Global News Podcast - Western countries urge restraint as Israel mulls response to deadly rocket attack in Golan Heights

Episode Date: July 29, 2024

There are fears that a major Israeli reprisal against the Lebanese group, Hezbollah, could ignite a regional war. Hezbollah has denied carrying out the strike in Majdal Shams. Also: Venezuelans vote in election challenging Maduro's grip on power, and the Irish author Edna O'Brien dies aged 93.

Hello, this is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service, with reports and analysis from across the world. The latest news seven days a week. BBC World Service podcasts are supported by advertising. If you're hearing this, you're probably already listening to BBC's award-winning news podcasts. But did you know that you can listen to them without ads? Get current affairs podcasts like Thank you. Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Jackie Leonard and in the early hours of Monday, the 29th of July, these are our main stories.

Western countries have urged Israel to show restraint as the government decides how to respond to a deadly attack in the occupied Golan Heights, which it's blamed on Hezbollah. Venezuela's Attorney General dismisses suggestions that the presidential election currently taking place might not have been fair. At the Paris Olympics, American gymnast Simone Biles has made an impressive return after having to withdraw from much of the Tokyo Games, we'll hear about her and the other highlights. Also in this podcast, the Irish author Edna O'Brien, best known for her groundbreaking Country Girls trilogy, has died aged 93.

Ireland, in many ways, has a great gaiety, but alongside that gaiety, you always pay the price. A great sort of melancholy. We begin in the Middle East. Western diplomats and politicians are scrambling to de-escalate tension between Israel and Hezbollah following Saturday's rocket strike on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights which killed 12 young people. As fears grow of a major war, they're urging Israel to show restraint in any military response. The Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, held a four-hour emergency meeting of the Security Cabinet late on Sunday.

Earlier, the White House also blamed Hezbollah for the attack. The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, repeated the United States' long-held position that it didn't want the conflict to spread. We're in conversations with the government of Israel, and again, I emphasize its right to defend its citizens and our determination to make sure that they're able to do that. But we also don't want to see the conflict escalate. We don't want to see it spread. That has been one of our goals from day one, from October 7th on. Hezbollah denies responsibility for the strike and says a projectile from Israel's Iron Dome defence system hit the town of Majdal Shams. The victims of Saturday's attack belonged

to the Arabic-speaking Druze community, a distinct religious and ethnic group that makes up 1.5% of Israel's population. Earlier, the funerals took place for the children who lost their lives. Our correspondent Paul Adams spent the day there and told us about the atmosphere. We've been here in Majdal Shams all day, and what a day it's been. A really profound sense of grief and shock that has descended on this small Druze community in this rather remote corner of the country. This is the Golan Heights, which have been under Israeli control since 1967.

This is a community that is very tight- tight knit, that clings to its roots, a place where people have not left despite the large evacuations that have gone on elsewhere across northern Israel in the last 10 months. The Druze community here in the Golan has stayed put. But of course, they have feared all along that something like this could happen. And sure enough, it has. And it has left them absolutely stunned. Here's just a flavour of what today has been like. Through the streets of Majdal Shams, the coffins came one by one. This town is reeling in shock, consumed by collective grief. For months, they a disaster, but they never imagined it would take away their children.

At the football pitch where they died, people came to pay respects and take in the scale and speed of this tragedy. A playground transformed in an instant into a place of jagged metal, discarded belongings, and in the corner, the blood of the victims. As government ministers arrived, the mood turned. There was anger, even from a soldier. They've been bombarding us for 10 months, he shouted. My children are crying every day. Israel's hardline finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, was here.

Some urged the government to crack down hard on Hezbollah. Others told him, in no uncertain terms, to leave. Ugarit Abu Awad knows a response will come, but is deeply fearful. There should be a response, but I don't think there should be like an all-out war with Hezbollah right now. Why? Because I'm afraid for the consequences if this happened yesterday. What about tomorrow if it happens, like, if it gets to an all-out war? It's going to be pretty tough. More people are going to die on all sides. Humanity is already suffering enough, I think. The Security Cabinet has been meeting today to talk about a response. What kind of response might be expected?

This is a difficult calculation. This is the moment that many people, diplomats and Israelis and Lebanese, have been worrying about for the past ten months. Is this the trigger for an all-out conflict, something much bigger than the simmering tit-for-tat exchange as we have seen for the past nine or ten months? There are no immediate signs of a large-scale military operation. We're not seeing the mobilisation of troops,

the massing of armour on the border, no immediate sign of an invasion of southern Lebanon, despite the Israeli government's keen desire to create some kind of buffer zone in southern Lebanon that would prevent Hezbollah from being able to launch rockets into Israel. But as you say, the Security Cabinet has been meeting, and the statement that was released following that meeting said the members of the Cabinet authorised the Prime Minister and Defence Minister to decide on the manner and timing of the response. No clues there. I think everyone is expecting some increased level of Israeli

military activity, whether it will amount to the kind of full-scale escalation that people fear. Well, we just don't know. An escalation on this border could have all sorts of ramifications, could worsen the conflict in Gaza, could wreck prospects for ceasefire talks there, could draw Iran further back into this conflict. There are all sorts of implications, all of which are pretty dire. There have been talks in Rome about a potential ceasefire for Gaza. Any news on that at all?

Nothing terribly convincing that I've heard anyway. They seem to be almost talks about talks, or talks for the sake of being there and being seen to have talks. The Americans were saying today that a successful conclusion of those ceasefire negotiations could have a very positive knock-on effect here in the northern border, could de-escalate the conflict, because after all, Hezbollah have ramped up the pressure on the northern border precisely because of the war in Gaza. So a lot hinges on the outcome of those ceasefire negotiations. There do still seem to be some major obstacles,

even though the Americans have been saying for the past week or so that we're in the kind of home stretch. But clearly all eyes will be on those talks to see if they get anywhere that so many previous rounds haven't so far. Paul Adams in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. To Venezuela next. And as we record this podcast, polls closed just a short time ago in an election described as the biggest challenge to the governing socialist PSUV party since it came to power 25 years ago. Opinion polls have

suggested that President Nicolás Maduro, who is running for his third consecutive term, could be defeated by the opposition coalition candidate, retired diplomat Edmundo González. There have been questions over whether the election would be free and fair, but the Attorney General, Tarek Saab, sought to assuage concerns. As the Attorney General, I can faithfully say with full guarantees that the electoral system of Venezuela is fully protected and one of the best automated voting systems on the planet. Therefore, when the National Electoral Council announces who has won, there shouldn't be any doubts who is the winner.

I have no doubt that during the night we'll have the results. Everything here will be calm, peaceful. Peace will win. The opposition's original choice, Maria Corina Machado, was banned from running for office. But after casting her vote, she said she was confident for Venezuela's future. Today, Venezuela is future. Today Venezuela is united. We've been united for many years in the hope that

we were going to be free and today it is a certainty. We're going to be free, we're going to bring our children back home, we're going to unite the country and we're going to have achieved the most important civic and libertarian journey in the history of our country. Our South America correspondent Ione Wells spoke to us from a busy street in the capital Caracas. So how free and fair was the election? Certainly there have been concerns raised today about some of the practices around the country. I was at some polling stations where there were huge queues outside of people waiting, but very few people being allowed in at any one time. And there were accusations levelled at the electoral authorities

that this was a deliberate tactic to try and delay people voting, perhaps in the hope that some people might give up entirely and go home. There's also footage that we've seen from other parts of the country where protests broke out because poll stations just didn't open completely and that caused clashes between people hoping to vote and the electoral authorities and police who were at the station. Now, as I say, we don't yet know the results of this election. We don't know what the result's going to be, who will claim victory.

But certainly there is a huge amount at stake here. As you mentioned there, the governing party have been in power for decades. Nicolas Maduro, the president, is hoping to be re-elected for a third term. And he's called on people today to respect the result of this election. But there have been significant concerns that he may not do that himself. And even in the build-up to this election as well, there have been concerns about the fact that, for example, opposition candidates were banned from running, some members of the opposition's teams have been detained, and millions of Venezuelans living abroad were unable to register to vote.

So there have been concerns already raised about whether some of the opposition vote has been suppressed. And what have been the biggest issues that Venezuelan voters are concerned about? Well, the main one is the economy. The economy here has been in freefall for about a decade. People are really struggling. More than half the country lives in poverty. And that's despite the fact that this should, in theory,

be a country with huge amounts of potential, huge amounts of resource. It's the country which has the biggest oil reserves, for example, in the world. And yet Maduro's critics blame economic mismanagement, corruption for the state of the economy. He blames sanctions that the US imposed after the last elections were widely dismissed as neither free nor fair. As well as that, but related to it, is the fact that millions and millions of Venezuelans have emigrated abroad to try and find a better life. And lots of voters I've spoken to today have raised the point that they just want their children to come home,

they want their families to be reunited. And that is something which is at stake here as well today. Irony Wells on a very busy street in Caracas. The Irish author Edna O'Brien, best known for her groundbreaking Country Girls trilogy, has died aged 93 after a long illness. Paying tribute, her publisher Faber said she revolutionised Irish literature, capturing the lives of women and the complexities of the human condition.

The Irish president, Michael D. Higgins, described her as a fearless teller of truths. Vincent Dowd looks back at Edna O'Brien's career, which spanned more than five decades. Edna O'Brien came from rural County Clare in Ireland and was educated at a boarding school by nuns. To escape what she called all-pervasive small-town Catholicism, she became a pharmacist in Dublin. Moving to London and starting to write, in 1960 she found success with the novel The Country Girls,

but it was Ireland which had given O'Brien her material. I find that in my present life in London, I am visited by the weather and the people, the sensations of my childhood, and I'd hate to have had a happy childhood, because then one might have forgotten it. Ireland, in many ways, has a great gaiety, but alongside that gaiety you always pay the price,

a great sort of melancholy. The Country Girls was open about sex and critical of Ireland's men in particular. The novel was banned there, but widely read. The follow-up was filmed as Girl With Green Eyes, and O'Brien wrote the screenplay. My father has a farm. Oh, but it'd help up our everything.

Except about you. You're a mixture of innocence and guile. What's guile? That chiffon scarf. And with the danger signal, I said to myself, that girl's got more than tea on her mind. In the decades that followed, Ireland became far less repressive, a process her early novels had encouraged.

But O'Brien chose to live mainly in London. She'd moved to the UK with her husband, the novelist Ernest Gabler, but the marriage ended. Edna O'Brien had a rare charisma and glamour. She was never short of male admirers. She wrote many more novels and for the stage, TV and cinema. In 2018, she was made a Dame of the British Empire, an honorary award, because to the end, Edna O'Brien remained an Irish woman. Vincent Dowd on the life of the Irish author Edna O'Brien, who's died aged 93.

Still to come... Electric-powered luggage is a new and unusual mode of transport. What Japanese airports are doing about the menace of the sit-on electric suitcase. Thank you. Now to the Olympics, where it was the second full day of competition on Sunday. Simone Biles, one of the world's most decorated gymnasts, returned for her third Games. The American received an enthusiastic welcome as she finished her routine on the beam, three years after she withdrew halfway through the Tokyo Games with a condition known as the twisties. In swimming Italy's Niccolo Martinenghi won the highly anticipated men's 100 metres breaststroke final forcing Britain's Adam Peaty into second place. Our correspondent Paul Serres gave us this update on Sunday's Olympic

events in France beginning with Simone Biles. She was absolutely sensational when you compare her performance earlier on Sunday to three years ago in Tokyo when she was lost I think with this affliction they call the twisties in gymnastics. It's where the athlete loses the ability to gauge where they are in the air during complex routines and obviously that has a serious impact on potential injuries and on your confidence on on the confidence in oneself to be able to perform at the level they've been training to do for for their entire lives so we saw three years ago Simone Biles the most decorated gymnast in Olympic history pull out of many of the events for which she was the favorite but then that triumphant return in front of it.

It's a tough crowd in Paris generally for sports stars, particularly if you're American or British, but the outpouring of love from the Parisian crowd, the gymnastics earlier on Sunday was just incredible. And she rewarded every single person there with an absolute tour de force, an incredible performance that saw her qualify for four individual finals and the all-around final with a score that would be incredibly difficult to catch for anyone else on the planet. So amazing, amazing scenes at the gymnastics on Sunday morning. And what about the day's other highlights?

Rafael Nadal was in action in the singles at Roland Garros, of course, 14 times a French Open champion it's somewhere that he knows incredibly well and he managed to beat Martin Fusovic the Hungarian to reach the second round in front of a crowd that he knows so well of course so much success over the years for Rafael Nadal at Roland Garros in Paris. And so what about the swimming? Yes well Adam Peaty was hoping to become just the second man in the history of the Olympic Games in the pool to win the same event

at three consecutive Olympic Games after, of course, the great Michael Phelps. He was beaten by two hundredths of a second in his quest for 100-metre breaststroke gold. It was Martin Engie, the Italian, who took gold and Peaty, who shared a silver. There has been controversy as well, though. The convicted child rapist, Steven van der Velde,

who's part of the Dutch beach volleyball team, he was playing. Tell us about the reaction. It's a conversation that's dominated the games, the run-up to the games. Steven van der Velde, a Dutch beach volleyball player, was convicted of three counts of child rape here in the UK back in 2016, was repatriated to serve his sentence in the Netherlands

where the charge was downgraded under Dutch law. He was met with boos around the beach volleyball courts and there has been such a strong protest against his inclusion in the Dutch team that one petition has reached almost 100,000 signatures to disqualify van der Velde from competing. That was Paul Serres. Meanwhile, officials in Paris say they are confident that the River Seine will be clean enough

for its first Olympic swimming event on Tuesday. A triathlon practice swim, due to have taken place on Sunday, was cancelled after tests showed that the Seine's water quality had fallen below acceptable standards. Twelve days ago, the city's mayor, Anne Hidalgo, swam in the river to demonstrate it was ready for the Games. Here's our Paris correspondent, Andrew Harding. The rain that dampened Friday's Olympic opening ceremony had a knock-on effect, washing untreated sewage into the River Seine. But French officials insisted any pollution would

be long gone by Tuesday, thanks to a spell of dry, warm weather and to a decade of hard work and investment. Paris has spent one and a5 billion euros diverting all sorts of waste pipes and building what's been dubbed an underground cathedral, a giant reservoir under the city centre that can hold excess rainwater. The renovations are not just for the benefit of a few triathlon athletes. Already, the number of fish species in the Seine

has risen tenfold. Public bathing spots will open next year. While some may remember Paris 2024 for Celine Dion or gold medals, a clean river, open to swimmers for the first time in a century, may prove to be the Games' most enduring legacy. That was Andrew Harding. The organisers of the Paris Olympics have said they're really sorry after some Roman Catholic groups and French bishops condemned parts of the opening Olympics have said they're really sorry after some Roman Catholic groups and French bishops condemned parts of the opening ceremony as making a mockery of Christianity. Criticism has focused on a scene involving dancers, drag queens and a DJ

in poses similar to depictions of the Last Supper, the final meal Jesus is said to have taken with his apostles. The event's spokesperson is Anne Deschamps. There was never an intention to show disrespect to any religious group. If people have taken any offence, we are of course really, really sorry. Anne Deschamps. Now to a pastime that is not an Olympic sport, roof-topping. It's the term given to those who risk their lives by climbing extremely high buildings or structures without safety equipment for the sake of art.

A new Netflix documentary entitled Skywalkers, A Love Story, focuses on two roof-toppers, Angela Nicolau and Ivan Vania-Birkus. A highlight shows them climbing the 679-metre Medeka 118 tower in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, while trying to avoid being arrested and jailed. Krupa Paddy spoke to the documentary makers Jeff Zimbalist and Maria Bukanina and first asked Jeff, a former rooftopper himself, to explain the concept. Usually trespassing tends to be onto the highest roofs in the world and it takes a range of

different forms. Some people do daredevil stunts where they hang from one arm for likes on social media and risk their lives, which is more of the shock value approach that we were less interested in. And then there's people who consider themselves genuine artists like Angela Nicolaou and Ivan Birkis. And for them, it's an opportunity to face their fears and figure out who they want to be in the world. And they put a lot of energy into picking out the wardrobe, picking the time of day, finding the lighting, creating acrobatic gymnastic poses. They're both trained in acrobatics and gymnastics and then flying their own drone and figuring out the right angles to get. Maria, I think that you've moved to live and travel with the couple for a significant amount of time for this documentary.

How was that? I did. You know, there was a lot of things going on with the couple and in their relationship and their artistic pursuits. And then, you know, pandemic hit. So we weren't sure where the story would go. And, you know, they weren't able to travel for a while. So by being there during the pandemic, we were able to kind of observe the tensions. And, you know, we didn't know the suspense was there. We didn't know if they would ever be able to travel again. As you know, this continued for several years. So it was an interesting time. You used the word tensions and they were romantic tensions as well, weren't they,

Jeff? Because this is part love story, part thriller. Was that a hard balance to strike? Yeah, you know, I had, like you mentioned, been a rooftopper in the late 90s, early aughts. And for 15 plus years, I was looking for a story that was more substantial than just that daredevil does stunt for likes narrative. And it wasn't until I first talked to Angela and she introduced me to Vanya. She introduced him at first. This is in 2015 or 2016 as a rival or a competitor. And it was under the surface that you could sense this bubbling flirtation. And that was the moment where this seed got planted of, oh, my God, maybe we could tell a love story on top of the world. And immediately the puzzle pieces came together

that you could use extreme climbing as a metaphor for romantic trust. We should also say that no one should be trying this at all. And the documentary states that a few times. Were you worried or are you worried at any stage that this documentary glamorizes what is a very dangerous activity? Yeah, that's a valid concern and something that we were concerned that we were concerned about as well from the beginning. You know, when you see this material on social media where it's existed for 15 plus years, it has no context. It's just a perfect polished pose at the end of, you know, often very scary and dangerous climb. And so if someone were

to watch that on social media, they might say, oh, I could do that. That's accessible to any of us. Whereas in the film, not only do we have the text up front that explains the dangers and says that nobody should copycat, but also you get to see deaths that have occurred as a result of this activity, which are, you know, stomach turning. And you see that our subjects are trained acrobats and gymnasts. And even then, they're very afraid. Angela has multiple panic attacks in the film. They consider quitting and retiring multiple times in the film. And you get to see just how hard it is. And so by the end of the film, you know, the overwhelming feedback we get from people who watch it is there's no way I

would ever even begin to think to attempt something like that. That was Jeff Zimbalist and Maria Bucanina, directors of the documentary called Skywalkers, a love story. And seriously, please don't try that at home. Now, a growing number of Japanese airports are banning sit on electric suitcases because they present a danger to other passengers. Mickey Bristow looks at how a piece of luggage has, for some, turned into a motorised menace. Electric-powered luggage is a new and unusual mode of transport. Travellers can still pack everything they need for a holiday, but it also allows them, particularly the older ones, to navigate the sometimes long distances within airports. Some passengers, though, have complained of suitcases whizzing past them at high speed,

and so one by one Japanese airports have been banning this motorised luggage. Kansai International Airport, Neurosaka, has become the latest. The problems caused by electric suitcases, however, are not just limited to airports. Last month, Japanese police pulled over a Chinese student on a street in Osaka because she was riding luggage with a top speed of 13 kilometres an hour. The incident was referred to prosecutors, the first case of its kind, because under Japanese traffic law, the suitcase was classified as a motorised bicycle and the rider should have had a helmet, insurance and rear-view mirrors. That was Mickey Bristow.

And that's it from us for now. I'm firing up my suitcase for the journey home, but there will be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later. If you'd like to comment on this edition or the topics covered in it, do please send us an email. Thank you. I'm Jackie Leonard and until next time, goodbye. If you're hearing this, you're probably already listening to BBC's award-winning news podcasts. But did you know that you can listen to them without ads? Get current affairs podcasts like Global News, AmeriCast and The Global Story,

plus other great BBC podcasts from history to comedy to true crime, all ad-free. Thank you.