country willing to accept them’.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu also voiced support for Trump’s plan, announced at a joint press conference between the two leaders, calling it ‘the first original idea to be raised in years’.

Hamas, however, condemned the remarks as ‘absolutely unacceptable’.

‘Trump’s remarks about Washington taking control of Gaza amount to an open declaration of intent to occupy the territory,’ spokesman Hazem Qassem said.

‘Gaza is for its people and they will not leave.’

Negotiations for the second stage of the ceasefire were set to begin on Monday, but there have been no details on the status of the talks.

The second stage aims to secure the release of more hostages and pave the way for a permanent end to the war, which began on October 7, 2023 with Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel.

During the attack, militants took 251 hostages to Gaza. Seventy-six remain in captivity, including 34 whom the Israeli military says are dead.​