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

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Netanyahu says he will not quit politics if he receives a pardon

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that he would not retire from politics if he receives a pardon from the country’s president in his years-long corruption trial. Asked by a reporter if planned on retiring from political life if he receives a pardon, Netanyahu replied:

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Netanyahu says he will not quit politics if he receives a pardon

REUTERS
Published :
Dec 07, 2025 21:59
Updated :
Dec 07, 2025 21:59

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu adjusts the headphones during a joint press conference with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (not pictured) in Jerusalem Sunday, Dec. 7, 2025. Photo : Ariel Schalit/Pool via REUTERS

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that he would not retire from politics if he receives a pardon from the country’s president in his years-long corruption trial.

Asked by a reporter if planned on retiring from political life if he receives a pardon, Netanyahu replied: “no”.

Netanyahu last month asked President Isaac Herzog for a pardon, with lawyers for the prime minister arguing that frequent court appearances were hindering Netanyahu’s ability to govern and that a pardon would be good for the country.

Pardons in Israel have typically been granted only after legal proceedings have concluded and the accused has been convicted. There is no precedent for issuing a pardon mid-trial.

Netanyahu has repeatedly denied wrongdoing in response to the charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, and his lawyers have said that the prime minister still believes the legal proceedings, if concluded, would result in a complete acquittal.

US President Donald Trump wrote to Herzog, before Netanyahu made his request, urging the Israeli president to consider granting the prime minister a pardon.

Some Israeli opposition politicians have argued that any pardon should be conditional on Netanyahu retiring from politics and admitting guilt. Others have said the prime minister must first call national elections, which are due by October 2026.​

 

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Hamas says no Gaza truce second phase

Hamas said on Tuesday that the Gaza ceasefire plan cannot proceed to its second phase as long as Israeli ‘violations’ persist and called on mediators to pressure Israel to respect the agreement...

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Hamas says no Gaza truce second phase
Israel ‘continues violations’

AFP photo

Hamas said on Tuesday that the Gaza ceasefire plan cannot proceed to its second phase as long as Israeli ‘violations’ persist and called on mediators to pressure Israel to respect the agreement.

The US-sponsored ceasefire, in effect since October 10, halted the war that began after Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. But it remains fragile as Israel and Hamas accuse each other almost daily of breaches.

Meanwhile, an Israeli official said that authorities would allow the Allenby crossing on the Israeli-controlled border between Jordan and the occupied West Bank to reopen on Wednesday to aid trucks destined for Gaza for the first time since late September.

Hamas political bureau member Hossam Badran accused Israel of failing to respect the Gaza ceasefire deal, noting that under its terms, Israel should have reopened the Rafah crossing with Egypt and increased the volume of aid entering the territory.

He urged the mediators, who include Egypt, Qatar and the United States, to pressure Israel ‘to complete the implementation of the first phase of the ceasefire agreement’.

Under the terms of the deal, Palestinian militants committed to releasing the remaining 48 living and dead captives held in the territory. All of the hostages have so far been released except for one body.

In exchange, Israel has released nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in its custody and returned the bodies of hundreds of dead Palestinians.

The first phase of the truce also stipulates that significantly more aid enter Gaza.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he expects the second phase of the deal to begin soon but Badran said it could not start ‘as long as the occupation Israel continues its violations’.

In the announcement of the opening of Allenby crossing, the Israeli official said in a statement that ‘aid trucks destined for the Gaza Strip will proceed under escort and security, following a thorough security inspection’.

Israel closed the crossing in the Jordan Valley, also known as the King Hussein Bridge, after a Jordanian truck driver shot dead an Israeli soldier and a reserve officer at the border in September.

Israel mostly reopened the crossing to travellers a few days later, but not to humanitarian aid destined for the Gaza Strip, which has been left devastated by more than two years of war.

Under the initial steps of the ceasefire plan, Israeli troops withdrew to positions behind a so-called ‘Yellow Line’ in Gaza, though they remain in control of more than half of the territory.

Israel’s military chief, Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, was quoted as saying on Sunday that the demarcation line was the ‘new border line’.

Badran on Tuesday slammed Zamir’s comments. ‘The statements clearly reveal the criminal occupation’s lack of commitment to the ceasefire agreement,’ he said.

The second stage of the truce plan concerns disarming Hamas, the further withdrawal of Israeli forces as a transitional authority is established, and the deployment of an international stabilisation force.

Israel has said the next phase cannot begin until the body of the last Gaza captive, the Israeli Ran Gvili, is handed over.

A final goal of the agreement is the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza in phases if certain conditions are met.

Hamas has said it is ready to hand over its weapons to the government of a future Palestinian state on the condition that the Israeli occupation ends.

The Gaza war was sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people.

Israel’s retaliatory assault on Gaza has killed at least 70,366 people, according to figures from the territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.

The ministry says since the ceasefire came into effect, 377 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire. Israel’s military has reported three soldiers killed during the same period.​

 

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Desperate Gazans pull iron bars from rubble to construct tents and scratch out a living

As winter bites in Gaza, displaced Palestinians set out every day to homes destroyed by Israel. There they rip out iron rods from the walls and use them to prop up their flimsy tents or sell to scratch out a living in an enclave that will take years to recover from war. The rods have become a ho

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Desperate Gazans pull iron bars from rubble to construct tents and scratch out a living

REUTERS
Published :
Dec 12, 2025 00:15
Updated :
Dec 12, 2025 00:22

Palestinian workers break concrete to extract steel bars from destroyed homes, relying only on simple hand tools amid a severe shortage of construction materials caused by long-standing restrictions on the entry of cement and iron, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, Dec 9, 2025. Photo : REUTERS/Haseeb Alwazeer

As winter bites in Gaza, displaced Palestinians set out every day to homes destroyed by Israel. There they rip out iron rods from the walls and use them to prop up their flimsy tents or sell to scratch out a living in an enclave that will take years to recover from war.

The rods have become a hot item in Gaza, where they are twisted up in the wreckage left by an Israeli military campaign that spared few homes. Some residents spend days pounding away at thick cement to extract them, others do the back-breaking work for a week or more.

With only rudimentary tools such as shovels, pickaxes and hammers, work proceeds at a snail's pace.

UN SAYS WAR GENERATED 61 MILLION TONNES OF RUBBLE

Once the bars helped hold up cement walls in family homes, today they are destined for urgently-needed tents as temperatures at night fall. Heavy rainstorms have already submerged many Gazans' meagre belongings, adding to their misery.

Palestinian father-of-six Wael al-Jabra, 53, was putting together a makeshift tent, trying to hammer together two steel bars.

"I don’t have money to buy wood, of course. So, I had to extract this iron from the house. The house is made of five floors. We don’t have anything apart from God and this house that was sheltering us," he said.

In November, the UN Development Programme said that the war in Gaza had generated 61 million tonnes of rubble, citing estimates based on satellite imagery.

Most of it can be cleared within seven years under the right conditions, it said.

A ROD CAN COST $15

A 10-metre metal rod costs displaced families $15 - a steep amount because many barely have cash.

The Palestinian militant group Hamas triggered the conflict after attacking Israel on Oct 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking 251 back to Gaza as hostages, according to Israeli calculations. Israel responded with a military campaign that killed over 70,000 people and laid waste to Gaza.

Carrying heavy buckets of rubble and pushing a wheelbarrow, Suleiman al-Arja, 19, described a typical day in the quest for iron rods.

"We pass by destroyed houses and agree with the house owner. He gives us a choice, whether to clean the house (clear the rubble) in exchange for iron or clean the house for money. We tell him that we want the iron and we start breaking the iron. As you can see, we spend a week, sometimes a week and a half," he said.

FOCUS IS ON DAILY STRUGGLE TO LIVE

US President Donald Trump promised to put together an international stabilisation force and an economic development plan to rebuild and energise Gaza, which was impoverished even before the war. Palestinians in Gaza can't look so far ahead even though a ceasefire was reached in October. Every day is a struggle for Palestinians who have seen peace plans come and go over many decades.

Their minds are focused on finding ways to survive, every single day.

"We do this work to get our food and drink, to cover our living expenses and not need anyone, so we earn a living through halal (legitimate) means and effort. These are my hands," said Haitham Arbiea, 29.

Palestinians accuse Israel of depriving Gaza of the iron bars.

An Israeli official told Reuters that construction materials are considered dual use items - items for civilian but also potential military use - and will not be allowed into Gaza until the second phase of the US-led peace plan. The official cited concerns that the materials could be used for the building of tunnels, which have been used by Hamas.​

 

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Hamas proposes weapons ‘freeze’ in return for long-term truce

A top Hamas leader told Qatari news channel Al Jazeera on Wednesday that the militant group is open to a weapons ‘freeze’, but rejects the demand for disarmament put forward in the US-sponsored peace plan for Gaza. ‘The idea of total disarmament is unacceptable to the resistance (Hamas). What is...

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Hamas proposes weapons ‘freeze’ in return for long-term truce
Agence France-Presse . Doha, Qatar 11 December, 2025, 23:10

A top Hamas leader told Qatari news channel Al Jazeera on Wednesday that the militant group is open to a weapons ‘freeze’, but rejects the demand for disarmament put forward in the US-sponsored peace plan for Gaza.

‘The idea of total disarmament is unacceptable to the resistance (Hamas). What is being proposed is a freeze, or storage (of weapons) to provide guarantees against any military escalation from Gaza with the Israeli occupation,’ said Khaled Mishaal in an interview aired Wednesday.

‘This is the idea we’re discussing with the mediators, and I believe that with pragmatic American thinking such a vision could be agreed upon with the US administration,’ he said.

The US-sponsored ceasefire deal, in effect since October 10, halted the war that began after Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. But it remains fragile as Israel and Hamas accuse each other almost daily of breaches.

The agreement is composed of three phases. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently indicated that it was about to enter the second phase.

Under that phase Israeli troops would further withdraw from their positions in Gaza and be replaced by an international stabilisation force, while Hamas would lay down its weapons.

Netanyahu is expected to meet with US president Donald Trump in the US later this month to discuss the steps forward in the truce.

But the Palestinian militant group has indicated it would not agree to giving up its arsenal.

‘Disarmament for a Palestinian means stripping away his very soul. Let’s achieve that goal another way,’ Meshaal added.

In the first phase of the deal Palestinian militants committed to releasing the remaining 48 living and dead captives held in the territory. All of the hostages have so far been released except for one body.

In exchange, Israel has released nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in its custody and returned the bodies of hundreds of dead Palestinians.

As for the international peacekeeping force, Meshaal said the group was open to its deployment along Gaza’s border with Israel, but would not agree to it operating inside the Palestinian territory, calling such a plan an ‘occupation’.

‘We have no objection to international forces or international stabilisation forces being deployed along the border, like UNIFIL,’ he said, referring to the UN peacekeeping force deployed in southern Lebanon near the Israeli border.

‘They would separate Gaza from the occupation,’ he added, referring to Israel.

‘As for the presence of international forces inside Gaza, in Palestinian culture and consciousness that means an occupying force.’

Mediators as well as Arab and Islamic nations, he said, could act as ‘guarantors’ that there would be no escalation originating from inside Gaza.

‘The danger comes from the Zionist entity, not from Gaza,’ he added, referring to Israel.​