Gaza truce extended after sixth exchange of captives
- Hamas and Israel announce extension of truce deal minutes before it was due to expire.
- At least three people killed, 16 wounded in shooting attack at West Jerusalem bus station. Two suspected attackers also killed, police say.
Pro-Palestine artists cancelled across Europe
In early October, when Israel began bombing Gaza, Bangladeshi photojournalist Shahidul Alam was busy co-curating a planned photography exhibition in Germany.
Since the onset of Israel’s war on Gaza, Alam has posted about the conflict dozens of times on Facebook to his 114,000 followers.
On October 8, one post read: “The news of semi-naked Israeli bodies being paraded is horrendous and cannot be justified … I feel for all Palestinians and Israelis lives destroyed.”
Another, on October 29, said: “This weekend’s horrific violence is the ugly reality of Israeli apartheid, the rotten fruit of decades of occupation of a stateless people divested of basic rights and freedoms.”
On November 21, the German Biennale for Contemporary Photography dropped the veteran shooter, accusing him of anti-Semitism.
US telling Israel to ‘cool off until they figure out what’s next’
After 50 days of fighting and America losing a lot of credibility and damaging its standing around the world, it is expecting Israel now to listen more carefully to what Washington is saying. Clearly, there are some strong messages on the part of the United States.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to the region is an inflexion point in the relationship regarding the war. I think Washington would like Israel to cool off for a few hours or a few days until they figure out what’s next.
But it’s not just the fanatics in the Israeli government, it’s also the military that cannot stomach the idea that the war stops now because the idea of stopping without defeating Hamas is not acceptable to the Israeli military.
This is the beginning of the discussion of what is going to happen in the next 50 days, which Israel has said it needs “to get the job done”. It is going to be unbearable not only for the people of Gaza, but I think for people around the world.
