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

[Saif]

https://www.newagebd.net/post/middle-east/307102/israeli-strikes-kill-12-in-gaza

Israeli strikes kill 12 in Gaza
Agence France-Presse . Gaza City 22 July, 2026, 00:08

Mourners weep next to the body of one of the Palestinian who died after an Israeli airstrike targeted a residential apartment in the Sabra neighbourhood of Gaza City on Tuesday. | AFP photo

Gaza’s civil defence agency and witnesses said Israeli strikes killed 12 people, including a family of six, in the Palestinian territory on Tuesday.

A fragile ceasefire remains in place between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas, but it has not halted the violence in the Gaza Strip, and efforts to secure a lasting agreement to end the war have stalled.

One airstrike hit a house belonging to the Al-Masri family in central Gaza City in the north, according to the territory’s civil defence agency, which operates as a rescue service under Hamas.

Witnesses said six members of the family were killed, including four children. Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital said it had received the bodies and the wounded.

An Israeli military source said that a strike had targeted ‘a Hamas terrorist’ in the area, without elaborating.

At the site, AFP journalists observed extensive damage to the charred multi-storey house, whose roof had almost completely collapsed.

Relatives gathered at the hospital. Some wept as the body of a girl was placed in a white plastic bag and laid alongside the other bodies wrapped in thick blankets.

The ‘attack took us by surprise’, said Ahmed al-Masri, who identified himself to AFP as a survivor of the strike.

‘I could hear the children crying out for help, yet I was unable to save them,’ he added.

‘My brother’s entire family was wiped from the civil registry: him, his wife and their four children.’

He said he had helped his children escape through a window, while flames devoured the building.

Another witness, Youssef al-Masri, said the strike took place around 2:00am.

‘While we were asleep, we heard the sound of a massive explosion and found that the house had been shelled, destroyed and engulfed in flames,’ he said.

The civil defence agency said six other people were killed on Tuesday in another Israeli strike in Gaza, where violence has persisted despite the ceasefire.

The United Nations said on Tuesday that Israeli attacks had killed at least 57 Palestinians from July 13 to 20.

‘The Israeli military has intensified its attacks in Gaza in recent days,’ UN rights office spokesman Thameen Al-Kheetan told reporters in Geneva.

‘Nowhere is safe for Palestinians in Gaza.’

The Israeli army has in recent days announced a series of strikes in the territory targeting Hamas and Islamic Jihad members who it said were involved in the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that set off the war, or the holding of hostages after.

At least 1,168 Palestinians have been killed since the truce took effect last October, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which operates under Hamas authority and whose figures are considered reliable by the United Nations.

The Israeli military says it has lost five soldiers in Gaza over the same period, as well as one civilian contractor.

Restrictions imposed on media outlets and limited access in Gaza prevent AFP from independently verifying tolls or freely covering the violence there.​

 

[Saif]

https://www.newagebd.net/post/middle-east/308203/israeli-strikes-kill-4-in-gaza

Israeli strikes kill 4 in Gaza
Agence France-Presse . Gaza City, Palestinian Territories 30 July, 2026, 23:28

A Palestinian boy walks his bicycle through the rubble of a destroyed building after it was targeted by Israeli strikes the previous night following warnings to evacuate in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip on Wednesday. | AFP photo

Gaza’s civil defence agency and two hospitals said Israeli attacks on Thursday killed four people across the Palestinian territory, including two children.

A ceasefire remains in place between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas, but it has not halted the violence in Gaza, and efforts to secure a lasting agreement to end the war have stalled.

Civil Defence spokesman Mahmoud Basal said that ‘four martyrs, including two children, and a number of wounded were transported following Israeli airstrikes’ across the Gaza Strip.

One Palestinian was killed and 10 others were wounded in an airstrike near a camp for displaced people next to Gaza City’s Yarmouk Stadium, according to the civil defence agency.

In a separate incident, Nasser Hospital, in Gaza’s southern city of Khan Yunis, said that its emergency service had received two people including an eight-year-old girl, as well as three wounded.

The casualties came after ‘an Israeli helicopter strike targeted the tent of the Balawi family west of Khan Younis,’ the hospital said.

Tens of thousands of people in Gaza still live in tents, after nearly three years of Israeli airstrikes destroyed much of the Palestinian territory’s standing structures.

The emergency department at Al-Aqsa hospital in central Gaza reported ‘the arrival of a child martyr and a number of wounded’ after an airstrike hit an apartment near the municipality building in the nearby Bureij refugee camp.

Israel’s military did not confirm any individual attack, but said that ‘the IDF struck several Hamas terror infrastructure overnight’ Thursday.

The air strikes come as a Hamas delegation holds talks in Cairo with Egyptian, Qatari, and Turkish mediators aimed at consolidating the ceasefire agreement between Israel and the Palestinian militant group, according to two sources familiar with the talks who spoke to AFP.

Since the fragile truce came into effect last October, Israel has continued carrying out near-daily air and artillery strikes across the territory, more than 60 per cent of which it controls.

Since the ceasefire agreement was announced, at least 1,214 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry, whose figures the United Nations considers reliable.

The Israeli military says it has lost five soldiers in Gaza over the same period, as well as one civilian contractor.

Restrictions imposed on media outlets and limited access in Gaza prevent AFP from independently verifying tolls or freely covering the violence there.​

 

[Saif]

Hamas agrees to deal for disarmament, Israel's withdrawal from Gaza

Hamas said Friday it agreed to a deal to end the war with Israel that included provisions addressing its weapons and the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip. The group's disarmament has been one of the key sticking points in the advancement of a ceasefire deal that has been...

en.prothomalo.com

Hamas agrees to deal for disarmament, Israel's withdrawal from Gaza

AFP
Gaza City, Palestine
Published: 31 Jul 2026, 10: 33

Hamas fighters carrying weapons in Gaza, Palestine. File Photo: AFP

Hamas said Friday it agreed to a deal to end the war with Israel that included provisions addressing its weapons and the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip.

The group's disarmament has been one of the key sticking points in the advancement of a ceasefire deal that has been in place in Gaza since October.

US President Donald Trump announced late Thursday an agreement for the "complete disarmament" of Hamas, calling it a critical step toward a new Palestinian government in Gaza.

Hamas officials told AFP a committee established by Trump's Board of Peace to govern Gaza would oversee the process of storing the Islamist movement's weapons.

The group said it expected mediators and the Board of Peace to ensure Israel complied with the deal's terms, which included Israel's withdrawal from Gaza.

Ghazi Hamad, a member of the group's negotiating team, said the movement was making "concessions for the sake of our people in the Gaza Strip, to save them from killing and displacement".

"Israel will not intervene in the issue of disarmament. The National Committee is the body that will undertake this task," he said, referring to the National Committee for Administration of Gaza (NCAG).

There was no immediate statement from Israel.

Despite the October ceasefire, violence has continued in Gaza, with Israeli strikes killing at least four people, including two children, on Thursday, according to health officials.

Ghazi Hamad, a member of the group's negotiating team, said the movement was making "concessions for the sake of our people in the Gaza Strip, to save them from killing and displacement".

Focus now on implementation
The Board of Peace confirmed in a post on X that Hamas had "agreed to a detailed Roadmap for implementing the next phases of the Gaza ceasefire".

"Our focus now turns to implementation," the organisation wrote, adding the NCAG will "soon begin a phased transition toward full authority".

Trump, in an earlier social media post, said that once Hamas's disarmament is complete, "Israeli forces will withdraw, and the International Stabilization Force will work with a new Palestinian police force to take responsibility for Gaza being safe for its residents and its neighbors".

Nickolay Mladenov, the Board of Peace's high representative for Gaza, said Friday the deal "took months of very difficult negotiations".

"What happens next matters even more. Implementation and verification have to be real," Mladenov wrote on X.

"Withdrawal must move in lockstep with decommissioning," he added.

Egypt's state-linked Al-Qahera News said early Friday that Cairo is set to host a meeting "soon" of the Gaza truce mediators, which also include the United States, Qatar and Turkey, focused on the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire plan.

Palestinians flee in search of safety amid smoke and flames following an Israeli strike on Al-Muttaqin Mosque in Gaza City on 28 July 2026. AFP

'No exceptions'
Earlier, a diplomatic source told AFP: "We continue to advance the implementation roadmap that offers a balanced and pragmatic path forward, with all weapons decommissioned and a phased transition of responsibilities taking place to hand over full authority to the technocratic government."

The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, said there would be "no exceptions for certain weapons or certain people. One authority, one law, one weapon".

"Israel will not intervene in the issue of disarmament. The National Committee is the body that will undertake this task," Ghazi Hamad said, referring to the National Committee for Administration of Gaza (NCAG).

The roadmap, the source said, would create "a process for the elimination of all tunnels, depots of weapons and any weapons production facilities".

The source said a verification mechanism would ensure compliance by each side.

A Hamas source familiar with the talks told AFP earlier that the movement was "awaiting the Israeli response to the amendments we recently submitted to the mediators".

The source said the amendments concerned two articles in the roadmap presented by the Board of Peace.

Regarding the article concerning weapons, the Hamas source said that "some points were removed, and alternatives were proposed".

Before the deal's announcement, an Israeli political source told AFP that the proposed agreement did not "satisfactorily" address Israeli demands.

"Israel demands the complete disarmament of Hamas, including the removal of weapons from Gaza and full demilitarization of the Strip as a precondition for any process," the source said.

The source also said that "the issue of Gaza did not come up at all" in the meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Trump in Washington this week.​

 

[Saif]

https://www.newagebd.net/post/middle-east/308459/israeli-strikes-kill-13-in-gaza

Israeli strikes kill 13 in Gaza
Agence France-Presse . Gaza City, Palestinian Territories 02 August, 2026, 09:20

Palestinians make their way through destroyed buildings in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on July 31. | AFP photo.

Israeli strikes on Gaza hit multiple residential buildings and killed at least 13 people, authorities said Sunday, despite Hamas saying it agreed to the latest stage of a deal to end the war.

Hamas said Friday it had agreed to a plan championed by US president Donald Trump that includes provisions for handing over its weapons and the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip.

Israel has yet to officially comment on the agreement, but a political source has said ‘that there will be no withdrawal whatsoever’ without Hamas’s ‘genuine disarmament’.

Gaza’s civil defence rescue service, which operates under Hamas authority, on Sunday said eight people were killed in strikes around midnight that hit multiple residential buildings, and five others were killed later in the day.

In one overnight attack near the central Gaza Strip, a man and his wife were killed and several others were wounded when an Israeli military helicopter struck an apartment, a civil defence spokesman said.

An elderly man and a child were killed in another attack on an apartment west of Gaza City, and three people, including a child, were killed in a strike on a residential building northwest of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.

‘One person was killed and four others injured in an Israeli drone strike targeting a group of civilians near a camp for displaced people in Jabalia refugee camp, northern Gaza Strip,’ he said.

A couple and their child were killed in a strike on an apartment west of Gaza City at dawn, the spokesman said, adding that the woman was pregnant.

Two others were killed in an Israeli drone strike on their vehicle in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, he said, with the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospitals saying they were brothers.

Authorities reported on Saturday that eight people had been killed in strikes that damaged a hospital’s medical supplies and targeted a rooftop. The Israeli army said two of the strikes targeted members of the Army of Islam and Islamic Jihad militant groups.

Meanwhile, authorities in Gaza said Saturday that they had recovered the remains of another 112 people in rubble, part of daunting operations after more than two years of Israeli strikes.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said it found the remains or body parts following 136 hours of digging, largely with bare hands, in Sabra, a neighbourhood in the south of Gaza City.

The remains included those of 40 children, 38 women and seven people who had had physical disabilities, according to the agency, which serves as a rescue service under Hamas.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said it supported the operation, which took place over nearly two weeks.

‘For more than two and a half years, thousands of families in Gaza have lived in pain and uncertainty, waiting for the chance to recover the remains of their loved ones, mourn them and lay them to rest with dignity,’ said Amani Al-Naouq, ICRC spokesperson in Gaza.

‘The search for missing persons and the recovery of human remains is a critically important humanitarian issue,’ she said.

Colonel Mohammed Abu Dan, who is in charge of the site for the civil defence agency, said that the team has not yet found 157 other bodies believed to be under the rubble there.

He described the search as arduous, with teams sifting by hand through destroyed concrete and twisted metal.

Thousands of people’s remains are still unaccounted for in Gaza, many of them believed to have been buried under rubble from intense Israeli air strikes.

Restrictions imposed on media outlets and limited access in Gaza prevent AFP from independently verifying tolls or freely covering the violence.

The Hamas-run health ministry has confirmed the deaths of more than 73,300 people in the war, in figures that are considered reliable by the United Nations.

The war broke out when Hamas militants attacked southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing 1,221 people and dragging 251 hostages into Gaza in the deadliest attack on the Israeli population since the creation of the state in 1948.​

 

[Saif]

Is there any hope for Gaza?

As ceasefire hopes fade, Gaza's devastation exposes the widening gulf between diplomatic rhetoric, military realities, and Palestinian survival.

www.thedailystar.net

Is there any hope for Gaza?
6 August 2026, 00:03 AM

Mahir Ali

Only an unreasonably optimistic worldview could persuade anyone to view last week’s announcements about the Gaza Strip as a ‘breakthrough’. Hamas might have agreed to put away its weapons, but that’s contingent on Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied territory. Its armed forces control more than 70 per cent of the Strip, and says it won’t budge until Hamas ‘completely’ disarms. At best, this is a recipe merely for prolonging the status quo that followed last year’s so-called ceasefire, which has been violated more or less daily by the Israel Defence Forces, with nary an objection from Donald Trump’s ridiculous Board of Peace (BoP). One can just about imagine a scenario in which the graduated disarmament of not just Hamas but also Israeli-sponsored factions in the territory is accompanied by a reciprocal IDF pullout.

But anyone cognisant of realities would find it hard to imagine any meaningful concessions from the Israeli state ahead of the October elections — even afterwards, regardless of whether Benjamin Netanyahu retains the prime ministerial post he has held far too frequently. There has lately been exaggerated commentary about the US president’s capacity to restrain Netanyahu’s worst impulses. This variety of nonsense is belied by recent history. All of the White House incumbent’s predecessors this century resisted Netanyahu’s unrelenting efforts to spark a military confrontation with Iran. It took a stupendous ignoramus to plunge in with haste and to regret it at leisure — amid his various other pastimes, from golf to architectural glitter.

The negotiations he recently cited as an explanation for not launching his threatened fire and fury against his latest adversary appear to be taking place only between Iran and Oman. Whether they lead to the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz will depend on extraneous factors over which only the US has control. The minimum requirement would be for the American blockade to be lifted, but it would hardly be unreasonable for Iran to also demand the cessation of attacks on its infrastructure. As in the case of Gaza, it’s natural to hope for the best without losing sight of contrary likelihoods.

Devoid of diplomatic skills, weak on geopolitical knowhow, and ignoring the recent precedents in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Trump administration this year embroiled the US in yet another war without an exit strategy. ‘Peace with honour’ used to be the motto in the Vietnam era, but the eventual defeat was accompanied only by ignominy. Perhaps the only consolation that can be drawn more than 50 years later is that the periodic bouts of invariably misguided military aggression can be interpreted as the fatuous fireworks of a fading empire.

Palestinians inspect the site of an Israeli strike on a residential apartment, according to medics, in Gaza City, August 2, 2026. Photo: REUTERS

The death throes might linger for a while, though, and there might be worse to come. Public opinion across much of the world, including in the West, no longer holds the US or its auxiliaries in much esteem. But ruling elites are a different matter. Notwithstanding Trump’s contempt, the EU by and large remains beholden to the Western emperor. So do many of the regimes in West and South Asia. One of them, for instance, has credited the BoP’s “significant achievement” to Trump’s “courageous leadership”, adding as an afterthought the hope that it would result in ‘realisation of the right to self-determination of the people of Palestine’.

The phrase ‘self-determination’ sounds almost archaic in the Palestinian context, particularly amid an unending genocide in Gaza and ‘ethnic cleansing’ in the West Bank. The pogroms are a daily affair, and they are only stepped up in the face of any resistance. The Palestinian Authority has long served as a kind of Vichy regime for the Zionist occupation, and rarely goes beyond the occasional platitude in response to everyday atrocities. Any resistance prompts the illegal settlers to step up their malignance. When BBC’s Lucy Williamson recently interrogated a settler called Yehuda Shimon on why one Jewish death (in an unusual instance of rebellion) should be avenged by taking hundreds or thousands of Palestinian lives (as he advocated), Shimon responded: “No, millions. One Jewish life, it’s 10 million… .”

We are witnessing the aftermath of that kind of attitude in Gaza. Even beyond public opinion among the states most complicit in Israel’s genocide, though, there are occasional indications of the turning tide. A German appeals court this week acquitted a woman convicted for Instagram posts that compared Israeli actions to Nazi conduct. Since Nazi ideology was being denigrated rather than promoted, the court ruled, the comments fell under the category of protected speech. It would be a welcome change if British courts took a cue from that, given their inclination to not just convict pro-Palestinian activists as terrorists, but to condemn their advocates as well.

This article was first published under the title “Back to war" in Dawn, an ANN partner of The Daily Star, on July 15, 2026.

Mahir Ali is a columnist at Dawn.​