Transcripts For BBCNEWS Unspun 20240704

Now on bbc news, unspun world withjohn simpson. Hello and welcome. In todays unspun world from the bbc� s headquarters here in central london, ill be asking bbc correspondents around the world to give us their insights into whats really going on. Whats daily life like in gaza and the west bank at present . Going to the bread queues, to the soup queues where children are struggling to get to the front of the queue before the food runs out. Peace in gaza and in ukraine. What might it look like . How might it happen . It can be because they think that, actually, if they carry on fighting, they might get on the losing side, and they want to make the leap before the situation turns against them. And the closest china gets to a parliament is gathering in beijing. Will it actually decide anything . I think a lot of analysts in particular like to read kind of Smoke Signals and the kind of subtle clues in what people are wearing or where people are sitting. When hamas fighters attacked a Music Festival and a number of israeli towns and settlements on 7th october, they committed unthinkable atrocities. Screaming the other day, a un investigation confirmed many, though not all, of the gruesome details. Israels attack on gaza, intended to root out hamas, has now brought 25 palestinian deaths for every one of the israeli deaths on 7th october. The deaths of palestinian women and children are disproportionately high. The Israeli Defense force doesnt allow foreign journalists into gaza, which makes first hand reporting pretty much impossible. But fergal keane, the bbc� s special correspondent, has spent the last couple of weeks injerusalem and the west bank, Gathering Pictures shot by palestinians of the israeli onslaught. Well, its an extremely tense situation on the west bank at the moment, and i think it has become ever more so as this war has progressed. You have increasing conflict involving settlers on the west bank, involving the army, Palestinian Militants and palestinian civilians. And itsjust a real sense of what feels like a powder keg to me. And i dont want to say that in any overdramatising sense, but it is quite something that up to date there hasnt been a major outbreak of violence in the west bank. So far, it has been an incident here, an incident there, repeated raids by the Israel Defense forces. And just today, the funeral of a ten year old boy, who was amr najjar, who was shot dead. He was going shopping with his father and his younger brother. And his father said the army opened fire on their car and that the boy was killed immediately with a shot to the head. The idf says its investigating what happened. Now, if you talk to people involved in Human Rights Organisations in the west bank, they will tell you that such deaths are not unusual. Lets turn now to gaza. On a daily basis, over the last couple of weeks or so, youve been looking at videos, whats sent through to jerusalem from gaza by gazans themselves. Tell me what those images show. Well, what weve done since early october is, you know, recruit a group of off camera people who go out every day, at great risk to themselves, one in the north, one in the centre and one in the south of the gaza strip. And they document whats happening to people on a daily basis. In times to come, this will be quite an extraordinary archive. Its Notjust Ourjournalists who are doing that on the ground, people are working for many other news organisations, and they do everything from, in our case, going to the bread queues, to the soup queues where children are struggling to get to the front of the queue before the food runs out. They go to hospitals day after day after day spent in hospitals, filming the arrival of casualties and going to the scene of various Different Military actions, air strikes which have taken place on peoples houses. For example, the other night, the shooting and trampling that took place when people came to get aid on Al Rashid Street in northern gaza. They have to do that. You know that better than anybody, john, after all the years on the road as a foreign correspondent, the one true way of finding out the truth between what one side claims and another side claims is to have people there on the ground actually asking questions. And ill give you an example of that. With that shooting and trampling on Al Rashid Street, more than 100 people killed. There were different claims coming from the Israel Defense forces, at first saying that shots had been fired over the crowd, then shots had been fired at their legs. And we sent ourjournalist to the hospital to interview doctors, to interview people who had survived the attack, others who had witnessed what had happened. And they confirmed that there were shots to the upper body of some people, other people in the head. That was then confirmed by visitors, a delegation from the united nations, which visited the hospital the day after. But, you know, through having our own man on the ground, going in there, asking questions of the medical staff, of witnesses and survivors, we were able to give a reasonably clear. Now, i stress that reasonably clear picture of what happened. It will have to wait until there is access to Human Rights Investigators, independent Human Rights Investigators who can go in there when the fighting has stopped to decide and discover what actually happened. All the signs are that Benjamin Netanyahu has done his ultimate to prevent any kind of Two State Solution. Do you see any signs, any possibility that that can happen when there are so many Israeli Settlers everywhere and where the anger is so great . John, if i had said to you in 1975, lets say, in Northern Ireland, and you covered the troubles as a young reporter, if id said to you then that wed be now living with a Power Sharing Government in Northern Ireland in which the dup, the hardest of hardline protestants in those days, and the descendants of militant republicanism, sinn fein, you know, if i told you that they were going to be in government together, youd have told me to get my head examined so if i say to you now that. In the midst of this carnage, of this horror that we are witnessing, that we have witnessed, that began with the massacre and brutality on october 7th and now goes on every single day with the deaths of thousands of people, over 30,000 people in gaza, if i said to you that there still is hope, there still is hope for a political solution, dont rule it out. I cant tell you how that will come aboutjust this minute, right when were in the heart of a war. But dont rule it out. All wars come to an end, even the first and second world wars, even vietnam, even the american and British Occupation of iraq. At some point, one side or the other realises its not going to win. The peace talks start, and eventually a deal is done. Weve got two particularly bitter wars going on at present israel gaza and the russian invasion of ukraine. How might they end . I asked the bbc Diplomatic Correspondent James Landale to speculate. Inevitably, conflicts do burn themselves out after a bit, and that tends to happen when one side or both sides begin to think that actually they have an advantage in talking, negotiating, having some kind of discussion rather than continuing to prosecute the war. That can be because they think that they are on the losing side. It can be because they think that, actually, if they carry on fighting, they might get on the losing side, and they want to make the leap before the situation turns against them. So thats when it tends to happen, and it takes time. And if Public Opinion is against the idea of talking, then that will delay things. If the populace at large say, look, we have fought and died, you know, our cousins have bled for this, we have paid a huge price for this war, now is not the time to give it up, and i think that sort of thing slows things down. I think, clearly, in the situation in gaza, any kind of cessation of hostilities has to begin with some sort of ceasefire. Then there is an entirely separate discussion, which is, how do you end tensions and conflict long term . And that is a discussion that has been going on for decades. And if hamas is prepared to talk, if netanyahu is prepared to talk, Big Question Marks Over either of those, does that lead towards a Two State Solution . If you go back to first principles, what are the options . Continued war, a One State Solution, ie, one state that encompasses the palestinians and israelis. But, like, if you have that, that contradicts the basic principle behind the state of israel, which is to be a state for the jewish people. So a One State Solution seems unlikely. So that brings you back to two states. In other words, two countries israel and a Palestinian State living side by side in a way that guarantees each other� s security. In a way that hasnt happened before. I havent heard anybody come up with a better political structure. And the problem is that, because there have been so many attempts at this but have failed, in recent years, the United States, many countries in the gulf have sort of got tired of it. They got bored with it. And so i think one thing that will come out of this conflict is now that the palestinian issue cannot be ignored in a way that i think many policymakers, both in the region and internationally, have ignored it in recent years. Lets turn to the other war, the one in ukraine. How might that end . You can imagine a scenario where theres a cessation of hostilities. Under whatever the geography of the battlefield has at the time. Maybe theres some kind of Buffer Zone Policed by some international force. Maybe you get the rump of ukraine. Whats left of ukraine does begin to startjoining nato, begin to startjoining the eu. Lots of reasons why thats difficult, if not impossible, while its still broken up territorially, but its possible, as a scenario, you could have that. But then also, at the same time, youre still abandoning four regions of ukraine to russian occupation. Thats a very high price to pay. Putin has probably a really good reason for wanting some sort of very low level conflict to continue, doesnt he . Because he can always step it up at any time he chooses. Yeah, which means that any kind of solution or settlement to the war in ukraine has to involve the continued deterrence of further russian aggression. In other words, the west europe, the United States will still have to provide ukraine with substantial amounts of support, both military, militarily and political support, to deter russia in the future. Whatever happens, even if ukraine won, russia ultimately will continue to try and threaten ukraine in the same way that it is seen to be threatening the Baltic States and other parts of eastern europe. Because, if you talk to ukrainians about it, quite a lot of them, when youre talking about victory, what does victory look like to you . They will say not, you know, Russian Forces expelled from ukrainian territory. They will say the break up of russia because to them that is the only outcome that ensures the long term security of ukraine. Every few years for a week in the ornate setting of the Great Hall Of The People in beijing, nearly 3,000 carefully selected delegates from all over china gather for the National Congress of the Chinese Communist party. The delegates, overwhelmingly male and ethnically han chinese, are supplied with identical dark suits, white shirts and red ties. And theyre expected to do as theyre told. Still, there can be some great moments of theatre at events like these. Remember the former leader hu jintao being humiliated and hauled out of the congress in 2022 . This year, the main focus will be on chinas faltering economy under xijinping, though, of course, absolutely no one will put it like that unless they want to get the hu jintao treatment. I turn for more details to tony han from the bbc World Services global china unit. I think a lot of analysts in particular like to read kind of Smoke Signals and the kind of subtle clues in what people are wearing, where people are sitting. For instance, some people have analysed the number of coffee. Tea cups that xi jinping has compared to other senior leaders, whether he dyes his hair or not. So theres a lot that can be read into the things that we see at these two sessions. And i think a key reason for that is the fact that we actually have such little visibility into chinas top leadership. Something that we heard was the announcement that the premier, li qiang, would not be delivering the customary Press Conference that premiers in the Chinese Government normally give at the end of the two sessions. This is a tradition that goes back to 1993, and the fact that this very rare occasion, when members of the press, including of the foreign press, could put questions to a Senior Member of the Chinese Government, now that thats disappeared, we have even less insight into what chinas leaders are thinking than ever before. Its certainly true that these two sessions are taking place in the most difficult economic context for china in, i think its fair to say, in a few decades. And so, in a context where the Chinese Government cannot necessarily give satisfying or comfortable answers to people about what theyre going to do about youth unemployment, what theyre going to do about chinas ageing population, maybe its just the case that the government would prefer to avoid having to answer those kinds of questions at all. How does china see the world at the moment . I mean, does it. It cant want donald trump as us president , presumably . The more nationalistic voices, many of whom are very loud presences online, often look forward or they welcome the prospect of a second Trump Presidency because they believe that aspects of his personality or his political style lend themselves to china increasing its influence in the world. So, for instance, trumps Scepticism Towards Building Alliances or his scepticism of multilateralism more generally is seen by these nationalist commentators as being a golden opportunity for china to expand its influence across the world. At the same time, other people might say that Biden Represents if not a more friendly then a more predictable or a more methodical and stable president in the white house. There are also those voices who say that both choices are as bad as one another. For instance, a professor at Fudan University in shanghai was quoted as saying that, in the eyes of the Chinese Government, these two choices are like two bowls of poison. And, overall, a sense of. Gloom . I think theres definitely a sense of general pessimism in china about the state of the economy. China is to some extent reprioritising Economic Growth because, for a long time, weve seen xijinping and the chinese leadership try and balance Economic Growth and a number of other priorities, including National Security, as they would understand it, and certain aspects of Social Policy or ideological goals that they want to achieve. And its commonly perceived to be the case that the pursuit of National Security and these ideological goals has come at the expense of growth. People in the outside world tend to see iran as a country of angry anti western people, screaming death to. Someone or other. In fact, as ive found over the decades, irans cities like tehran tend to be highly sophisticated and strongly influenced by western ideas. But the countrys been governed for 45 years by a theocratic elite which is all too ready to use force against anyone who disobeys its strict islamic codes. In october 2022, a young woman, mahsa amini, died after being detained by irans morality police. And it was months before the authorities were able to clamp down on the protests. The islamic government seems old and tired. And a few days ago when an election was held to the majlis or parliament the turnout was unprecedentedly low. I asked baran abbasi, of bbc persian, to explain. Many people had boycotted the elections, and those who wanted to vote had limited choice, as almost all reformists, as well as a large number of independents and centrist conservatives, had been disqualified. Including the previous president. Exactly. There were two elections being held on friday. One was parliamentary elections, and one was assembly of experts that chooses the leader. And former president hassan rouhani, who was considered as relatively moderate and was a sitting member of the council, was disqualified. And because the assembly of experts is chosen for an eight year term, it is expected to be the one that we choose the next leader, because the leader is 84 years old. And it seems that hes done his utmost to make sure only his most ardent supporters will find their way into the council. What does this say about iran, about the way that iranians feel about their government . It doesnt say very good things, does it . Absolutely. Well, iranians have been grappling with an ailing economy. Economic problems are their main concern, as well as systemic corruption among iranian officials and distrust in the political system, and a crushed Protest Movement. These were the first elections that were held after the death in custody of mahsa amini, and the protests that were sparked afterwards. It shows how much the people distrust the regime, and how much theyve lost hope that, through a democratic process, they can change their situation. The latest elections seem to have been the most restrictive in the history of the Islamic Republic. But it does really argue a lack of self confidence. They seemed very nervous before the elections, the leader himself asked people to turn up and vote many times, even on the election day. And the voting hours were extended until midnight six hours after it was supposed to close. It is all because they wanted people to vote, because they were worried about their image, and because they had argued in the past that those countries with low turnout in elections, they have no legitimacy. Now that the results are out and the turnout seemed to be another historic low the lowest in the 45 years since the Islamic Republic was established some moderate newspapers had said that this should be a wake up call for the regime. But by the reaction that we are seeing from officials and the media close to them, it seems unlikely. Ive paid, i dont know, maybe a dozen, maybe 15 visits to iran over the years since the revolution. It never seemed to me to be solid and permanent. And yet, its lasted as you say, its lasted 45 years. I mean, could it last another 20 to 30 years . The only indications that the regime is being put under more pressure is the Protest Movement that is becoming more frequent, more ordinary iranians are willing to risk getting imprisoned to show their discontent. Women and girls now, even after the Protest Movement was crushed, they go out to the streets without wearing a headscarf. It seems that especially the new generation are more courageous, and they are more willing to risk their freedom to stand up for their rights. Baran abbasi, of bbc persian. The future of our entire world seems likely to depend on which of two old men gets elected in the us this november. One of them is 81 and has a tendency to trip over and forget names. The other is 77, uncontrollable, overweight, and also a bit uncertain about names. The other day, that particular old man donald trump, of course got mixed up and seemed to think he was running against barack 0bama, instead ofjoe biden. The crowd went noticeably quiet with embarrassment. But its the other old man, joe biden himself, whos really suffering. An opinion poll in the New York Times found that 73 of those questioned think that biden is too old to be president. And a clear majority now favours trump over biden. Biden himself, and his wifejill whos very important in this context both seem to think still that he can stop trump. But more and more people are begging him to step aside. Even so, theres no sign yet that hell do any such thing. Age and at 79 myself, i can vouch for this can possibly give you better, more maturejudgment. But youre definitely more inclined to mix up names, forget things and generally give a bad impression of yourself. It shouldnt matter, of course. Think of gladstone or bismarck or clemenceau or churchill. But in their day, there wasnt television to capture every little failing and replay it endlessly. In my case, of course, we can edit out all my mistakes and stumbles. Oh, sorry, ive screwed up. Just. Right, once more. If Onlyjoe Biden must think he could do such a thing, too. Oh, well. Thank you for watching this edition of unspun world. From me and from the team whose job it is to stop me looking too bad, until we meet again, goodbye. Some in central and eastern areas started with sunshine but elsewhere fairly cloudy with most and certainly cloud they are shrouding the hills, misty conditions to contend with. Through today, a mixture of some sunny spells, central and eastern areas some sunshine, low pressure to the south west throwing up cloud and showers. Showers spreading into south wales for a time, cloudy in Northern Ireland, northern england, outbreaks of rain and drizzle, sunshine in the far north west of scotland, sunny spells continuing in east anglia past the midlands, north wales as well, and they sent a too bad, 1213 c, wales as well, and they sent a too bad, 12 13 c, elsewhere 7 8. Through tonight we will see more persistent rain spreading in from the south and will set up a wet start to sunday morning. Although it will be frost free, temperatures no lower than 5 8 c. Mothering sunday . Pretty wet, wetter than today, that rain into the central sort of scotland, northern england, midlands, south east, heavy rain at times, moving further westwards into north wales but for south west wales, south west england, some sunny spells with showers, temperatures lower through tomorrow because of the cloudy skies and the rain, 7 11. Into next week, low pressure moves to the east, monday should be quieter but we still have an easterly airflow bringing quite a bit of cloud on monday towards the eastern coast of scotland, eastern england, may be some spots of rain. Elsewhere largely dry, some bright and sunny spells towards Western Areas of the uk. Temperatures pretty typicalfor the time of year, eight 11 or 12 celsius. Forthe the time of year, eight 11 or 12 celsius. For the rest of the week, southern and eastern area should remain largely dry, some spells of sunshine, temperatures rising, 1415 c sunshine, temperatures rising, 111 15 c further north and west remaining unsettled, rain at times and temperatures 10 13. Temperature slightly above the average as we go through the week, goodbye. Im Anna Foster Injerusalem with the very latest developments on the israel gaza war. The European Union says a maritime aid corridor from cyprus to gaza could Begin Operating in the coming hours. They are loading the first ship. But, as the humanitarian situation becomes ever more desperate, the United States says it could take up to 60 days for a Temporary Port to be built. Live from london, im samantha simmonds. The urgent hunt for nearly 300 nigerian schoolchildren, abducted by gunmen. A State Governor says at least 28 have managed to escape their captors. A London Fertility Clinic has its Operation Licence suspended after significant concerns are raised over errors in the freezing of embryos. The duchess of sussex reveals she was cyberbullied while pregnant with her two children