Global News Podcast - Israel says Gaza ceasefire will end unless Hamas frees hostages by Saturday

Episode Date: February 12, 2025

Israel says the ceasefire will end unless Hamas frees hostages by Saturday. Also: the US teacher held in Russia for four years is freed, and remembering the child chimney sweep whose death changed England's labour laws.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. What does it take to go racing in the fastest cars in the world? Oscar Piastri. Your head's trying to get rid of one way, your body's trying to go another. Let's stroll. It's very extreme in the sense of how close you're racing wheel to wheel. We've been given unprecedented access to two of the most famous names in Formula One, McLaren and Aston Martin.

I'm Landon Aris. They build a beautiful bit of machinery that I get to then go and have fun in. They open the doors to their factories as the 2024 season reached its peak. I'm Josh Hartnett. This is F1, Back at Base. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Nick Miles and in the early hours of Wednesday 12 February these are our main stories.

The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the Gaza ceasefire deal will end if Hamas does not free hostages by Saturday. Mr Netanyahu added that intense fighting would also resume. King Abdullah of Jordan has told President Trump that his country would take thousands of sick children from Gaza. In other news, the author Salman Rushdie has testified at the trial in New York state of a man accused of attempting to murder him. Also in this podcast. It's a great relief. It's been very difficult, but we're all here.

We're all together and we're looking forward to healing. Washington says it secured the release of a U.S. school teacher who had been held in Russia for four years. We speak to his sister. Israel and Hamas are midway through the first stage of a fragile ceasefire. So far, 16 Israeli hostages have been released in exchange for more than 500 Palestinian prisoners. Another exchange is due to take place on Saturday. But all that has been thrown into question. Hamas said they may delay the release because of what

they said were Israeli violations of the agreement. The US President Donald Trump says that if all hostages aren't returned by noon on Saturday, then in his words, all hell will break loose. Meanwhile, after meeting his security cabinet, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this. The decision that I passed unanimously in the cabinet is this. If Hamas does not return our hostages by Saturday noon, the ceasefire will end and the army will return to intense fighting until Hamas is finally defeated. So is Benjamin Netanyahu really demanding the release of all hostages on Saturday, like President Trump? A question for our correspondent in Jerusalem, Wirra Davis.

I think Mr Netanyahu has been deliberately vague. There are members of his cabinet who've come out and said they back Mr Trump 100 percent and some unofficial comments from the government say yes, that is what they want. They want all hostages released, but I think in practice that will be very unfeasible because it would mean Netanyahu unilaterally changing the terms of an agreed ceasefire. If Hamas, for example, on Friday afternoon, as they've done so far,

give a list of three hostages to be released as was planned, and Netanyahu says all of a sudden, no that's not enough, we want them all out and in that case war would resume. There would be a huge repercussion in Israel. The vast majority of people in Israel, especially the families and supporters of the hostages, want the ceasefire deal to continue because they've seen regular releases of hostages. Of course that would take Hamas to change its position. Hamas yesterday said that they were suspending the release of hostages at the weekend because of what they said were Israeli breaches of the ceasefire agreement. If Hamas now

changed their position and published the list of three as they would have done anyway, I think it's been very difficult for Mr Netanyahu to insist that everybody should be released. Meanwhile Hamas have been saying that they want Qatari and Egyptian mediators to intervene to get the ceasefire deal back on track in their words. By the sounds of things it's going to be extremely difficult at this stage for mediators to make any difference. The big challenge at the minute is how do we move from ceasefire part one, which is only two weeks before it finishes, to ceasefire part two, which would involve the release of more hostages and a longer term agreement to formally end the war. Those talks haven't started yet and that's going to take some effort. So the Israelis, the Hamas delegates,

the Qataris, the Egyptians and the Americans are going to have to get round a table. Otherwise there will be no stage two and if there is no stage two then the likelihood of a resumption of the war is more possible. And at the moment Hamas is saying that Israel has been blocking humanitarian aid and that's the reason they're giving for maybe not releasing the next three hostages. Is there any room for movement there? There's undoubtedly a lot more aid getting through to Gaza because of the ceasefire. People are able

to travel much more freely because of the ceasefire. The border between Egypt and Gaza has reopened partially because of the ceasefire. But what Hamas is saying, temporary covered accommodation, things like tents, aren't being delivered in the numbers that have been promised. That's a debatable point and that's something that may have to be resolved in the next couple of days. We're a Davis. Well, just how do people on the ground in Gaza view the prospect of the ceasefire unraveling and a return to war? Barzad told the BBC of his family's reaction to the latest news. All of us felt this sense of discomfort, of fear, that the war may come back next week. I believe the last three weeks were very short. Like if the war was just yesterday,

what was shocking to us is not the news itself, but also the complicit support of US on it, like the Trump's statements that he will open the doors of hell on Gaza next Saturday. Again, he's blaming the victims, he's blaming us, added to this feeling of fear, feelings of anger. Me, as I'm a doctor, I faced many scenes that I thinking that if I will live for more than even a hundred years, I will not see this again. So it was very hard for us after 15 months, war and now ceasefire happened. So everyone is looking forward, what we will do and what

will be next. Yesterday there was a delaying hostages release after many comments like from the United States and from other places that maybe we need the Gazan people to be out of the land to emigrate and we need to have investment inside Gaza. We will buy Gaza. I think this is a normal reaction from the people who is handling this agreement of ceasefire because it cannot be like you are sponsor of the ceasefire agreement and at the same time you are speaking about buying Gaza. All we want are our most basic rights such as access to sufficient food, car funds, a

shelter for the families whose homes were destroyed. In return Hamas will hand over the hostage as required. How can they give the hostage without first giving us our most basic rights? We heard there from people in Gaza Gaza Dalia, Fahed and Barzad. Let's hear now from a relative of one of the hostages being held in Gaza. Sharon Livshitz's parents were taken by Hamas on October the 7th 2023. Her mother Joceved was released but her father Oded is still being held. I think there's a lot of talk and big talk and very scary talk but I think we have to keep ourselves to brace ourselves and to wait and see what happened. There's a lot of big egos

and there's a kind of negotiation tactic and I hope that's what it is. I hope both sides want to continue the deal. And actually, you know, we want all the hostages back home. The reports from those that come back, the conditions they are held in are petrifying. And their capacity for survival is diminishing all the time. They should all come back back as I'm saying, but for that to happen, we need a ceasefire, we need a withdrawal from Gaza, we need an exchange of prisoners for hostages.

There's a very large majority of Israeli public that want this deal to come through, that want the return of hostages in return to a ceasefire and complete withdrawal from Gaza. Just follow the wishes, not just of me and the hostage families, but of the vast majority of the Israeli public. Get that deal completed. It's the most important thing you can do in your life. We have to move on to make a sustainable future for the people of the region. Sharon Livchitz.

Well, the future of Gaza and the Palestinians living there was discussed at the White House when Donald Trump met Jordan's King Abdullah on Tuesday. On Monday, the US president said he might withhold aid to Jordan and Egypt if they didn't take in large numbers of Palestinians from Gaza. Here's Donald Trump on Tuesday. I believe we'll have a parcel of land in Jordan. I believe we'll have a parcel of

land in Egypt. We may have someplace else but I think when we finish our talks we'll have a place where they're going to live very happily and very safely. King Abdullah had already rejected the idea of taking in Ghazans, saying his country is at boiling point as it already hosts millions of refugees. King Abdullah did, however, announce that Jordan would take in 2,000 sick children from Gaza for treatment. Our State Department correspondent Tom Bateman was at the White House. We learned basically that he is fundamentally doubling down on the two things that he has been saying recently.

First of all, and he was asked extensively about his plan to clean out the Gaza Strip. He's put it to empty it of Palestinians, a plan which appears to involve the forcible relocation of some two million people for the US to become the occupying power of Gaza and to turn it into a Mediterranean resort. He talked about building hotels there, said it would look beautiful. And the second was about this noon Saturday deadline that he first revealed on Monday in which he says

that if Hamas doesn't release all of the remaining hostages, that there would be, in his words, hell to pay. The phrase he used today, that all bets would be off if that doesn't take place. So sitting next to King Abdullah of Jordan, one of the countries he has said that he expects to take relocated Palestinians, as he puts it in his language. And the Jordanians obviously adamantly opposed this plan, but we didn't hear that kind of opposition, certainly not being voiced publicly in front of the press in the Oval Office. He did, though, King Abdullah, saying that there will be a united response to the US president's plan, united maybe in the sense of, we reject it.

Well, I think united he, he means Arab nations. And what appears to be happening, at least my sense is, that Egypt at the moment is working on an alternative proposal to President Trump's plans. Now, this would involve potentially something like a sort of technocratic, administration of governance of Gaza, not drawn from political factions.

So that obviously keeps Hamas out of the mix. Not clear how they would involve security forces is an absolutely key question but this is basically I think the Arab countries led at the moment by Egypt scrambling to come up with an alternative to Mr. Trump's plan basically for the US to take possession of the Gaza Strip and to clear out its population. Now what we heard from King Abdullah is that there was an Egyptian proposal kind of in the works that they were going to meet in Riyadh under the sponsorship of the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and formulate this proposition which they would then discuss with the Americans. So I think that's where the Arab countries are at but

this feels like a very sort of quick and putting together at the last minute to desperately try and counter out what Mr Trump is proposing. Tom Bateman. Let's move on to some other news now and the novelist Salman Rushdie has been testifying in the trial of the man accused of attempting to murder him in 2022. Frenzied stabbing attack at a lecture in New York left Mr. Rushdie blind in one eye. The author has been subject of a fatwa issued by the then Iranian supreme leader since publishing the Satanic Verses back in 1988. Our correspondent Neda Taufik is at the court in New York State. After more than two and a half years, Salman Rushdie returned to this quaint lakeside town in upstate New York,

where he nearly lost his life. At this courthouse not far from the Arts Center where he was due to speak about keeping writers safe that August day, he once again came face to face with his alleged attacker. Twenty-seven-year-old Hadi Mattar looked down as the author, wearing a suit, calmly gave graphic evidence from the witness stand. He recounted how just as he was about to speak at the Chateauquat Institute, he was aware of a person wearing dark clothes and a face mask with dark hair rushing at him. He said he was struck by his dark eyes. During the attack, Rajdi said everything happened so quickly, initially he thought

he had been punched. Turning to illustrate his injuries to the jury, he described the horror of being stabbed and slashed 15 times in a matter of seconds. Lowering his glasses, he showed his blind right eye that had been sewn shut. He held up his hand with severed tendons and nerves that he had raised in self-defense. He described a sense of great pain and shock as he had laid in a lake of his own blood, thinking clearly that he was dying. In a previous BBC interview, the Booker Prize winner said he couldn't make sense of the attack. He took very little trouble to inform himself about the man he was planning to kill. He'd read a couple of pages, he didn't say of what, and that he'd watched a couple of

YouTube videos and decided that I was disingenuous. Inside the courtroom, jurors listened intently to Rushdie's testimony, as did his wife and friend who were also present. The 77-year-old said he is still recovering. As for his alleged attacker, if convicted, he faces 25 years in prison. Neda Taufik. A billionaire couple have won a court case here in the UK. A judge ruled they'd get most of the fortune that they paid for a London mansion returned to them. Why? Because the place was infested with moths, millions of them that got into their food, ruined their clothes and even landed on their

kids' toothbrushes whilst they were brushing. Stephanie Zacharison reports. If you're buying a house for a staggering 40 million dollars, you're probably expecting to move into your dream home. After all, Horbury Villa had a range of luxury additions like a spa, a gym, a pool and a cinema room. But after the couple, the daughter of a Georgian billionaire and her husband, moved into the mansion in London's desirable Notting Hill area, they soon realised their new home also came with some unwanted residents. Lots and lots of moths. Millions of them. The families say they were swatting around a hundred moths a day and they were landing on their children's toothbrushes and on food, floating around

in wineglasses and nibbling away at clothes and furniture. After getting exterminators in, unable to resolve the infestation, the pair went on to sue the man they bought the property from. The couple argued the seller had made fraudulent misrepresentations when he, on a form before the sale went through, had claimed no knowledge of any vermin problems in the house. But the lawyers found there had been issues. At least two reports from pest control companies pointed out a serious moth infestation in the insulation of the walls. So the judge has ruled that the couple

will be able to hand the keys back to the seller and get most of their money back, plus damages for ruined clothes and furniture. Stephanie Zacharison. Still to come. George Brewster was the boy that changed the law and I would like all children to know this boy's name. Honouring England's last climbing boy, the Victorian child who died after he became stuck up a chimney, triggering national outrage and a change in child labour laws. Oscar Piastri. Your head's trying to get roofed one way, your body's trying to go another. Lance Stroll.

It's very extreme in the sense of how close you're racing wheel to wheel. We've been given unprecedented access to two of the most famous names in Formula One, McLaren and Aston Martin. I'm Landon Aris. They build a beautiful bit of machinery that I get to then go and have fun in. They open the doors to their factories as the 2024 season reached its peak. I'm Josh Hartnett. This is F1 Back at Base. Listen

wherever you get your podcasts. The White House has announced that an American man, a teacher, Mark Fogel, who'd been held in Russia since 2021 on drugs charges, has now been freed. The 63-year-old who once worked as a diplomat at the US embassy in Moscow, was serving a sentence for being caught in possession of what was said to be a small amount of cannabis. In a moment we'll hear from Mark's sister, but first Steve Rosenberg, the BBC's Russia editor in Moscow. We haven't heard from the Russian side. Mark Fogel had been given a 14-year prison sentence. But everything changed when Donald Trump's special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, flew to Russia, flew

to Moscow to secure Mark Fogel's release. He was able to do that. And later, Donald Trump's national security adviser, Mike Waltz, said that the Trump administration had negotiated an exchange that serves as a show of good faith in the Russians and a sign we're moving in the right direction to end the war in Ukraine. So first of all, this talk about an exchange, we have no details whatsoever about for whom or for what Mark Fogel was exchanged. But also it's interesting, isn't it, that the release of a US prisoner and the war in Ukraine are mentioned in the same paragraph.

And I think that amid all the talk we're hearing of possible peace talks to end the war in Ukraine, of some kind of imminent US peace plan, I suspect that any sign of a thaw in US-Russian relations, in this kind of language we're seeing, show of good faith in the Russians moving in the right direction. I suspect that in Ukraine, in Kiev, they'll be pretty wary of that and wondering if that means moving in the right direction for Moscow.

Steve Rosenberg, speaking from the state of Montana, Mark Fogel's sister, Anne Fogel, gave her reaction to my colleague Celia Hatton. I just had a shot of Belvany 21 and I plan to celebrate from now through the next 24 hours. We're so happy. Quite a celebration. Did you know that this was happening? Well, last week we knew he was removed from the Rybinsk penal colony. So we knew something was afoot, but these negotiations are very tenuous and we weren't sure if they would get the job done. And I'm so pleased to say that he is now flying over Iceland. So it's a great relief. Do you know when you will get to see him?

I don't know exactly. He's flying into DC today to Andrews Air Force Base and then he'll say hello to his wife and his children. And then I think he'll fly on to probably San Antonio, Texas for medical evaluation and psychological evaluation. The Biden administration said it had tried to include your brother in the last prisoner swap between the US and Russia and you had said at the time that you felt you'd been stabbed in the back when he wasn't included in that deal. Why do you think it's happened now under the Trump administration? I don't have a real answer for you. As I said, I think these negotiations are very difficult

and I don't think that Mark was prioritized at that point in time. It was after that then that he was designated as wrongfully detained. And I don't know why he wasn't higher on the list in the August swap. Does it have anything to do with the new administration being in place? I think it must. My mother met with Donald Trump about 30 minutes before he was shot in Butler, Pennsylvania. And he had given his word at that point in time that he would get him out if he was elected. And he's true to his word.

We know that the U.S. National Security Adviser Mike Wald said the exchange served as a show of good faith between the U.S. and Russia and a sign they're moving in the right direction to end the war in Ukraine. How do you feel about your brother's release being tied to a wider issue like the end of the conflict there? These are the giant machinations of world politics at play. It's going to be interesting to look back at this and to see how it all fits into how history plays out. I think that he is probably was utterly shocked when they came for him. Anne Fogel. How to make money out of artificial intelligence occupies the

thoughts of many a tech mogul. How to control it keeps many politicians up at night. One hour 60 countries including China have signed an international agreement to develop what they call inclusive, ethical and sustainable artificial intelligence. It came at the end of the AI action summit in Paris but two of the biggest players in the sector, the UK and America, refused to sign up to the deal. The US Vice President, JD Vance, had this warning to those gathered in Paris. We believe that excessive regulation of the AI sector

could kill a transformative industry just as it's taking off. And we'll make every effort to encourage pro-growth AI policies. And I like to see that deregulatory flavor making its way into a lot of the conversations this conference." Later on, though, the French president Emmanuel Macron explained why regulation of the AI

sector was necessary. We do need these rules. This is for AI to move forward. This is not being wary of artificial intelligence. It's not running counter to innovation, but it's looking to the future so we can have an international area where we will avoid our efforts being fragmented. And we also want to have AI

that we can consider trustworthy and which will unite the international community. Dr. Stephanie Hare is a broadcaster and writer who specialises in the tech sector. And she was at the conference. So what did she make of the two-day event and has it changed much? I would say yes it has. There's an American expression, show me the money. This summit, unlike the first one that happened in the United Kingdom at Bletchley Park back in

November 23, is all about AI opportunities, whereas the first summit was all about AI risks and how to make us safer. This one is actually backing up this talk about AI action and opportunities with money. And we're talking a lot of money. So let's break it down. We've got a 200 billion euro AI investment fund from the European Union and the private sector. That's a pledge, great, and then the French president

Emmanuel Macron has coughed up a further 109 billion euros for AI investment in France alone. Compare that to the 500 billion dollar Stargate AI investment program that President Trump announced in the United States a couple of weeks ago and you're getting pretty close to parity there on investments. Dr Stephanie Hare. It is being called the most significant blow to the Italian mafia in more than 40 years. Police say that more than 130 members of the group were arrested in and around the Sicilian city of Palermo known colloquially as the Cosa Nostra. The group terrorised large parts of Italy in the 1980s and 90s. Since then it's been overtaken as Europe's most powerful mob by the Calabrian, Ndrangheta. Our reporter Carla Conti is from Sicily and told me more about this latest strike against the island's group.

What took place in the early hours of Tuesday in the Sicilian capital of Palermo is being referred to as the biggest anti-mafia operation since at least in the 1980s. And it's because of the sheer amount of arrests that were carried out. So over 180 suspected mafia members were arrested and the list of crimes that they are accused of ranges from attempted murder and blackmail to illegal gambling. But perhaps the most important thing that has transpired from this whole operation, which is the result of a months-long investigation by the Carabinieri military police, is that

the mafia is not really a relic of the past. It is still operating, it is evolving, and it's evolving alongside technology. And it's giving rise to what some Italian media have been describing as the Mafia 3.0. So now both the Mafia bosses that are free and the ones who are behind bars have been using latest generation mobile phones with special encrypted software for their meetings, to the point where some bosses from their prison cells have been able to order the beatings of some people that have wronged them and, you know, watch it all happen on the screen of a tiny mobile phone. You grew up in Palermo, in that part of Sicily.

Perhaps people will have mixed feelings about what's happened now. On the one hand, fewer members of the mafia on the one hand, fewer members of the mafia on the streets. On the other, evidence that the mafia is still very strong. Yes, that's right, Nick. And well, I and I think many other Sicilians still feel like the mafia is kind of a specter that hangs over us. It still finds a way to kind of weave itself into bigger, already existing problems and economic crises. So for example, Sicily is currently undergoing one of the most serious water crises in its history. And while of course this is due to droughts and increasingly dry winters, the mafia there has been able to harness that crisis for profit.

For example, by offering water for sale, which is often drawn from illegal wells of questionable purity and sell it at extortionate prices. So I think many Sicilians still feel disheartened and powerless in the face of it all and feel that it's a problem that they will never be able to fully eradicate. Karl Aconte. 150 years ago a chimney sweep aged just 11 died at work in a building in Cambridgeshire in the south-eastern part of England. But George Brewster's tragic tale would help change child labour laws here in Britain. On Tuesday his short life was finally honoured with a commemorative blue plaque at the building, a former asylum. Jo Black takes up the story. George Brewster died 150 years ago after he became stuck in a chimney here at the former asylum.

The building has since been turned into offices. A short ceremony was held in his honour. The blue plaque was awarded by Cambridge Past, Present and Future, and this application was the first the charity has received for a child. The local amateur historian who researched George Brewster's story, Joanna Hudson, believes the 11-year-old was the last so-called climbing boy to die in England. His death in 1875 was discussed in Parliament and brought about a momentous turning point, changing child labour laws in Britain. Miss Hudson says she wants to remind people of the sacrifice and extreme working conditions

Victorian children endured. I'd really love that children know more about him. I mean, kids today, they'll... Both of my children have been through primary school and they learnt about the Industrial Revolution and they learn about child labour laws. But what they don't know is the true stories behind that and George Brewster was the boy that changed the law and I would like all children to know this boy's name.

Miss Hudson's six-year campaign has been supported by various organisations, including the Guild of Master Chimney Sweeps. She says George Brewster died not knowing he would change the lives of thousands of children and that his story would have huge significance, not only for Cambridgeshire but for the whole country. Joe Black. And that's all from us for now but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later on. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it you can send us an

email. The address is globalpodcast.bc.co.uk you can also find us on x at bbc world service using the hashtag at global news this edition was mixed by caroline driscoll and the producer was allison davis the editor is carolyn martin i'm nick miles and until next time, goodbye. We've been given unprecedented access to two of the most famous names in Formula One, McLaren and Aston Martin. I'm Landon Aris. They build a beautiful bit of machinery that I get to then go and have fun in. They open the doors to their factories as the 2024 season reached its peak. I'm Josh Hartnett. This is F1, back at base. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.