Global News Podcast - Israeli army starts calling up reservists for planned expansion of Gaza offensive

Episode Date: May 5, 2025

Israel's military has confirmed that tens of thousands of call-up orders are being sent to reservists - in preparation for an expansion of operations in Gaza. Also: Welsh cyclist completes 'dream' ride across the world.

This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Janet Jalil and in the early hours of Monday the 5th of May, these are our main stories. Israel's military has confirmed plans for another expansion of the war in Gaza by sending call-up orders to thousands of reservists. A nationalist, Euro-skeptic candidate who opposes sending military aid to Ukraine looks set to win the first round of Romania's rerun presidential election. Donald Trump denies that he's seeking a third term, despite having previously said he would. Also in this podcast... When the Pope needs anything, we receive a call and we go to the Vatican to take the measurements.

We usually make three different sizes. As Cardinals get ready to elect the next Pope, we look at the preparations to ensure that he can appear in full papal regalia soon after. Israel's military chief, Ayel Zameer, has confirmed that thousands of call-up orders are being sent to thousands of reservists in preparation for an expansion of Israel's offensive in Gaza. As we record this podcast, the Israeli Security Cabinet has been meeting, as expected, to approve the plan shortly. Israel says it's aiming to put pressure on Hamas to release all remaining hostages. The strategy has included a blockade

on the delivery of humanitarian supplies to Gaza. Aid agencies say this policy could amount to a war crime, an allegation Israel rejects. Our correspondent in Jerusalem, Hugo Besheger, told me more about the Israeli plans to call up more reservists. Earlier today we had confirmation from the military's chief of staff that tens of thousands of reservists were being called up. And don't forget these reservists are exhausted. A lot of them have served five, six times since the beginning of the war. And a lot of people in Israel say that this is a failed policy, that military pressure hasn't worked to release the hostages in Gaza, no one has been freed since the ceasefire collapsed back in March. Meanwhile the situation in Gaza itself is growing ever more desperate. We're hearing about reports that Hamas

is hunting down looters because there's such a shortage of food supplies that we now have armed gangs prowling the territory. We've got what more than 52,000 people who have died since the October 7th attacks and aid agencies say many more is dying from preventable illnesses because of the Israeli blockade. Yeah and I mean as you say we're hearing some dramatic accounts of the desperate situation inside Gaza. Aid agencies are saying that the majority of the population is now struggling with acute shortages of water, food and medicine supplies, and that people are dying of hunger.

And there was something that the UN's emergency coordinator in Gaza said a few days ago that really struck me She said people were burning alive after Israeli airstrikes because there was no water to save them So this gives you an idea of the situation that the catastrophic situation in Gaza and these aid Organizations are saying that this is a policy of starvation by Israel that could amount to a war crime, something that Israel has obviously denied. You go, Bishay, go in Jerusalem. For more on what the call up of Israeli reservists could achieve, James Menendez spoke to the Economist Israel correspondent Anshul Pfeffer. We may not necessarily see massive changes on the ground in Gaza in the next few days,

but I think gradually as more Israeli troops are deployed, the plan is, from what I understand, is to capture another part of Gaza and push the civilians out of it and start destroying what Israel calls the terror infrastructure, but basically would be most of the buildings in that area. And so widening the war and calling up all these thousands of reservists, I mean, how the terror infrastructure, but basically would be most of the buildings in that area. And so widening the war and calling up all these thousands of reservists, I mean how much support does that have in Israel? Well what we're seeing in the polls now is that it's not a very popular move.

A majority of Israelis, according to all the surveys we've seen now for months, think that at this point Israel should prioritise a deal which would release all the hostages, even if that means long-term ceasefire, which would keep Hamas in place. That's now roughly 60% of Israelis are saying that. So it's not a popular move. It's also not a popular move because it means tens of thousands of Israelis, mainly men. It's also some women in their twenties and thirties are going to be called up yet again for the fifth or the sixth time since October 7 for a lengthy period, which means that when we were their families,

many of them were students or setting out in their careers, so it's not a very useful thing for them to be called up for what is probably going to be a three-month period. The Economist Israel correspondent,shul Pheffer. In Israel itself, a missile fired from Yemen evaded its sophisticated air defences and forced a brief shutdown of the main international airport on Sunday, exposing Israel's vulnerability to attacks from Iranian-backed Houthis and the limits of the current US military bombing campaign against

the group to try to end its attacks on Red Sea shipping. The Israeli government has vowed to retaliate, but the Houthis have also vowed to carry out more attacks to further disrupt air travel over Israel. Defence analyst Jean-Thomas Marcus assessed the significance of the Houthis finally being able to fire a missile so close to Ben Gurion Airport. It's clearly going to be a serious worry to Israeli military planners. None of these missile defence systems are hermetically sealed. None of them work 100% of the time. But the fact

that this Houthi missile seems to have evaded both Israel's very sophisticated Arrow system and also a system known by its initials as THAAD, which is an American high altitude interception system which has been deployed in Israel as part of the efforts to bolster their anti-missile defenses. The fact it beat both these systems is something that's going to cause worry and they will be obviously working hard to try and figure out what precisely went wrong. So they'll be trying to do that and at the same time the Israeli government has vowed to retaliate. But what can it do realistically given that the US and before that Saudi Arabia have for years been unable to stop Houthi attacks?

Well you make a good point there. I think one of the key problems here is the extraordinary resilience of the Houthi regime. You're right, they've seen off the Saudi military. The Americans have launched an extremely aggressive program of attacks in recent weeks against targets there. We've not had a huge amount of detail from the Pentagon on exactly what they've struck, but the intensity has certainly been upped and it doesn't seem to have daunted the Houthis in any way. Israel has struck back at Houthi targets in the past. The attacks against Israel itself are fairly sporadic.

I think there have been four or so ballistic missiles launched against them in the last four days or so. missiles launched against them in the last four days or so. One obviously has got through. The rest, I think, were intercepted. But it's a continuing problem. And remember, it's not just missile attacks against Israel. It's attacks against warships and commercial shipping in the Red Sea.

Both Britain and the United States have been involved in attacks against the Houthi regime. But again, nothing yet seems to have deterred them. Now there are voices, not least in Israel, who say that it is Iran that is behind the regime there. It is Iran that is providing some of the more sophisticated weaponry, and that perhaps a reprisal should be directed against the Tehran. But of course, that raises a whole other set of issues and of course you have ongoing efforts by the Americans to sort of

test out whether Iran's nuclear programme can be reduced or limited in some way through negotiations. So it's a very complex and very difficult set of issues that they're all having to grapple with. And why can't the international community stop those weapons coming from Iran to Yemen when there are UN embargoes in place? Well, again, that would require significantly stepped up efforts. It's one of the reasons, I think, why some of the more hawkish voices are saying that the address for reprisals should be the

government in Iran itself. But I think you are left with the fact that a lot of this weaponry is not hugely sophisticated. It's much easier for countries to develop these kinds of systems and to transfer them. But at root, if the Houthi regime insists on carrying on with these attacks, and obviously they say they are acting in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza, and of course, it's Israel's decision to relaunch the war in Gaza, which has to a large extent relaunched the Houthi efforts to attack them. defence analyst Jonathan Marcus A nationalist, Euro-skeptic candidate who opposes sending military aid to Ukraine looks

set to win the first round of voting in Romania's presidential election, five months after an earlier poll was scrapped over alleged fraud and Russian interference. George A. Simeon is expected to face a runoff against a centrist candidate in two weeks' time. In a video message, Mr. Simeon praised Romanians who'd voted for him. I want to thank from the bottom of my heart all those who chose to vote for me. It was more than a choice. It was an act of courage, trust and solidarity. I am grateful to them and I assure them that their trust will not be betrayed.

Lea O'Hara,?CNNP Reporter Shortly before we recorded this podcast, our correspondent in the Romanian capital Bucharest, Nick Thorpe, gave us this update. Nick Thorpe, Romanian Correspondent, Bucharest With almost all the votes counted, he's actually running on about 40% of the vote in Romania with his nearest rivals trailing both of them, two centrist candidates on 21%. So while we don't know yet who will challenge him in that second round, we can say for sure, I think at this point, that he will be in that second round in two weeks' time. And just remind us why this election had to be rerun in the first place. Kalin Georgescu, another nationalist or patriot as he would call himself, came first on November

24th but then over allegations of Russian interference and of campaign fraud, of large social media accounts on TikTok suddenly appearing and boosting Mr. Gheorghescu from an almost unknown figure to the winner of that election. That election result was annulled. Mr. Simeon really in a way took over as the main nationalist or right-wing candidate in this election when Mr. Gheorghescu, who won that first round back in November, was barred from taking part. So he has really successfully scooped up both his own votes and those that would have gone to Mr. Gheorghescu to get this very strong result into... really he's got more than two million votes more than his nearest rival so he certainly the favorite in two weeks time.

A lot of people are watching this very closely not least the Trump administration which criticized the scrapping of the the last election and also Ukraine which is worried about the impact this could have on the war there. That's right Mr. Simeon Georgeimeon, who's done so well in this election, he describes himself as an admirer of Donald Trump. He's also a great critic, however, of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, but he's critical of all the help which Romania, one of Europe's poorest countries, has been giving to Ukraine. He's not in favor of further military support for it, and yet he does proclaim himself as

a strong believer in NATO and of persuading Donald Trump, if he can, to keep US troops in Europe. So, sort of many different pictures really coming across of him, really pro-American, pro-Trump, but very critical of the European Union and especially of the leadership of the EU by Ursula von der Leyen. Nick Thorpe in Romania. Donald Trump has denied that he's seeking a third presidential term, a move that's banned under the US Constitution. This despite previously having said that he was not joking about wanting to serve a third

or even fourth term as US president. He was speaking to NBC's Meet the Press program. So many people want me to do it. I have never had requests so strong as that. But it's something that to the best of my knowledge, you're not allowed to do. I don't know if that's constitutional that they're not allowing you to do it or anything else, but there are many people selling the 2028 hat, but this is not something I'm looking to do. I'm looking to have four great years and turn it over to somebody, ideally a great

Republican, a great Republican, a great Republican to carry it forward. But I think we're gonna have four years and I think four years is plenty of time to do something really spectacular. So why the U-turn now? A question Bernadette Keough put to our correspondent in Washington, Jake Kwon. This is something that he had been flirting with, the idea of running for third term since the beginning. And if you go to any of his rallies, this is an issue that comes up and his supporters seems to really believe in this idea that this could happen.

His official website has started selling last week. This red hat says Trump 2028, which promotes the idea of him running for third term. And his former adviser, Steve Bannon, has been going around saying that he is absolutely serious in trying to get Mr. Trump to run for third term and his former advisor Steve Bannon has been going around saying that he is absolutely serious in trying to get Mr Trump to run for third term. So I think it's more of a wait and see. Now this denial about trying to run again, is it just a ruse, Jake, to divert attention away from other issues? Certainly there is this aspect of when he puts out this official merch selling the idea of running for third term, it really fires up his support base and it also agitates his critics. It really generates this outrage and his supporters love to see Mr. Trump as anti-establishment,

a disruptor. And you know, the conversation moves away from the other issues that the White House is currently contending with, mainly the economy. This is an issue that Mr. Trump certainly does not want to fight on. A lot of Americans are currently feeling agitated and anxious about where the economy is going. The inflation worries about the tariffs. And of course, we're now looking at the prospect of there being no toys come Christmas.

And Mr. Trump has also been trying to douse this doubt, saying that, you know, Americans don't need 30 dolls for Christmas they can just be happy with three. You don't need 250 pencil you can just have five and if we focus on whether he's going to run for third term or not it may help the White House a little bit. Jake Kwong in Washington. The former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro has left hospital three weeks after he was admitted for major abdominal surgery. Mr Bolsonaro, who lost his re-election bid three years ago, is due to stand trial for being part of an alleged plot to overturn that result to prevent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from taking over from him. Leonardo Russia reports. time his lawyers will be preparing his defence in a criminal trial at the Supreme Court. Mr Bolsonaro has been charged with plotting a military coup to prevent the inauguration

of his successor, President Lula da Silva, in January 2023. He says the allegations are politically motivated. Leonardo Russia. Still to come. It's been a 14-month journey. I set off from Cardiff Bay on St David's Day last year, 2024. A man who's completed a bike ride halfway across the world from Wales to Australia has said he also plans to cycle home. You're listening to the Global News Podcast. Sudanese paramilitaries have carried out drone strikes on the city of Port Sudan, causing major disruption at what was the country's

only functioning international airport. It's the first time the seat of the army-backed government has been attacked during two years of devastating civil war. Joe Inwood reports. Huge plumes of black smoke can be seen rising into the air near Port Sudan. The target was the Osmondinya air base with a goods warehouse and civilian facilities said to be hit. This is the first time the paramilitary rapid support forces have managed to strike at the base of the national army. A spokesman for the Sudanese armed forces said that kamikaze drones have been responsible, a tactic the RSF have been increasingly using in recent months. As well as hosting the army, Port Sudan is home to many international organisations and aid agencies.

Clementine Quetta Salami is the most senior UN official in the country. She says the attack will have an impact on their operations. We will have to assess the situation, what it means in terms of our ability to bring items and staff in and out of the country. It will also force us to reflect of our own footprint, our posture, and to make sure that we can manage the security situation as it evolves. Just to say that I have said repeatedly, as have other actors called on all those engaged in this conflict to ensure that civilians and civilian infrastructure are not targeted. That is a call that has not been heeded in a civil

war that is often said to be the world's worst humanitarian disaster. Much of the capital city has been destroyed with more than 12 million people forced to flee their homes and tens of millions suffering from acute hunger. The Sudanese armed forces have taken back swathes of territory in recent months including the presidential palace but that has clearly not removed their rivals ability to strike at an area previously considered safe. Jo Inwood, in two days' time 135 cardinals will gather in the splendour of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican to decide which one of them will succeed Pope Francis, a process that could take days and successive rounds of voting. The ballots will be burnt after each round,

with the black smoke emerging from the chimneys, signaling to the crowds waiting outside that no pope has yet been chosen. But once white smoke rises, it means that there is a new pope who will then appear shortly afterwards wearing the papal white cassock. And preparing for that is the tailor to a long succession of popes, the family-run

business Gamarelli. William Crawley went along to their workshop in Rome. How long have you been on this particular site? The business was established in 1798. We are here since 1875. So new kid on the block. Who are the typical customers here? Our customers go from the seminarian to the priest to the bishop to the cardinals to the Holy Father. All of these people typically come in to be tailored?

Yes. Except the Pope? The Pope could not come here because it would be too difficult. When the Pope needs anything, we receive a call and we go to the Vatican to take the measurements or the order. We usually make three different sizes. Small, medium and large? Roughly speaking.

This time we have not made the three vestments because the Vatican informed us that it was not necessary, they already had everything. We think it's because they're using the vestments we made for previous conclaves. How many popes has your family tailored for? We are not sure because we don't have records for the first years. Back to 1798? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Just the ones you've got. The pictures on the wall here from... Here are eight pictures of the last eight popes. You've got Francis, Benedict, John Paul II, John Paul I, you've got Paul VI, John XXIII, all the way back to the Piuses. Those are the ones you know of. We surely have worked with popes before that, but we don't have the picture.

If I were coming here, if I were a cardinal, what could you do for me? We start by taking measurements and then asking what do you need, because it's not the same for every cardinal. Each cardinal chooses what he wants to wear. And some of them will be much more simple in their taste, some will be a bit more ornate. And that's true of popes as well. You get popes who, like Francis, very simple in his style. Pope Francis only wanted the white cassock, the very simple dress that the pope wears every day and for ceremonies. For example, Pope Benedict also wore the white cassock, but over that wore also the red mozzetta that

is distinctive of the Holy Father. Pope Francis never wanted to wear it. This is almost like a shoulder hooded around the top of the white cassock. Francis wanted more simplicity, I guess, in the way he dressed. Probably, yeah. What kind of fabrics do you use for the Pope's garments? They're all pure wool fabrics. No silk in there, no? There's some very tiny silk details, but the main fabric is wool.

I hear that Benedict liked silk. But he also wore wool. The cassock of a Pope is made of wool, not silk. I can show you the fabrics we use for priests or bishops or cardinals, but not the ones that we use for the pope because they're white and they could get spoiled with the sun, so we keep them somewhere else. You've got a special pope store room, have you? Yeah, of course you do. Yeah, you would. So we've got cassocks here in black. What is this in red? This is a coat. This is somebody else's coat. Nothing to do with the church. It looked like it should

be a cardinal's coat. We are tailors to the church, but we are also tailors. So every now and then... You really do suits as well. No pope has ever entered this store, but most of them came here before they became pope, the cardinals, or even before that. We served Pope Francis Cardinal Bergoglio when he was created a Cardinal, and we served Pope Benedict Cardinal Ratzinger for all his life in the Church. He was probably your best customer.

He loved to dress up, didn't he? I don't remember the exact words, but in a book of his memories, he wrote that life without Gamarelli would be impossible. That report by William Crawley in Rome. Meanwhile, a Pope mobile used by Pope Francis during his visit to the occupied West Bank a decade ago is to be transformed into a mobile clinic for wounded children in Gaza. He said to have given his blessing to the project last year. Here's Mike Thompson. Mike Thompson The converted gleaming white

Pope Mobile is likely to be a very welcome, if rather incongruous looking site, in Gaza. Much of the territory now has little or no available health care. The Roman Catholic aid organisation Caritas, which has long operated there, is to kit the vehicle out with diagnostic equipment, vaccines and other life-saving supplies, along with blast-proof glass. Pope Francis is known to have been deeply concerned about the plight of civilians in Gaza and is said to have been in daily touch with the priests there. He also criticised Israeli military offensives in the Strip, a fact which may help explain why the country only sent its Vatican ambassador to the Pontiff's funeral. A legacy that could stymie the already formidable challenge of getting the Pope Mobile into Gaza, which is under an Israeli aid blockade. Mike Thompson. 50 years ago, North Vietnamese tanks rolled through the gate of

the presidential palace in Saigon, effectively ending a long and bloody war. To mark the anniversary, the Guimet Museum in Paris is presenting a special audiovisual exhibition featuring the work of the French photojournalist Marc Huibou. His best-known image is from an anti-war protest in the US of a girl holding a flower towards American soldiers who are pointing their guns at her. But the photographer also worked extensively in Vietnam during the conflict. Our Paris correspondent, Hugh Schofield, visited the exhibition. Stop the war in Vietnam and bring it home.

Because I am sick of the racist war in Vietnam when we don't have justice in the United States. Fifty years ago, the long war in Vietnam came to an end. This was in no small part due to the anti-war protest movement in the U.S. And one of the best known images of the time shows a 17-year-old girl holding a chrysanthemum up before a line of soldiers armed with bayonets at a protest in Washington DC. La jeune fille à la fleur, the picture came to be called, or as it was published in English, the ultimate confrontation, the flower and the bayonet. The man who captured this image was French photographer Marc Riboud, and his work on

Vietnam is on display now at the Musée Guimet in Paris to mark the anniversary of the end of the war. Visiting the exhibition, I spoke to curator Lorraine Dorret, and I began by asking her why Riboud had selected this particular frame of all the pictures he took of that anti-war demo in 1967. When you look at the contact sheet, you see it's the more powerful photo. It's a very simple composition divided in two parts. So on one side, the girl with the flower, and in front of her, the soldier who are as

young as her, they seem. But she looks very resolute and firm. We can't really give her an age, though we learned later on that she was only 17. Peace now! Peace now! Peace! I think it's that way that the photo became a symbol of peace, and Mark Reboul was really happy about it. It's a photo that is still very much reenacted

during the demonstrations for different causes. Would it be groovy with bombs going off all around you to report in your suit and tie for work that morning? It seemed a little far out though. Was Marc Ribot an anti-Vietnam war campaigner? He has never been a militant. When we see his works, of course we can feel his sympathy. But he was very lucid. He always remained distant with the politics

and focused more on people. Let's move on and show us a couple of other pictures that you particularly like here. It's a line of five children walking away from us at an angle, wearing these strange jackets made out of straws. Yes, yes, but these jackets look like carnival, it looks like a happy sort of parade, but when you look at the caption and you read it carefully you can see that the jackets were made of straw to

protect themselves from explosions, which make the photograph much more deep. What's very obvious is that he wasn't in the kind of conventional terms a war photographer. I mean, we're not seeing soldiers, we're not seeing fighting, we're not seeing bloody bodies at all, are we? That's what makes his work special, especially the work on Vietnam,

because to prepare this exhibition, we looked at many books of the war in Vietnam, and what we see first is photographs of mostly American soldiers and we don't see almost any here maybe one or two at the beginning. He said himself that he was not a war photographer that he was more interested in the beauty of the world and that's what we see in his photographs we see life. And that was curator Lorraine Duret ending that report from Huescofield in Paris.

A man who's completed a remarkable bike ride halfway across the world from Wales to Australia has said he also plans to cycle home. Nathan Hurley has raised close to five and a half thousand dollars for charity on his journey which took him across much of Europe and Asia. He's been speaking to Michael Daventry. It's been a 14-month journey. I set off from Cardiff Bay on St David's Day last year, 2024. That was on the 1st of March. 25,000 kilometres and a fair few punctures later, Nathan Hurley rolled on his bike into Sydney Harbour last week. It had been an exhausting trip through mountain ranges, deserts and one or two politically delicate regions. In parts of China he was followed by a police car, the only other vehicle for miles around. So when he finally arrived

in Australia's largest city and video called his parents, they were hoping his journey was at an end. I gave them the good news that I arrived but I also gave him the bad news that I decided to come back home the other way around the planet. So I think my dad was really supportive, but my mum had her head in her hands. Right now Nathan is in New Zealand, but plans to take a flight to Alaska. From there he'll cycle down the Americas to Brazil before crossing into Africa and back up north to Cardiff Bay in the south of Wales.

Michael Daventry. And that's all from us for now but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. Before we go we have a quick request. We want to hear where you're listening from so we can update our shiny new map in the office. You can email globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk with your town or city. And while you're there, feel free to leave us a voice note. This edition was mixed by Nick Randall, the producer was Liam McShepard, the editor is Karen Barton. I'm Jeanette Jalil, until next time, goodbye.