Global News Podcast - US and Israel leave Gaza ceasefire talks in Qatar

Episode Date: July 25, 2025

The United States has joined Israel in recalling its negotiators from Gaza ceasefire talks in Doha. The US envoy, Steve Witkoff, has accused Hamas of showing a lack of desire to reach a deal. Also: the wrestling legend Hulk Hogan dies aged 71.

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slash Toronto. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Julia McFarlane and in the early hours of Friday the 25th of July, these are our main stories. Both the United States and Israel have withdrawn from Gaza peace talks in Qatar, with Washington accusing Hamas of not acting in good faith. President Emmanuel Macron says France will officially recognize the state of Palestine in September. The International Criminal Court has jailed two former militia leaders from the Central African Republic for attacks against the country's Muslim

community between 2013 and 2014. also in this podcast. The American wrestling legend Hulk Hogan has died at his home in Florida. He was 71. Hopes that the conflict in Gaza might soon be brought to an end, or at least a pause, have been dealt a blow. The US special envoy in the Middle East has said that the United States has joined Israel in withdrawing from Gaza peace talks in Qatar with Hamas. Steve Witkoff said alternative options would now be considered to bring Israel's hostages home.

He did not say what alternative options these were. Mr. Witkoff himself has been in Italy for discussions with Israeli and Qatar officials. Our State Department correspondent Tom Bateman sent this report from Capitol Hill on Thursday evening. President Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff is currently on the luxury hotel line coast of Sardinia in Italy. This trip, it was hoped, would usher in a potential breakthrough in those indirect ceasefire hostage release talks between Israel and Hamas in Doha. Instead, what we have seen is Mr. Witkoff follow the Israelis by saying they're actually withdrawing their negotiating team from Doha for consultations, bringing them home, he

says, accusing Hamas of selfishness, not being coordinated and failing to engage in these discussions in any meaningful way in a pretty excoriating statement. Now, this may be in part a pressure tactic on Hamas after they said they put their final response to the table. As for the Palestinians, they have long accused Israel of changing the terms of wanting to maintain a military occupation in too much of the Gaza Strip and crucially keep control, military control, of the food supply to Palestinians. But as of now, these talks are off. The statement was reiterated by the State Department spokesman Tommy Piggott and I asked him

about the timing. Can you help us understand why at this moment when you see the conditions on the ground in Gaza with now mass starvation the US is deciding this is the moment to walk away from these talks? This is not a question of what the United States is doing, it's a question of what Hamas has done. This is a response to what Hamas has done continually. But that's not actually the position of many of the Israeli hostage families of... Israel has long accepted the deal on the table and Hamas has long rejected it. I mean, this is about, it's never about been our commitment to a ceasefire. That's never been the question here.

We have engaged in good faith to try to achieve a ceasefire. Now amid all this, you have increasing isolation for the US on the world stage over its support for the aid system. France saying it will recognise an independent Palestinian state in September that has enraged the Israelis tonight and so a serious wedge between the US and its traditional allies when it comes to the future of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Americans saying they will seek alternative models but with Gaza in ruins, starvation on the ground, it's very hard to see whether or not that threat will ring true.

Tom Bateman in Washington. Three quarters of UN members recognise a state of Palestine, but France would become the first major Western power and permanent member of the Security Council to do so. The French president will join the leaders of Germany and the UK on Friday for an emergency call on the situation in Gaza. The head of the UN agency working in Gaza has said civilians in the Palestinian territory have been described as being like walking corpses as fears of a widespread famine continue to grow. In a statement, the Commissioner General of UNRWA, Filipe Lazzarini, warned that the entire humanitarian system was at risk of collapse, with parents too hungry to care for children and health workers too weak to help.

Juliet Tuma from UNRWA said seeking food in Gaza has become as deadly as the bombardments. Gaza has become hell on earth and no place is safe. In his statement, the Commissioner General said that no one is spared. Caretakers, including the UNRWA colleagues in Gaza, are also in need of care now. Doctors, nurses, journalists, humanitarians, among them UNRWA staff, are hungry. Many are now fainting due to hunger and exhaustion while performing their duties, reporting atrocities or alleviating some of the suffering. Dr. Nada Al-Hadifi has just returned to the UK after three weeks in Gaza, working as a surgeon at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza. She told us about the state of malnourishment among some of

the children that she treated. Kids that are 8, 10, 12 years old should be weighing 40 kilograms plus. All I can feel are bones. Their humeral width, their upper arm, is the same width as their wrists. I can feel their bones through their skin and as a consequence, their wounds are breaking down, their grafts are failing. Our correspondent, Amir Nader, is in Jerusalem with this report. Even a father's tenderness cannot ease Rahaf's hunger or treat her illness. She weighed about 15 kilograms when the war started but only six and a half a week ago. Sitting in a Spartan room Ali strokes his daughter Rahaf's skeletal face.

She has a developmental condition affecting her eyes but her health is deteriorated by the disappearance of fresh food, fruit, bread. Shelves empty at home and at the hospital too. I took her to the hospital. They have been looking for an infusion, but there is nothing. At a soup kitchen in Gaza City, the scenes of chaos are becoming disturbingly familiar. But each day, the soup is thinner and the faces more desperate. Um Mohammed is standing nearby. My whole body is shivering from the lack of food and I'm breastfeeding too. How can I get them food? My kids keep crying around me. I don't sleep at night because they keep crying. I make them drink salt water to get to sleep. How can I provide for them? Until

when will this suffering continue? Oh people of the world, feed us. Feed our children and look to us with a merciful eye. Now, the grip of hunger is reaching into each home, every tent, the poor, the middle class and the once wealthy. Israeli officials say they facilitate the delivery of aid. Here's Colonel Abdullah Halabi at the Gaza border today. The responsibility of moving the aid inside Gaza, it's up on the humanitarian organization and we help them as much as possible in order to do their job. But those organizations say that even when they get Israeli permission to pick it up, their convoys often get shot at by the military. While the blame game continues, a system of restrictions and chaotic aid distributions

is being overseen by Israel and Gaza, causing mass hunger and scenes of deadly starvation. Amir Nader reporting from Jerusalem. BBC News and three leading news agencies, Reuters, Agence France-Presse and the Associ Associated Press have expressed desperate concern for the Palestinian journalists they work with in Gaza who are increasingly unable to feed both themselves and their families. In a joint statement they urge Israel to allow journalists in and out of the war-torn territory. Israel has barred foreign journalists from entering Gaza. The BBC's director of news content is Richard Burgess. We have been in touch with those journalists over the past few days, frankly, and have

been increasingly concerned about what they are telling us. They are struggling with the lack of food. They are struggling with the scarcity of a variety of food. They're struggling with extremely high prices, very long distances in order to get to food. And obviously then the effects of that, you know, which is dizziness, you know, lack of vitamins, low blood sugar levels. So they've got, it's really difficult for them to operate frankly. Mr Burgess also says it's crucial that local journalists who are there are able to work effectively. We invest a lot in journalists around the world on the ground and we do that because we think that is the best way of reporting what's going on.

People witnessing it with their own eyes are experienced journalists. And if you remember after the Hamas attacks on October the 7th, we were on the ground. We were invited by Israel, frankly, to see what had happened and we were able to report in no uncertain terms about the horrific nature of those attacks. That's what we want to do in Gaza as well. The BBC's director of news content, Richard Burgess. Matthew Amroliwala spoke to Eilon Pincus, former Israeli diplomat and columnist for Haaretz. He began by asking him how much of events in Gaza, such as starvation, do Israelis actually see in their media?

Israelis can watch the BBC, they can watch any one of your international colleagues, and they can read any one of the newspapers, some of which you've mentioned before, The Guardian, The Independent, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, they're all reporting this. But Israelis have been, you know, first it was natural, living in denial, living in dismissal, and being oblivious to the suffering because there was an almost understandable sense of devastation after October 7, 2023, and then this sense of vengeance and retaliation at any cost. Even if you accept that that was understandable, there's absolutely no excuse and absolutely

no mitigating circumstances for Israelis not being aware of what is going on in Gaza, at least in the last six months. And there is, if you look at the Israeli media in the last two, three months, there is, there's change in the sense that there are more reports and people are exposed to that information. There was understandable outrage right across the world after October the 7th. But in terms of the response, particularly since March, when Israel broke the ceaseth, but in terms of the response, particularly since March when Israel broke the ceasefire, how normalised has it become? Do you think bombing areas where there are civilians talk of putting the whole population

into a camp now starvation? There was too much understanding toward that, too much tolerance towards that policy. Look, you know, from the very outset, even inside Israel, people like me, but many more and even more important than I am, have said repeatedly that unless the government has clear political objectives rather than just military retaliation, it risks this kind of situation that we're seeing now. And people said repeatedly, Matthew, look, if you occupy the Gaza Strip, de facto, not even the U.S., if you occupy the Gaza Strip, you own it. And what we're seeing now is this false and

improbable attempt by the government to both occupy and not be responsible. Military presence over 100% of the Gaza Strip, yet zero responsibility over humanitarian aid and this famine slash hunger slash malnutrition, however you choose to define it. Ailon Pinkus, former Israeli diplomat and columnist for Haaretz newspaper. Next to Ukraine. Anti-corruption agencies in the country have welcomed a new law proposed by President Zelensky, which reverses many of the changes he brought in only three days ago. The move would restore their independence, they said, and they've urged Ukraine's parliament to back it. Here's our Europe regional editor, Paul Moss.

You can almost hear the screeching of brakes as Volodymyr Zelensky performs a spectacular U-turn, though perhaps not a surprising one. Ukraine's president had been widely denounced on Tuesday when he placed his country's two anti-corruption agencies under the control of a man he himself appointed. Critics at home and abroad warned this would hamper the fight against bribery and kickbacks. Now it seems the agency's independence will be restored by another legislative measure, one Mr. Zelensky said would also stop Russia interfering in anti-corruption work. Paul Moss. The US Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanch has met Gailen Maxwell, the associate of the

convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking in the US state of Florida. The meeting was widely anticipated. After Mr Blanch announced earlier in the week he had contacted Maxwell's lawyers to see if she might have information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims. The Trump administration has been facing mounting pressure from the president's supporters to release additional information about investigations into Jeffrey Epstein. Here's our North America editor Sarah Smith. It's not clear exactly what the deputy attorney general thought he would learn

from interviewing Ghislaine Maxwell about Jeffrey Epstein and their history of sexually abusing young girls. He may have hoped he would get information about other people who committed crimes against Epstein's victims that could be used to distract from the furor over the Trump administration's decision not to release all the files the government holds on Epstein. Ms Maxwell's lawyer, David O. Marcus, speaking outside the federal courthouse in Tallahassee, Florida, said the government had much they wanted to know from her.

He took a full day and asked a lot of questions and Ms Maxwell answered every single question. She never stopped, she never invoked a privilege. She never declined to answer. She answered all the questions truthfully, honestly, and to the best of her ability. A report in the Wall Street Journal that Donald Trump was told by his attorney general months ago that his name appears in the Epstein files multiple times just increases the political pressure on him. Being mentioned does not denote any kind of wrongdoing, but it will feed growing suspicion among his own supporters

that President Trump has something to hide. Sarah Smith. Still to come. Two decades ago East Timor had more than 200,000 annual cases of malaria, but that's gone down to zero. The World Health Organisation says East Timor is the latest country in the world to be certified malaria-free. Get ready for a celebration of play like no other at the all-new LEGO Summer of Play event

at LEGOLAND Discovery Centre Toronto, now through August 3rd. I'm Master Model Builder Noel, inviting you to discover your play mode with awesome build activities, experiences, and even some fresh new dance moves. Enjoy the ultimate indoor LEGO playground with rides, a 4-day theatre, and millions of LEGO bricks at Legoland Discovery Center. Build the best day ever with your family by getting tickets online now at legolanddiscoverycenter.com slash Toronto. Two militia leaders from the Central African Republic have been found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court.

One of them was the former head of the country's football federation. They were accused of coordinating attacks against the country's Muslim population in 2013-2014. I heard more from our Africa regional editor, Will Ross. Patrice Gaissona and Edward Yacatom were both members of a militia force that rose up, and it was a largely Christian and animist militia force that rose up to fight against another militia known as the Saleika. Now the Saleika, they were largely Muslim, they had ousted the president of the time, Francois Bozize, this is back in 2013. And these two men played a prominent role in this anti-balaka force that rose up to kind of carry out revenge

attacks and try and reverse what had happened with this militia seizing power. Now all kinds of atrocities went on and some of those crimes they've been found guilty of and they include murder and the forced displacement of people as well as attacks on religious institutions. I understand they weren't found guilty of recruitment of child soldiers and the carrying out of rape, even though those crimes definitely did happen during this conflict. It was a particularly brutal conflict that saw atrocities carried out in communities, largely because of them being Christian or Muslim, so that there are these back and forth attacks going on. And they were both given sentences, 12 years for Mr. Gaisona

and 15 years for Mr. Yekatom. Gaisona was kind of seen as somebody who had helped coordinate and finance the group, whereas Mr. Yekatom was kind of known to have been on the ground in the capital, Bongi, as they were leading the militiamen as they were carrying out the attacks. Will, we get a sense from you just there about some of the horrors that happened in the CAR. Some of the worst of this happened nearly 10 years ago. The ICC have been investigating the violence in the country. What have we seen in terms of accountability? So here you've got two anti-balaka men who have now been given their sentences. There's one person from the opposing side who's on trial in The Hague, but at the same time there's been another court going on in the Central African Republic. A special court was set up and it has also had trials and seen people from both

sides convicted of similar crimes. It's working kind of a bit quicker than the the ICC. I mean this case was extremely complicated with I think 170 witnesses and taking nearly four years so it's been a long long trial. As for the now, so there's still the court going on in the Central African Republic, but also worth remembering that this is not a country that's at peace at the moment. This year, there have been signs of progress with a peace deal that's brought in recently, just a few weeks ago, a couple of rebel groups.

But there are still other rebels operating. And the president of the country, Fonstant Acharge-Touadere, who's been in power since 2016, he gets help from the Rwandan military that's there helping, but also from Russian mercenaries who are fighting and kind of propping up the government,

helping it keep the rebels at bay. But it's still a pretty precarious country. Will Ross. Next to Russia, where rescuers have failed to find any survivors at the site where a plane crashed into a forested mountain slope in the far eastern Amur region. 49 people are reported to have died.

The crash has called into question the safety of Russia's aging fleet of passenger planes, many of which date back to Soviet times and are still used in its remote regions. Sergei Goriyashko of BBC Russian told me more. According to Russian officials, the plane has crashed during its second attempt to land in Tinda Airport. It's in Amur Oblast in Russia. There's been low clouds, low visibility and the plane crashed into not a very big mountain near the airport.

And what has been the public reaction and the reaction from the Russian government? It's one of the worst air crashes in Russia's recent history and one of the worst air crashes for this particular type of the aircraft. There's been crashes like this before, but not in the recent years. Russian President Vladimir Putin started his talks with Russian Navy today with a minute of silence. So it's obviously a sad day for the Russian aviation industry and for the whole country. This was a very old aircraft. What has Russia been doing to try and update its fleet of passenger planes, many of which are dating

back to Soviet times? With no options to replace those Antonov 24 for now, they are still operating these in remote regions of the country. These are specific types of airports and they require specific small planes, usually turboprop. Russia has not been building anything like those since Soviet times as you've mentioned and they cannot buy anything from their European or American counterparts at least for now while their country is under the sanctions which is why it leaves them with two options either leave all those Far East airports without any aircrafts at all without planes at all either to keep flying those

Soviet machines. Sergei Gorashko Deadly clashes continued on Thursday between troops from Thailand and Cambodia. At least 12 people, most of them Thai civilians, are so far known to have died after a dramatic escalation in a long-running border dispute. Residents on both sides have fled the fighting. Our Southeast Asia correspondent Jonathan Head has been to one of the communities on the Thai side of the border. From roadsides in northern Cambodia, dozens of rockets soared into the sky headed for

Thailand. The smouldering border dispute between the two countries erupted this morning. On the Thai side, thousands of people were evacuated from their homes. Schools were hurriedly emptied. It's much heavier than last time, said this evacuee from her bunker, referring to previous clashes. Another woman fretted about the effect of the shelling on her children. There were many casualties. Six people died when a convenience store took a direct hit from a rocket. This is the most serious confrontation between the Thai and Cambodian armies in more than a decade.

Ostensibly it's about a few slivers of disputed forest on the border. But behind this flare-up is the dramatic breakdown of an old friendship between two ruling families. The wily old Cambodian strongman Hun Sen turned on his one-time ally, Thai billionaire Thaksin Shinowat, humiliating his daughter, the Prime Minister, by leaking a phone conversation she had with him. That set off a bitter war of words, which has now escalated into a costly armed conflict. And with both governments unpopular and unable to revive their economies, neither seems ready to back down. Jonathan Head.

The World Health Organization says East Timor is the latest country in the world to be certified malaria-free. It's not had a single case of malaria in the last four years. Our Asia-Pacific editor Miki Bristo, reports. The WHO described this as a remarkable achievement for somewhere that only became an independent country in 2002. Two decades ago East Timor had more than 200,000 annual cases of malaria, but that's gone down to zero.

It's achieved that by trying to prevent cases through measures such as mosquito nets to better monitoring and treatment. Only 47 countries in the world have managed to eliminate malaria which kills around 600,000 people a year. Mickey Bristo The American wrestler Hulk Hogan has died at his home in Florida at the age of 71. It's believed he suffered a cardiac arrest. He was a five-time WWF champion, now called WWE. Hulk Hogan, whose real name was Terry Gene Belayer, was the best-known professional wrestler

of the 80s and 90s. He later moved into politics, speaking in support of President Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention. Our correspondent Sean Dilley looks back at a colourful and controversial life. And now introducing the World Wrestling Federation Heavyweight Champion, Hulk Hogan. An all-American hero, he was one of wrestling's first superstars with a career that transcended the ring into TV and film. At six feet and seven inches tall and weighing 21 stone, he was literally a giant of wrestling.

He was loved by his fans who became known as Hulkamaniacs. Hogan entered the ring in 1977. Over the years he built a huge brand around himself with a famous catchphrase. Hulkamania is going to run really wild. And I have one question. What you going to do when Smackdown Hulkamania runs wild on you? What you going to do? But in 2015, he was banished from WWE and kicked out of the Hall of Fame after racist remarks he made eight

years previously were made public. After apologising he was reinstated three years later. Despite a star-studded career he said he always struggled with fame. Many will remember Hogan, real name Terry Jean Bollier, for a leaked sex tape posted in 2012. After a lengthy legal battle, he was awarded $115 million by a Florida court. In his twilight years, he lent his credibility to another controversial figure. I've been in the ring with some of the biggest, some of the baddest dudes on the planet. And I know tough guys. But let me tell you something, brother. Donald Trump is the toughest of them all. Ultimately, though, it was his reputation as WWE's first action hero that defines Hulk

Hogan's life and his legacy. Sean Dilley. And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or any of the topics covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Chris Ablackoa, the producers were Liam McShepard and Stephen Jensen. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Julia McFarlane. Until next time, goodbye.