Reuters World News - Israel’s hospital raid, Imran Khan’s jail time, the Fed and Northern Ireland

Episode Date: January 31, 2024

Israeli commandos disguised as medical workers and Muslim women have raided a hospital in the occupied West Bank, killing three Palestinian militants. Former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s jail sentences pile up ahead of next week’s general election in Pakistan. Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government is expected to resume after two years with an Irish Nationalist at the helm. Plus, Hamas considers ceasefire deal and the Fed’s first meeting of the year. Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, disguised as civilians, Israeli troops raid a West Bank hospital. We break down the rules of war. Imran Khan's jail sentences pile up, but a banned cricket bat may be more damaging for his party. Investors look for a rate-cut timetable as the Federal Reserve wraps its first meeting of the year. And Northern Ireland looks set to have a government after a two-year gap, but this time with an Irish Republican at the top. It's Wednesday, January 31st. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, every weekday. I'm Kim Van Nal in Wonganui, New Zealand. And I'm Carmel Crimmons in Dublin. Israeli commandos disguised as medical workers and Muslim women burst into a hospital in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday and killed three Palestinian militants.

One was killed while lying in bed, paralysed. CCTV footage from the hospital shows a group of about 10 people, pacing through a corridor armed with assault rifles. One of them appears to be carrying an infant's car seat. The brazen raid has garnered a lot of attention in the region. James McKenzie is our Jerusalem Bureau Chief. Well, the account that the Israelis gave was that it was a planned operation in the early hours of the morning against.

a Hamas operative who they said was planning on October the 7th style attack. So they identified this man and killed him. And at the same time, they found two others, two brothers who were there in the hospital, who weren't members of Hamas, but who were members of another Palestinian militant group. And they were also shot. How unusual is an operation like this? These armed interventions by Israeli special forces or commandos dressed in sort of civilian clothes or dressed as Palestinians are not uncommon in the West Bank. It's not usual to see them filmed in this way. So the film was very striking. But, you know, it's the fact that it happened in the hospital that really makes this one stand out.

Is Israel allowed to do this under the rules of war? Well, each side accuses the other of war crimes, and the Palestinians accuse the Israelis of war crimes because you're not allowed to attack hospitals under normal circumstances. What the Israelis say is that these aren't normal circumstances and that these hospitals are used deliberately to hide military infrastructure, fighters, weapons, and that this not only removes the protection that international law gives to hospitals and so on and actually constitutes a war crime itself. Hamas has denied the Israeli allegations.

The Palestinian Health Ministry has called on the United Nations to guarantee protection for hospitals. Hamas says it's studying a new proposal for a ceasefire and release of hostages in Gaza. The proposal contains three stages. First, the release of civilian hostages, then soldiers, then the bodies of hostages who've been killed. It appears to be the most serious peace initiative for months. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, though, repeated his vow not to pull out troops from Gaza until total victory. Iran-aligned Iraqi armed group Katayib Hezbollah says it's suspending all operations against U.S. troops in the region. It says it's to prevent the embarrassment of the Iraqi government.

The Pentagon says the drone attack in Jordan, which killed three U.S. troops on Sunday, bore the footprints of Qatayab Hezbollah. but a final assessment has not been made. President Joe Biden says he has decided how to respond to that attack, but didn't give details. Elon Musk could be losing out on a $56 billion Tesla pay package. A Delaware judge has ruled the record-breaking compensation granted to Musk by the Tesla board was unfair to shareholders, calling it an unfathomable sum.

The decision can be appealed. The Federal Reserve wraps up its first meeting of the year later today, and all eyes are on Jerome Powell for clues of loosening rates. Our Fed watcher, Howard Schneider, will be in the room. So Howard, first off, how is inflation looking and should we expect any rate cuts? Well, no rate cuts in January, but they may well issue a statement that starts to move them to a neutral stance that would precede a rate cut later in the year. As of December, their economic projections showed three quarter point reductions,

over the course of the year. So the people who have spoken to this with any specificity have pointed to the second half of the year, maybe June, July. Now, in terms of inflation, it's been going pretty well. If you look at the months to months inflation rates, if you annualize those out, it's been under 2% for about seven months now. So they want a little more confirmation on that front. But it's been a pretty good track record of the inflation indices that they care about running at or below 2%, which is their target. Pakistan's former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his wife have each been sentenced to 14 years in prison, a day after Khan was jailed for 10 years.

The politician is already behind bars after being convicted of corruption. Khan says the cases against him are politically motivated. But where does it all leave Pakistan a week before general elections? Ariba Shahid is in Karachi. Khan was already barred from competing in this election, so what impact do all these verdicts have on its outcome? So what hurts Khan's party more than these convictions on sentencing is the fact that Khan's party lost their right to use their electoral symbol, the cricket bat.

The electoral body took this away from them in another case. Now, in Pakistan, where the number of illiterate people is high, this is very important because people would look at the ballot paper and just vote for the symbol of the party that they're backing. But now they're going to have to research who the party back candidate is, memorize their name. And then later on, even if, let's say, that candidate does win, because the candidate is an independent candidate and not party backed officially, they can easily switch sides. So what message do these court cases and those restrictions on Kahn's party, the PTI? What message does it send to the electorate? So current party leaders and many analysts believe that this will push party supporters even more to go out and vote. However, the electoral symbol again plays a major role in the final outcome of the election.

Analysts believe that Pakistan's powerful military has thrown its backing to Nawaz Sharif and the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz. So the military, however, denies the acquisitions and says it remains apolitical. Bilal Bhutto is another contender of the People's Party, who says that his party is looking forward to forming government along with the independent candidates that are running, which, by the way, is one of the largest numbers in Pakistan's history, mostly owning to the bad symbol being taken away from the PTI. How does all this change things for Pakistan? The funny thing is that jailing and disqualifying premiers is business as usual for Pakistan. Pakistan's history is filled with various examples of leaders being jailed, exiled, and even given the death penalty. So all of this isn't a change.

However, because Pakistan's in the precarious situation navigating a tricky path to recovery under an ongoing IMF program. And it needs another program following this. If anything, Pakistan needs more political stability than anything else. So any government that does come, the stability aspect is the most important. Another place in need of political stability is Northern Ireland. Its two years of political paralysis look to be over. The region's main pro-British party has said it is ready to return to a power-sharing government with Sinn Féin, the Irish Republican Party. But this time, for the first time, a Republican will be at the helm. Amanda Ferguson is in Belfast. Amanda, the Democratic Unionist Party is ending its boycott of government after agreeing to new post-Brexit trade

rules, right? Well, we're at the end of a two-year process before Christmas. The UK government laid a deal on the table, and I think this is the reality biting that this is as good as it gets for the DUP. Post-Brexit Northern Ireland essentially remained in the EU single market for goods, which is different from what happens in Scotland, England and Wales. So the DUP doesn't much like that Northern Ireland has a different form of Brexit from the rest of the United Kingdom. But that was the reality and that was always going to be the case because there was never going to be a hard border as it's described on the island of Ireland,

given the sensitivities of our post-conflict society. The power sharing government may be back in action in a matter of days, but it's going to look quite different, right? The major difference that there's going to be is that for the first time in Northern Ireland's history that there's going to be an Irish Republican at the very top of government. Now, Northern Ireland was created

over a hundred years ago with an inbuilt British Unionist majority and that doesn't exist anymore. And I think that a lot of our problems flow from the fact that while we are a place at peace in Northern Ireland, it is still a contested place. Not everybody feels that they're a British unionist.

Many people feel that they're Irish Republicans and there's a cohort in the middle that we could be persuaded either way. And I think that that's the ongoing discussion that we're having at the moment. And those conversations have accelerated in the aftermath of Brexit. That's it for today's episode of Reuters World News. We'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline show. To make sure you know what's going on in the world,

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