All hell broke loose in the Palestinian city of Gaza on Tuesday. Israeli forces have turned the area into a hellish landscape when they unleashed air strikes on a hospital that left at least 500 people dead and many more wounded.
With this heinous strike on the Ahli Al-Arabi hospital where many terminally wounded people were housed, the death toll in Gaza is feared to surpass 4,000 while Israeli casualties are estimated at around 1,400. Even schools, convoy of ambulances, civilian facilities and other places have not been spared by the Israeli air offensive.
What is more worrying is that Israel has also used white phosphorus munitions in its ongoing military operations in Gaza and Lebanon which endanger lives of civilian people.

There is beyond a shadow of a doubt that this Israeli strike on the hospital is a clear violation of the international law which defines that attacks on medical facilities and other places where the sick and wounded reside is prohibited under the international humanitarian law.Israeli forces have laid a complete siege to the Gaza city since October 7 after Hamas militants launched surprise missile attacks on Israeli lands. Since then, they have closed all the crossings into the city forcing around 1.1 million Gazans to live sans food, fuel, electricity and medical facilities.

Amid this catastrophic humanitarian crisis, our Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina rightly made a clarion call to the world leaders to stop Israeli- Palestinian conflict and games of weapons and arms race as these cause most sufferings for the general people mainly women and children.  Pointing to the Russian-Ukraine war, she also said that all are witnessing the rattle of wars across the globe right now.

On the Palestinian issue, Bangladesh government earlier issued a statement in which a two-state solution was clearly enunciated with Palestine and Israel living side by side as independent states free of occupation in accordance with the UN Resolutions No 242 and 338.

Now a question arises whether the Western world has been playing its due role in implementing the two-state policy in order to end Palestinian conflict. Or conversely, they are fueling the wars by condoning Israeli atrocities.

Evidently, in a show of support for Israel, the US president Joe Biden is in Tel Aviv and orders 2,000 military personnel to prepare for deployment in the Middle East as a show of force. Earlier, the US moved its world’s largest aircraft carrier closer to the eastern Mediterranean and supplied projectiles for Israeli forces.

All this suggests that the US has extended its blind and unwavering support to the Jewish state. This is why the US has to take the blame for horrific crimes and genocide as Palestinian prime minister said countries backing Israel also bore the responsibility.

We are in plea to the world community to ensure emergency supplies to the besieged Gaza city in order to save the lives of innocent people.