Global News Podcast - Celebrations and relief over Gaza ceasefire deal

Episode Date: January 16, 2025

Israelis and Gazans welcome the ceasefire but express concern it won't end the conflict. Also: Trump's secretary of state pick, Marco Rubio, stresses the US First agenda, and rethinking women's roles in ancient Britain.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Jonny Diamond from the Global Story podcast. After 15 months of war, a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. The conflict has cost tens of thousands of lives and left two million people displaced from their homes. What does the ceasefire deal say and crucially can it hold? That's on the Global Story, wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Paul Moss and in the early hours of Thursday 16th January these are our main stories. Israel and Hamas have agreed a ceasefire and hostage release deal in Gaza, raising hopes there could soon be an end to more than a year of war. The news was met with celebrations in Gaza and relief around the world. In other news, Donald Trump's pick for Secretary of State Marco Rubio has stressed the America First agenda at his confirmation hearing in Washington. Also in this podcast...

The corridors, the hospital, the wards, they are all full of people in pain. Everyone complains that they do not really receive the kind of treatment they used to receive before. After the withdrawal of foreign aid, many Afghan hospitals are struggling to cope. It might sound strange to say, but there was something strikingly similar about the crowds who gathered in Gaza and in Israel, huddled together, waving flags, faces of hope,

both people who'd come together wanting to hear collectively that announcement of a peace deal or at least a ceasefire. But that said, there is of course a profound difference in what exactly they're hoping for. In Israel it's all about securing the release of the hostages held by Hamas. But what the people of Gaza want is an end to Israel's missile, rocket and artillery attacks which have killed more than 45,000 people, most of them civilians. So will the deal announced in Qatar deliver all that?

From Jerusalem, here's our correspondent Jonah Fisher. There are three phases to this deal but only the first part has been agreed. It's a six-week ceasefire with the phased release of 33 hostages who were seized during Hamas' attacks 15 months ago. In return for each hostage set free, Israel will release dozens of Palestinian prisoners. Morayd will immediately flow into the Gaza Strip and Israel will pull its soldiers out of the more densely populated parts of the territory. Displaced people will then be allowed to return to find out what, if anything, is left of their homes.

The Prime Minister of Qatar, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdul Rahman al-Thani, has been hosting and mediating talks between the two sides. Speaking through a translator, he said he was confident the truce would hold. We are committed. We will continue to do everything we can, everything possible, together with our partners to ensure that this deal is implemented as it's agreed. And this deal will bring us peace, hopefully at the end of it. I believe that it all depends on the parties of the agreement acting in good faith in order to ensure that no collapse is happening to that deal.

There is still a group of Israeli hostages, men of military age, who are not part of the first releases. Their fate has been left to another round of talks, which are due to start 16 days into the ceasefire. It's only then that key questions about Gaza's future, such as who will govern it and whether Israel fully withdraws its forces, will be addressed. Jonah Fisher. Israel says that 60 hostages are still alive and being held by Hamas.

Around 30 more there are thought to be dead. Among those hoping that their family is closer to being reunited is Moisha Lavi, brother-in-law of Omri Miran, who was abducted from his home on Okibut. He told my colleague Tim Franks this deal gives no absolute guarantees. This is a phase deal and only the first phase was agreed upon. Sadly, it's called the humanitarian phase, but all the hostages in day 467 are in a humanitarian condition right now. And so we will have to keep fighting, keep advocating as families with all leaders, with our own government, to understand they have to release all the hostages and put an end to the

conflict and start looking how we can rebuild both in Israel and in Gaza. Obviously we don't have a list of who the initial hostages are, but all the reporting suggests that this first group of hostages likely to number about 33. It's unlikely to include your brother-in-law Omri. Yes, Omri turned 47 while in captivity and so he's below the age of elderly men, as considered by Hamas, plus 50. He's not in the other categories either. And so we're not expecting him to be included in the first phase. We hope for a miracle. We wish for a miracle. Until we'll see the first hostage coming home, we're not going to believe it's happening. Have you any idea how Omri is doing?

I don't. I wish I did. But Hamas refuses to allow international bodies like the ICRC to visit the hostages, refuses to provide a medical assessment of the hostages. And so we don't know. The last we saw Omri was in a psychological warfare video released by Hamas in late April. He looked unwell, but we were relieved to see him alive. It gave us the motivation to keep advocating for him. But it's been so long since last April. It's almost been a year since then. My sister, Lishaie, who met the prime minister yesterday and echoed their the air sentiment that we can't leave anybody behind irrespective of the phase agreement we're reaching now. Moshe Lavie talking to Tim Franks. In Gaza, crowds gathered to celebrate as news of the

agreement emerged, including in Deir al-Balakh in the southern Gazan Strip. trip. Our special correspondent Fergal Keene is in Jordan and considers how a ceasefire deal will be received by Palestinians. For more than a year the people of Gaza have endured war at its most violent and destructive. Most of the population has been displaced, many of them multiple times. Our journalist in northern Gaza met a man who had been forced to flee nine times with his family. His five-year-old son contracted hepatitis because of desperate health conditions. Often people fled to areas that were supposed to be safe zones,

only to discover that they were again vulnerable to Israeli airstrikes. Like Noir Al-Najjar, whose husband was among more than 70 people killed when Israeli forces launched an operation to rescue two hostages. For her, the task of rebuilding is immense. After the ceasefire, I want to give my children the best life, she says, and I want them to get over the fear we lived. My children are really scared. The terror has settled in their hearts. There are hundreds of thousands of stories both like this but also different in the intimate terms of each family's suffering. The reconstruction of Gaza

will ultimately demand as much attention to the trauma of the population as it will to their physical well-being. Fergal Keane, that physical well-being will be dependent on a major increase in aid. Juliet Thouma is Director of Communications at UNRWA, the main United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees. As she explained to Tim Franks, the main focus now is on getting supplies in and quickly. Hand in hand what we do hope is that we see an increase in the flow of humanitarian and also commercial supplies for the markets. We're talking about at least 600 trucks that need

to come into Gaza every single day. The daily average just this month has been just over 50. There will undoubtedly still be concerns from the Israelis about exactly what is coming in because there will be some items I'm sure that they will be worried about could be in the jargon deal use that they might be somehow sequestered by militants and used in order to try and bolster their positions. What reassurances can you give the Israelis on that front? The Israelis screen everything that goes into Gaza. This is not just during the war, but they've been doing that for the past 18 years since they've imposed

the blockade in Gaza. So they have the infrastructure and they have the facilities in place, especially at Karim Shalom. You see, before the war, they, the Israelis, used to process 500 trucks of commercial and humanitarian supplies every day, Sunday to Thursday. So there's no reason why we can't go back to that. You, at the moment, are the main relief agency for Palestinians, not just in Gaza, also in the West Bank and also in countries around the region. You're due to have to stop operations, at least out of Israel and out of Jerusalem, at the end of the month because of new legislation that has been passed in the Knesset in the Israeli Parliament. How are you going to try

to get around that and to deliver these increased amounts of aid? Well, you never know what this ceasefire is going to bring, whether this ceasefire is going to bring. Whether this ceasefire is with the respite and the much, much needed release of hostages, whether with that will also come a cancellation or a reversal of that Knesset decision that will allow UNRWA, which is the largest humanitarian organization in the occupied Palestinian territory. And that for us includes, by the way, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and Gaza, to continue working, including not only to deliver humanitarian supplies in the context of Gaza, but also to continue to provide things like education for kids and primary health care in the occupied West Bank.

Juliet Thumar talking to Tim Franks. Still to come, new discoveries suggest the Iron Age in Britain was a time when women held considerable power. If your daughter is going to be staying put, that's going to encourage you to invest a lot. And daughters typically can end up controlling land and property. How did scientists work this out just by looking at DNA? I'm Jonny Diamond from the Global Story podcast. After 15 months of war, a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. The conflict has cost tens of thousands of lives and left 2 million people displaced

from their homes. What does the ceasefire deal say and crucially can it hold? That's on the Global Story, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. You do sometimes wonder what Senator Marco Rubio makes of his soon-to-be boss Donald Trump. Once upon a time they were rivals for the Republican Party presidential candidacy. And Mr Trump didn't just oppose Senator Rubio, he mocked him for his diminutive stature, calling him Little Marco. Marco Rubio, in turn, called him a con artist. Well, the two have presumably allowed bygones to be bygones. Marco Rubio

is now Donald Trump's pick for Secretary of State. And Wednesday saw him face a confirmation hearing. He told senators he would put America's interests first, but would also keep the United States strong and engaged in the world. And North America editor Sarah Smith followed the proceedings. Shouting in Spanish, these protesters decried Marco Rubio's policy towards Cuba and Venezuela. As he explained to senators how America's foreign policy will change under him these protesters decried Marco Rubio's policy towards Cuba and Venezuela. As he explained to senators how America's foreign policy will change under him and President Donald Trump. They will unashamedly, he said, put American interests first,

claiming that globalization and free trade policies had hurt American workers. He said the post-war global order was being used against the US, and he singled out China as the greatest threat. We welcomed the Chinese Communist Party into the global order and they took advantage of all of its benefits and they ignored all of its obligations and responsibilities. Instead, they have repressed and lied and cheated and hacked and stolen their way into global superpower status and they have done so at our expense and at the expense of the people of their own country. It will be a priority to try to end the war in Ukraine.

To reach a ceasefire or a peace deal he said both Russia and Ukraine will have to make concessions. He agreed with Donald Trump who wants NATO members to spend more money on their own defense. The alliance Mr. Rubio said was very important but the US needed to consider what its role inside NATO should be. Marco Rubio, who was once named Little Marco by Donald Trump, is probably the least controversial of his choices to serve in his cabinet. He's expected to be easily confirmed as Secretary of State by the Senate in the coming weeks. Sarah Smith, to Afghanistan now where hospitals are struggling to cope with cuts in funding, Payenender Sargan from the BBC's Pashto service visited a hospital in Kandahar

and told me what he witnessed. Most Afghans, they have been through four decades of war and at the moment the hospitals of course, there's a big shortage of doctors overall. In a very small hospital you will see hundreds of people like in this hospital, Mirwais Hospital, on daily daily basis, 2500 people come there. The corridors, the hospital, wars, they are all full of people. Everyone sitting in a corner in pain and expecting to be helped sooner. Everyone complains that they do not really receive the kind of treatment they used to receive before. I've been to the children's malnutrition ward. It was so horrible. Women waiting for their children

to be treated. They need more time in order to get on their feet. But it's not going to happen with that kind of support they receive there. Now I gather a lot of the Afghan Health Service has in the past been funded by NGOs and particularly the ICRC, the International Committee of the Red Cross, but they've now cut their funding and you say that's made a big difference. Yes, I spoke to ICRC. ICRC, they have their own reasons. Of course, they do not want to comment about it now, but in the past they had they mentioned that they have budget problems. I gather that the Taliban has limited the ability for women to work in the health service

and in fact is not training any new female staff like doctors and nurses at all. How much difference is that making to a service which you're suggesting was already overstretched? Exactly. That will have a very bad effect in a few years time because at the moment they're already short on female staff. But in a few years time where there are no graduates from universities or healthcare training centers, so in a few years time I don't think there will be many female workers in the health section. It will have a very bad effect in traditional Afghan society. It's women should not be seen by male doctors, but because there is a big shortage

at the moment, a woman has to be seen by a male doctor. It's not acceptable there, but it is happening. I want to ask you what it's like for you yourself going back to Afghanistan. You're a journalist, but you also someone who who was born and brought up in that country. And when you see the kind of decline you're describing. When I go to Afghanistan, it's quite difficult for me to see people in the situation that they are now. I saw many people that they asked me if I could buy them bread, if I could provide them a meal and that's not really easy to see and

especially if it's your own country. Payender Sargand. It was on November 25th last year that a boat carrying divers sank in the Red Sea. 11 people died. Now, survivors are alleging that the subsequent investigation tried to cover up safety failings, failings they believe contributed to the disaster. For more than a month, our correspondent, Joe Inwood, has been speaking to people who were on board the vessel,

investigating not just the cause of the disaster, but the way it was handled after. This is his latest report. As the first survivors of the sea story traipse to shore, bedraggled, traumatized and wearing clothes donated by passengers of another dive boat, they might have thought their ordeal was an end. They've told us that it was not. And until all of us answer all the questions, that it was not. And until all of us answer all the questions, we were not allowed to go to have a shower, to go to our rooms, to rest. That was the voice of Hisora Gonzalez, one of almost a dozen survivors we spoke to.

Until you don't sign this, you cannot even go to sleep. So we were there until 11 or 12 at night without having slept all night without any psychological help. They all paint a remarkably similar picture. They were exhausted but say they were made to give statements almost straight away. They gave them to someone they thought was a translator. Justin Hodges told us the man admitted after that he actually worked for the company that owned the boat. They had left it where it felt like he was just another investigator and not somebody who worked for the company. It felt very, very deceitful looking back.

All the survivors we interviewed had safety concerns about the sea story. Sarah Martin believes they were removed from statements by the employee, something she found out when she translated her statement on her phone. I noticed most of what I had said about the safety equipment and what was and wasn't there in the life raft wasn't included. They say those translations were then taken by the judges leading the investigation. Lisa Wolf couldn't believe it was allowed. All my statements about the condition of the life rafts and safety issues on the boat, that just didn't, yeah, they were just away.

Of all the survivors it was maybe Luciana Galletta, her partner Christophe and a dive guide Youssef, who had the most traumatic experience. They were stuck in the upturned hull of the sinking ship for 35 hours. They even recorded a brief video during their ordeal. Luciana was taken to hospital when she got back to dry land, but made to give her statement from there. We just wanted to get rid of them, to be able to leave because they didn't want us to leave the hospital before doing this interview. Multiple survivors also claim the company tried to pressure them into signing paperwork that said,

in English, no one was criminally liable for the disaster. Justin Hodges said it happened to him twice. He kept pressuring, kept pressuring, kept pressuring. I'm like, I don't know. I can't say. I don't know what happened. I don't know why it happened. We've tried a number of times to contact both the Egyptian government and Dive Pro Liver Board, but have never received a response. In total, 35 people were rescued from the sea story. Four bodies were recovered and seven people have never been found, including Jenny Corson

and Tarik Sinada. Andy Williamson is a friend of the couple. He says the family is still waiting for answers. It would appear that the Egyptian authorities are doing their very best to kind of sweep this under the carpet, pretend like nothing's happened, but there's a clear track record there now. There's been many, many incidents in the last few years of dive boats sinking in the Red Sea and of course they want to protect tourism. Last week a group of 15 survivors, including many we spoke to,

sent a letter to the Egyptian Chamber of Diving and Water Sports. They have received a response saying appropriate action will be taken against any negligence and the circumstances that resulted in the compromise of people's safety. What they do not yet have is an answer as to why the sea story sank in the first place. Joe Inwood. The Iron Age began around 3,000 years ago, a period when, as the name suggests, iron smelting was invented. On the one hand this represented quite a leap forward technically. On the other, iron was used to make new weapons which allowed people to

wage war and kill each other more efficiently. What's now been discovered though is that the Iron Age, in Britain at least, was a period when women seemed to have had far more power domestically than they did later. And what's remarkable is that this work was carried out by examining the DNA of Iron Age bodies. Our science reporter Georgina Ranard told me how. It does sound like a leap of faith, but basically this DNA was sequenced from a lot of skeletons found in the cemetery in Dorset in the south of England. So they know that these skeletons were from the same community. They extracted a bit from the bone and then they can identify

a pattern. So there's a type of chromosome, the mitochondrial, which passes from mother to daughter. And then they can analyze that compared to the Y chromosome, which is passed father to son. And the mitochondrial, which mother to daughter, they found that they were very similar, indicating that lots of the women were blood relatives. Whereas the Y chromosome was really diverse. So that shows that the men in that community were from lots of different backgrounds, basically outsiders from other areas who had moved to live with their wives. And that's what they think is really unusual, that the power is centered around the woman and her family. Okay, so the man would move to the wife's community when they got married. Maybe it's obvious, but why does that mean that the women we know had a stronger role, perhaps more

power than is commonly assumed? Absolutely. So what it suggests is that the society was built around the woman's bloodline. So if all the women in the community are related, it means that the land and the wealth is being passed down mother to daughter. So the daughters are inheriting that land and that status. And so when I spoke to Lara Cassidy, who's a geneticist at Trinity College Dublin, she did that sequencing of the DNA and she told me how that made these women so influential.

If you don't leave home, all your family members, your close and extended family members are all still around you. It's your husband who's kind of coming in and he's the relative sort of stranger to the community and he's dependent on your family for his livelihoods and daughters typically can end up inheriting land and controlling land and property directly. I gather that when the Romans then arrived in Britain and found that women had this stronger role than perhaps they expected they weren't very impressed. Well exactly they actually appeared to have viewed this relative equality in Britain as a sign of barbarism. So there were written accounts from people like Julius Caesar about

Britain where they had gone there and they'd identified that women appeared to have some sort of power. They probably also heard and saw Boudicca, the famous warrior queen, who is a bit of a legend in Britain because she led a tribe in East Anglia in revolt against the Romans. They will have seen all of that and thought, well, that's a sign of backwardness. That's not what a modern society should be. That's one where men and women have much stricter gender roles. And of course, later the Romans were successful and dominated Britain. Georgina Ranard, let's end the podcast with a look back over the past 15 months since that fateful day in October 2023 when Hamas led an attack on Israel which left 1200 people dead and 250 held hostage. Israel's retaliation then killed more than 45,000 people in the

Gaza Strip. Our chief international correspondent is Lise Doucet. She's reported on events throughout the Gaza conflict. How significant is the ceasefire deal? It's hugely significant. I think for the long suffering people of Gaza, for the profoundly suffering families of the hostages, this is the first moment of hope since November when you had the November of 2023 where you had about a hundred hostages released in exchange for about 240 Palestinian prisoners that all fell apart within weeks. Now there is a hope for what's being described as a sustained ceasefire, even daring to think it could be the end of the war. And in such darkness you hold on to every moment of bliss. There is going to be

sadness ahead, there is going to be more pain ahead, but for people who have longed for this moment, who can deny anyone this moment of celebration, and they will celebrate till Sunday when it formally begins, the first part of it, it's a three-phase deal, it's been on the table since May, everyone, I've never seen such a deal. It's been on the table since May. Everyone, I've never seen such a deal which has been so leaked. Those six weeks it seems clear that the women and children will be released and Palestinian prisoners will be released according to an agreed formula. Israel will pull back from the populated areas.

But then it's the hard part, which is then what do you do next? Will Prime Minister Netanyahu resist the pressure of those hard right-wing Saying you've got to keep the going you cannot end the war Will it all fall apart for one reason or another will President Trump's team take his eye off the ball? I think we really are going to him into we're gonna be at this Day sometimes hour by hour, but certainly week by week one phase after the other It's going to the end of the war. The beginning of a new chapter is a long way off but at least it is beginning.

And just within the context of the history, I mean maybe the last hundred years of the Middle East, these last 15 months, this convulsion, this terror, this fear, I mean it's going to resonate for a long time, isn't it? It is a changed Middle East. You know from your own time in the region how many times people spoke with the so-called new Middle East, this sentimental phrase which came up after the Oslo Peace Accords. Again, people daring to believe that Israelis and Palestinians could live by side by side in the so-called two-state solution. It has been dizzying what has happened. All of the barriers were taken away from Israel. It was emboldened what happened in Lebanon with not just the assassination of Hassan

Nasrullah, but the pager attacks, the attacks in the mobile phones. Then you had the assassination of Ismail Haniya in Tehran, direct attacks between Israel and everything we thought was unlikely has come to pass. Least to set. And that's all from us for now, but there'll be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on x at globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Nick Randell and the producer was Alison Davies. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Paul Moss. Until next time, goodbye. ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. The conflict has cost tens of thousands of lives and left two million people displaced

from their homes. What does the ceasefire deal say and crucially can it hold? That's on the Global Story, wherever you get your BBC podcasts.