[🇧🇩] 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.’​

 

[Saif]

https://www.newagebd.net/post/opinion/316844/palestine-is-more-than-a-humanitarian-cause

Palestine is more than a humanitarian cause
Isaac Namoura 07 October, 2026, 00:00

Isaac Namoura in his hometown in the West Bank in 2020. | Author’s courtesy


A TICKING bomb and a matter of time. These words summarise what’s currently going on now in Palestine. But you, the person who’s reading this, might ask how, and I will answer.

Let’s start by talking about the Gaza Strip. Currently more than 50 per cent of the land has already been taken by the Israeli occupation. And the people and their resistance are boiled down into thinking about how to survive every day on its own. Water to drink and to wash yourself, sanitation and sanitary products, access to medical care and critical care.

Nevertheless, people are very aware of the current political situation of the world, especially with American foreign politics about the genocide and the recent Trump plans, and they’re aware that this is a sugar-coated way of saying, ‘We are going to take your land and turn it into anything we want, and you have no right to complain. If you don’t like it, leave.’

Most of the news that comes out from the Gaza Strip right now is completely shadowed, and no one is seeing anything coming out from there except for the people who are searching for it.


The West Bank has been divided into small cantonments that people somehow scrape by and somehow move around through numerous checkpoints, which has increased in number by twofold. Some people can’t reach their workplaces, and others can’t visit their family members and loved ones, all while everyday there’s new legislation to make more illegal settlements; the most recent has been a settlement they’re building one kilometre away from my own house.

The incidence of settler violence has increased at least threefold from three years ago. Full of unhinged audacity, they come armed with way more weapons than before, and they destroy everything. They attack houses, burn them down while people are inside, steal and kill cattle, and cut down and burn trees. Basically, whatever helps people to exist other than the fact that they shoot people on sight if they show any form of resistance, or if they see them in a secluded area, it depends on how much ‘fun’ they want to have — sadistic blood thirst at its best.

As for finances, there are two types of workers in the West Bank, the majority (60-65 per cent) of which are workers inside the Israeli-occupied land, and for the past three years their work has been cut off, and they haven’t made any form of financial progression since then, and the other half, which are government and private sector workers inside the West Bank, have been receiving half and most of the time less than that of their salaries, with some who haven’t even got any salary for the past few months, all while the price of basic groceries and oil has increased heavily. Not even factoring the problem of availability, this is already a dire situation.

And how can we forget about the nearly 12,000 Palestinian hostages in Israeli jails, who were taken without any trial, who have been tortured, starved, and even raped, including women and children, and every household has a beloved one that’s rotting in their injustice, waiting for the day they see the light of freedom.

So as I said in the beginning, a ticking bomb is the West Bank, and a matter of time is the Gaza Strip.

As a Palestinian in Bangladesh, I have witnessed the kindest, warmest treatment by people, be they friends, teachers and colleagues, or even street vendors. Once they hear where I am from, they never waste a chance to show kindness. People here made Bangladesh a second home for me. In all honesty, I don’t know how I will be able to say goodbye to all of this once I leave after I am done with my internship.

There are definitely certain things that changed my perspective on life: how much the concept of comfort is relative and how much we can get easily used to a new life, and how my life back at home is a form of suffering. For example, I have water 24/7, and I use as much as I want. Back at home, we used to stay days and weeks without water because it used to be cut off, or when the electricity didn’t go away randomly for days or even weeks. Like back at home, I realised I can travel between two cities without needing to be worried about the army threatening or shooting me, that I can travel wherever I want. In Palestine, the sea is only 40 kilometres away from me, yet if I never came to Bangladesh, I probably would have never been able to visit a beach in my life. I can walk around at night without being worried about a settler shooting me or running over me with his car, and most importantly, for me, is how open and free Bangladesh can be for me to express my genuine opinion on politics or anything else I wish to talk about.

Witnessing all of this while being in Bangladesh has been an experience of mixed feelings. On one hand, I feel proud to represent my cause and even more proud of my Bangladeshi friends for being on the right side of history, but on the other, I wish I was there with my family. Being devastated is an understatement. I have seen my Palestinian friends here lose family members and how they lived through it while being away from home. No matter how much in touch with my family I am, every time we speak about the current situation, it hits me that it’s way worse than I even thought.

What we want from the world is simple: we recognise that our struggle has been familiar to most people around the world, but now we are waiting for action, don’t stop boycotting, sharing, talking, rallying, lobbying, and always remember, this is not just a humanitarian cause, we are people who are fighting for freedom and self-determination, against the coalition of evil and vile.

Isaac Namoura is a Palestinian medical student who has been living in Bangladesh since 2020 and is currently an intern physician at Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College Hospital.​

 

[Saif]

https://www.newagebd.net/post/middle-east/317024/israel-strikes-kill-three-in-gaza

Israel strikes kill three in Gaza
Agence France-Presse . Gaza City 08 October, 2026, 00:00

Displaced Palestinians receive hot meals distributed by a charity kitchen in the Nuseirat camp for Palestinian refugees, central Gaza Strip on Wednesday. | AFP photo.

Israel carried out new strikes in Gaza on Wednesday as it marked the third anniversary of the October 7 attacks by Hamas, with Palestinian officials reporting three people dead.

Loud bangs across the border in Gaza were audible from the site of the Nova music festival just as family members gathered at dawn to mourn the more than 300 revellers killed three years earlier.

In Gaza City, Al-Shifa hospital reported two people killed in an Israeli strike overnight.

Gaza’s civil defence identified one of the dead as Mohamed Tamous and said he was a volunteer for the agency, which serves as an emergency rescue service under Hamas.

In the southern city of Khan Yunis, Nasser Hospital said that a 60-year-old man, Hisham Ibrahim Abu Mustafa, was killed in an Israeli strike and that others were injured.

AFP has asked the Israeli military for comment.

On the third anniversary of the first day of the war in Gaza, living conditions remain dire in the coastal Palestinian territory, despite a US-brokered ceasefire that came into effect in October 2025. ‘After three years of siege, killing and destruction, Israel has turned the Gaza Strip into an uninhabitable place,’ said Gaza City resident Mahmoud Abu Hasira.

Hundreds of thousands of displaced people still live in tent cities and makeshift shelters that sprawl on beaches or next to piles of rubble from bombed-out residential buildings.

‘We once had homes, but now we have lost our loved ones, whose bodies still lie beneath the rubble,’ said Bassam Nasser, a resident of Beit Hanoun, a now largely destroyed city in Gaza’s north, who was displaced in the early days of the war.

Israel says it controls about 60 per cent of Gaza, on the territory’s outer perimeter including Beit Hanoun, while most of the Palestinian population lives in the remaining Hamas-controlled areas.

Though Israel eased its restrictions on aid trucks entering Gaza after the ceasefire, Ahmed Nasser, another resident of Gaza City, said that life remained desperately hard.

‘The war and the famine have left us hungry, fearful and displaced, living in tents and struggling with soaring prices,’ he said.

Israel’s military offensive has displaced nearly the entire population of Gaza and killed more than 74,200 people, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which is under Hamas authority and whose figures are considered reliable by the United Nations.

Since the ceasefire was declared last October, Israeli forces have killed more than 1,460 people in Gaza, according to the ministry.​

 

[Saif]

Almost all Gaza residents need shelter as El Niño threatens flooding, UN agency says

Almost all of Gaza’s population need tents or help with shelter ahead of winter, with the El Niño weather phenomenon expected to bring heavier rainfall, while supplies remain scarce due to Israeli ‌restrictions, the UN migration agency said on Friday. The El Niño —

thefinancialexpress.com.bd

Almost all Gaza residents need shelter as El Niño threatens flooding, UN agency says

Tents for displaced Palestinians inside a school-turned-shelter in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, September 10, 2026. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/Files

Almost all of Gaza’s population need tents or help with shelter ahead of winter, with the El Niño weather phenomenon expected to bring heavier rainfall, while supplies remain scarce due to Israeli ‌restrictions, the UN migration agency said on Friday.

The El Niño — which could be the strongest ever, according to the UN weather agency — could further weaken unsafe buildings, and cause flooding amid the enclave’s heavily damaged drainage systems, the IOM said.

Almost 2 million people inside the enclave, largely devastated by the war launched ⁠by Israel in response to Hamas’ assault in October 2023, require assistance, but only about 17% of the needs for winter shelter supplies have been met by humanitarian actors, IOM Director General Amy Pope said.

“Families who have already endured repeated displacement and devastating loss must be able to face the winter in safety and dignity,” Pope said, adding that constraints by Israeli authorities are making it hard for agencies to scale up their responses.

Some 8,600 emergency shelter kits, comprising wood, a tarpaulin and some basic materials, ‌have ⁠not been allowed by Israeli authorities to enter Gaza, as they have been determined as dual use, the IOM said.

COGAT, the Israeli military arm that oversees aid flows into Gaza, did not immediately respond to Reuters request for comment. Israel cites security concerns for its curbs on ⁠Gaza.

IOM said they had been able to bring in some tarpaulin and tents, but that it was not enough at the current scale needed in Gaza.

More than half of all tents ⁠and makeshift shelters in the enclave need replacing as they are in poor condition, the IOM said, warning that there are few alternatives with war-damaged buildings posing ⁠safety risks.

More than 3,600 structures were identified in August as dangerous and at risk of collapse, while around 1.8 million people are living in displacement sites - most in flood-risk areas, the IOM said.​

 

[Saif]

Gaza and the elusive path to peace: Can the Middle East finally break the cycle of war?

The Gaza crisis is no longer merely a local confrontation between Israel and Hamas; it has become one of the most consequential tests of the international order, humanitarian law and the credibility of global diplomacy. What began as another chapter in the protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflict...

en.prothomalo.com

Gaza and the elusive path to peace: Can the Middle East finally break the cycle of war?

Farzana Afroz & Tania Khatun

Palestinians flee the area after Israeli bombardment in central Gaza City on 18 March, 2024, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the militant group Hamas. The staggering suffering, death and destruction of six months of war since Hamas's 7 October attack has widened the gulf between Israelis and Palestinians, leaving both feeling that the prospect of peace is ever more elusive. AFP

The Gaza crisis is no longer merely a local confrontation between Israel and Hamas; it has become one of the most consequential tests of the international order, humanitarian law and the credibility of global diplomacy. What began as another chapter in the protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflict has evolved into a devastating humanitarian catastrophe and a formidable diplomatic challenge.

Behind the immediate violence lies a century of contested history, displacement, occupation, competing national aspirations and repeated failures of negotiation. The central question now is not simply how to stop the fighting, but whether the current diplomatic momentum can transform a fragile ceasefire into a durable political settlement.

The roots of the conflict stretch back to the early twentieth century, but the establishment of Israel in 1948 and the Palestinian Nakba created the foundations of the modern dispute. The 1967 war further complicated the situation when Israel occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.

Although Israel withdrew its permanent military presence and settlements from Gaza in 2005, its control over borders, airspace and access continued to shape the territory's political and economic reality. Hamas's electoral victory in 2006 and its subsequent takeover of Gaza in 2007 deepened the Palestinian political schism between Hamas and Fatah, leaving the Palestinian leadership divided between Gaza and the West Bank.

The Oslo Accords of the 1990s once generated cautious optimism. Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation recognised each other, and the Palestinian Authority was established as an interim governing structure. Yet Oslo postponed the most contentious questions—Jerusalem, refugees, borders, settlements and sovereignty—rather than resolving them.

Consequently, what was intended as a transitional framework gradually became a symbol of an unfinished peace process. The expansion of Israeli settlements and the absence of a sovereign Palestinian state subsequently weakened confidence in the two-state paradigm.

The Gaza crisis reached an unprecedented level after Hamas's 7 October 2023 attack on Israel, in which approximately 1,200 people were killed and around 250 were taken hostage. Israel responded with an extensive military campaign across Gaza, producing enormous civilian casualties, mass displacement and infrastructural devastation. The consequences have extended far beyond the battlefield: Gaza's healthcare system has been severely degraded, schools and homes have been destroyed, food insecurity has intensified and access to water, sanitation and humanitarian assistance has become increasingly precarious.

This humanitarian catastrophe has simultaneously exposed the limitations of the existing peace architecture. Previous ceasefires, including those mediated by Egypt and Qatar, have generally been temporary and transactional, focusing on hostage releases, prisoner exchanges or humanitarian access rather than addressing the structural causes of conflict.

Egypt and Qatar have nevertheless remained indispensable interlocutors because they possess channels of communication with both Israel and Palestinian actors. The United States, meanwhile, remains the most influential external actor because of its strategic relationship with Israel and its capacity to exert diplomatic and economic leverage.
Is there a peace deal now?

As of 17 August 2026, there is an important diplomatic development, but it would be misleading to describe the situation as a fully implemented and permanent peace agreement.

The most significant initiative is US President Donald Trump's broader 20-point Gaza peace plan, which seeks a permanent cessation of hostilities, Hamas's disarmament, phased Israeli withdrawal, a new Palestinian technocratic administration, international security arrangements and large-scale reconstruction. In January 2026, the United States announced the formation of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, intended to oversee governance, public services and reconstruction as part of Phase Two of the plan.

The future of Gaza will depend on whether diplomacy can move beyond temporary ceasefires towards an enforceable political settlement. The first priority must be the consolidation of a durable ceasefire accompanied by unhindered humanitarian access.

The White House

A major breakthrough emerged in late July 2026 when Hamas agreed in principle to a framework involving disarmament, transfer of civilian authority to a Palestinian technocratic government and a phased Israeli withdrawal. The arrangement was presented as a major step towards implementing Trump's 20-point framework.

However, the agreement has not yet translated into a comprehensive, stable peace settlement. The principal obstacle is sequencing. Hamas has accepted a phased process, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted that Israel will not withdraw from Gaza until Hamas is completely disarmed. Israel subsequently rejected the newer US-backed 15-point roadmap, while Hamas has continued to support the broader framework subject to reciprocal Israeli commitments.

Therefore, the present situation should be characterised as a fragile and contested peace process rather than a final peace deal. Indeed, diplomatic efforts remain active. On 17 August, US envoy Jared Kushner met Netanyahu after meeting Hamas's political leadership in Cairo, seeking to revive negotiations and overcome the deadlock over disarmament and Israeli withdrawal.

What comes next?

The future of Gaza will depend on whether diplomacy can move beyond temporary ceasefires towards an enforceable political settlement. The first priority must be the consolidation of a durable ceasefire accompanied by unhindered humanitarian access. Without food, medicine, shelter, clean water and reconstruction, peace will remain little more than a diplomatic abstraction.

Second, Gaza requires a credible post-war governance mechanism. A Palestinian technocratic administration could potentially provide an interim alternative to both direct Israeli military rule and continued Hamas governance. Yet such an arrangement will require Palestinian legitimacy, Arab backing and international guarantees.

Third, disarmament must be accompanied by reciprocal security guarantees. Demanding unilateral concessions from one side while leaving the other''s security concerns unaddressed, is unlikely to produce sustainable peace. A monitored, phased process involving an international stabilisation force could offer a possible mechanism for preventing renewed violence.

Most importantly, however, Gaza cannot be detached from the broader Israeli-Palestinian question. Reconstruction without political rights may restore buildings but not peace. A sustainable settlement ultimately requires addressing Palestinian self-determination, Israeli security, borders, Jerusalem, settlements and the refugee question. The two-state solution, despite its severe political and territorial obstacles, remains the most widely supported international framework for resolving these fundamental disputes.

The international community also has a decisive responsibility. The United States must use its considerable leverage more consistently; the European union should overcome its internal divisions; Arab states must continue mediation and reconstruction efforts; and the United Nations should strengthen mechanisms for humanitarian protection and international monitoring. China and other emerging powers could also contribute to a more genuinely multilateral diplomatic architecture.

Ultimately, the Gaza crisis has exposed the limitations of a diplomacy that repeatedly treats symptoms while postponing causes.

A ceasefire can silence weapons, facilitate hostage releases and open humanitarian corridors, but it cannot by itself resolve the political architecture that has sustained decades of confrontation. If the present diplomatic momentum is to become meaningful, it must evolve from a transactional arrangement into a structured peace process one capable of linking security, governance, reconstruction, political legitimacy and Palestinian self-determination within a coherent framework.

The real measure of success, therefore, will not be whether the guns fall silent for several weeks or whether another agreement is signed. It will be whether the parties can transform temporary restraint into durable coexistence, whether Israeli security can be reconciled with Palestinian political rights whether reconstruction can be converted into economic and institutional recovery and whether international guarantees can replace the recurring logic of retaliation with a credible system of accountability.

Gaza does not simply need another pause between wars. It needs a political architecture capable of making the next war unnecessary. After decades in which diplomacy has repeatedly approached the threshold of peace only to retreat into another cycle of violence, the current opening represents not a guarantee of peace, but a rare opportunity to redefine what peace itself must mean not merely the absence of war, but the presence of security, dignity, political rights, accountable governance and a viable future for both Palestinians and Israelis.

* Farzana Afroz is Associate Professor, Department of International Relations, Jahangirnagar University

* Tania Khatun is a student of Department of International Relations, Jahangirnagar University​