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

[Saif]

https://www.newagebd.net/post/economy/315337/gaza-suffers-worlds-worst-ever-economic-crisis-un

Gaza suffers world’s worst ever economic crisis: UN
Agence France-Presse . Geneva 26 September, 2026, 00:10

A Palestinian family inspects the remains of their home and livestock pen after they were demolished along with more than 20 other structures that Israeli authorities said had been built without permits, in the Palestinian village of Jinba, south of Yatta in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, on Wednesday. | AFP photo

Gaza is suffering the world’s worst economic crisis ever recorded, with nine in 10 businesses destroyed and hundreds of thousands of people unemployed, a top UN development agency warned on Thursday.

Israel’s military offensive sparked by Hamas militants’ attack in October 2023 devastated the territory of two million people before a patchy ceasefire was announced in October 2025.

‘The collapse of the economy of Gaza is the world’s most severe economic crisis on record,’ said Pedro Manuel Moreno, acting secretary-general of the UN Conference on Trade and Development.

‘It has wiped out decades of development and generated an acute economic crisis for its people,’ he told reporters in Geneva as the organisation released a new report.

It said 92 per cent of Gaza’s ‘economic establishments have been damaged or destroyed’.

The territory’s daily per capita GDP is $0.58 a day, the report said. Prices are 274 per cent higher than in 2022.

Israel’s military offensive killed more than 73,000 people, according to the territory’s health ministry under Hamas authority, whose figures are regarded as reliable by the United Nations.

It displaced virtually the entire population and damaged or destroyed most of its buildings.

Before October 2023, ‘two out of three Gazans were poor. Today, everyone in Gaza is multidimensionally poor,’ said Mutasim Elagraa, UNCTAD’s coordinator for assistance to the Palestinians.

Industrial activity and agricultural production have fallen by 94 per cent, with only 1.5 per cent of arable land accessible, forcing ‘total dependence on humanitarian food aid’, Elagraa said.

According to the report, the conflict has destroyed hundreds of thousands of jobs, leaving more than 90 per cent of Gaza’s working-age population unemployed.

The report also detailed an economic and financial crisis in the occupied West Bank, citing ‘reduced access to land and natural resources linked to (Israeli) settlement expansion’.

The Palestinian government has borrowed heavily from local banks, drawn on the Palestinian pension fund and owes money to private contractors, Elagraa said.

The Palestinian territories risk a ‘banking collapse’, he warned. The ‘political and social and humanitarian consequences will be immense’.​

 

[Saif]

https://www.newagebd.net/post/middle-east/316064/israeli-strike-kills-five-in-gaza-city

Israeli strike kills five in Gaza City
Agence Frqance-Presse . Gaza City, Palestinian Territories 01 October, 2026, 00:00

Palestinians inspect the damage following an Israeli airstrike that targeted a minibus and killed five people in Gaza City’s Tel al-Hawa neighbourhood on Wednesday, according to Gaza’s civil defence agency and a hospital. | AFP photo.

Gaza’s civil defence agency and a hospital said an Israeli airstrike targeting a minibus killed five people on Wednesday in a neighbourhood southwest of the city.

Mahmoud Bassal, the spokesperson for the civil defence which operates as a rescue force under Hamas authority, said there were ‘five martyrs and 20 wounded, including a number of children and women... as a result of an Israeli airstrike that targeted a passenger bus in Tel al-Hawa’.

Bassal said the bus was carrying civilians between Gaza City and the central and southern parts of the Palestinian territory.

He said it was hit ‘by two missiles fired by Israeli drones, which led to the destruction of its front and completely burned it’.

AFP has contacted the Israeli military for a response.

Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital confirmed that five bodies and several wounded people had arrived at the medical facility ‘following an Israeli airstrike that targeted a vehicle near the destroyed cabinet headquarters in the Tel al-Hawa neighbourhood’.

The Gaza war was sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented 2023 attack against Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

The massive Israeli offensive in response has left most of Gaza in ruins and killed more than 74,000 people, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which is under Hamas authority and whose figures are considered reliable by the United Nations.

Israeli forces have killed more than 1,400 people since a ceasefire was announced last October, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

The Israeli military has identified five deaths in its ranks over the same period, as well as the death of one civilian contractor.​

 

[Saif]

https://www.newagebd.net/post/middle-east/316474/israeli-strike-kills-5-in-gaza

Israeli strike kills 5 in Gaza
Agence France-Presse 04 October, 2026, 01:24

Gaza’s civil defence agency and a hospital said on Saturday that an overnight Israeli airstrike on an apartment in Gaza City killed five Palestinians, including four women.

Israeli media reported that the military was targeting Ali al-Amoudi, a senior Hamas official. The army has yet to comment on the incident.

Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital told AFP it had ‘received at dawn five martyrs and a number of injured... following the Israeli airstrike on an apartment’ in the Rimal neighbourhood.

It said the dead were two women and their daughters, as well as a young man.

Mahmoud Bassal, the spokesperson for the civil defence which operates as a rescue force under Hamas authority, told AFP that his team took ‘five bodies and several wounded’ to the hospital after the strike.

He said two missiles directly hit the apartment, causing a fire to break out and damaging the building.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization on Friday said getting humanitarian aid through Israel into Gaza is layered with ‘delay after delay’ as it decried ‘chronic shortages’ of mdical supplies.

Reinhilde Van de Weerdt, the WHO’s representative in the Palestinian territories, said the health situation in the Gaza Strip ‘remains utterly dire’, with none of its hospitals fully functional.

‘Not enough humanitarian aid is entering Gaza, and definitely not enough to allow for a meaningful expansion and restoration of health services,’ she told reporters in Geneva, speaking from Jerusalem.

She said Israel’s approval system for medical and other humanitarian supplies was proving a major bottleneck.

‘It is laborious, time-consuming, with no guaranteed results,’ she said.

Based on the WHO’s latest analysis, large volumes of medical supplies wait for clearance for a median of 74 days, said Van de Weerdt, adding that if it is not, ‘than we start that lengthy, cumbersome process all over again’.

She added that the approval system kept changing, with new regulations introduced.

Van de Weerdt said standard health kits used worldwide had the lowest approval rate, while X-ray machines, sterilisation equipment and spare parts for CT scans and other essential machinery ‘get rejected regularly’.

‘In just the last six months alone, one shipment of prosthetics and assistive devices was rejected four separate times,’ she said.

However, medicines move ‘relatively well’, with almost 87 per cent approved and one per cent rejected, she added.

‘It’s not one single blockage. It’s a system, layered with delay after delay... and on the other side of every one of these delays is a patient who is waiting,’ she said.

‘We need the unimpeded and predicable entry of humanitarian and health supplies into Gaza, at scale.

‘We hope that Israel will at least release the pressure on medical supplies.’

Van de Weerdt called for more crossings into the territory to be opened, and for ‘clear, published guidance’ on processes and requirements.

She added that success should not be measured in terms of numbers of trucks crossing the border, insisting that it says ‘almost nothing about whether people’s actual health needs are being met’.

‘A truck full of non-priority supplies, or the right supplies arriving too late, doesn’t save lives.’​