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

[Saif]

Why Gaza peace deals keep falling apart

Gaza’s repeated peace deals keep faltering because they lack clear mechanisms to verify compliance, resolve disputes and enforce commitments.

www.thedailystar.net

Why Gaza peace deals keep falling apart

Adam Farquhar

Donald Trump’s Board of Peace published a 15-point roadmap for Gaza in late July in which Hamas would hand its weapons to a committee of Palestinian technocrats, certified by an international verification body, and Israel would withdraw from the strip in phases. After Israel officially rejected the plan on August 9, US envoy Jared Kushner flew to the Egyptian coast to meet Hamas representatives.

From there, he travelled to Jerusalem where it was proposed the weapons would instead be handed over under the supervision of an American general. This change to the disarmament process is a clear illustration of what has gone wrong with each agreement reached over Gaza since January 2025: none have established, in advance, who certifies compliance.

The University of Edinburgh’s Peace Agreement Database and Dataset recorded four agreements related to the Gaza ceasefire process in 2025. They include a ceasefire agreement in January, a run of ceasefire and related agreements in October and a UN resolution in November.

These agreements addressed things such as the exchange of hostages and prisoners, and created a transitional authority for the Gaza Strip. But they did not build the machinery that decides what counts as a breach, who adjudicates in case of disputes and how the process resumes once a breach has been found.

Series of deals
The January 2025 deal contained the most detailed provisions of the four agreements. Its published text named the number of hostages and prisoners for exchange, the corridors through which Israeli troops would leave Gaza and the sequence in which displaced families could return home. What it did not do is say what holding the parties to it would involve.

The guarantors – the US, Egypt and Qatar – were asked only to work towards continued negotiation. A follow-up mechanism was announced by Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani, alongside the deal rather than written into it. Guarantors were given the ability to log issues, but not enforce the agreement.

This gap showed when the first phase of the deal ended on March 1 with the second phase in limbo and, on March 18, Israel resumed its bombing campaign.

US President Donald Trump speaks at the inaugural Board of Peace meeting at the US Institute of Peace in Washington, DC, US, 19 February 2026. Photo: REUTERS


The two October 2025 agreements sought to get the process back on track under renegotiated terms. The October 10 agreement looked to address the lack of an enforcement mechanism in the January deal.

A centre run from Israel by US Central Command, the arm of the American military responsible for the Middle East, was created to coordinate aid and monitor the ceasefire. But little changed after two months. Aid workers and UN staff complained of continued aid restrictions and a lack of discussion over who would govern and secure Gaza.

The so-called Trump Declaration for Enduring Peace and Prosperity was signed on October 13 by the leaders of the US, Egypt, Qatar and Turkey. This agreement committed signatories to a broad set of principles around religious tolerance, human rights, security and dialogue across the region.

Neither Israel nor Hamas signed it. That is not unusual as guarantors often sign what warring parties will not. But four governments cannot promise tolerance and human rights on behalf of two parties that did not sign, and nothing in the text says what they will do to make them.

The UN’s November resolution was the most institutionally significant agreement. It officially endorsed Trump’s Gaza peace plan, called the Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict, and established the Board of Peace as the head of a new transitional body overseeing political transition in Gaza.

It said nothing about who sits on the body, including women, who appear in the agreement only in relation to prisoners and hostages.

The resolution did, however, build the machinery for the economic reconstruction of Gaza. It also included a provision around the “self-determination and statehood” of the Palestinian people. But the resolution carries the same defect as the ceasefires.

Under the UN resolution, statehood becomes possible once reform of the Palestinian Authority, which was created in 1994 as an interim administration for Gaza and the West Bank, is “faithfully carried out” and redevelopment in Gaza “has advanced”. Nobody was appointed to judge when either has happened.

Palestinians inspect the site of an Israeli strike on a house at al-Shati (Beach) refugee camp in Gaza City, 24 August 2026. Photo: REUTERS


This brings us back to the 15-point roadmap, which was an attempt to address some of the lack of detail in previous agreements. The plan contains an international verification committee that would certify that both parties have completed each phase before the next one begins.

However, the phased withdrawal of Israeli troops the roadmap had promised has now been reversed. On August 17, the Board of Peace assured the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that Israeli forces would not move out of Gaza until disarmament of Hamas was complete. Verification of this disarmament has also shifted from a multilateral committee to an American general.

Any workable version of this agreement needs an arbiter both sides can live with, agreed before the steps begin, with a stated procedure for breaches. It needs the regional guarantors who made these deals possible in the first place to be inside that mechanism.

And beyond this, there needs to be a governing arrangement that Palestinians in Gaza have some say in and that provides them with a political horizon to aim for and some means of addressing the trauma of war. Without this, even if the disarmament row is settled, the same absence will produce the same deadlock.

This article was first published under the title “Why Gaza peace deals keep unravelling" in The Conversation on August 20, 2026.

Adam Farquhar is a Research Associate in the School of Law at the University of Edinburgh.​

 

[Saif]

https://www.newagebd.net/post/middle-east/311485/fresh-israeli-strikes-kill-five-in-gaza

Fresh Israeli strikes kill five in Gaza
Agence France-Presse . Gaza City, Palestinian Territories 28 August, 2026, 22:21

Volunteers from the ‘Guardians of Heritage’ team collect books while carrying out conservation work as part of an initiative to protect the historical features of the damaged Abu Salim mosque that was recently hit by an Israeli strike in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza Strip on Thursday. | AFP photo

Israeli strikes killed five people in Gaza on Friday, authorities in the Palestinian territory said, in the latest day of attacks despite international appeals to move ahead on a peace plan.

The civil defence agency, which serves as a rescue service under Hamas, said that the bodies of three people were recovered in pieces after Israeli strikes in the town of Al-Qarara, east of Khan Yunis.

Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis named the three people and said they all belonged to the same family, with two aged 42 and one aged 28.

An Israeli military spokesperson, contacted by AFP, said that the military was looking into it.

Gaza authorities later reported two additional deaths, including in a drone attack near Gaza City.

The latest deaths came the same day that Israel carried out a rare airstrike in the occupied West Bank, with prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying it killed militants planning attacks from the Palestinian territory.

Israel has kept striking the Gaza Strip and its forces have made further inroads despite a US-brokered ceasefire announced in October, with Israel insisting it must eliminate threats from Hamas, which led the unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack against Israel.

Nickolay Mladenov, the high representative for Gaza under the ‘Board of Peace’ established by president Donald Trump to implement the deal, said Thursday that deadly Israeli strikes made it hard for the people of Gaza to feel the ceasefire, which he said was still holding.

‘Every use of force that does not answer an immediate threat, and every incident that the deconfliction mechanism was not asked to resolve, costs this process something very hard to buy back,’ he told the UN Security Council.

He said Hamas also has not fulfilled its commitments including on disarmament, although the group promised late last month to do so.

Israel has warned that it will retaliate for the flying of kites in Gaza after a number crossed into Israel, leading some parents to stop their children from kite-flying.

In previous years, kites and balloons laden with explosives have been flown from Gaza. The latest did not contain explosives although at least one reportedly had a political message written on it.

Defence minister Israel Katz said Thursday that the deadline had passed to stop kite-flying, warning, according to Israeli media: ‘Any launch constitutes an act of terrorism in itself, and we will treat it as such.’​

 

[Saif]

https://www.newagebd.net/post/middle-east/312400/forcible-displacement-of-palestinians-raise-concerns-of-ethnic-cleansing

Forcible displacement of Palestinians raise concerns of ethnic cleansing
Staff Correspondent 04 September, 2026, 17:57

A UN report said Israel forcibly displaced the entire Palestinian populations of three refugee camps in the occupied West Bank and continues to prevent their return, raising concerns of forcible transfer and ‘ethnic cleansing.’

The UN Human Rights Office report published on Friday said Israeli forces displaced residents of the Jenin, Nur Shams and Tulkarm refugee camps during Operation Iron Wall in January and February 2025.

‘The forcible emptying of refugee camps, destruction of civilian infrastructure, and denial of humanitarian access suggest a deliberate strategy to effect the mass forcible transfer of large parts of the population of the northern West Bank,’ the report says.

Israeli forces killed civilians, destroyed homes and infrastructure, cut water and electricity, and restricted humanitarian access during the operation, according to the report.

More than 33,000 Palestinians were displaced from the three camps, with 33,362 still unable to return as of July, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.

The report said the ‘large-scale, long-term and systematic displacement’ raises serious concerns of the crime against humanity of forcible transfer.

It said actions that rendered the camps uninhabitable ‘appear to amount to collective punishment and raise concerns of ethnic cleansing.’

According to the report, Israeli forces killed 102 Palestinians, including 21 children, during the period covered.

The fatalities accounted for 46% of all Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank during that period, it said.

By October 2025, 52% of structures in Jenin camp, 48% in Nur Shams and 36% in Tulkarm had been destroyed or damaged, according to the report.

Displaced Palestinians also told the UN office that Israeli officers said there would be ‘no more refugee camps’ and that they should ‘all go to Jordan.’

On Feb. 23, 2025, Israel’s defense minister ordered the Israeli army to remain in the three camps and said Palestinians displaced from them would not be allowed to return.

Despite a previous truce and hostage exchanges brokered in late 2025, intermittent Israeli military strikes continue across Gaza, and far-right Israeli officials continue pushing proposals focused on the removal or displacement of Palestinians from the territory.

Clashes, military raids, and settler violence persist in the West Bank, alongside renewed international controversy regarding Israeli settlement expansions.​

 

[Saif]

Are we not forgetting the genocide of the Palestinians?

What the Nazis did to the Jews, Israel is now doing to the Palestinians. I

www.thedailystar.net

Are we not forgetting the genocide of the Palestinians?

The joint statement of 12 Western countries is most timely

Mahfuz Anam

Mass funeral for members of the Irahem, Malaka, Qanbour, Balawi and Dahdouh families, who were killed in an Israeli strike in 2023 and whose remains were recovered from beneath the rubble, in Gaza City, September 6, 2026. PHOTO: REUTERS

What the Nazis did to the Jews, Israel is now doing to the Palestinians. It has turned Gaza and the West Bank into de facto concentration camps. Instead of gas chambers, it bombs helpless Palestinians as a near-daily routine. What an irony. The Nazis and their collaborators murdered millions of Jews across Europe, and the world was sympathetic to their plight and wanted justice, which, unfortunately, has come at the cost of the Palestinians.

Israel’s relentless bombing has reduced Gaza to piles of rubble, and those who have survived the devastation have nowhere to live except in tents, without food and the minimum facilities for a livelihood. Their hospitals have been bombed, their sources of electricity decimated. They have even been deprived of water and, for weeks if not months, have been forced to drink seawater. Nearly 80,000 Palestinians have already been killed, including over 20,000 children. Subject to an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, along with his diabolical team, has thus committed the most inhuman and barbaric crime under the pretext of eliminating Hamas. For those still alive, each day is a survival without any hope for the future. The Israelis are trying to starve Gazans into extinction. This is genocide unfolding right before the eyes of the world, and it is not condemning it enough.

The tragedy of the moment is that world attention currently stands diverted because of the US-Israeli war on Iran. It has already been revealed that it was an Israeli ploy that dragged the US into this war. The resulting disarray in global supply chains, rising energy costs, and other troubles have served to largely shift focus away from the Palestine situation. Although many had hoped that the war would end quickly, its prolongation has kept global attention diverted, allowing Israel to use the opportunity to continue its killings and territorial expansion in Palestine.

Meanwhile, Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon have killed more than 4,300 people since March 2. About 12,400 have been wounded, while hundreds of thousands have been displaced. Moreover, there have been 179 attacks on Lebanese ambulance crews, killing 135 healthcare workers.

In Gaza, more than 1,300 Palestinians have been killed since the US-brokered ceasefire last October. Even though much of Gaza has been razed to the ground, the bombing continues. For Israel, killing Palestinians seems to have become a sort of an “entertainment” item, for which justification can always be engineered. The new cause for concern is the attacks by Israeli settlers in the West Bank, with 76 Palestinians reportedly killed as of August 10 in 2026. Many have been displaced due to settler violence, demolitions, and evictions.

Whatever Israel is doing, the secret plan is to realise the idea of “Greater Israel”. It is a political, religious and nationalist vision that the present ultra-right-wing government wants to implement. They want a territory far larger than present-day Israel. The so-called biblical version—as interpreted by the orthodox Jews—of the concept of Greater Israel extends from the Nile to the Euphrates. Another version refers to territory stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River. A more practical version, advocated by many Zionists, involves the permanent control of the West Bank and Gaza, while Israel has already taken over East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.

The outcome of the Six-Day War of 1967, in which Israel’s victory was something nobody had imagined, made Israeli leaders more confident. They concluded that their ambition of implementing the Greater Israel plan was possible. When Menachem Begin and his Likud party assumed power in 1977—10 years after the war—the idea of Greater Israel, the ideology of Likud and the Israeli right, started to be implemented more rapidly. Over the years, the idea grew and more and more Zionists took it up as their plan. And if the plan was to be realised, the Israeli military had to grow. This triggered its expansion and the creation of right-wing militias in various parts of Israel. The US, knowingly or unknowingly, became an integral part of the plan.

So the aim became clear—expand Jewish settlements in the West Bank and make them as permanent as possible so that it becomes difficult, in fact impossible, to remove them if the situation were to change due to international pressure.

After the 1967 war, Israel started the settlement process. By 1972, there were 14 settlements, and within four years, this became 20, with 3,200 settlers. The argument grew stronger that Judea and Samaria were not only strategically useful but also religiously ordained to be part of Greater Israel. Following Begin’s coming to power, the number of settlers rose from 3,200 to 17,400, and the number of settlements increased substantially. By 1983, there were 22,800 settlers and 76 recognised settlements. According to an estimate, the number of settlers in the West Bank now exceeds 5,00,000 in 2026. In the initial phase, from 1967-1977, the settlements were largely justified from a security perspective; from 1977 to 1992, it became more ideological; and from 1993 to 2009, settlement expansion became far more intensive. Finally, from 2009 to 2026, what happened was de facto annexation.

The only serious attempt at a peaceful solution during this time was the Oslo Accords. It began secretly in 1992 and progressed into direct negotiations between Israel and the PLO. In 1993, the Oslo Accords were formally signed between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat in the presence of US President Bill Clinton. This was followed by the Gaza-Jericho Agreement in 1994, which implemented the first major agreement on Palestinian self-rule. In 1995, the second Oslo Agreement was signed, dividing the West Bank into Areas A, B and C. The idea was to expand Palestinian self-rule, but it ended up with greater Israeli control of the territory. Today, the West Bank, with its intensive infrastructure, military outposts, roads, municipal jurisdictions and economic integration, can be said to have practically become integrated with Israel.

In the face of the above, the recent joint statement by the foreign ministers of Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the UK comes as a very timely collective action towards the two-state solution, which remains the only way forward for permanent peace in the Middle East. The joint statement categorically said that Israel’s actions in the West Bank “are undermining the possibility of a two-state solution. The situation is rapidly deteriorating amid unprecedented levels of settler violence and settlement expansion.” It called for an immediate stop to the expansion of settlements and civilian administrative powers. The countries also declared that they are determined to take action in pursuit of a just and lasting peace. The statement reads: “We are unequivocally committed to the two-state solution, in accordance with relevant UN Security Council resolutions, that enables Israel and a sovereign, democratic and viable Palestinian state to live side by side in peace, security…”

Netanyahu and his far-right cabinet have never hidden their aim to eliminate the Palestinians and have thoroughly opposed the two-state solution. So, for these Western countries to strongly support its revival is a very important development. Israel has not faced such a unified Western stance before. A year earlier, Saudi Arabia and France moved for wider recognition of a Palestinian state, which resulted in more countries doing so. The latest initiative should lead to greater international support for the two-state solution. All Arab countries should endorse it fully, and so should the international community.

This should be done not only for the Palestinians but also for the future of a law-abiding international order that will create a better world for us all. Otherwise, we will become a civilisation devoid of values, ethics, justice and, most importantly, peace.

Mahfuz Anam is the editor and publisher of The Daily Star.​