Gaza live: Israeli attack hits Unrwa centre

A Coca-Cola advert aimed at distancing the company from perceived ties with Israel has gained widespread criticism in Bangladesh amid the ongoing war on Gaza.

The 60-second commercial, which was broadcast on TV and social media on 9 June, but removed from Coca-Cola Bangladesh's official YouTube and Instagram accounts, was aimed at countering a months-long boycott of its drinks by millions of Bangladeshis.

The ad, which debuted during a highly anticipated Pakistan-India T20 World Cup cricket match, opens with a scene in a market on a hot day.

A young man named Sohail approaches a middle-aged shopkeeper he calls Bablu bhai. The shopkeeper, offers Sohail a bottle of Coke, which he refuses, saying: "No Bablu bhai, I am not drinking this stuff any more."

When the shopkeeper asks why, Sohail replies: "This stuff is from 'that place'." He does not name the "place" but it appears that he is referring to Israel.

Read more: Coca-Cola ad denying ties to Israel sparks backlash in Bangladesh 

Good morning Middle East Eye readers,

Here are the latest developments from the Israeli war on Gaza, now on it's 252nd day: 

• An Israeli air strike killed two Lebanese woman and wounded others late on Thursday in Tyre, according to local media. The attack came as fighting between Israel and Hezbollah continues to escalate.

• Bombing in Gaza also persisted, with air strikes killing two women and a child overnight. 

• Hamas official Osama Hamdan reiterated the group's demand that any deal must include guarantees of a permanent ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, in an interview with CNN. He said Hamas needed  a "a clear position" from Israel on this provision.

• A sailor was severely wounded after a Houthi missile attack on a bulk cargo carrier in the Gulf of Aden on Thursday, according to the US military. 

On Wednesday morning, the homes of four executives from the Brooklyn Museum were smeared with red paint and grafitti accusing them of having "blood on their hands". 

At the home of Anne Pasternak, the director of the Brooklyn Museum, a banner with the words "white-supremacist Zionist" was stretched out between two pillars outside her front door.

No group has claimed responsibility for the actions but the incident sparked immediate backlash from the political establishment.

NYC's Mayor Eric Adams described as "unacceptable antisemitism" and added that the city's police department would investigate and "bring the criminals responsible here to justice".

The action outside the executives' homes, activists familiar with the months-long advocacy against the Brooklyn Museum said, was in protest against the complicity of the museum's leadership with Israel's continued war on the Palestinians in Gaza.

Read more: Why pro-Palestine protesters are targeting the Brooklyn Museum

Yemen's Houthis targeted the Palauan-flagged, Ukrainian-owned, Polish-operated bulk cargo carrier "Verbena" in the Arabian sea and attacked two more vessels, the Seaguardian ship and Athina ship, in the Red Sea.

The crew of Verbena "reported damage and subsequent fires on board. One civilian mariner was severely injured during the attack," the US Central Command (Centcom) said in a statement.

The Houthis' military spokesman, Yahya Saree, said in a televised speech on Thursday that the attacks on the ships come "in retaliation to the crimes committed against our people in the Gaza Strip, and in response to the American-British aggression against our country".

The Houthis have been attacking vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden since November in solidarity with Palestinians during the ongoing war on Gaza.

Member of Knesset Benny Gantz said in an interview with Israel's Channel 12 News on Thursday that "Lebanon should burn", if Hezbollah does not stop attacking Israel.

Benny Gantz resigned from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government on Sunday citing, among other reasons, the absence of a post-war plan for Gaza.

Gantz said that despite his resignation from the coalition, his party will back the government on action against Lebanon, Haaretz reported.

Israeli authorities have released Aziz Dweik, the speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, after he had been arbitrarily detained since October.

He was dropped off by Israeli security forces to a military checkpoint in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron on Thursday, eyewitnesses told Anadolu Agency.

Dweik, 77, was arrested on 17 October and held under military detention for six months, which was later extended by Israeli authorities.

Israel holds detainees under administrative detention on the grounds of a "security threat" without an indictment for a period of six months, which can later be extended.

Dweik was held at a prison in the Negev desert, where the Palestinian Prisoners' Club accused authorities of medical neglect.

Read More: Palestinian speaker Aziz Dweik released by Israel after eight months

US President Joe Biden said on Thursday that he discussed the Gaza ceasefire proposal during the G7 summit and that he hasn’t lost hope, but Hamas has to step up.

Asked by reporters if he was confident there will be a ceasefire deal soon, Biden said, “No,” adding, “I haven’t lost hope, but it’s going to be tough. Hamas has… to move."

Hamas is demanding that Israel lift its debilitating 17-year-long blockade on Gaza, and that Israeli forces fully withdraw from the territory in the initial stage of the US-mediated ceasefire proposal, Middle East Eye can reveal.

According to amendments submitted to Egyptian and Qatari mediators earlier this week, Hamas demanded an end to the siege on Gaza which would allow the free movement of people and goods into the territory.

The Israeli land, air and sea blockade, which began after Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, has left the more than two million Palestinians living there in conditions described by rights groups as an open-air prison.

Israel's public rationale for imposing the siege has been focused on the security of its citizens and holding Hamas, which it considers to be a terrorist group, accountable for rocket attacks on them.

Read more: Hamas demands Israel end Gaza blockade as part of ceasefire deal

Two Palestinians were killed and several others detained during an attack by Israeli forces on Qabatiya, a town in the occupied West Bank, in what the army described as an "operation" to preempt militant attacks.

During the attack, troops surrounded a building where two gunmen were holed up and exchanged fire with them, the army claimed.

An eyewitness saw the body of one Palestinian killed being lifted out by an armoured bulldozer.

A poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) shows that support for armed struggle as the best means to end Israeli occupation and achieve statehood has risen among Palestinians.

Support for armed struggle climbed by eight percentage points to 54 percent of those surveyed in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, while support for Hamas also increased by six percentage points to 40 percent.

Support for the Palestinian party Fatah, led by President Mahmoud Abbas, meanwhile is at 20 percent.

Videos have emerged of recently released Palestinian prisoners detailing their experiences of torture and abuse in Israeli detention.

The men were among a group of 50 prisoners who were released on 11 June through the Zikim crossing west of Beit Lahia in northern Gaza, and are now receiving treatment at Kamal Adwan Hospital.

In the videos, which are being circulated online, one former detainee and cancer patient, Mohammad Aklouk recalled how a 31-year-old fellow prisoner died in his arms after being struck on the head by Israeli soldiers.

“I was reading the Quran when the Israeli special forces came in and told us to lie on our stomachs,’ he said. “They hit him on the head…he died in my arms,” he recalled. “He said to send a message to his mother.” “They [the Israeli forces] took him away in a bag as if he were a dead chicken.”

Aklouk said that his cell was so small that he couldn’t “see the daylight,” so he was forced to gauge his prayer times from the size of the shadows cast from the columns.

Read more:  ‘He died in my arms': Videos emerge of released Palestinian prisoners recalling detention conditions

United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) says a merchant vessel has reported an explosion in the Red Sea.

The ship reported the explosion in its close proximity, located 82 nautical miles northwest of Hodeidah, Yemen.

“There is no damage to the vessel, all crew are reported safe and the vessel is proceeding to its next port of call,” UKMTO said on X.

Authorities are currently investigating.

Leaders of the G7 are concerned by the situation on the Israel-lebanon border, and back up US proposal to announce a ceasefire in Gaza, a draft communique that is due to be rfeleased following this week's G7 summit says.

The leaders stress their commitment to a two-state solution for occupied Palestine, where Israelis and Palestinians live in peace, side by side, the draft says. 

The call upon Israel to stop its assults full-scale offensive in Rafah, “in line with their obligations under international law”.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has called upon the United Nations Security Council - and in particular the United States - to press Israel to agree on a ceasefire in Gaza.

Earlier this week, the council supported a proposal brought forward by the US, which aims to end Israel’s eight-month assault on Gaza.

Erdogan said his country welcomes any ceasefire proposals that would bring the war in Gaza to a halt, stating that the US's support to the Israeli operations in the strip has been "truly upsetting" Turkey.

In a column for Middle East Eye, activist and writer Tariq Ali says that western media triumphalism over the rescue of four Israeli hostages at the cost of 270 Palestinian lives was "both short-sighted and repellent". 

He writes: "Although Spain, Ireland and Norway recently recognised Palestine and strongly criticised Israel, the bulk of 'western civilisation' remains hard at work defending it. The desire to kill, which always lurked under civilised waistcoats in colonial times, never truly went away. It was, in most cases, merely hibernating. 

Amid yet another massacre of Palestinians, this time in the Nuseirat camp, western media are toasting the 'triumph' of four recovered hostages. As in Kenya, India or South Africa during colonial times, the lives of the native population do not matter; it is the 'adventure' that must be celebrated."

You can read the full column below. 

Opinion: How the West celebrated the Nuseirat massacre