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

[Saif]

Support for Israel’s Gaza war hits new low in US: poll

A new poll from the research firm Gallup suggests that only 32 percent of Americans approve of Israel’s military action in Gaza, a 10-point drop from September 2024, as anger over atrocities against Palestinians continues to rise.

www.thedailystar.net

Support for Israel’s Gaza war hits new low in US: poll

A new poll from the research firm Gallup suggests that only 32 percent of Americans approve of Israel's military action in Gaza, a 10-point drop from September 2024, as anger over atrocities against Palestinians continues to rise.

The survey, released on Tuesday, also showed an enormous partisan divide over the issue. Seventy-one percent of respondents who identified as members of the Republican Party said they approve of Israel's conduct, compared with 8 percent of Democrats, reports Al Jazeera online.

Overall, 60 percent of respondents said they disapprove of Israel's action in Gaza. Shibley Telhami, a professor at the University of Maryland, said the latest survey shows a trend of growing discontent with Israel that goes beyond the war on Gaza.​

 

[Saif]

Gaza aid delivery is ‘far from sufficient’: UN

The United Nations’ humanitarian agency has said that the conditions for delivering aid into Gaza were “far from sufficient” to meet the immense needs of its “desperate, hungry people”.

www.thedailystar.net

Gaza aid delivery is ‘far from sufficient’: UN
Israeli strikes kill 34 Palestinians, including 15 aid seekers

Palestinians carry aid supplies provided by the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in the central Gaza Strip, yesterday. Photo: Reuters

The United Nations' humanitarian agency has said that the conditions for delivering aid into Gaza were "far from sufficient" to meet the immense needs of its "desperate, hungry people".

OCHA also said fuel deliveries were nowhere near what is needed to keep health, emergency, water and telecommunications services running in the besieged Palestinian territory.

This week, Israel launched daily pauses in its military operations in some parts of the Gaza Strip and opened secure routes to enable UN agencies and other aid groups to distribute food in the densely populated territory of more than two million, reports AFP.

"While the UN and its partners are taking advantage of any opportunity to support people in need during the unilateral tactical pauses, the conditions for the delivery of aid and supplies are far from sufficient," the agency said.

"For example, for UN drivers to access the Kerem Shalom crossing -- a fenced-off area -- Israeli authorities must approve the mission, provide a safe route through which to travel, provide multiple 'green lights' on movement, as well as a pause in bombing, and, ultimately, open the iron gates to allow them to enter."

In the ground, Israel's relentless bombardment of the besieged enclave continues, with at least 34 Palestinians killed since dawn yesterday, including 15 aid seekers.

Gaza hospitals also recorded seven new deaths from "famine and malnutrition", raising the total hunger-related death toll to 154, including 89 children, since October 2023.

Meanwhile, US special envoy Steve Witkoff met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday in a bid to salvage Gaza truce talks and tackle the humanitarian crisis in the enclave.

Indirect ceasefire talks between Israel and Palestinian group Hamas in Doha ended in deadlock last week with the sides blaming trade for the impasse and gaps remaining over issues including the extent of Israeli forces' withdrawal.

US President Donald Trump has doubled down on his backing for Israel after having appeared to give a green light to the British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, to recognise a Palestinian state.

He also said Canada's move to recognise the Palestinian state threatens a US-Canada trade deal.

Israel on Wednesday sent a response to Hamas' latest amendments to a US proposal that would see a 60-day truce and the release of hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, a source familiar with the details said.

There was no immediate comment from Hamas.​

 

[Saif]

US envoy visits Gaza sites as UN says hundreds of aid-seekers killed

President Donald Trump's special envoy inspected a US-backed food distribution centre in war-torn Gaza on Friday, as the UN rights office reported that Israeli forces had killed hundreds of hungry Palestinians waiting for aid.

en.prothomalo.com

US envoy visits Gaza sites as UN says hundreds of aid-seekers killed
AFP Gaza City
Published: 01 Aug 2025, 18: 42

Palestinians in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip rush towards a plane conducting an airdrop of aid above the Israel-besieged Palestinian territory on 1 August, 2025. AFP

President Donald Trump's special envoy inspected a US-backed food distribution centre in war-torn Gaza on Friday, as the UN rights office reported that Israeli forces had killed hundreds of hungry Palestinians waiting for aid.

The visit by Steve Witkoff came as a report from global advocacy group Human Rights Watch (HRW) also accused Israeli forces of presiding over "regular bloodbaths" close to the US-backed aid points.

The UN's rights office in the Palestinian territories said at least 1,373 people had been killed seeking aid in Gaza since 27 May -- 105 of them in the last two days of July.

"Most of these killings were committed by the Israeli military," the UN office said, breaking down the death toll into 859 killed near the US-backed food sites and 514 along routes used by UN and aid agency convoys.

The US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, posted on X that he and Witkoff had visited Gaza "to learn the truth" about the private aid sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which is supported by the United States.

"We received briefings from IDF (the Israeli military) and spoke to folks on the ground. GHF delivers more than one million meals a day, an incredible feat!" Huckabee said.

"Hamas hates GHF because it gets food to people without it being looted by Hamas."

The foundation, on its own X account, posted that it had been a "privilege and honor" to host Witkoff and Huckabee as the group delivered its 100-millionth meal in Gaza, fulfilling Trump's "call to lead with strength, compassion and action".

Gaza's civil defence agency said 11 people were killed by Israeli fire and air strikes on Friday, including two who were waiting near an aid distribution site run by GHF.

GHF largely sidelined the longstanding UN-led humanitarian system just as Israel was beginning to ease a more than two-month aid blockade that exacerbated existing shortages of food and other essentials.

'Beyond imagination'

In its report on the GHF centres on Friday, Human Rights Watch accused the Israeli military of illegally using starvation as a weapon of war.

"Israeli forces are not only deliberately starving Palestinian civilians, but they are now gunning them down almost every day as they desperately seek food for their families," said Belkis Wille, associate crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch.

"US-backed Israeli forces and private contractors have put in place a flawed, militarised aid distribution system that has turned aid distributions into regular bloodbaths."

Responding to the report, the military said GHF worked independently, but that Israeli soldiers operated "in proximity to the new distribution areas in order to enable the orderly delivery of food".

It accused Hamas of trying to prevent food distribution and said that it was conducting a review of the reported deaths, adding it worked to "minimise, as much as possible, any friction between the civilian population" and its forces.

After arriving in Israel on Thursday, Witkoff held talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over how to resolve the almost 22-month-old war, feed desperate civilians and free the remaining hostages held by Palestinian militants.

Netanyahu has vowed to destroy Hamas and free the captives, but is under international pressure to end the bloodshed that has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians and threatened many more with famine.

Following his discussions with Witkoff, Netanyahu met Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul of Germany, another staunch Israeli ally, who nonetheless delivered a blunt message.

"The humanitarian disaster in Gaza is beyond imagination," Wadephul told reporters after the meeting, urging the government "to provide humanitarian and medical aid to prevent mass starvation from becoming a reality".

"I have the impression that this has been understood today," he added.

Hostage video

On Thursday, the armed wing of Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad released a video showing German-Israeli hostage Rom Braslavski, 21, watching recent news footage of the crisis in Gaza and pleading with the Israeli government to secure his release.

"Even the strongest person has a breaking point," his family said in a statement released by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum in Israel.

"Rom is an example of all the hostages. They must all be brought home now."

On Friday, Wadephul also met relatives of hostages still held in the Gaza Strip. According to the German foreign office, among the 49 hostages still held, a "single-digit" number are German-Israeli dual nationals

"Germany continues to do everything in our power to achieve the release of the hostages," Wadephul said, expressing outrage at the video release.

This "horrible" footage reveals "once again the utter depravity of the kidnappers", he added.

The Hamas-led October 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to a tally based on official figures.

Of the 251 people taken hostage, 49 are still held in Gaza, including 27 declared dead by the Israeli military.

The retaliatory Israeli offensive has killed at least 60,249 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to Hamas-run Gaza's health ministry.

This week UN aid agencies said deaths from starvation had begun.

Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties accessing many areas mean AFP cannot independently verify tolls and details provided by the civil defence and other parties.​

 

[Saif]

Trump envoy to inspect Gaza aid as pressure mounts on Israel

The Israeli military said troops had fired “warning shots” as Gazans gathered around the aid trucks.

en.prothomalo.com

Trump envoy to inspect Gaza aid as pressure mounts on Israel
AFP Jerusalem
Published: 01 Aug 2025, 13: 56

People carrying sacks of flour walk along al-Rashid street in western Jabalia on 17 June, 2025, after humanitarian aid trucks reportedly entered the northern Gaza Strip through the Israeli-controlled Zikim border crossing, amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. AFP

President Donald Trump’s envoy met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday ahead of a visit to inspect aid distribution in Gaza, as a deadly food crisis drove mounting international pressure for a ceasefire.

Steve Witkoff, who has been involved in months of stalled negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage release deal, met Netanyahu shortly after his arrival, the Israeli leader’s office said.

On Friday, he is to visit Gaza, the White House announced.

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Witkoff, who visited Gaza in January, would inspect “distribution sites and secure a plan to deliver more food and meet with local Gazans to hear firsthand about this dire situation on the ground”.

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul also met Netanyahu in Jerusalem, and afterwards declared: “The humanitarian disaster in Gaza is beyond imagination.

“Here, the Israeli government must act quickly, safely and effectively to provide humanitarian and medical aid to prevent mass starvation from becoming a reality,” he said.

“I have the impression that this has been understood today.”

In an example of the deadly problems facing aid efforts in Gaza, the territory’s civil defence agency said that at least 58 Palestinians were killed late Wednesday when Israeli forces opened fire on a crowd attempting to block an aid convoy.

Hostage video

The armed wing of Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad meanwhile released a video showing German-Israeli hostage Rom Braslavski.

In the six-minute video, Braslavski, speaking in Hebrew, is seen watching recent news footage of the crisis in Gaza. He identifies himself and pleads with the Israeli government to secure his release.

Braslavski was a security guard at the Nova music festival, one of the sites targeted by Hamas and other Palestinian fighters in the October 2023 attack that sparked the Gaza war.

“They managed to break Rom. Even the strongest person has a breaking point,” his family said in a statement released by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum in Israel.

“Rom is an example of all the hostages. They must all be brought home now.”

Hungry crowd

The Israeli military said troops had fired “warning shots” as Gazans gathered around the aid trucks. An AFP correspondent saw stacks of bullet-riddled corpses in Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital.

Jameel Ashour, who lost a relative in the shooting, told AFP at the overflowing morgue that Israeli troops opened fire after “people saw thieves stealing and dropping food and the hungry crowd rushed in hopes of getting some”.

Witkoff has been the top US representative in indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas but talks in Doha broke down last week and Israel and the United States recalled their delegations.

Israel is under mounting international pressure to agree a ceasefire and allow the world to flood Gaza with food, with Canada and Portugal the latest Western governments to announce plans to recognise a Palestinian state.

International pressure

Trump criticised Canada’s decision and, in a post on his Truth Social network, placed the blame for the crisis squarely on Palestinian militant group Hamas.

“The fastest way to end the Humanitarian Crises in Gaza is for Hamas to SURRENDER AND RELEASE THE HOSTAGES!!!” declared Trump, one of Israel’s staunchest international supporters.

Earlier this week, however, the US president contradicted Netanyahu’s insistence that reports of hunger in Gaza were exaggerated, warning that the territory faces “real starvation”.

UN-backed experts have reported “famine is now unfolding” in Gaza, with images of sick and emaciated children drawing international outrage.

The US State Department said it would deny visas to officials from the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank—the core of any future Palestinian state.

‘This is what death looks like’

The October 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to a tally based on official figures.

Of the 251 people seized, 49 are still held in Gaza, including 27 declared dead by the Israeli military.

The Israeli offensive, nearing its 23rd month, has killed at least 60,249 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to Hamas-run Gaza’s health ministry.

This week UN aid agencies said deaths from starvation had begun.

The civil defence agency said Israeli attacks across Gaza on Thursday killed at least 32 people.

“Enough!” cried Najah Aish Umm Fadi, who lost relatives in a strike on a camp for the displaced in central Gaza.

“We put up with being hungry, but now the death of children who had just been born?”

Further north, Amir Zaqot told AFP after getting his hands on some of the aid parachuted from planes, that “this is what death looks like. People are fighting each other with knives.”

“If the crossings were opened... food could reach us. But this is nonsense,” Zaqot said of the airdrops.

Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties accessing many areas mean AFP cannot independently verify tolls and details provided by the civil defence and other parties.​

 

[Saif]

Israeli fire kills 22 in Gaza

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli gunfire and air strikes killed at least 22 people on Friday, including eight who were waiting to collect food aid in the war-battered Palestinian territory.

www.newagebd.net

Israeli fire kills 22 in Gaza
Agence France-Presse . Gaza City 02 August, 2025, 00:56

Palestinians receive lentil soup at a food distribution point in Gaza City on Friday. | AFP photo

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli gunfire and air strikes killed at least 22 people on Friday, including eight who were waiting to collect food aid in the war-battered Palestinian territory.

Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said that five people were killed in a strike in the southern Gaza Strip, and four more when a vehicle was hit in the central area of Deir el-Balah.

Bassal said Israeli forces killed five Palestinians who were trying to return to the Gaza City area, in the territory’s north, after word had spread that troops had withdrawn from there.

There was no comment from the Israeli military, which said it could not confirm any of the incidents without specific coordinates for each of them.

The civil defence agency reported deadly fire at Palestinians who were seeking humanitarian aid, in a territory where UN-backed experts have reported that ‘famine is now unfolding’.

Bassal said six people were killed by Israeli gunfire while waiting near northern Gaza’s Zikim crossing, through which aid trucks have entered from Israel in recent weeks.

Israeli fire on a crowd near an aid distribution site in southern Gaza killed two people and wounded 70 others, the civil defence said.

The site is run by the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, whose operations have been marred by chaotic scenes and near-daily reports of deadly incidents.

The Israeli military did not comment on the latest reports, while the GHF has denied that fatal shootings have occurred in the immediate vicinity of its aid points.

Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties in accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify the tolls and details provided by the civil defence agency and other parties.

As Gazans face dire conditions after nearly 22 months of war, thousands have gathered each day near aid distribution points in Gaza, including the four operated by the GHF.

Israeli restrictions on the entry of goods and aid into Gaza have led to severe shortages of food and essential goods, including medical supplies and fuel, which hospitals rely on to power their generators.

The shortages were exacerbated by more than two months of a total blockade on aid imposed by Israel, which began easing the stoppage in late May as GHF began its operations.

US special envoy Steve Witkoff made a rare visit on Friday to a GHF site in Gaza, with the aim to ‘help craft a plan to deliver food and medical aid to the people of Gaza’.

An Israeli defence ministry body overseeing civil affairs in the Palestinian territories, COGAT, said that more than 200 trucks of aid had been collected and distributed by the United Nations and international organisations on Thursday.

Four fuel tankers for UN agencies also entered the Palestinian territory, and 43 pallets of supplies were parachuted into Gaza in cooperation with the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Jordan, COGAT added.

The UN says Gaza requires at least 500 trucks of aid per day.​

 

[Saif]

Time is running out for Palestinians

World must act to end Israel’s genocidal campaign

www.thedailystar.net

Time is running out for Palestinians
World must act to end Israel’s genocidal campaign

VISUAL: STAR

We are appalled by Israel's relentless bombardment of the besieged Gaza Strip, which resulted in the killing of at least another 23 Palestinian aid seekers on July 31. A day earlier, according to Al Jazeera, Israeli attacks killed at least 71 Palestinians who were attempting to access humanitarian assistance amid a deepening hunger crisis in Gaza. Among them, at least 51 people were killed (and more than 648 others wounded) in a single strike while they were heading towards the Zikim crossing point to receive aid from trucks entering northern Gaza. Similarly, in southern Gaza, another 20 aid seekers were killed near the Morag Corridor, close to Khan Younis.

On the one hand, Israel is severely restricting the entry of aid into Gaza to the bare minimum, deliberately starving the Palestinian population. On the other hand, it has consistently targeted those seeking aid and turned distribution sites into dystopian killing fields. Starving and desperate Palestinians have described this brutality as Israel's version of "The Hunger Games" against them. As a result, Gaza is now experiencing "the worst-case scenario of famine," according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), with children being the worst affected. The IPC reports that more than 20,000 children have been admitted to Gaza's hospitals with acute malnutrition since April.

The silence and support Israel has received from its Western allies—even in the face of such war crimes—has been sickening. However, the fact that the majority of the world, including millions of ordinary Western citizens, has raised their voices against Israel's genocidal campaign in Gaza may still hold the key to halting this massacre. The governments of France, the UK, and Canada—all of which have blindly supported Israel for decades—have, for example, recently been forced to put some pressure on Israel. France has issued a collective appeal with 14 other countries, expressing their desire to recognise the State of Palestine. British and Canadian prime ministers have made similar announcements, stating that their countries will formally recognise it in September unless Israel takes various "substantive steps", including agreeing to a ceasefire in Gaza.

Although extremely late in coming, these are indeed some positive signs. The international community must build on this momentum now to force Israel to end its genocidal campaign, before it is too late. Conscientious citizens and governments around the world must also use this opportunity to push all relevant parties—particularly the US—to acknowledge that the only way to resolve this crisis is through a two-state solution, which requires the recognition of the State of Palestine.​

 

[Saif]

Gaza mother worries time running out for evacuation of malnourished daughter

Stroking the hair of her emaciated daughter on a hospital bed in Gaza City, Nasma Ayad fears time is running out for a medical evacuation of the malnourished eight-year-old to avoid the fate of her sister, who died last month. "I feel I'm slowly losing my daughter, day after day - everything she's

thefinancialexpress.com.bd

Gaza mother worries time running out for evacuation of malnourished daughter

REUTERS
Published :
Aug 02, 2025 19:37
Updated :
Aug 02, 2025 19:37

Nasma Ayad fans her daughter, Jana Ayad, who is malnourished, according to medics, as she receives treatment at a hospital in Gaza City, amid a worsening hunger crisis, July 29, 2025. Photo : REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa

Stroking the hair of her emaciated daughter on a hospital bed in Gaza City, Nasma Ayad fears time is running out for a medical evacuation of the malnourished eight-year-old to avoid the fate of her sister, who died last month.

"I feel I'm slowly losing my daughter, day after day - everything she's suffering from is multiplying," Ayad said.

With few medical supplies and limited food, treating malnourished Palestinian children with complicated conditions in war-shattered Gaza has become increasingly difficult, according to medical staff and humanitarian agencies.

Jana received treatment for malnutrition last year at an International Medical Corps clinic in the central town of Deir al-Balah after showing signs of weakness and delayed growth.

Though she improved, the frequent interruption of healthcare services and increasing scarcity of food - as Israeli forces who control all access to Gaza have kept up their offensive against Hamas militants - led to a relapse, Ayad said.

She weighs just 11 kilograms (24 pounds) and has trouble seeing, speaking or standing up.

"She started having an edema, which is fluid retention that makes the limbs and the body swell and store water because of the lack of protein and food," said Suzan Marouf, a therapeutic nutritionist at Patient Friend's Benevolent Society Hospital.

Jana's sister, Joury, died on July 20. The child had kidney problems exacerbated by malnutrition, her mother said.

Gaza's spiralling humanitarian crisis prompted the main world hunger monitoring body on Tuesday to assess that a worst-case scenario of famine is unfolding, and that immediate action is needed to avoid widespread death. Images of emaciated Palestinian children have shocked many around the world.

Gazan health authorities have reported more and more people dying from hunger-related causes. The total now stands at 156, among them 90 children, most of whom died in the past few weeks.

Ayad had hoped both her girls could be evacuated to safety to receive treatment outside the Gaza Strip. Health officials had added them to a list of patients who were in need of evacuation last September.

But the evacuations never transpired. Though it was too late for Joury, her mother still holds out some hope for Jana.

"I am calling for the urgent referral of Jana as soon as possible to be treated outside the country," she said.

With the international furore over Gaza's ordeal growing, Israel announced steps over the weekend to ease aid access. But the UN World Food Programme said on Tuesday it was still not getting the permissions needed to deliver sufficient aid.

Israel and the US accuse Hamas of stealing aid - which the Islamist group denies - and the UN of failing to prevent this. The United Nations says it has seen no evidence of Hamas diverting much aid. Hamas accuses Israel of causing starvation and using aid as a weapon, which the Israeli government denies.​

 

[Saif]

Gaza civil defence says Israeli fire kills 22

Gaza's civil defence agency said Israeli gunfire and air strikes killed at least 22 people on Friday, including eight who were waiting to collect food aid in the war-battered Palestinian territory.

en.prothomalo.com

Gaza civil defence says Israeli fire kills 22

AFP Gaza City
Published: 02 Aug 2025, 09: 41

Palestinians carry bags of flour that they obtained from aid trucks which entered Gaza through the Zikim crossing point, in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on 1 August, 2025. The UN human rights office said on 1 August that 1,373 Palestinians have been killed while waiting for aid in the shortage-stricken Gaza Strip since late May, most of them by the Israeli military. AFP

Gaza's civil defence agency said Israeli gunfire and air strikes killed at least 22 people on Friday, including eight who were waiting to collect food aid in the war-battered Palestinian territory.

Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that five people were killed in a strike in the southern Gaza Strip, and four more when a vehicle was hit in the central area of Deir el-Balah.

Bassal said Israeli forces killed five Palestinians who were trying to return to the Gaza City area, in the territory's north, after word had spread that troops had withdrawn from there.

There was no comment from the Israeli military, which told AFP it could not confirm any of the incidents without specific coordinates for each of them.

The civil defence agency reported deadly fire at Palestinians who were seeking humanitarian aid, in a territory where UN-backed experts have reported that "famine is now unfolding".

Bassal said six people were killed by Israeli gunfire while waiting near northern Gaza's Zikim crossing, through which aid trucks have entered from Israel in recent weeks.

Israeli fire on a crowd near an aid distribution site in southern Gaza killed two people and wounded 70 others, the civil defence said.

The site is run by the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), whose operations have been marred by chaotic scenes and near-daily reports of deadly incidents.

The Israeli military did not comment on the latest reports, while the GHF has denied that fatal shootings have occurred in the immediate vicinity of its aid points.

Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties in accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify the tolls and details provided by the civil defence agency and other parties.

As Gazans face dire conditions after nearly 22 months of war, thousands have gathered each day near aid distribution points in Gaza, including the four operated by the GHF.

Israeli restrictions on the entry of goods and aid into Gaza have led to severe shortages of food and essential goods, including medical supplies and fuel, which hospitals rely on to power their generators.

The shortages were exacerbated by more than two months of a total blockade on aid imposed by Israel, which began easing the stoppage in late May as GHF began its operations.

US special envoy Steve Witkoff made a rare visit on Friday to a GHF site in Gaza, with the aim to "help craft a plan to deliver food and medical aid to the people of Gaza".

An Israeli defence ministry body overseeing civil affairs in the Palestinian territories, COGAT, said that more than 200 trucks of aid had been collected and distributed by the United Nations and international organisations on Thursday.

Four fuel tankers for UN agencies also entered the Palestinian territory, and 43 pallets of supplies were parachuted into Gaza in cooperation with the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Jordan, COGAT added.

The UN says Gaza requires at least 500 trucks of aid per day.​

 

[Saif]

Israeli fire kills 34 in Gaza

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli fire killed 34 people in the territory on Saturday.

www.newagebd.net

Israeli fire kills 34 in Gaza
Agence France-Presse . Tel Aviv, Israel 03 August, 2025, 00:24

Nine-year-old malnourished Palestinian girl Mariam Dawwas gets her hair combed by her mother as she sits with her on the floor, in the Rimal neighbourhood in Gaza City on Saturday. Dawwas’ mother, Modallala, 33, who is living with her family in a displacement camp in the northern Gaza Strip, said her daughter had no known illness and weighed 25 kilograms before the war, but has now dropped to 10 kilograms. | AFP photo

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli fire killed 34 people in the territory on Saturday.

Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said five people were killed in an Israeli strike on an area of central Gaza where Palestinians were awaiting a food distribution by the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

He added that Saturday’s strikes mostly targeted areas near Gaza City in the north and Khan Yunis in the south.

Meanwhile, US envoy Steve Witkoff met anguished relatives of Israeli hostages still held in Gaza on Saturday, as fears for the captives’ survival mounted almost 22 months into the war sparked by Hamas’s October 2023 attack.

Witkoff was greeted with some applause and pleas for assistance from hundreds of protesters gathered in Tel Aviv, before going into a closed meeting with the families.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum confirmed the meeting was underway and videos shared online showed Witkoff arriving as families chanted ‘Bring them home!’ and ‘We need your help.’

The visit came one day after Witkoff visited a US-backed aid station in Gaza, to inspect efforts to get food into the devastated Palestinian territory.

Yotam Cohen, brother of 21-year-old hostage Nimrod Cohen, told AFP: ‘The war needs to end. The Israeli government will not end it willingly. It has refused to do so.

Of the 251 hostages taken during the Hamas attack, 49 are still being held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.

After the meeting, the Forum released a statement saying that Witkoff had given them a personal commitment that he and US President Donald Trump would work to return the remaining hostages.

Hamas attempted to maintain pressure on the families, releasing a video of one of the hostages -- 24-year-old Evyatar David—for the second time in two days, showing him looking emaciated in a tunnel.

The video called for a ceasefire and warned that time was running out for the hostages. David’s family said their son was the victim of a ‘vile’ propaganda campaign and accused Hamas of deliberately starving their son.

‘The deliberate starvation of our son as part of a propaganda campaign is one of the most horrifying acts the world has seen. He is being starved purely to serve Hamas’s propaganda,’ the family said.

The United States, along with Egypt and Qatar, had been mediating ceasefire talks between Hamas and Israel that would allow the hostages to be released and humanitarian aid to flow more freely.

But talks broke down last month and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is under increasing domestic pressure to come up with another way to secure the missing hostages, alive and dead.

He is also facing international calls to open Gaza’s borders to more food aid, after UN and humanitarian agencies warned that more than two million Palestinian civilians are facing starvation.

But Israel’s top general warned that there would be no respite in fighting if the hostages were not released.

‘I estimate that in the coming days we will know whether we can reach an agreement for the release of our hostages,’ armed forces chief of staff Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir said in a statement.

‘If not, the combat will continue without rest.’

Zamir denied that there was widespread starvation in Gaza.

‘The current campaign of false accusations of intentional starvation is a deliberate, timed, and deceitful attempt to accuse the IDF (Israeli military), a moral army, of war crimes,’ he said.

Alongside reports from UN-mandated experts warning a ‘famine is unfolding’ in Gaza, more and more evidence is emerging of serious malnutrition and deaths among the most vulnerable Palestinian civilians.

Modallala Dawwas, 33, living in a displacement camp in Gaza City told AFP her daughter Mariam had no known illnesses before the war but had now dropped from 25 kilos (four stone) to 10 (barely one and half) and was seriously malnourished.

Hamas’s 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to a tally based on official figures.

Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed at least 60,332 people, mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, deemed reliable by the UN.​

 

[Lulldapull]

Do teen yahuday roz marva deta hae Iran.......via Hezb supplied maal.......aur jo duss aur zakhmi hotay hain (daily) a good one to two of em commit suicide or get crippled for life.

Its a brutal strategy against a small country like Israel.

It'll pay off down da road.......actually it already has paid off.

Israel got no future with Iran breathing down its neck.

 

[Saif]

Israel to decide next steps in Gaza after ceasefire talks collapse

Benjamin Netanyahu will convene his security cabinet this week to decide on Israel's next steps in Gaza following the collapse of indirect ceasefire talks with Hamas, with one senior Israeli source suggesting more force could be an option. Last Saturday, during a visit to the country, US Middle Ea

thefinancialexpress.com.bd

Israel to decide next steps in Gaza after ceasefire talks collapse

REUTERS
Published :
Aug 04, 2025 23:04
Updated :
Aug 04, 2025 23:04

Smoke rises from Gaza as the sun sets, as seen from the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border. Photo : REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun/Files

Benjamin Netanyahu will convene his security cabinet this week to decide on Israel's next steps in Gaza following the collapse of indirect ceasefire talks with Hamas, with one senior Israeli source suggesting more force could be an option.

Last Saturday, during a visit to the country, US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff had said he was working with the Israeli government on a plan that would effectively end the war in Gaza.

But Israeli officials have also floated ideas including expanding the military offensive in Gaza and annexing parts of the shattered enclave.

The failed ceasefire talks in Doha had aimed to clinch agreements on a US-backed proposal for a 60-day truce, during which aid would be flown into Gaza and half of the hostages Hamas is holding would be freed in exchange for Palestinian prisoners jailed in Israel.

After Netanyahu met Witkoff last Thursday, a senior Israeli official said that "an understanding was emerging between Washington and Israel," of a need to shift from a truce to a comprehensive deal that would "release all the hostages, disarm Hamas, and demilitarize the Gaza Strip," - Israel's key conditions for ending the war.

A source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Sunday that the envoy's visit was seen in Israel as "very significant."

But later on Sunday, the Israeli official signalled that pursuit of a deal would be pointless, threatening more force:

"An understanding is emerging that Hamas is not interested in a deal and therefore the prime minister is pushing to release the hostages while pressing for military defeat."

"STRATEGIC CLARITY"

What a "military defeat" might mean, however, is up for debate within the Israeli leadership. Some Israeli officials have suggested that Israel might declare it was annexing parts of Gaza as a means to pressure the militant group.

Others, like Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir want to see Israel impose military rule in Gaza before annexing it and re-establishing the Jewish settlements Israel evicted 20 years ago.

The Israeli military, which has pushed back at such ideas throughout the war, was expected on Tuesday to present alternatives that include extending into areas of Gaza where it has not yet operated, according to two defence officials.

While some in the political leadership are pushing for expanding the offensive, the military is concerned that doing so will endanger the 20 hostages who are still alive, the officials said.

Israeli Army Radio reported on Monday that military chief Eyal Zamir has become increasingly frustrated with what he describes as a lack of strategic clarity by the political leadership, concerned about being dragged into a war of attrition with Hamas militants.

A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) declined to comment on the report but said that the military has plans in store.

"We have different ways to fight the terror organization, and that's what the army does," Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani said.

On Tuesday, Qatar and Egypt endorsed a declaration by France and Saudi Arabia outlining steps toward a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which included a call on Hamas to hand over its arms to the Western-backed Palestinian Authority.

Hamas has repeatedly said it won't lay down arms. But it has told mediators it was willing to quit governance in Gaza for a non-partisan ruling body, according to three Hamas officials.

It insists that the post-war Gaza arrangement must be agreed upon among the Palestinians themselves and not dictated by foreign powers.

Israel's Foreign Minister Gideon Saar suggested on Monday that the gaps were still too wide to bridge.

"We would like to have all our hostages back. We would like to see the end of this war. We always prefer to get there by diplomatic means, if possible. But of course, the big question is, what will be the conditions for the end of the war?" he told journalists in Jerusalem.​

 

[Saif]

Six more die of hunger in Gaza as trucks reach border for rare fuel delivery

Six more people died of starvation and malnutrition in Gaza over the past 24 hours, its health ministry said, underlining the enclave's humanitarian emergency as Egyptian state TV said two trucks were set to make a rare delivery of fuel on Sunday. The new deaths raised the toll of those dying from

thefinancialexpress.com.bd

Six more die of hunger in Gaza as trucks reach border for rare fuel delivery

REUTERS
Published :
Aug 03, 2025 17:57
Updated :
Aug 03, 2025 17:57

Humanitarian aid packages are airdropped over the Gaza Strip, as seen from Israel, August 3, 2025. Photo : REUTERS/Amir Cohen

Six more people died of starvation and malnutrition in Gaza over the past 24 hours, its health ministry said, underlining the enclave's humanitarian emergency as Egyptian state TV said two trucks were set to make a rare delivery of fuel on Sunday.

The new deaths raised the toll of those dying from what international humanitarian agencies say may be an unfolding famine to 175, including 93 children, since the war began, the ministry said.

Egypt's state-affiliated Al Qahera News TV said two trucks carrying 107 tons of diesel were set to enter Gaza, months after Israel severely restricted aid access to the enclave before easing it somewhat as starvation began to spread.

Gaza's health ministry has said fuel shortages have severely impaired hospital services, forcing doctors to focus on treating only critically ill or injured patients. There was no immediate confirmation whether the fuel trucks had indeed entered Gaza.

Fuel shipments have been rare since March, when Israel restricted the flow of aid and goods into the enclave in what it said was pressure on Hamas militants to free the remaining hostages they took in their October 2023 attack on Israel.

Israel blames Hamas for the suffering in Gaza but, in response to a rising international outcry, it announced steps last week to let more aid reach the population, including pausing fighting for part of the day in some areas, approving air drops and announcing protected routes for aid convoys.

United Nations agencies have said that airdrops of food are insufficient and that Israel must let in far more aid by land and open up access to the war-devastated territory where starvation has been spreading.

COGAT, the Israeli military agency that coordinates aid, said 35 trucks have entered Gaza since June, nearly all of them in July.

LOOTED AID TRUCKS

The Hamas-run Gaza government media office said on Sunday that nearly 1,600 aid trucks had arrived since Israel eased restrictions late in July. However, witnesses and Hamas sources said many of those trucks have been looted by desperate displaced people and armed gangs.

More than 700 trucks of fuel entered the Gaza Strip in January and February during a ceasefire before Israel broke it in March in a dispute over terms for extending it and resumed its major offensive.

Palestinian local health authorities said at least 40 people had been killed by Israeli gunfire and airstrikes across the coastal enclave on Sunday. Deaths included persons trying to make their way to aid distribution points in southern and central areas of Gaza, Palestinian medics said.

Among those killed was a staff member of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, which said an Israeli strike at their headquarters in Khan Younis in southern Gaza ignited a fire on the first floor of the building.

The Gaza war began when Hamas killed more than 1,200 people and took 251 hostage in a cross-border attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, according to Israeli figures. Israel's air and ground war in densely populated Gaza has since killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, according to enclave health officials.

According to Israeli officials, 50 hostages now remain in Gaza, only 20 of whom are believed to be alive.​

 

[Bilal9]

Gazans resort to turtle meat in hunt for food

With food scarce in the besieged and war-battered Gaza Strip, some desperate families have turned to eating sea turtles as a rare source of protein...

www.newagebd.net

Gazans resort to turtle meat in hunt for food
Agence France-Presse . Khan Yunis, Palestinian Territories 20 April, 2025, 00:10

With food scarce in the besieged and war-battered Gaza Strip, some desperate families have turned to eating sea turtles as a rare source of protein.

Once the shell has been removed, the meat is cut up, boiled and cooked in a mix of onion, pepper, tomato and spices.

‘The children were afraid of the turtle, and we told them it tasted as delicious as veal,’ said Majida Qanan, keeping an eye on the chunks of red meat simmering in a pot over a wood fire. ‘Some of them ate it, but others refused.’

For lack of a better alternative, this is the third time 61-year-old Qanan has prepared a turtle-based meal for her family who were displaced and now live in a tent in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza largest city.

After 18 months of devastating war and an Israeli blockade on aid since March 2, the United Nations has warned of a dire humanitarian situation for the 2.4 million inhabitants of the Palestinian territory.

Israel has accused Hamas of diverting aid, which the Palestinian militant group denies.

The heads of 12 major aid organisations warned on Thursday that ‘famine is not just a risk, but likely rapidly unfolding in almost all parts’ of the territory.

‘There are no open crossings and there is nothing in the market,’ said Qanan. ‘When I buy two small bags [of vegetables] for 80 shekels, there is no meat.’

Sea turtles are internationally protected as an endangered species, but those caught in Gaza fishermen’s nets are used for food.

Qanan mixes the meat with flour and vinegar to wash it, before rinsing and boiling it in an old metal pot.

‘We never expected to eat a turtle,’ fisherman Abdel Halim Qanan said.

‘When the war started, there was a food shortage. There is no food. So [turtle meat] is an alternative for other sources of protein. There is no meat, poultry or vegetables.’

The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has warned that Gaza is facing its most severe humanitarian crisis since the war began on October 7, 2023, triggered by Hamas’s attack on Israel.

Fighting has raged in Gaza since then, pausing only twice—recently during a two-month ceasefire between January 19 and March 17, and in a previous one-week halt in late November 2023.

The World Health Organization’s regional chief Hanan Balkhy said in June that some Gazans were so desperate that they were eating animal food, grass, and drinking sewage water.

Hamas on Thursday accused Israel of using ‘starvation as a weapon’ against Gazans by blocking aid supplies.

Fisherman Qanan said the turtles were killed in the ‘halal’ method, in accordance with Islamic rites.

‘If there was no famine, we would not eat it and leave it, but we want to compensate for the lack of protein,’ he said.​

Turtle meat is not Halal - but it is allowed during desperate times like this.

My heart goes out to people in Gaza - may Allah give them "Sabr" to bear this test from Allah.

 

[Saif]

Ex-Israeli security chiefs urge Trump to help end Gaza war

Hundreds of retired Israeli security officials including former heads of intelligence agencies have urged US president Donald Trump to pressure their own government to end the war in Gaza.

www.newagebd.net

Ex-Israeli security chiefs urge Trump to help end Gaza war
Agence France-Presse . Jerusalem 04 August, 2025, 23:56

Displaced Palestinians gather to receive aid at a distribution centre run by the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation at the so-called ‘Netzarim corridor’ in the central Gaza Strip on Monday. | AFP photo

Hundreds of retired Israeli security officials including former heads of intelligence agencies have urged US president Donald Trump to pressure their own government to end the war in Gaza.

‘It is our professional judgement that Hamas no longer poses a strategic threat to Israel,’ the former officials wrote in an open letter shared with the media on Monday.

‘At first this war was a just war, a defensive war, but when we achieved all military objectives, this war ceased to be a just war,’ said Ami Ayalon, former director of the Shin Bet security service.

The war, nearing its 23rd month, ‘is leading the State of Israel to lose its security and identity,’ Ayalon warned in a video released to accompany the letter.

Signed by 550 people, including former chiefs of Shin Bet and the Mossad spy agency, the letter called on Trump to ‘steer’ prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu towards a ceasefire.

Israel launched its military operation in the Gaza Strip in response to the deadly October 7, 2023 attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas.

In recent weeks Israel has come under increasing international pressure to agree a ceasefire that could Israeli hostages released from Gaza and UN agencies distribute humanitarian aid.

But some in Israel, including ministers in Netanyahu’s coalition government, are instead pushing for Israeli forces to push on and for Gaza to be occupied in whole or in part.

The letter was signed by three former Mossad heads: Tamir Pardo, Efraim Halevy and Danny Yatom.

Others signatories include five former heads of Shin Bet — Αyalon as well as Nadav Argaman, Yoram Cohen, Yaakov Peri and Carmi Gilon — and three former military chiefs of staff, including former prime minister Ehud Barak, former defence minister Moshe Yaalon and Dan Halutz.

The letter argued that the Israeli military ‘has long accomplished the two objectives that could be achieved by force: dismantling Hamas’s military formations and governance.’

‘The third, and most important, can only be achieved through a deal: bringing all the hostages home,’ it added.

‘Chasing remaining senior Hamas operatives can be done later,’ the letter said.

In the letter, the former officials tell Trump that he has credibility with the majority of Israelis and can put pressure on Netanyahu to end the war and return the hostages.

After a ceasefire, the signatories argue, Trump could force a regional coalition to support a reformed Palestinian Authority to take charge of Gaza as an alternative to Hamas rule.

Meanwhile, Israel said the plight of hostages held in Gaza should top the global agenda, after Palestinian militants released videos showing them looking emaciated, heightening fears for their lives after nearly 22 months in captivity.

Foreign minister Gideon Saar, in a press briefing ahead of the UN Security Council session on the issue, said that ‘the world must put an end to the phenomenon of kidnapping civilians. It must be front and centre on the world stage’.

Of the 251 hostages seized during Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the on-going Gaza war, 49 are still held in the Palestinian territory, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.

The UN session was called after Palestinian militant group Hamas and its ally Islamic Jihad published last week three videos showing hostages Rom Braslavski and Evyatar David appearing weak and emaciated, causing deep shock and distress in Israel.

Hamas’ armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, said it was willing to allow Red Cross access to the hostages in exchange for permanent humanitarian access for food and medicine into all of Gaza, where UN-mandated experts have warned famine was unfolding.

The ICRC said in a statement it was ‘appalled by the harrowing videos’ and reiterated its ‘call to be granted access to the hostages’.

Netanyahu’s government has faced repeated accusations by relatives of hostages and other critics of not doing enough to rescue the captives.

‘Netanyahu is leading Israel and the hostages to ruin,’ said a campaign group representing families of the captives.

Mediation efforts led by Qatar, Egypt and the United States have failed to secure an elusive truce.​

 

[Saif]

Forgive them not, Gaza …

There is an American-enabled Israeli starvation in Gaza.

www.thedailystar.net

Forgive them not, Gaza …

Displaced Palestinian mother Zainab Dakka eats canned beans with her children inside their tent, from the aid she brought back after an aid delivery that entered Gaza through Israel, in Gaza City, August 1, 2025. PHOTO: REUTERS

Last April, I wrote Forgive Me, Gaza—a personal reflection of anguish and helplessness. Today, there is no room for introspection. It is no longer about personal guilt. We are witnessing an Israeli campaign of mass starvation, mass destruction, and mass slaughter made possible only by global indifference.

There is no hunger in Gaza. There is an American-enabled Israeli starvation.

The genocide in Gaza is not the consequence of war. It's pretextual with intent. This is not an opinion, but a documented fact expressed openly by Israeli officials, from the president down to ordinary citizens.

This intent is not the fringe views of a few extremists, as the Zionist-managed media would have you believe. It is the mainstream. An overwhelming 82 percent of Jewish Israelis support the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, with a significant portion openly endorsing the mass killing of civilians. This is the grim reality. This is the Israeli culture, nurtured and sustained by Western powers desperate to atone for their own historical crimes against Jews by imposing a settler-colonial Zionist project in the heart of the Arab world.

A diabolical culture manifests in starving millions by a regime intoxicated by its own impunity. In October 2023, Israeli President Isaac Herzog erased the line between civilians and combatants, announcing, "It is an entire nation out there that is responsible." With that one sentence, he demonised all civilians and handed down the collective death sentence we witness today against 2.3 million people. Last week, he doubled down, claiming that the Israeli siege is "in keeping with … Israeli and Jewish values."

The then defence minister, Yoav Gallant, resonated the same Zionist ideological hate, "We are putting a complete siege … No electricity, no food, no water, no gas." His successor, Defence Minister Israel Katz, was no less brazen in his recent declaration: "No humanitarian aid will enter Gaza."

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich went even further, openly stating that mass starvation was morally justified. With terrifying openness, he advocated ethnic cleansing, describing Israeli "victory" as one in which "Gaza will be entirely destroyed," forcing Palestinians to "leave in great numbers to third countries." His words provide a window into the genocidal mindset guiding Israel's racist leadership and the vast majority of its public.

These are not radical outliers but widely held beliefs. They are the impetus driving Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli state—policies codified into practice by a government rooted in racism and justified by religion, where using food as a weapon to starve an entire population is "justified and moral."

Such policies represent an entrenched, immoral Zionist cult. It is the same moral rot that allows senior Israeli figures to rationalise mass killing in religious and racial terms. Speaking on the genocide in Gaza, Israeli Rabbi Eliyahu Mali, head of a religious school in Yaffa, addressed the students, many of whom serve in the army, stating: "In our mitzvah ... (Jewish Law) not every soul shall live," and urging soldiers to kill "the future generation (children) and those who produce the future generation (mothers), because there is really no difference."

Years earlier, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the then chief Sephardic rabbi, once preached that God created "Goyim … only to serve the People of Israel," comparing the life non-Jews to that of a "donkey." These words are not an aberration. They're authoritative and reflect a toxic ideology embedded in Israeli culture and religious discourse. They are religious pontifications used to justify kosher starvation and slaughtering Palestinian goyim.

According to the World Food Programme, close to one-third of people are "not eating for days." When Israeli leaders juxtapose this reality with claims of morality, they are invoking a religious doctrine that frames such cruelty as a form of divine mitzvot.

This brings us to the shameful enablers of this twisted religious view. Israel cannot starve 2.3 million people without external support. Not without the complicity of the Egyptian regime, which allowed Israel to violate its supplementary Camp David agreement that prohibits Israeli military presence at Gaza's border with Egypt.

Certainly, not without the US funding of the "Gaza Humanitarian Foundation" (GHF), which was denounced by every credible human rights organisation as an Israeli public relations farce. It is a project designed in Tel Aviv, financed in Washington and meant to maintain starvation while shielding Israel from mounting global outrage. Like Biden, President Donald Trump bent the knee to Tel Aviv, feeding the machinery of disinformation and underwriting tools of starvation with American tax dollars and an Iron Dome of political cover.

The latest breakdown of talks to end the Israeli genocide exposed just how far the American administration was willing to bow to Netanyahu's demonic agenda. The talks failed because the US enabled Israel to use starvation as a lever in political bargaining.

What about Europe? Britain and the EU continue to issue hollow statements of "concern," repeatedly warning Israel of so-called consequences, but none of which ever materialise. This is while they continue to supply Israel with the military tools and share intelligence that make this genocide possible.

The Arab world? A complete and utter shame. Regimes have stood by as Gaza plunged into famine, like passive spectators of a dramatic fiction movie, detached and unmoved. Except for Yemen, Arab leaders and people have either remained disgracefully silent or carried on with business as usual with Israel, even as Gaza starves.

I alluded in an opinion piece last week to a plan to revive the food aid airdrops, which started on Sunday, July 27. I argued that the airdrops, much like the floating pier and GHF, were little more than distractions: painkillers for the Israeli-inflicted cancer of starvation. As with GHF's limited distribution, airdrops are constrained, as each C-130 flight can deliver 12,650 meals per trip. To provide just one meal a day for Gaza's 2.3 million residents, 170 flights would be needed daily.

Jordan and the UAE, the feel-good collaborators who are leading the airdrops, have a combined fleet of 18 C-130s. Assuming an extremely generous eight-hour turnaround for loading, flight, and drop and considering that a round-trip flight between the UAE and Palestine alone takes about seven hours, each aircraft could, at best, complete two trips per day. That amounts to no more than 36 total flights daily, delivering the equivalent of just one-fifth of a meal per person per day.

At the same time, there is growing concern that the current, limited easing of starvation is part of a broader strategy—Netanyahu permitting restricted aid in return for Trump's future support in a joint military operation in Gaza to attempt to free the Israeli captives. With the worst images of starvation temporarily subdued, it would be easier for Trump to send American troops in yet another made-for-Israel war.

This could also explain the silence of Israel's racist ministers, Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, who had previously threatened to resign if food aid entered Gaza. Their lack of protest raises questions about what political deal may be in the making behind closed doors.

Israel's "minimum amount of aid" will not stop the growling stomachs or hydrate the parched lips of Gaza's children. It may, however, just extend the suffering of their emaciated bodies before being murdered in the next American war on behalf of Israel.

American officials must end parroting the Israeli talking points and recognise that access to food is a fundamental human right, not a tool of political leverage. As long as Israel dictates the American messaging and controls the minimal flow of food, fuel and medicine, starvation will persist. Meanwhile, the most vulnerable of the population, one million children, are slowly wasting away. Those who survive will bear the burden of irreversible health complications and deep psychological wounds that never heal. Robbed of their childhood, they will carry their physical and emotional trauma forever. They will not forget. And they will not forgive.

Forgive them not, Gaza
Not Europe that denies your children food
Not the Arabs who look away
Not the Trump administration that funds your starvation
Not the world that watches you suffer in vain.

Jamal Kanj is the author of Children of Catastrophe: Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America, and other books. He writes frequently on Arab world issues for various national and international commentaries.​

 

[Lulldapull]

This shouldn't stop at all. Iran needs to kill both these basturds.

Its working great and looks like the tunnels are clear for arms shipment.

Jhoottay muzlim/ AL-Yahuday ko maarna sawab hae.......both must be killed......there's no other way no?

Both are toxic compulsive bullshitters.

@Vsdoc ........ager ye jang Iran nay bund kari doc.......where these cockroaches are killing each other beautifully........No Iranian will ever forgive Khamenei for treason:

These haramzaday must both be killed till their harami king-dumb come:

 

[Saif]

Terrible thirst hits Gaza with polluted aquifers and broken pipelines

Weakened by hunger, many Gazans trek across a ruined landscape each day to haul all their drinking and washing water - a painful load that is still far below the levels needed to keep people healthy. Even as global attention has turned to starvation in Gaza, where after 22 months of a devastating

thefinancialexpress.com.bd

Terrible thirst hits Gaza with polluted aquifers and broken pipelines

REUTERS
Published :
Aug 06, 2025 17:16
Updated :
Aug 06, 2025 17:16

A Palestinian girl carries buckets of water amid shortages, in Gaza City August 6, 2025. Photo : REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa

Weakened by hunger, many Gazans trek across a ruined landscape each day to haul all their drinking and washing water - a painful load that is still far below the levels needed to keep people healthy.

Even as global attention has turned to starvation in Gaza, where after 22 months of a devastating Israeli military campaign a global hunger monitor says a famine scenario is unfolding, the water crisis is just as severe according to aid groups.

Though some water comes from small desalination units run by aid agencies, most is drawn from wells in a brackish aquifer that has been further polluted by sewage and chemicals seeping through the rubble, spreading diarrhoea and hepatitis.

COGAT, the Israeli military agency responsible for coordinating aid in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, says it operates two water pipelines into the Gaza Strip providing millions of litres of water a day.

Palestinian water officials say these have not been working recently.

Israel stopped all water and electricity supply to Gaza early in the war but resumed some supply later though the pipeline network in the territory has been badly damaged.

Most water and sanitation infrastructure has been destroyed and pumps from the aquifer often rely on electricity from small generators - for which fuel is rarely available.

COGAT said the Israeli military has allowed coordination with aid organisations to bring in equipment to maintain water infrastructure throughout the conflict.

Moaz Mukhaimar, aged 23 and a university student before the war, said he has to walk about a kilometre, queuing for two hours, to fetch water. He often goes three times a day, dragging it back to the family tent over bumpy ground on a small metal handcart.

"How long will we have to stay like this?" he asked, pulling two larger canisters of very brackish water to use for cleaning and two smaller ones of cleaner water to drink.

His mother, Umm Moaz, 53, said the water he collects is needed for the extended family of 20 people living in their small group of tents in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.

"The children keep coming and going and it is hot. They keep wanting to drink. Who knows if tomorrow we will be able to fill up again," she said.

Their struggle for water is replicated across the tiny, crowded territory where nearly everybody is living in temporary shelters or tents without sewage or hygiene facilities and not enough water to drink, cook and wash as disease spreads.

The United Nations says the minimum emergency level of water consumption per person is 15 litres a day for drinking, cooking, cleaning and washing. Average daily consumption in Israel is around 247 litres a day according to Israeli rights group B'Tselem.

Bushra Khalidi, humanitarian policy lead for aid agency Oxfam in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories said the average consumption in Gaza now was 3-5 litres a day.

Oxfam said last week that preventable and treatable water-borne diseases were "ripping through Gaza", with reported rates increasing by almost 150 per cent over the past three months.

Israel blames Hamas for the suffering in Gaza and says it provides adequate aid for the territory's 2.3 million inhabitants.

QUEUES FOR WATER

"Water scarcity is definitely increasing very much each day and people are basically rationing between either they want to use water for drinking or they want to use a lot for hygiene," said Danish Malik, a global water and sanitation official for the Norwegian Refugee Council.

Merely queuing for water and carrying it now accounts for hours each day for many Gazans, often involving jostling with others for a place in the queue. Scuffles have sometimes broken out, Gazans say.

Collecting water is often the job of children as their parents seek out food or other necessities.

"The children have lost their childhood and become carriers of plastic containers, running behind water vehicles or going far into remote areas to fill them for their families," said Munther Salem, water resources head at the Gaza Water and Environment Quality Authority.

With water so hard to get, many people living near the beach wash in the sea.

A new water pipeline funded by the United Arab Emirates is planned, to serve 600,000 people in southern Gaza from a desalination plant in Egypt. But it could take several more weeks to be connected.

Much more is needed, aid agencies say. UNICEF spokesperson James Elder said the long-term deprivations were becoming deadly. "Starvation and dehydration are no longer side effects of this conflict. They are very much frontline effects."

Oxfam's Khalidi said a ceasefire and unfettered access for aid agencies was needed to resolve the crisis.

"Otherwise we will see people dying from the most preventable diseases in Gaza - which is already happening before our eyes."​

 

[Saif]

Genocidal starvation in Palestine

WEAPONISATION of starvation is going on in Palestine to evict the remaining population to make more room for Israeli settlers. The unlawful transformation of Palestinians into refugees raises questions about the legitimacy of the genocidal starvation. This is a violation of the basic human right...

www.newagebd.net

Genocidal starvation in Palestine
Mohammad Mahfuzul Islam 07 August, 2025, 00:00

WEAPONISATION of starvation is going on in Palestine to evict the remaining population to make more room for Israeli settlers. The unlawful transformation of Palestinians into refugees raises questions about the legitimacy of the genocidal starvation. This is a violation of the basic human right to access food. Palestinians are perishing silently, and their resistance is crumbling to the ground. International media can do nothing but display malnourished bodies to seek sympathy from viewers. The reluctant silence of the conscientious individuals unleashes a deadly punch on the face of the Palestinians. As a result, debilitating feelings control our exposure to images.

Imposed hunger is everywhere; not a single strip of land is spared from its ominous effect. Food is the most precious item on a land devoid of fuel for the body. Our bodies are designed to consume food and water to produce energy. The basic design of human anatomy, used to create enthusiasm to fight, is forced to sag. A child carrying a heavy sack of flour knows the harsh reality of life, penned by remorseless monsters. Infants without baby food pass away from this unjust world. Our conscience does not wake up even after seeing the emaciated bodies of children. We can neither help nor remain silent in this situation. Our helplessness consumes our existence as human beings when we see the perpetrators get away with their war crimes for the time being.

Animals are also starving in Palestine due to the artificial crisis created by the Israeli settlers. When humans are deprived of food, animals do not receive their share. Animals have become mere skin and bone. They have nowhere to go or escape. The severity of starvation is taking its toll on both human and animal lives. Ribcages and the backbones of humans and animals become prominent under the skin and declare the oppression and tyranny of Zionist genocide. An oppression of any kind is a reversible zero-sum game. The accumulated cases of victims make the ground fertile for future oppression by the oppressed. If allowed to continue, the vicious cycle will find its victims among the oppressors.

The systematic annihilation of a populace before the entire world does not meet any resistance from any country. The Zionists, being historically informed of the Jewish people who faced starvation in Nazi Germany, are replicating the same model in Palestine. Palestinians wait for planes to drop relief from above. If they see one, they look up at the sky until it vanishes into the horizon. Relief tied to parachutes falls to the ground, apparently providing relief from the pangs of hunger. Armed Israeli soldiers shoot down those who gather to collect relief. The victims, according to the plan, are first lured by the food and then mowed down by the merciless settlers.

If they succeed in getting a portion of relief, then they consider themselves fortunate. Those who fail would go hungry due to the fault of the Zionist agenda in this world. To make one’s selfish life prosper, one cannot step on the shoulders of the downtrodden people. The Palestinians are forced to experience atrocious famine to eliminate them from the so-called promised land. One’s promised land becomes someone else’s nightmare. When children die of malnutrition, the remaining people wait for the silver lining in the cloud. But the Zionist colonisers forget that no matter how hard they try, they cannot obliterate the population. The Palestinians will rise from the ashes of hunger and famine to reclaim their motherland.

Bottles full of grains and lentils with written notes are thrown into the ocean to find the shore of Palestine. Hope keeps the dream of feeding the hungry alive in the age of toxic Zionism. The ocean waves help bottles reach the Palestinian coast to assuage the hunger of helpless civilians. The minimal help the fortunate people can provide becomes the lifeline for the victims. If we all threw bottles of grain into the ocean to help fight starvation in Palestine, then it would be a significant step towards humanity’s triumph.

The Palestinian people do not want any relief. They want to be free from the shackles of oppressive occupation. They want a dignified life with their rights safeguarded as human beings. When they are turned into scavengers, we are emotionally shocked and intellectually castrated. When respect is taken away from them, we become speechless. When we see them jostle for scanty relief, we look for a place to hide our shame and inability to act. The survival of the fittest game is being run in Palestine. The conscientious individuals curse the Israeli government for their deliberate food scarcity created in Palestine.

Zionism is a big threat to the security and existence of the Palestinians. It is spreading like malignant tumours in the world. The cancerous growth destroys healthy human relationships. Inter-ethnic and inter-religious relationships are jeopardised by Zionism’s deadly sting. Like racism, it demolishes human equality and tries to establish a hierarchy of ascribed identity. The subscriber of this spiteful ideology should realise that this world needs compassionate companions, not murderers, to unlock a better future.

The Israeli settlers apply the method of European colonisers to dispossess the Palestinians. Having killed many colonised people, the descendants of European colonisers now chant the slogan of human rights. Israel, being an illegal state, unleashes the reign of terror to cultivate the culture of fear and anxiety. The atrocities inflicted on the Palestinians will wait for their turn for vengeance. The settlers seem to forget the old saying that what goes around comes around.

We protest against Israeli occupation and genocide through starvation in Palestine. We say: stop genocide through starvation. Stop the oppression of helpless victims. Stop the stupidity against humanity. Stop the annihilation of humans based on identities. Stop plundering the resources of someone else’s land. Stop the dispossession of one’s motherland. Stop the cruel drama. Stop the silence and indifference. We invite the whole world to rise against normalised monstrosity in Palestine, break the silence, and restore the rights of Palestinians as humans.

Mohammad Mahfuzul Islam is an anthropologist and a faculty member at Independent University Bangladesh.​

 

[Saif]

20 killed by overturned aid truck in Gaza

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Wednesday that 20 people were killed when an aid truck overturned on a crowd of aid seekers in the central Gaza Strip...

www.newagebd.net

20 killed by overturned aid truck in Gaza
Agence France-Presse . Gaza City 07 August, 2025, 00:26

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Wednesday that 20 people were killed when an aid truck overturned on a crowd of aid seekers in the central Gaza Strip.

‘Twenty people were killed and dozens injured around midnight last night in a truck carrying aid overturned while hundreds of civilians were waiting for aid,’ the agency’s spokesperson Mahmud Bassal said.

The incident took place near the Nuseirat refugee camp, as the truck was driving on an unsafe road that Israel had previously bombed, Bassal added.

The Israeli military said it was looking into the reports.

Hamas accused Israel of forcing truck drivers to take dangerous routes to reach aid distribution centres, and to ‘intentionally engineer starvation and chaos.’

Israel ‘forces drivers to navigate routes overcrowded with starving civilians who have been waiting for weeks for the most basic necessities,’ Hamas’s media office said in a statement.

‘This often results in desperate crowds swarming the trucks,’ it added.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military will have to execute any government decisions on Gaza, the defence minister said Wednesday after reported disagreements over the prospect of a full occupation of the Palestinian territory.

Signs of a rift over strategy emerged as prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepared to announce a new phase in the war, after he said Israel must ‘complete’ the defeat of Hamas in order to secure the release of hostages still held in Gaza.

The Israeli press has predicted an escalation of operations, including in densely populated areas where hostages are believed to be held, such as Gaza City and refugee camps.

The reports also said Netanyahu and his cabinet would order a full military occupation of Gaza, sparking dissension from the army’s Chief of Staff, Eyal Zamir.

On Tuesday, Netanyahu held a restricted three-hour meeting with security chiefs to discuss options for the continuation of the war, his office said in a statement.

At the meeting, Zamir reportedly warned that a full occupation would be like ‘walking into a trap,’ according to public broadcaster KAN.

The army chief suggested alternatives to a full occupation, such as an encirclement of specific areas where Hamas is believed to be hunkering down, according to the Channel 12 broadcaster.

But defence minister Israel Katz hit back with a clear message.

‘It is the right and duty of the chief of staff to express his position in the appropriate forums,’ he wrote on X.

‘But once decisions are made by the political echelon, the IDF will execute them with determination and professionalism until the objectives of the war are achieved,’ he added, using an acronym for the Israeli military.

Netanyahu is expected to convene the security cabinet on Thursday to finalise a decision on the expansion of the offensive, local media reported.

US president Donald Trump told reporters on Tuesday he was not aware of reported plans to occupy the entire Gaza Strip, but said that such a decision would be ‘up to Israel’.

At war with Hamas since the unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement on Israel on October 7, 2023, the Israeli government is under growing pressure to bring the conflict to an end.

Israelis are increasingly alarmed about the fate of the dozens of hostages in Gaza.

Of the 49 still held there, the Israeli military says 27 are dead.

The UN Security Council held a special session on Tuesday to discuss Israeli hostages in Gaza, as the country seeks to keep the issue on top of the global agenda.

On Tuesday, Trump described a recent video released by Hamas of emaciated Israeli hostage Evyatar David purportedly digging his own grave as ‘horrible.’

In parallel, international criticism has surged over the suffering of over two million Palestinians, who the UN warns are at risk of widespread famine.​

 

[Saif]

Starvation in Gaza: Israeli lies and the tail that wags the dogs

Israel turns the aid distribution points into killing zones of Palestinians.

www.thedailystar.net

Starvation in Gaza: Israeli lies and the tail that wags the dogs

The engineered starvation in Gaza, supported by the US, has always been a central pillar of Israel’s psychological warfare. FILE PHOTO: AFP

Whenever Israel yields to international pressure and allows aid trucks into Gaza, it devises other methods to ensure that food is never delivered. On July 26, Israel announced airdrops and "humanitarian corridors" for the United Nations convoys. Its forces also murdered 53 people seeking aid in those corridors on the same day. Rather than feeding the starving population, Israel turns the aid distribution points into killing zones. Time and again, Palestinians have been paying with blood for a loaf of bread or a bottle of water.

In less than two months, death by Israeli bullets at the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has reached over 1,054, averaging about 20 killings daily. Since July 26, when Israel announced the new "humanitarian corridors," the death toll has more than doubled—325 last week alone—from the number of Palestinians killed daily at GHF distribution centres. Meanwhile, the tokenistic airdrops by Arab collaborators are nothing short of a disgrace.

The $60 million that Donald Trump brags about giving to GHF is funding the deaths of hungry Palestinians. For the starved, GHF stands for Gaza Humiliation Front—not a lifeline, but an Israeli murder-line. Instead of wasting American taxpayer money on these death traps, Trump should consider restoring US funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the only agency that has offered real hope to Palestinian children for more than 75 years.

Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff's visit to a GHF centre in Gaza, followed by his statement that there is no starvation, was a textbook case of confirmation bias. His tour did not reveal the absence of starvation, but rather his willful blindness to see it. Witkoff sought out information that would reinforce his predetermined narrative to whitewash starvation.

To be honest, no one had seriously expected him to witness starvation at a carefully staged (safe) site, far removed from the people. He declined an invitation to visit a hospital in Gaza to see the starved children and hear directly from the life-saving medical professionals. Instead, he chose a photo op and listened to the mercenaries of death at GHF.

The engineered starvation in Gaza, supported by the US, has always been a central pillar of Israel's psychological warfare; a calculated strategy aimed at expelling the population or driving them into a survivalist frenzy. Israel and the US-funded GHF have become the perfect linchpin of this Israeli-designed contraption. Replacing a well-established UN infrastructure that operated 400 distribution centres, GHF offered only four aid points. These limited sites made it easier for Israel to surveil, shoot at the starving, and leave the survivors to fight over the meagre crumbs that remained.

GHF's role was exposed by Anthony Aguilar, a retired US Special Forces officer and recipient of the Purple Heart and Bronze Star. Choking back tears, Lt Col Aguilar recounted the story of a child who "walked 12 kilometres to reach" one of GHF's food distribution sites. "He got nothing but scraps, thanked us for it…" and then he was shot dead by the Israeli army.

Still, the "free" Western media has too often acted as Israel's public relations arm. It downplays Israel's horrific crimes and markets Israeli falsehoods, such as the baseless claim that Hamas steals food aid. This narrative persisted even after USAID concluded that Israel failed to provide any evidence supporting that food aid was being diverted. Other than for Israeli military hindrance, under UN oversight, there have been no issues delivering food to all of Gaza. Israel's objective is simple: deflect responsibility by blaming the starving for their own starvation.

Early last June, I wrote on the Israeli scheme to "lie, deny, and distort the truth." In the article, I detailed a long list of Israeli lies and how the US media disseminated the disinformation with little to no effort to verify or challenge. You see, Israel does not just enjoy political impunity from the US administration; it also has the freedom to lie with complete immunity from the US media.

The daunting question remains: how many lies must Israel tell before the media call them out, just as they do with the US President Donald J Trump, or other leaders and nations?

A recent example of how the Israeli-managed "free" media misrepresents facts is the failed ceasefire talks. Listening to the Western media, one might conclude that the Palestinian negotiators rejected a "generous" offer for a ceasefire. In reality, the talks collapsed because Netanyahu sought only a pause to secure the release of captive Israeli soldiers, refusing to agree to end the war or the starvation blockade.

No rational party would accept, let alone consider, such a half-measure. When Palestinians rejected a proposal short of a lasting ceasefire, Netanyahu cried foul. President Trump and Witkoff rushed to absolve Netanyahu's intransigence to accept a permanent ceasefire, and then blamed the Palestinians.

The reluctance, and perhaps intimidation, of Arab mediators like Qatar and Egypt to publicly challenge Washington's pro-Israel stance has only deepened the media distortions. The mediators' silence allowed Netanyahu's false narratives to dominate international discourse.

Nonetheless, the tide could be turning. France and the UK's recent promise to recognise the state of Palestine, although long overdue, signals the growing frustration with Netanyahu's lies and deceit. The European officials made it clear, they were no longer willing to tolerate the Israeli farce. The symbolic act, however, would never atone for Britain's original sin—the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which promised European settlers a homeland in Palestine while failing to enshrine the rights of the indigenous Palestinians on their land. Nor does it exonerate France, which conspired with Britain in the secret 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement to carve up the eastern part of the Arab world.

Still, recognition matters. Fourteen other countries are poised to follow France's lead next month. The growing calls demanding Netanyahu agrees to a ceasefire are also telling. These governments have finally realised what their subjects had long known, that the absence of peace is not due to Palestinian rejectionism, but to Netanyahu's deception and insatiable thirst for the never-ending wars.

Despite the dominance of Israeli-embedded journalists and pundits in Western media, the world is finally waking up to the true face of Israel. Alternative media has, to a great extent, succeeded in piercing through the wall of Israeli lies, offering an unfiltered view into the lived horrors of starvation and genocide. No amount of Israeli propaganda can obscure the images of skeletal ribs jutting from the bodies of dying children. The sight of starving infants suckling on their bony fists indicts the liars.

To that end, a recent Gallup poll shows a clear shift in the US, where American support for the Israeli military action in Gaza has dropped to 32 percent, and disapproval has soared to 60 percent. For a while, Israel was enabled to "fool all the people some of the time," and it continues to "fool some of the people all the time," but ultimately, and as the latest poll shows, it "cannot fool all the people all the time."

Yet, babies are starving, the genocide continues, and there is no ceasefire in sight. This is only possible because Netanyahu and AIPAC continue to wag the dogs of Washington.

Jamal Kanj is the author of Children of Catastrophe: Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America, and other books. He writes frequently on Arab world issues.​