Global News Podcast - Trump: “Let all hell break out” if Hamas does not release hostages

Episode Date: February 11, 2025

President Trump says Israel should cancel the ceasefire if Hamas doesn't release hostages by Saturday. He threatens to stop aid to Jordan and Egypt if they refuse Palestinians. Also: Musk’s bid to buy OpenAI is rebuffed.

This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Jackie Leonard and at 14 Hours GMT on Tuesday, the 11th of February, these are our main stories. US President Donald Trump says he thinks Israel should cancel the ceasefire and let hell break out in Gaza if Hamas does not release all remaining hostages by Saturday. Luis Rubiales, the former president of the Spanish Football Federation on trial for sexual assault, maintains when he kissed the player Jenny Hermoso at

the Women's World Cup it was consensual. And we'll hear from three Ghanaians who say their involvement in the Islamist insurgency in Burkina Faso was to protect communities from the army, not for religious reasons. Also in this podcast, a consortium led by Elon Musk offers to buy the artificial intelligence firm OpenAI for almost $100 billion. The boss of OpenAI says, no thanks. Elon Musk responding to that tweet by calling Altman a swindler. So I don't think the temperature is going to be cooling off anytime soon. The Gaza ceasefire, which brought a halt to more than 15 months of war, is under increasing

strain. As we reported in the last edition of the podcast, Hamas has postponed the next planned release of Israeli hostages, saying Israel was not in compliance with the deal. Israel called the move a complete violation and said its military was being put on the highest level of alert. President Trump, a key ally of Israel, had this to say. Well, I would say this, and I'm going to let that be because that's Israel's decision, but as far as I'm concerned, if all of the hostages aren't returned by Saturday at 12 o'clock, I think it's an appropriate time, I would say cancel it and all bets are off and let hell break out. I think a lot of them are dead.

I think it's a great human tragedy what's happened, how people can be that mean to do. Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian politician in the Occupied West Bank, says Israel has to address its own violations of the agreement. First of all, they continue to shoot people in Gaza while we are having ceasefire. Up till now, 25 people have been killed, which is a serious violation of a ceasefire agreement. Second, they blocked, and that's most important, they blocked the humanitarian aid to Gaza. The agreement says there should be 200,000 tents and at least 60,000 fabricated houses. Israel did not allow a single tent to get to Gaza.

Third, the Israelis should have initiated, agreed to start negotiations about this next phase. This should have happened two days ago. And finally, and in that I would hold President Trump responsible as much as Israel is, this talk about ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians from Gaza. How could you continue to have ceasefire when you are threatening to people to be evicted completely from their homelands? Hamas says Mr Trump's comments have further complicated the increasingly fragile ceasefire. Paul Adams is our diplomatic correspondent. It was always likely that as negotiations began to turn towards phase two of this three-stage ceasefire that things would get complicated.

And if you think about the structure of even phase one with this gradual release of hostages and Palestinian prisoners, there was always the scope for things to go wrong. And what you've had on the Hamas side is what they say is a growing list of Israeli violations, including the withholding of certain types of aid, in particular shelter that's badly needed for people who are trying to return home.

But of course, also the effect of Donald Trump's intervention, because effectively what Donald Trump is saying is that he wants to take over the Gaza Strip, own it, and that all Palestinians should leave. Faced with that kind of rhetoric, there may be those in Hamas who are wondering what exactly are we negotiating about? And tell us a bit more about what the differing strategies driving Israel and Hamas are at this stage in negotiations. Well, I think from Hamas's point of view you know they control a small dwindling number of what they would regard cruelly as assets

those Israeli hostages alive and dead still in their hands and so they are deploying those assets in the way they can which is to kind of dangle the prospect of further releases and then of course to dash hopes with warnings that they will not release them. And they know that this is having an enormous impact on Israeli society and on Israeli politics. And so they are going to continue to wield that weapon, you know, in a way that most Israelis find deeply cynical and just engenders a kind of despair. As for Israel's position, well, Donald Trump has obviously thrown this proposition into the mix, which has given

Benjamin Netanyahu perhaps some breathing room. It's got his hardline right-wing colleagues off his back and gives him a certain amount of room for maneuver. But he still wants to pursue this idea of total victory against Hamas and the spectacle of Hamas fighters parading their weapons along with the hostages on a regular basis is clearly causing anger in Israeli circles. What about the impact of the appearance of those hostages that were released at the weekend?

There's been quite a reaction, hasn't there? Well, yes, I think this is clearly something that is causing deep anxiety in Israel, that as we have seen these successive phases, at first the hostages who were released early on in this deal all seem to be in relatively good physical shape. That was clearly not the case last weekend with the three men who were released then and there is a fear that we're going to see more of that kind of scene of emaciated terribly damaged hostages and of course everyone knows that at some point, the handover is going to involve dead hostages. This is an awful grim business, which is just calculated to cause and spread despair. This is a hideous process full of pain for everyone concerned.

And Hamas is both using that, but also perhaps embarrassed by it. That was Paul Adams. President Trump has also said that displaced people from Gaza should be taken in by neighbouring Egypt and Jordan, threatening to withhold aid if they didn't cooperate. Both countries have rejected the proposal. Mr Trump has also said that they would not have the right to return, apparently in breach of international law. On Tuesday he's due to meet Jordan's King Abdullah in the White House, their first meeting since his re-election. Jordan, already home to millions of Palestinian refugees, has fiercely rejected the US plan. But as our Middle East correspondent Lucy Williamson reports from the Jordanian capital

Amman, it presents the country with a critical challenge. Some of the fiercest opponents to moving Gazans to Jordan are the Gazans who moved here before. We're being tailed by a crowd of children as we walk through the Gaza camp in northern Jordan. It's one of several Palestinian refugee camps here. Jordan. It's one of several Palestinian refugee camps here. All the families here trace their roots back to Gaza. Most of them left in 1967 during the war with Israel and they say that those living in Gaza now have learned that lesson that once you leave you can't return. When our grandfathers left it's because there was no resistance movement back then. They had no weapons like Hamas has these days.

That was before. Now the new generation is more aware and we won't make the same mistakes of the past. They will fight to stay. No one here would have been surprised to watch Donald Trump's latest interview with Fox News, repeating his demand that Gaza's population relocate to Jordan and saying they would not have the right to return home. It would be a beautiful piece of land. No big money's turned. No, they wouldn't because they're going to have much better housing, much better.

In other words, I'm talking about building a permanent place for them, because if they have to return now, it'll be years before you could ever, it's not habitable. Jordan is under pressure from its key military ally, but there are growing pressures at home too. Many native Jordanians blame waves of refugees from the region's conflicts for high unemployment at home. Waiting for work outside the mosque, we met Hassan and Imad, both day labourers who haven't worked in months. The situation in Jordan used to be great, but when there was the war in Iraq, things got worse. When there was the war in Syria, it got worse. Now there is a war in Gaza. It's gotten a lot worse.

The foreigners take our job. The battle of Syria, Jerusalem, Baghdad, take our jobs. Now, without job. Four months without any job. I have no money, no food. What happens if the Gazans come here too? What happens then? We will die from hunger.

Jordan is treading a tightrope between its military and diplomatic ties, popular support for the Palestinians and resistance to another wave of refugees at home. We want to live in peace. For decades, Jordan has been a superpower of stability, surrounded by conflicts. Last Friday, thousands protested here against Donald Trump's plan. Jordan is home to US military bases and millions of refugees. Its security cooperation crucial for Israel, worried about smuggling roots into the occupied West Bank. Any risks to Jordan's

stability mean risks for its allies too. Lucy Williamson in Jordan. The former president of the Spanish Football Federation Luis Rubiales has told a court in Madrid that he was absolutely certain that the player Jenny Amoso had given him permission to kiss her following Spain's victory in the 2023 Women's World Cup final. Mr Rubiales is accused of sexual assault and then attempting, along with three co-defendants, to coerce Amoso into publicly saying the kiss had been consensual. Here's some of what he had to say in court on Tuesday. Just because she was the champion and this was a tremendous moment for her. We were champions and so we were thanking each other and she pressed me very hard around

the waist and then I asked her whether I could give her a kiss and she said yes. Guy Hedgeco is our Madrid correspondent. He said it was a spontaneous gesture, he said it was something that was caused by the euphoria of having just won the Women's World Cup moments earlier and he also talked about his relationship with Jenyian Mosso, he said that he had a particularly close relationship with four or five players in that team and Jenyian Mosso was one of them. And he said at times he let the occasion get to him and he got caught up in the euphoria of the moment and that was why he behaved as he did.

But he said that's a long way from committing a crime. His team called an expert witness, someone who is an expert at lip reading, and they interpreted a video which was shown to the court, the video of Mr. Rubiales kissing Yenier de Morceau. According to this expert, Mr. Rubiales had said, can I give you a kiss in the video, although we don't know what her answer was because of the angle of the camera. And just remind us about the background to the charges and the penalty if he is convicted.

Well, he's facing two sets of charges. One is sexual assault for the kiss itself. And he's also facing a charge of coercion for the fallout from the kiss. The allegation is that in the hours and days after the World Cup final, he and people close to him in the Football Federation tried to persuade Jenny and Mossot in a very forceful manner to come out and play down the kiss and say that it had been consensual.

Obviously that was something that she didn't do. The prosecutor therefore is calling for Mr. Roubi-Alice to be given a jail sentence of two and a half years for those two charges. There are also three other people from the Federation facing the coercion charges. They could face jail sentences of up to a year and a half. That was Guy Hedgeco. Still to come in this podcast. We hope to push up the RICC to support our team. We're doing this especially for Afghan women and I would just say just don't give up.

The Afghan women cricketers living as refugees and fighting their sports world governing body for recognition. The Islamist insurgency in Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso, in which thousands have been killed and millions displaced, has been described by the UN as the epicentre of global jihadist extremism. In Burkina Faso violence between militant groups and the army seems to be intensifying and spreading into what has long been regarded as one of West Africa's most stable democracies, Ghana. Ed Butler sent this report from the border region.

We're being pulled over by the police here. It's another of this checkpoint. On a major northern road in Ghana, military roadblocks like this have become an occupational hazard. Shall I open my bag? And this is why. The nightly soundtrack facing many people in Boku, a small market town in northern Ghana close to the Bikina Faso border, where in the last few months dozens, maybe hundreds, have been killed in growing communal violence. The evenings in Boku is always gaseous and fierce exchanges.

We are losing the young ones. Those are the people that are dying. The voices there of Boku residents reached by phone. It was just too dangerous for me to enter the town. Rival tribes are embroiled in a decades old argument there over who controls Boku's chieftaincy. And Elias Utanko, a defence journalist based in northern Ghana, says the violence is being fuelled by guns and ammunition smuggled across the border by Burkina Faso militants. JNM is a jihadist group that have agents in Ghana selling the firearms, some of the firearms that they have been able to take over from the military forces in Burkina Faso.

In cattle markets like this, we've met people who said they traded livestock with the jihadist groups, and some here have even gone to fight with them. The military in Burkina Faso are killing people just like dogs. This is one of three Ghanaian men who told us they had gone to join the insurgency. All were about 40 years old and said that they'd travelled multiple times to fight in Burkina Faso. We've had to conceal their voices and their identities and whilst we can't independently confirm their stories, they did share photos of weapons they said were being used and described details including locations and known individuals.

This may be the first time that Ghanaians have spoken to the media about their involvement in the insurgency. How do you justify this? I mean you're joining a group that's been involved in well documented atrocities targeting unarmed civilians. I go because the Burkina Faso military ain't just attacking the militants. They are also attacking innocent people, women and children. Are you personally involved in attacks on women and children? Some of the local people support the military in attacking us, so we have to kill them too.

I'm not happy to fight like this, but this fight has ended our blood. Three years ago it was estimated that some two to 300 Ghanaians had joined the insurgency. These accounts suggest that it may now be more. One man was unashamed about the profit to be made there. I joined because I would get more animals from the fighting to sell on and take care of my family. At the beginning some were were fighting for religion, but not anymore. Now even some of the Burkina military have switched sides. The recently elected president in Ghana, John Mahama, has acknowledged the Islamist threat.

He's launched a new peace initiative for Boku and sent an envoy to Sahel states to improve ties. But experts are still warning that the combined call of armed struggle and economic opportunity could yet tip some Ghanaian communities beyond the government's control. That was Ed Butler in northern Ghana. It's the latest twist in a long-standing battle between Elon Musk, the world's richest man and confidant of Donald Trump and the chief executive of OpenAI, Sam Altman. A consortium of investors led

by Mr Musk has offered nearly $100 billion to buy OpenAI which develops the popular AI tool, ChatGPT. But that bid has been met with a no thank you. Instead Mr. Altman offered to buy X for a tenth of the price. Janette Jalil heard more from our technology correspondent, Lily Jamali. The backstory here is that Elon Musk helped co-found OpenAI way back in 2015 and then left three years later. He says it was because OpenAI strayed from its mission to develop AI for the benefit of humanity is the phrase that he and his lawyers use. His critics say he was just upset

because he wanted control of the company, didn't get it, and that's why he left. And so Elon Musk and Sam Altman are now embroiled in a legal fight. Musk is trying to stop OpenAI from transitioning from a nonprofit, the way itAI from transitioning from a non-profit the way it was founded to a for-profit corporation, which is the direction that Sam Altman wants to take the company.

And despite the huge amount of money he's offering, he's getting short shrift from Mr. Altman. That's right. Yes, they had a little bit of a spat on what was once Twitter and is now Elon Musk owned X. So Sam Altman pretty much immediately responding. And as you said, no thank you, but he offered to buy Twitter for almost $10 billion, which is really throwing shade at Elon Musk who bought the platform for quite a bit more than that,

for $44 billion. So I think that that's very much part of, par for the course in their relationship. And Elon Musk responding to that tweet by calling Altman a swindler. So I don't think the temperature is going to be cooling off anytime soon. Absolutely not, because you've got Donald Trump also announcing $500 billion of investment in AI tech. So there really is huge competition now to win this race for artificial intelligence dominance. That's right. And that was a really remarkable moment when you saw Sam Altman on stage or

really at a press conference at the White House standing next to Donald Trump. The first week that Donald Trump took office, I mean, the reason that was so remarkable is because of Altman's relationship with Musk and the fact that Donald Trump invited Altman into the inner sanctum really, despite what Musk had done to help get Trump elected. And so that project that you're referring to is a massive investment in the infrastructure

that will help power OpenAI, build a bunch of data centers starting in Texas. The promise was 100,000 jobs. We'll see if anything near that actually materializes. But that's all going to be private money. There's no US taxpayer money that is slated for that. But at least in Trump's view, he got to be a part of the reveal there and get a little bit of the PR halo, if you will. Lily Jamali in San Francisco.

While meme coins are often created as a fun alternative to other crypto currencies, taking inspiration from internet trends and popular culture references, they have become hugely popular among crypto traders. One African country, the Central African Republic, has embraced them too, creating its own meme coin. President Faustin Archange-Touadera says it's an experiment aimed at boosting national development and putting the country in the global spotlight. Victoria O'Wong-Hunda has been speaking to Nzuisi Sarchidembo, who runs Riskblock, an online platform that assesses

the risks of cryptocurrency investments. It is a branding exercise that's been carried out by the country of car to promote their innovative nature in terms of adopting digital assets. This is not the first time they've done this. Three years ago, they were one of the first nations to actually adopt Bitcoin as legal tender. It's quite revolutionary to see a country embracing such a crypto token at this early stage. They were the first African country, but they were second in the world after El Salvador.

So in Sweden, what do they cost? What we have seen when the meme coin was actually launched is that the total value has changed shape in quite a drastic way, starting from about 60 something million right up to 600 million. This is the total value of all the meme coins in circulation, which really bolts down to the high volatility of meme coins and the speculative nature of these crypto tokens. So that high volatility that you speak of and the uncertainty around the meme coin, how does then that work with what President Wadera said that this decision was part in support of national development? There is quite a lot of risk there.

Yes, indeed. And I think the high volatility, exceptional, let me say high volatility nature of this specific meme coin was bound to the fact that firstly it is the first of its kind where it's backed by an actual nation, but also the doubts that came into the market when everyone was asking the question if this is actually legit or not. There were quite a number of different players that jumped on the bandwagon and started trying to roll out different scams on the backdrop of this release. So that created a lot of concern, a lot of uncertainty, which really, really fuelled the incredible volatility that we witnessed. And we see Sir Chidambo. Afghanistan's women cricketers, who had to flee their country when the Taliban took over in 2021

say they will keep fighting their sports world governing body for recognition after playing their first ever official match. The group of players now living as refugees in Australia say they've received no support from the ICC since escaping their home country. Jo Curry spent time with them in Melbourne. The Afghanistan women's 11 may not have won their first ever game but the true victory was the match itself. Three years after they fled their home country the moment marked a new chapter in their remarkable story. The players are now living safely in Australia and are out of the clutches of the Taliban but

batswoman Feroza Amiri admits the day they return to power still haunts her. In that moment I was shocked and I felt that I lost everything. Did you know in that moment on that day that them coming back into power would mean that you would have to leave? Absolutely yes. I didn't know that it's going to be a chance for me and family to get out of Afghanistan or we're going to be live or die. I burned everything, all my certificates, all my medals.

Under Taliban law, women are banned from sport, universities and parks. They're also forbidden from having their voices heard outside of their homes. The players knew they were in immediate danger. But it was only thanks to three women in Australia that they were able to flee. Emma Staples, Dr Catherine Ordway and the former Australia captain Mel Jones heard about the players plight and knew they had to help. It all started when a cricket journalist asked Mel to reach out to one of the players to make sure she was OK.

It was then panic stations when she said all the team, all the contracted players and some administration support staff as well, very keen to look at any way possible of getting out. So it was the three of us that sort of got our heads together and started to figure out how you set up a backyard sort of immigration system to try and connect with government, connect with the players and then try and fight the system a little bit and everyone kept saying it's impossible. But it wasn't impossible as they eventually helped over 130 people including 19 players, backroom staff and their families escape. But once the team had reached Australia, they had a new battle to fight, this time against the International Cricket Council. Back home

they had had contracts with the Afghanistan Cricket Board who no longer engaged with them. So they asked the ICC what happened to those contracts and the funds that were meant to be for their development. Cricket journalist Alison Mitchell picks up their story. They got a reply to say, well, contracts are an issue for the Afghanistan Cricket Board, which is the very board that the women have been ostracised from, and that also funds that are given to the Afghan cricket board is for them to decide how it is spent. At that point the girls were

thoroughly dispirited and they felt as if the game at the top level has washed their hands off them. The players wrote a second letter, this time requesting permission to set up an international refugee team. They never received a response. We asked the ICC why it hadn't communicated with the women's team more or supported them. In a statement, ICC chair Jay Shah told us, Although we continue to support the Afghanistan Cricket Board, we acknowledge the absence of a women's programme and are actively addressing this through the Afghanistan Cricket Task Force.

Despite having no official support, the Afghanistan Women's XI took to the field at the Junction Oval on January 30th in their first official match, a 20-overs exhibition game against a cricket without borders team. They lost with four balls remaining, but the moment sent a big message to those in charge – Afghanistan women belong on the field. Here are players Safir Yossifazi, Nilab Stanikkazi and Shahzia Zazai. Unbelievable, I can't believe that still I'm feeling like I'm dreaming right now.

We are so happy to play together with our own team and hope to push up the ICC to support our team. We are doing this specially for Afghan women and I would just say, just don't give up. These players still have big dreams of playing on the international stage. But the reality is whilst the ICC refuses to engage with them, they'll need to keep fighting that battle. However one thing is certain, at a time when women in Afghanistan feel like they have no voice, this is a team that refuses to be silenced.

That report from Jo Currie. And that's it from us for now but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. If you would like to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, do please send us an email. The address is globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on x at BBC World Service and use the hashtag globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Gabriel O'Regan. The producer was Ella Bicknell. Our editor is Karen Martin. I'm Jackie Leonard and until next time, goodbye.