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Israeli airstrikes killed at least 17 people in the Gaza Strip early Friday, as Israeli forces pushed deeper into the northern part of the Palestinian territory, intensifying their campaign against Hamas. According to hospital sources, an airstrike in the southern city of Khan Younis killed at least 17 people, several of them from the same family. Hours later, rescuers were still searching through debris in hopes of finding survivors. This latest assault follows Israeli airstrikes a day earlier that killed over 100 Palestinians. In the past two weeks alone, hundreds have died as Israel escalates its operations to pressure Hamas into releasing the remaining hostages taken during the group’s October 2023 attack. On Friday, Israel announced that its ground forces had entered northern Gaza to expand what it calls a “security zone.” Ahead of the ground incursion, the Israeli military had ordered mass evacuations from parts of northern Gaza. The UN’s humanitarian office estimates that around 280,000 Palestinians have been displaced since Israel resumed combat operations after the breakdown of a ceasefire with Hamas last month. Israeli airstrike on Gaza School kills 27 Israel has recently declared plans to take control of large areas of Gaza and create a new security corridor across the territory. To increase pressure on Hamas, Israel has enforced a blockade on food, fuel, and aid for over a month, leaving civilians in desperate need as resources dwindle. Human rights groups have condemned the tactic as a war crime. Israel, however, maintains that the volume of aid delivered during a six-week truce was sufficient for Gaza’s population of roughly 2 million. Hamas has said it will only release the 59 remaining hostages — 24 of whom are believed to be alive — if Israel agrees to release Palestinian prisoners, establish a permanent ceasefire, and withdraw from Gaza. The group has refused demands to disarm or vacate the territory. The airstrike early Friday destroyed a three-story building, killing members of one extended family and injuring at least 16 others. AP reporters saw bodies wrapped in blankets and charred remains being recovered from the wreckage. “We don’t know how to collect the bodies or how to bury them. We can’t even identify the remains. They’re burned and torn apart,” said Ismail Al-Aqqad, who lost his brother and his brother’s family in the strike. On Thursday, hospital staff reported that more than 30 bodies — including women and children — were brought to medical centers in and around Khan Younis. Meanwhile, Israel announced Friday that it had killed a senior Hamas commander in a strike on the Lebanese coastal city of Sidon. The military identified the target as Hassan Farhat, a Hamas commander in western Lebanon, saying he had orchestrated multiple attacks, including one in February that killed an Israeli soldier. As part of its renewed offensive, Israeli forces have expanded a buffer zone within Gaza, recaptured sections of the Netzarim corridor, and effectively split northern and southern Gaza. According to the U.S.-based Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), more than 300 airstrikes were recorded in just 10 days at the end of March — nearly 10 times the number seen in February. The conflict began when Hamas-led fighters launched a surprise assault on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people — most of them civilians — and taking 251 hostages. Most hostages have since been released through ceasefire deals, though Israel has also rescued a handful and recovered numerous bodies. Gaza’s Health Ministry reports that over 50,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and fighters, but says more than half of the dead were women and children. Israel claims to have killed about 20,000 militants, though it has not provided supporting evidence. The war has devastated Gaza, leaving much of the territory in ruins and displacing up to 90% of its population at the height of the conflict.        

Israeli airstrikes in Gaza have claimed at least 28 lives, including seven children and one woman, according to Palestinian health authorities. The attacks occurred hours after the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. One of the strikes destroyed a residential building in the densely populated Nuseirat refugee camp, as reported by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, where victims were brought. Another set of airstrikes killed 15 men involved in aid coordination efforts in collaboration with the Hamas-controlled Interior Ministry. The U.N. resolution, which calls for an end to hostilities and expresses support for the U.N. agency assisting Palestinian refugees, was backed by an overwhelming majority. While non-binding, such resolutions reflect global sentiment. The conflict erupted on October 7, 2023, following a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, resulting in 1,200 deaths, predominantly civilians, and approximately 250 abductions. Israeli officials estimate over 100 hostages remain in Gaza, with many presumed dead. Read: Israeli strike kills 19 people in northern Gaza Gaza's Health Ministry reports that the ongoing Israeli offensive has killed more than 44,800 Palestinians, predominantly women and children, though it does not distinguish between combatants and civilians. Israeli authorities claim to have killed 17,000 Hamas militants but have not substantiated these figures. Developments in West Bank and Syria In the West Bank, an attacker responsible for fatally shooting a 12-year-old Israeli boy near the Beitar Illit settlement has surrendered to Israeli authorities. The shooting, which also injured three others, occurred near Jerusalem, close to major Israeli settlements. Meanwhile, Indonesia has successfully evacuated 37 citizens from Syria amid the ongoing fallout from the Assad regime’s collapse. Indonesian officials report that 98% of daily activities in Syria have returned to normal, with most Indonesians opting to stay in the country. Read more: Humanitarian Aid Blocked in North Gaza for Over Two Months, UN Reports Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza The war has plunged Gaza into a dire humanitarian crisis, with experts warning of potential famine. Israel claims it permits sufficient aid entry, but U.N. agencies blame Israeli restrictions and the lack of law enforcement for operational challenges. Gaza’s infrastructure remains heavily damaged, complicating relief efforts.

Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen has said the situation in Gaza is not only a classic example of ethnic cleansing but also genocide by a state power assisted by leaders of “the free world and proponents of human rights, humanitarian laws and all moral and ethical values.” “Israel-Gaza war is not a war at all. It is, in fact, barbaric and collective punishment and killing of a captive group of innocent men and women and especially children who cannot be combatants,” he said while speaking at the 8th Extraordinary Islamic Summit in Riyadh on Saturday (November 11, 2023). The Joint Arab-Islamic Extraordinary Summit was held in the city of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to discuss the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people. Read more: Israel must stop killing babies and women in Gaza: Macron tells BBC Momen said it is destroying cities and towns, hopes and aspirations of a nation, and calculated deprivation of an occupied people of their rights – to food, shelter, water, essential medicines, fuel and electricity, and of course, a decent life.

The nation is observing a Day of Mourning today (October 21, 2023) for the Palestinians killed in recent Israeli attacks.All government, semi-government, autonomous and private institutions and Bangladesh missions abroad are keeping the national flag at half-mast in observance of the mourning day.Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina made the announcement on Thursday while addressing a programme arranged in Sarak Bhaban in Dhaka’s Tejgaon. Resolving Palestine crisis depends on ‘united efforts’ by Muslim Ummah: PM More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed in the war — mostly civilians slain during the Hamas incursion while more than 4,100 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry run by Hamas, according to AP reports. Stop Israel-Palestine war, save women and children: PM Hasina urges world leaders

Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian teenager Tuesday during an army raid in a refugee camp in the northern West Bank, Palestinian officials said. The death was the latest in an almost year-long surge in Israeli-Palestinian violence that shows no signs of abating. Meanwhile, in the southern West Bank city of Hebron, a video captured by an American journalist showing an Israeli soldier shoving a Palestinian activist to the ground and then kicking him caused an uproar online — prompting the Israeli military to jail the soldier for 10 days. Early on Tuesday, the Israeli military said it carried out raids across the occupied West Bank overnight. During an operation in the Faraa refugee camp near the northeastern city of Tubas, the army said it opened fire on a Palestinian who approached troops with an explosive device. The camp is home to a recently formed militant cell affiliated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an Islamist group. The Palestinian Health Ministry said that 17-year-old Mahmoud al-Aydi died from a bullet wound to the head. No militant group immediately claimed him as a member. Also on Tuesday, a 25-year-old Palestinian succumbed to wounds he suffered two years ago when the Israeli army shot him in Masafer Yatta, in the southern West Bank, leaving him paralyzed from the neck down. Palestinian health officials identified him as Haroun Abu Aram. Footage from the incident in 2021 showed him struggling to prevent Israeli security forces from confiscating his portable generator before a shot rang out, and he collapsed. Tensions have mounted for months as Israel has escalated arrest raids in the West Bank, which were prompted by a spate of Palestinian attacks on Israelis last spring. Some 30 people were killed in Israel by Palestinians in 2022, and at least 12 others died in attacks so far in 2023. An Israeli Border Police officer died Monday after he was stabbed by a Palestinian teen in east Jerusalem. A security guard opened fire at the assailant, but police say he also wound up shooting and critically wounding 1st Sgt. Asil Su'ad. A Bedouin Arab serving in Israel's paramilitary police force, Su’ad was to be laid to rest in northern Israel on Tuesday. In Hebron, prominent Palestinian activist Issa Amro was giving an interview to Lawrence Wright of The New Yorker magazine on Monday when an Israeli soldier grabbed Amro by the neck as if to choke him before throwing him onto a brick sidewalk, footage posted by Wright on Twitter showed. The soldier kicked Amro as he lay on the ground and began to drag him on the concrete before another soldier intervened, pulling him away from Amro. Late on Monday, the Israeli army said the soldier would serve 10 days in military prison and be suspended from active combat duty, adding, “As the video shows, the soldier did not act as expected and did not follow the (military's) code of conduct." Palestinian and human rights groups accuse the Israeli military of frequently using excessive force and say soldiers are rarely punished for violent acts. Even in the most shocking cases — and those captured on video — soldiers often get relatively light sentences. Yet Israel's ultranationalist National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir lambasted the punishment as a “disgrace.” He has long called for a relaxation of open-fire regulations and immunity from criminal prosecution for members of the security forces acting in combat situations in the West Bank. “Soldiers deserve to be backed up, not jailed,” Ben-Gvir wrote on Twitter. Nearly 150 Palestinians were killed last year in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, making it the deadliest year in those areas since 2004, according to figures by the Israeli rights group B’Tselem. At least 48 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops since the start of this year. Israel says that most of those killed have been militants but others — including youths protesting the incursions and other people not involved in confrontations — have also been killed. Israel says the military raids are meant to dismantle militant networks and thwart future attacks while the Palestinians view them as further entrenchment of Israel’s open-ended, 55-year occupation. Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war, territories the Palestinians claim for their hoped-for independent state.

Palestinian medics said a man died early Saturday after he was critically wounded by Israeli gunfire during a military raid in the occupied West Bank nearly two weeks earlier. Yazan al-Jaabari, 19, died from wounds he sustained on Jan. 2, Ibn Sina hospital in the southern town of Jenin said. Al-Jaabari was injured when Israeli troops stormed Kafr Dan village to demolish the homes of two Palestinian gunmen who killed an Israeli soldier during a firefight in September. Two Palestinians, including a gunman, were killed during confrontations with Israeli forces that day. The death of al-Jaabari raises to 10 the number of Palestinians killed during Israeli raids in the West Bank since the beginning of the year. Read more: Palestinian medics say death toll from Israeli airstrikes in Gaza City climbs to 33, deadliest attack in recent fighting Israel ramped up its military raids last spring after a spate of Palestinian attacks against Israelis killed 19 people. Israel says the operations are meant to dismantle militant networks and thwart future attacks. The Palestinians see them as further entrenchment of Israel’s 55-year, open-ended occupation of land they seek for their future state. The raids sharply escalated tensions and helped fuel another wave of Palestinian attacks in the fall that killed 10 Israelis. Nearly 150 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank and east Jerusalem in 2022, Israeli rights group B’Tselem reported, making last year the deadliest since 2004. Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, territories the Palestinians want for their future independent state. Israel has since settled 500,000 people in about 130 settlements across the West Bank, which the Palestinians and much of the international community view as an obstacle to peace. Read more: Palestinian officials say house fire in Gaza Strip kills 21

 The Israeli military shot and killed three Palestinians during arrest raids in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, Palestinian health officials said, the latest bloodshed in months of rising violence between Israelis and Palestinians. The military, which has been carrying out near-nightly raids in the territory since early last year, said soldiers who entered the Qalandia refugee camp before dawn were bombarded by rocks and cement blocks. In response, the military said troops opened fire at Palestinians throwing objects from rooftops. The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the man killed as Samir Aslan, 41. Aslan's sister, Noura Aslan, said Israeli security forces broke into their house at 2:30 a.m. to arrest his 18-year-old son, Ramzi. As Ramzi was being hauled away, his father sprinted to the rooftop to see what was happening, she said. Within moments, an Israeli sniper shot him in the back. Aslan's wife called an ambulance, but Noura said the army initially prevented medics from reaching the house. As Aslan was bleeding, his family dragged his body down the stairs and called for help. An ambulance picked him up some 20 minutes later, Noura said. Read more: 4 Palestinians killed in flare-up as Israel counts votes The Israeli army also raided the northern occupied West Bank on Thursday, entering the village of Qabatiya south of the flash point city of Jenin and surrounding a house in the town. The Palestinian Health Ministry reported that Israeli forces fatally shot 25-year-old Habib Kamil and 18-year-old Abdel Hadi Nazal. The Israeli army said security forces entered Qabatiya to arrest Muhammad Alauna, a Palestinian suspected of planning militant attacks. The army said soldiers shot at a number of Palestinians during the raid, including a man who tried to flee the scene with Alauna, a gunman who fired at the forces from inside his car as well as a group of Palestinians throwing rocks at Israeli troops. It was not immediately clear what Kamil was doing when he was shot. The deaths on Thursday bring the total number of Palestinians killed in the West Bank this year to nine, including two Palestinians killed Wednesday in separate incidents in the West Bank. One was killed during an Israeli military arrest raid in the territory’s north and another after stabbing and wounding an Israeli man in a southern settlement. Israel ramped up its military raids last spring, after a spate of Palestinian attacks against Israelis killed 19 people. Israel says the operations are meant to dismantle militant networks and thwart future attacks. The Palestinians see them as further entrenchment of Israel's 55-year, open-ended occupation of land they seek for their future state. The raids sharply escalated tensions and helped fuel another wave of Palestinian attacks in the fall that killed 10 Israelis. Nearly 150 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank and east Jerusalem in 2022, Israeli rights group B'Tselem reported, making last year the deadliest since 2004. The heightened violence comes as Israel's new ultranationalist and ultra-Orthodox government — it's most right-wing ever — is charting its legislative agenda, one that is expected to take a tough line against the Palestinians and drive up settlement construction in the West Bank. Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, territories the Palestinians want for their future independent state. Israel has since settled 500,000 people in about 130 settlements across the West Bank, which the Palestinians and much of the international community view as an obstacle to peace.

Israeli forces on Saturday shot and killed a Palestinian teenager in the occupied West Bank after a group of youths smashed a hole through the Israeli separation barrier and began throwing objects at police. The shooting happened in Azariyah, a village just outside of Jerusalem, and marked the latest violence in what has become the deadliest year in the West Bank since 2015. In the Gaza Strip, meanwhile, thousands of supporters of the ruling Hamas militant group filled a soccer stadium in a demonstration they said was meant to show solidarity with the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem during the Jewish high holiday season. Amateur video shared on social media showed a group of masked youths gathered in front of the towering concrete barrier and chanting slogans as they forced their way through a gate. “Walk forward our popular fans,” they chanted. “A hole in the separation wall, a patrol explodes.” Israel’s paramilitary border police said forces shot a protester who attempted to throw a firebomb at them as they came to disperse a demonstration. It said demonstrators threw stones and explosives at them. The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the dead youth as 18-year-old Fayez Damdoum. Read: Israeli strikes on Gaza kill 8, including senior militant Israel built the barrier some 20 years ago in what it said was a security measure meant to prevent attackers from entering Israel. But the barrier frequently dips into the West Bank, carving off nearly 10% of its territory. The Palestinians view the structure as an illegal land grab and symbol of Israel’s 55-year military occupation of the territory. Israel captured the West Bank and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war. Some 700,000 Israeli settlers now live in the two areas, which the Palestinians claim for a future state. Saturday’s killing came at a time of heightened tensions. Israel has been carrying out stepped-up military activity in the West Bank, mostly in the northern cities of Jenin and Nablus, following a series of deadly Palestinian attacks inside Israel last spring. In Gaza, thousands of people attended Saturday’s rally, called “Al Aqsa is in danger.” Hamas leaders, including its top official in Gaza, Yehiyeh Sinwar, stood on a stage and addressed the crow. Hamas has previously threatened violence in response to what it says are “violations” against Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque during the Jewish New Year holiday season. Tens of thousands of Jews visit the city during the holiday, including large numbers of people who visit the contested hilltop compound where the mosque is located. Jews revere the site as the Temple Mount, home to the biblical Jewish Temples, and consider it the holiest site in Judaism. The site is the emotional epicenter of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the competing claims often spill over into violence. Under longstanding arrangements, Jews are allowed to visit, but not pray at the site. However in recent years, the number of visitors has swelled, with some people praying under police protection. These scenes have raised fears among Palestinians that Israel is plotting to divide or take over the site — a claim Israel denies. Rawhi Mushtaha, a member of Hamas’ political bureau, said Israeli practices were endangering the mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam.   “The practices of the occupation in Al-Aqsa, the West Bank and Palestine herald the great explosion in Al-Aqsa,” he said.

Israel’s military said early Sunday it launched strikes against militant targets in the Gaza Strip, a day after rockets were fired from the Hamas-ruled territory. Video filmed in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, showed three huge explosions and fighter jets could be heard flying overhead. There was no immediate confirmation on possible casualties. The Israeli military said the attacks targeted a rocket manufacturing facility and a military post for Hamas. It also blamed the militant Islamic group for any violence emanating from the territory it controls. The airstrikes come as retaliation for two rockets fired from Gaza on Saturday which landed in the Mediterranean Sea off central Israel. Read: Israel set to OK 3,000 West Bank settler homes this week It was not clear whether the rockets were meant to hit Israel, but Gaza-based militant groups often test-fire missiles toward the sea. There were no reports of casualties from Saturday’s rocket launches. Apart from a single incident in September, there has been no cross-border rocket fire since a cease-fire ended an 11-day war between Israel and Hamas in May. The cease-fire, brokered by Egypt and other mediators, has been fragile. The militant Hamas group says Israel did not take serious steps to ease the blockade it imposed on Gaza with Egypt’s help when the Islamic movement seized control of the coastal enclave in 2007. Tension are also high as other groups like the smaller but more hardline Islamic Jihad threaten military escalation if Israel doesn’t end the administrative detention of a Palestinian prisoner who has been on a hunger strike for over 130 days. Read: Israel, Palestinian militants use bodies as bargaining chips On Wednesday, Palestinian militants in Gaza shot and lightly wounded an Israeli civilian near the security fence and Israel responded with tank fire targeting multiple Hamas sites in the first exchange of fire in months.

You and I are human beings, with family, perhaps children and grandchildren, certainly with friends and neighbors. We are of different nationalities, ethnicities, beliefs. We have all seen extreme poverty, and witnessed wars and the killing and the dying, whether firsthand or through the news.  We have similar sentiments. Empathy is a part of us, in our DNA. Unless one can completely block out this aspect of all human beings, it is impossible to view what has happened in the last weeks the people of Gaza without being heartbroken, angry, and feeling helpless. The country inflicting such disproportionate war on the inhabitants of Gaza is the one that was carved out of ancient Palestine following one of the worst, and one of the most heartbreaking man-made human calamities, the Jewish Holocaust.  As the smoke clears, and as both parties finish their “victory celebrations,” it is on all of us to ask ourselves what we can do. A mostly barren region of the world, the Israeli and Palestinian land is the holy birthplace of the prophets of the three primary monotheist religions of the world. One would think that with the wisdom of these powerful religions, it would be a heaven of harmony. Instead, we find a hell on Earth, a ground soaked in the blood and tears of far too many innocent victims. No conflict has consumed so much thought, wisdom and mediation by so many sages. It has produced more “peace plans” and “road maps” than any other conflict of the last century, the writers and planners at times rewarded prematurely with the Nobel Peace Prize, creating false optimism followed by disillusion, more frustration and anger. The hopes of Palestinians have been betrayed by their own leaders, by the rulers of their fellow Arab nations, and by the US. We have just witnessed a new round of horrors, unleashed by an Israeli state that is apparently without moral constraints, one that believes it somehow has God’s exclusive mandate to be the unchallenged regional power, and one that believes itself entitled to nuclear arsenal that is denied to others in the region. Hamas rockets are easily overwhelmed by the unmatched air force and infantry army of Israel, the world’s 4th world military power. Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II. AS of 2020, the United States had provided Israel $146 billion (current, or noninflation-adjusted, dollars) in bilateral assistance and missile defense funding. In 2021, the Trump Administration requested and additional $3.3 billion in Foreign Military Financing for Israel and $500 million in missile defense aid. Israel receives the second largest foreign aid allocation in the US budget, second only to Afghanistan, including ultra-modern lethal weapons, advanced missile shield technology and the most advanced jet fighters. Rhetoric and fist-waving aside, Israel has no discernible external threats to its survival. Iran is as close as it comes to a plausible enemy – but with no nuclear weapons against Israel’s 200 nuclear warheads it is difficult to call this credible. The rockets fired by Hamas, most of them destroyed by Israel’s “Iron Dome,” are comparable to a child throwing rocks at an army of tanks in proportion to Israeli might. Yet the Israeli army has continued to wage wars against the Palestinian people, as it has done since the Arab-Israel war of half a century ago. The recent conflict, ignited by the invasion by Israeli security forces of the most sacred of Muslim sites, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, resulting in hundreds wounded, is only the latest move in a long campaign. It is made even more absurd today by the fact that 44% of the population of Gaza is under 14 years old, a demographic often seen in populations that have been subjected to campaigns of annihilation. The US is an irreplaceable partner in the region and is critical to is resolution. The Biden Administration is inheriting a legacy of extraordinary blunders by the Trump administration that were received by Netanyahu as a green light and license for a scorched earth war against the Palestinians. It will demand courage and wisdom, and strong international support, to undo. A path to the resolution must begin with all parties being held to the recognized international standards for crimes against humanity. No alliance with the powerful should shield any state or party from accountability for the violation of these standards. International Standards of crimes against one’s fellow human beings, when applied to Slobodan Milošević or Omar Al-Bashir but not to Benjamin Netanyahu become pointless.  Every conflict in this ongoing theater of insanity, including the “eviction” by armed forces from one’s home, to missiles landing in one’s bedroom in Gaza to a 10-year-old Israeli girl cowering in fear in a shelter, should reaffirm the validity and urgent need for the two-state solution based on the 1967 borders. The only other option is a unified state composed of Israelis and Palestinians, with the recognition that Palestinians would be the majority. There are no other options. The next steps on this vital road must now include unimpeded access to Gaza for international humanitarian agencies, and international support for the reconstruction and compensation for the destruction of infrastructures and human lives needlessly lost and wounded. Our common empathy and humanity demand it.   (This article was published in Wall Street International on June 4, 2021 from New York, USA)