Global News Podcast - Israeli media reports plans to expand military offensive in Gaza

Episode Date: August 4, 2025

Hundreds of ex-Israeli security officials write to President Trump, urging him to pressurize the government into ending the war in Gaza, amid reports that Prime Minister Netanyahu is seeking to expand the military offensive to free the remaining hostages. Also: A BBC investigation into child abuse in Kenya, South Korea dismantles loudspeakers on its border with North Korea to ease tensions, plus how David Attenborough's new wildlife documentary on parenthood might teach humans how to parent. The Global News Podcast brings you the breaking news you need to hear, as it happens. Listen for the latest headlines and current affairs from around the world. Politics, economics, climate, business, technology, health – we cover it all with expert analysis and insight. Get the news that matters, delivered twice a day on weekdays and daily at weekends, plus special bonus episodes reacting to urgent breaking stories. Follow or subscribe now and never miss a moment.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. deal ratings and price history. So you know a great deal when you see one. That's cargurus.ca. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Valerie Sanderson at 1300 Hours GMT. On Monday, 4th August, these are our main stories. Reports in Israel say the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is planning to expand military operations in Gaza despite renewed domestic criticism, including from many former defence chiefs. There's a resumption of talks on a global plastics treaty as experts warn that plastic pollution is a grave and under-recognised danger to health. Also in this podcast, reports from Sudan's Darfur region

say Colombian mercenaries allied to the paramilitary rapid support forces have been handed control of a camp that's home to hundreds of thousands of displaced people and... The mother Orangutan in Borneo is building her bed for the night. Her young son, a few branches below, is getting to work on his own bunk. How animals parrot their young. So what can we learn? Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is planning to expand military operations in Gaza, that's according to a

diplomatic source quoted by Israeli media. It comes in the wake of Hamas releasing videos of two of the living hostages held in Gaza. The Red Cross, which assisted with the hostage releases in January and February, said it was appalled by the footage, which showed the two men in an emaciated condition, with one of them appearing to dig his own grave. Our Middle East correspondent in Jerusalem, Isiola Nel. Several Israeli journalists were briefed by the same Israeli official, some say it was the Prime Minister himself, basically suggesting that there is now a growing understanding that Hamas is not interested in a deal. This is something that the Prime Minister said in his video message after the videos came out showing two emaciated, skeletal Israeli hostages. And this Israeli

official has told journalists that the Prime Minister therefore is pushing for the release of hostages as part of what's been called a military resolution or a decisive military victory. So under this plan, it's also said that humanitarian aid would still be delivered outside of combat zones and overall it does look like this amounts to an escalation of the wall that's being proposed but no decisions be made. We understand that the Security Cabinet is going to meet later this week that maybe various scenarios will be presented to them. Some speculation about what that could be. It could go as far, some journalists are saying, as a full occupation of Gaza or encirclement of key cities with raids by the Israeli military in places that haven't so far seen significant ground activities. And how have the hostage families responded to this? Well, of

course, they're extremely worried about what this means for their loved ones. And there's a strong statement that's come out from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, the main support group, and it says that Netanyahu is preparing the largest possible scam. He's talking about releasing the hostages while claiming victory. These talking points have been repeatedly made to deceive the public. They're saying he's leading the hostages and Israel to doom. So this comes, I have to say, as we heard big protests, tens of thousands of people coming out, there is in Israel a clear majority of people, as there has been for months now, that are in favour, according

to polls, of a ceasefire deal that would bring home the hostages from Gaza. And we're also hearing, aren't we, of more deaths from malnutrition in Gaza itself? Yes, so there were six more people who died of hunger and malnutrition in the previous 24 hours, we heard on Sunday from the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza. It still remains an extremely desperate situation. And Israel's been heavily restricting aid into Gaza. The UN agencies witnesses saying that much that is going in is now being looted, it's being diverted in a very chaotic way and there are small achievements. Four tankers of fuel were allowed in a day ago according to what the Israeli military body that controls

the crossings has said. That has been something that's been very rare since March. The UN has consistently been asking for more fuel. Israeli media reports about Israel's plans to expand military operation in Gaza come even as hundreds of retired Israeli security officials write to the US President Donald Trump, urging him to pressurise their government to end the war. The signatories, including eight former heads of the security services and three former military chiefs, say Hamas is no longer a strategic threat and the war is no longer just. So what might this proposed expansion in military operations actually mean?

We asked Rob Geist-Pinfeldt, a lecturer in defence studies and international security at King's College here in London. From Israel's government's perspective this is very much a return to form or to business as usual. Remember in May of this year the government and the military announced a new plan for Gaza, a military operation called Gideon's Chariots which calls for the IDF taking control over around two-thirds of the Strip and moving Gaza civilians down to the south of the Strip, concentrating them there. Now, that has been in operation for some time. The problem is that this

is becoming less politically tenable and more high risk for Netanyahu because of those images of starvation in Gaza. There was a feeling that the Trump administration is going to start leaning on Netanyahu. Trump was said to be personally very distressed by those images of famine and deaths through malnutrition that we're seeing on a near daily basis now. However, the recent talks with Hamas in Qatar mediated by the US collapsed, as we know, and the US then went on to blame Hamas for the failure of those talks. Whether that's correct or not, we still don't know, but what we do know is that the Israeli government now feels it has more wiggle room to crack on with basically this plan, Gideon's

chariots, with controlling more and more of the Gaza Strip. So the problem here is that Netanyahu claims that he can use military force to release the hostages. From experience we know that's not true. Almost all of the hostages were released following ceasefires between Gaza, between Hamas and Israel, not through military action. Indeed, Israeli military action led to the deaths of many hostages, either through friendly fire or through Hamas killing the hostages when Israeli forces came nearby. So the facts on the ground is that this doesn't work. You cannot use military force to release most of the hostages, but this is not going to stop Netanyahu from pursuing it, especially now he feels that he's got the Trump administration off his back.

Rob Geist-Pinfeld of King's College London. Well, as we heard earlier in the podcast, the health ministry in Gaza says more people died of malnutrition on Sunday. After months of aid restrictions, organisations like the United Nations say that Palestinians in Gaza are experiencing famine conditions and hundreds of thousands of children are at risk. At the same time, an emergency has been declared in Sudan where more than 24 million people face acute hunger. So how

do aid organisations aim to feed a hungry population? Linda Kees is a nutritionist for the World Food Programme and she explained how the organisation calculates what food people need. That standard has been set at 2,100 calories per person per day with about 10 to 12 percent of the total energy coming from protein and 17 percent of the energy being provided by fat. We also need to make sure that that food includes the essential vitamins and minerals that people need to survive on a daily level. We would also want to consider cultural food preferences. So it

typically contains cereals, pulses, vegetable oil and iodized salt. Now the cereal might be wheat or maize, might be rice, sorghum, depending on the cultural preference. But what do you do if, for example, there is a huge shortage of water, a huge shortage of firewood to make a fire to cook something like rice? We would always look at whether households, whether they have the facility and the capacity to cook at home. If they're not able to cook at home, then we would set up some type of a kitchen If they're not able to cook at home, then we would set up some type of a kitchen where meals would be pre-prepared and people would then receive prepared food.

Typically, women during pregnancy and breastfeeding and young children and elderly people are kind of at a greater risk. And so there would be, in addition to the food basket, we would in most cases provide special foods for these targeted individuals. Many people have heard of the ready to use foods. These are foods that are made of powdered milk and peanuts or chickpeas with vegetable oil, sugar, and a mix of vitamins and nutrients. They have very high nutritive value. They have a long shelf life. They're really easy to digest, and they don't require preparation.

It looks like peanut butter, like a paste. Young children, I'm talking about children less than two, or children less than five, they eat a relatively small amount of food, and so we need to make sure that what they eat is very nutrient dense. So we would try to ensure that, you know, they don't eat a big bowl of rice, because that is not very nutrient dense. There we would try to ensure that you know they don't eat a big bowl of rice because

that it's not very nutrient dense. There's calories there but there aren't a lot of the essential vitamins and minerals and very limited proteins. And then we'd really want to make sure that the food supply is very stable. It's really important in these situations that people know that there will be food tomorrow and the next day and the next day. Linda Keese, nutritionist for the World Food Programme. A big push to finalise an international treaty on plastics pollution is taking place over the next couple of weeks. Representatives of nearly a hundred countries are meeting

in Geneva to hammer out a deal. Our climate and science reporter is Esme Stallart. The three kind of key areas that they're looking at is first of all to try and just reduce the levels of plastic in the environment. It's become a growing political issue. We've seen these awful pictures of plastic littering our oceans and potentially causing issues for human health. So looking to cut the levels of production but also ban the most potentially cancer causing those harmful chemicals that are in plastic and try and improve design globally. So that could include, for example, what we've already seen here in the UK where we get those plastic bottle tops attached to the bottle to try and reduce the levels of waste. And then finally, there's the money to try and make that happen.

Could there be some sort of universal tax that they get plastic packages to pay to try and help deal with the issue? So a lot to get done over the next two weeks. These talks are actually into overtime. The treaty was meant to be finalized at the back end of December after five rounds, but they've had to come back for more. And that's because there's a key split. There's a sort of high ambition countries, they're being called, and they really want to focus on cutting the levels of production of plastic. And then on the other side, you've got the oil producing nations. They want to focus on end of life recycling. And actually, strangely, progress on climate action could be causing some issues here. We're expecting demand for oil across the

energy and transport systems are going to fall in the next couple of years. And that means that plastic is seen as really one of the last remaining growth markets for oil producing countries and any efforts to cut production, they're worried might impact their economies. But I think despite these divides, the music from negotiating teams I've been speaking to is generally positive, but that's mostly because they're sort of worried about worsening geopolitical strain and if they don't get something now, they might not ever get something. So at the end of two weeks, maybe a deal, maybe something a little bit weakened, more of a roadmap for future work than commits to anything concrete, but certainly all eyes on Geneva for the next couple of weeks.

Esme Stallard. Researchers in Cuba and Britain have joined forces to launch a breeding programme for a type of snail that's now critically endangered because its colourful shell is in high demand. Conservationists say the trade in polymeter tree snails, of which there are six known species, threatens to wipe them out. The most endangered, Polymeter self-eurosa, is lime green with blue flame patterns around its coils and bright orange and yellow bands across

its shell. Snail biologists, both in Cuba and at Nottingham University here in the UK, are now working together to study their biological secrets. So why are the snails in danger? The BBC's pre-arise spoke to Professor Angus Davison from Nottingham University. There are a multitude of problems with them. So climate change makes it more difficult for them to breed, habitat loss. And on top of that, there's an illegal trade in their shells.

Some of your photographs are on the news article about this. Just explain their attraction in that regard. They are amazing. I hope listeners can see some pictures. So they're red, green, yellow, pink, orange, white, brown. There's just an extraordinary variety of colours that these snails have. So I think they are rightly called the most beautiful snail in the world. And that's what I'm interested as a biologist. But unfortunately that beauty is also what's endangering them. There's an illegal trade of the shells. So taking animals from the wild illegally, illegally exporting them from Cuba. And then some of those shells are remarkably are the making their way to this country and selling for quite large amounts of money. I can see some that are made into necklaces or other kind of

garments. And so explain then your breeding program. I mean, how do you get them to breed? With great difficulty, that's the problem. So just to preface that really, that any kind of captive breeding program is the last desperate act really. So what we're doing at the moment, what my colleagues in we're doing at the moment, what my colleagues in Cuba are doing at the moment is trying to learn how to breed them. So should it be necessary, if that's the last thing we have to do,

we are able to breed them. And they're working with myself and colleagues from London Zoo to kind of work out how best to breed them in captivity. Conditions in Cuba at the moment are very different, very frequent power outages. And so my colleague there is having to breed the snails in his house in Cuba and doing okay in terms of keeping

them alive but so far he has not been able to breed them. Any idea of time scale, how much time before they would go extinct? Well it varies, there's six different species and with a lack of data for most of them but one of them has a very small distribution which is getting smaller. I was lucky enough to go there to collect them and we struggled to find them. You can easily imagine how collecting could tip them over to extinction. And that's the polymeter Sulphurosa. Sulphurosa, yes, exactly.

And you can see some pictures of those snails on our website at bbc.com forward slash news. Still to come, the Ukraine war prompts France to switch normally civilian factories to production of military drones. We have hired 9,000 people over the last three years in defence capabilities in France. Mercenaries fight in wars around the world. Now there are reports that Colombian mercenary groups are fighting in the civil war in Sudan. They are on the side of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces or RSF against the Sudanese army, a conflict which began more than two years ago. The situation in Sudan has been described by the UN

as a humanitarian catastrophe with millions displaced amid hunger, disease and violence. Our Africa regional editor David Bamford told me more about what's happening at Zamzam, one of the largest refugee camps in Darfur. The Zamzam camp in Darfur region of West Sudan, it is a massive place, but since the RSF rebels took it over last April, about half a million people have moved out and there are a few thousand left. And the reports that have been coming through from the last few days from residents still in the camp is that Spanish-speaking mercenaries are walking around as though they own the place.

And these appear to be Colombian mercenaries who are under the hire of the RSF. Why Colombians? According to the Sudanese government, the RSF has been hiring mercenaries from various places and the United Arab Emirates, which has been bankrolling the RSF has been hiring mercenaries from various places and the United Arab Emirates, which has been bankrolling the RSF, basically are paying for it all. So a lot of these mercenaries come from Colombia. They're former military who are skilled in warfare and so on. And they come hired with UAE money, apparently paid $4,000 a month to train local forces, bring in Somalis who also paid to fight, to back up the RSF siege of this city of El Fasher in Western

Sudan. It's the last city still in government hands in Western Sudan. And that's what's happening. The Wagner group of Russia is also said to be involved. And tell us about where we are with this conflict which has gone on now for more than two years. It has and I suppose you could say over the past six months or so it has moved in the sense that the Sudanese government which was on the back foot for a long time now seems to have pretty full control of central Sudan, of the capital Khartoum, of the eastern areas. But the RSF, the paramilitary force opposing them, they are still very much stronger in western Sudan, Darfur. They are originally the Janjaweed,

who were responsible for the genocide in Darfur a couple of decades ago, and they seem to have these strong hands. So this war seems to be going on for quite a long time yet. And it is catastrophic, isn't it, for millions of civilians there? Absolutely. It's horrendous, the amount of despair that is existing particularly in Western Sudan where the aid agencies are desperately trying to get food through to al-Fashir but they can only go through RSF lines and of course they're besieging the city so they're reluctant to let aid through and consequently hundreds of thousands are starving. David Bamford. Two women in Kenya have admitted to uncover reporters

that they exploited children for sex. The BBC unit which carried out the investigation alerted the Kenyan police, who tried unsuccessfully to locate the women involved. Underage children are thought to be at constant risk in Kenya, despite a potential life sentence for anyone convicted of selling or trafficking under 18-year-olds. Nijeri Mwangi has this report from Maimahiu in Kenya's Rift Valley. And a warning, some listeners may find parts of this report distressing. Life starts at night in Maimahiu.

Maimahiu is a key transit town in Kenya's Rift Valley, a vital hub for transporting goods and people across country and borders. It's known for sex work. It's also a breeding ground for child sex abuse, with women known as madams selling children for sex. They're still children, so it's easy to manipulate them by just handing them sweets. This woman calls herself Nyambura, and we're talking to her, undercover, in a nightclub, after months of gaining her trust. You can't just bring them out openly in town.

I only sneak them out at night in great secrecy. I have one who's 13, turning 14 next month. The 13-year-old has been working for six months. Chepto, another madam, admits selling children for sex to our undercover investigator. If anyone says they want a young girl, I ask them to pay me. And we also have our regulars who always come back for them. Our undercover investigator was taken by Chapture to meet minors she said worked for her. As Chapture left, she briefly spoke to two girls. We've used an actor to tell you what they said.

You told me you really don't like this job. What don't you like about it? Having sex with oversized men and you are small-bodied. What if the customer refuses to use condoms? We will have unprotected sex. We gave all our evidence to the Kenyan police in March. They say the women and girls cannot be traced. To date there have been no arrests. There are still thousands of children in Kenya caught up in the sex trade who have fled from broken homes.

But one woman here is making a difference. Baby Girl was a sex worker for 40 years. Now she provides refuge for children who have escaped exploitation. I just found myself taking girls in, so I ended up with very young girls in my home. So that's how I became a mother to many. More than a mother, that is. Baby Girl provides basic protection against HIV to her community. Nakuru County has one of the highest rates of HIV infection in Kenya.

Trump ordered USAID not to be funded. Condoms are not in Kenya. Trump ordered USAID not to be funded. Condoms are not in supply. Now we are distributing the few we have in stock. This is about to change. From September, we will be unemployed. So what happens now? I don't know. Tell me.

Tell me what will be. The U.S. government did not respond to comments in this investigation about the likely impact of stopping USAID funding. Nigeri Mwangi in Kenya. The use of high-powered speakers mounted near the border between North and South Korea has been part of both countries' strategy to broadcast information and music to their neighbour. Seoul blasts out world news, defection updates and criticism of the Pyongyang regime to the north,

with whom it's technically at war. In response, North Korea broadcasts martial music, sirens and speeches praising the leadership of Kim Jong-il. South Korea started the audio battle back in the 1960s, but now it's started taking its speakers down. Jae Sung Lee is our Asia Pacific editor. Essentially, it's the latest effort by South Korea's new president Lee Jae Myung. He's trying to improve strained relations with North Korea.

Now Seoul had already turned these speakers off in June, but now we're actually seeing them dismantling them from the front lines. The South Korean government says around 20 of these will be taken down in the next few days. Ever since he assumed office in June, President Lee has been making overtures to Pyongyang in the hopes of reviving direct talks with the North. These have been halted since 2019, and Mr Lee is really seeking to revive such talks to ease tensions on the Korean Peninsula. This is because inter-Korean relations have been at their lowest point for years. In 2023, North Korea altered its constitution to define its southern neighbour as a hostile country. It's a symbolic move, but a significant one nonetheless. And in 2020, even bombed the

inter-Korean liaison office in the border city of Kaesong. And what about these speakers? Are they really just symbolic? Because as I understand it, the sound can't actually reach the border. Is that true? Well, so these are mounted in the front lines and they do reach the border region. So typically in South Korea, you would have border residents who would actually complain about the noise that are being broadcast from these speakers, both from the South and the North side. So I think they would certainly welcome this latest move by the South Korean government. As for the North Korean side, it's very hard to tell with anything with North Korea. It's always very hard to tell because we don't have, you know, people on the ground getting us information.

people on the ground getting us information. But what we do know from certain reports is that, you know, these areas are very sparsely populated and as it's a heavily fortified border, we're not sure that it will really reach a lot of North Koreans. North Korean people actually would tend to get more information from South Korean broadcasters because a lot of South Korean content are smuggled mainly through China and are sold in North Korean markets, black markets. And they're said to be very popular from the reports we see. And South Korean content is currently making the waves around the world. We see K-pop and K-culture really taking over the charts now. We can see that it's no exception in North Korea, even in one of the most isolated countries

in the world. J. Sung Lee. A new report says Chinese students in British universities are being asked to spy on their classmates. The assessment, by the think tank UK China Transparency, says the aim is to suppress discussion of subjects unfavourable to China. Here's Nathan Stanley. This report is published days after a new law came into force requiring all universities in the UK to do more to protect free speech. It says academics at British universities have reported intimidation by staff at Confucius Institutes. These are partnership organisations on some campuses which serve to promote Chinese culture and language, but they've been criticised

for alleged links to the Chinese Communist Party. The Office for Students says it expects universities to amend or terminate any agreements which may pose a threat to free speech, and the UK government says any intimidation or harassment by foreign states wouldn't be tolerated. This report, however, finds that some students on China studies courses are uncomfortable discussing topics deemed sensitive to Chinese authorities. The Chinese embassy called the report's conclusions groundless and absurd and said China did not interfere in other countries' affairs. Nathan Stanley. Since the start of the war in Ukraine, France has become the world's second

biggest arms exporter after the US. Faced with increased uncertainty over President Trump's commitment to European defence and a more hostile Kremlin, it's boosting defence spending even further and switching civilian factories to weapons production. President Macron wants to develop what he describes as a wartime economy. Our reporter John Lawrenson has been to a factory in Normandy to see the change in action. This factory owned by the TALES company makes hand-finished printed circuit

boards for Rafale fighter planes, enabling them to detect an enemy, jam its radar and destroy it. This production line started up in January. Until then the jobs of 300 employees at this factory were in jeopardy. The switch to military saved them. As site manager Thierry Charleau explains.

Historically this site has been producing telecoms, SIM cards, and so over the long time the physical SIM card will disappear. And so we are now in this plant making a conversion towards this new activity. Part of which is being transferred to France from South East Asia. Other companies are carrying out similar conversions. Two munitions factories that went civilian have now switched back to military for example. The owner of the second is buying a car park factory in Brittany to start shell case production there. Another

factory owned by Renault has switched from making car dashboards to military aircraft calculators. Renault is also planning to start drone production although that would be in Ukraine. Capacity is rising at existing facilities too. Thales's director of strategy is Philippe Quérère. We have multiplied our production of radars by three and we are continuing to increase. This is over the last four years and what we do for rockets at the NATO standards, we have multiplied by five over the last three years. We have hired 9,000 people in defence capabilities in France. If you

look to the investments for production, we have invested around 750 million euros of capital investments for our factories for defence in France over the last three years. And this was before any new stance in Europe about what is happening in the world and how we need to somehow rearm Europe. Back in the Thales facility in Normandy, a second production line is due to start up at the end of the year. John Lawrenson in France and you can hear more of John's report on Business Daily wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Sir David Attenborough's nature

documentaries have been watched in more than 190 countries as he explores different aspects of life on earth and now in his new series Parenthood he's observing how different species raise their young. Stephanie Prentice has this report. A mother orangutan in Borneo is building her bed for the night. Her young son, a few branches below, is getting to work on his own bunk. Like many youngsters, he decides that his mother's bed is preferable. One of many scenarios in the Parenthood series, which is described as exploring relatable parental dilemmas. Filmed across three years and six continents,

it showcases previously unseen animal behaviors, as episodes take viewers inside the family units of orangutans, box of crabs, elephants, and poisonous frogs. Its director, Hugh Wilson, says some of the scenes are a nod and a wink towards more modern parenting techniques. Rhiannon Lucy Coslet is author of the book Republic of Parenthood. For me it's the amount of co-parenting that goes on in the animal kingdom, the shared parenting between different members of the pack.

I think that's something that we're losing. They don't actually think that the nuclear family is an ideal set up for parenting. This is Parenthood. Stories of incredible ingenuity and some extraordinary teamwork. But it's not all baby lions learning to hunt. The first episode, which shows young spiders stalking and then eating their mother and elderly relatives, has been described as nightmarish by critics. hungry spiderlings descend en masse to their mother's dinner table one last time. Only this time, she is the main course.

While nobody is advocating for that, the series has been praised for opening a dialogue about parenting in a world where often techniques are a contentious topic. Dr. Emma Svarnberg, a clinical psychologist and author of the book Parenting for Humans, told us what humans could learn from the animal kingdom. This pressure that we get from so many different angles, I think, is something that I certainly haven't seen before in my career, the amount of anxiety that can exist around what is the right thing to do. But actually,

you know, when we kind of really tune into our instincts for connection, for offering nurturance and security, those things become much easier to do to quiet the voices around us. Whether voices, roars or trumpeting, one of the resounding messages from the series from Sir David Attenborough is that success for all parents has perhaps the greatest of consequences. It ensures the future of life on our planet. The future is everything. The voice of the icon, Sir David Attenborough. And that's it 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, send us an email. The address is globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Sid Dundon, the producers were Marion Straughan and Peter Goffin. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Valerie Sanderson. Until next time, bye bye.