Reuters World News - What it takes to prosecute a war crime, the day after Biden's mission and worldwide protests

Episode Date: October 19, 2023

Our International Criminal Court correspondent explains how prosecutors would investigate what happened at the Al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza. Biden returns from his diplomatic mission as protests erupt around the world over who's behind the hospital blast, Israel’s continued bombing of Gaza, the hostages and Hamas' victims. 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. I'm very pleased to be able to be here. It's an important time. The UK Prime Minister follows in Biden's footsteps, arriving in Israel to show his support. Violence in Middle Eastern capitals over Palestinian deaths and who's behind the hospital blast. In western cities,

thousands also turning out to protest Israel's bombing of Gaza. Others hold vigils for the 1400 killed in the Hamas attacks, or demand the return. of the more than 200 hostages still missing. From the Middle East to the streets of the US. The world gripped by anger on all sides. It's Thursday, October 19th. This is Reuters World News,

bringing you everything you need to know in 10 minutes, every weekday. I'm Kim Vinal. President Biden's diplomatic mission to the Middle East was cut in half by the bombing at the Gaza Hospital. Instead, he spent eight hours on the ground in Israel. The president flying home last night after pledging support to Israel for the war on Hamas, consoling survivors and the families of hostages like Osnak Jets.

We are really, really thank him for coming here to give all Israel a hope that maybe something now will be better with all the families that are looking for the beloved one to come back home. Osnad's nephew, Omar, was taken. Like our good father came here to protect us, to take care of the bad situation here in Israel. Most notably, Biden lent his weight to Israel's statement that it wasn't behind the Gaza hospital blast

that killed more than 470 Palestinians. Based on the information we've seen today, it appears the result of an errant rocket fired by a terrorist group in Gaza. The United States unequivocally stands for the protection of civilian life during conflict. He also committed to push Congress for more funding for Israel. But he appeared to have only limited success in his other mission, to persuade Israel to ease the plight of 2.3 million Gazans under a total siege. He said he had secured an offer from Egypt to allow 20 aid trucks to reach Gaza at some point in the coming days,

but a fraction of the 100 per day needed. The hospital blast has intensified international outcry over the fate of Palestinian civilians, and protesters are adding the US to their outrage. Outside the US Embassy in Lebanon, protesters were pushed back with tear gas and water cannon. America is the devil, the real devil, because he supported Israel.

And then all the world is blind. see, you don't see what happened yesterday or before and before, Israel will take more aggressive because he supported for America for the USA. This is shame. Heather Timmons is our White House editor. Heather, what intelligence was Biden basing his statements about the hospital blast on? Biden said when reporters asked him in Israel that he was basing it on the U.S. Department of Defense information. And then we saw the National Security Council come out with a statement afterwards. And their statements said Israel is not responsible for the explosion at the hospital. And they said that they based that on the U.S. analysis of overhead imagery, intercepts, and open-source information.

So I think one of the sort of big questions was, is the U.S. basing its own analysis on what Israel has said or information that Israel has directly given them? And I think they're trying to set, put a little distance between that idea. The explosion upended the trip in a lot of ways. how will Biden's visit to just Israel impact U.S. relations with other allies in the region? The White House had pictured this as a great example of sort of Biden being an elder statesman. He would go out there. He would talk to Netanyahu, and then he would go to Jordan, and he would speak to Palestinian and Egyptian leaders. And then the hospital explosion in Gaza, of course, upended all that. The summit in Jordan was canceled. And so it left Biden with sort of a half a trip.

if you think his main goal was to try to calm down tensions there. And what you wound up with is a bunch of powerful images of Biden in Israel, talking to Israelis, talking about the U.S. being close to Israel. He did mention several times that Palestinians are suffering, but it was very obvious when he was finished with this trip that the U.S. is just going to be inextricably linked to what happens over the next few days and weeks in Israel. And in Gaza.

What does this do for Biden back home? It's been the sort of the case of the Democratic Party, you know, for years and ever more so in the future is that it's a huge tent full of lots of different opinions. The overwhelming opinion in the Republican Party is, you know, we stand with Israel and there is much less concern about Palestinians. I've already seen some of the Republican candidates for president come out and say, we're not going to let anyone from Gaza into the country, which isn't even something that anyone has brought up from the administration at this point. But there's a wide range of opinions in the Democratic Party. and it will be interesting to see what it does for a sort of cohesion in the Democratic Party. Getting to the bottom of who's to blame

for the Gaza hospital bombing won't be an easy task. Stephanie Vanderberg covers war crimes and the International Criminal Court in the Hague. So Stephanie, how would ICC prosecutors go about proving what happened? Well, of my experience with other cases where they looked at explosions,

for instance, in Lebanon and in the former Yugoslavia, what you will see is that they tend to have ballistic experts who go on the ground, look for missile fragments, things that could explain what caused the explosion, because that is number one. You have to establish what caused the explosion. Then you can establish and maybe link it to one of the warring parties. Of course, in the situation as it is in Gaza, there are no investigators on the ground at the moment because it's just impossible to get anybody in there to look at things as they happen.

So what you would see is that they are going to look at video images, photographs, and try to geolocate them and use open source intelligence to track directions of missiles, things like that. Right now it's not clear who launched this attack or if it was even an accident. Does that matter when it comes to the ICC? Yes, it does matter because the law states that you cannot deliberately target civilian infrastructure. But if it's not deliberate, if it's a mistake or a rocket gone wrong, then that's more complicated to prove. You could potentially prove that it's reckless or you took an enormous risk by doing this in a very populated area. But if this does turn out to be kind of a rocket gone wrong, then there's a very big chance that the ICC will not pick up this bit of the case.

But of course, establishing the facts is going to be difficult. Israel is not a member of the ICC, right? For the ICC, it in that sense, doesn't matter. They say that its statute grants it jurisdiction over alleged crimes on the Palestinian territory and also over Palestinian citizens who commit crimes on Israeli territory. The problem here is, yes, if Israel doesn't recognize the jurisdiction of the court, it also doesn't want to cooperate with the court in this. So it's very hard for the courts to actually get on the ground and find evidence.

and find things to build a case with. Carmel Crimmons now with the markets, and Carmel, the spiraling situation in the Middle East, has investors staring well clear of risky assets. Yes, escalating tensions in the Middle East and angst over higher bond yields. You remember they mean higher borrowing costs. Have investors ditching shares, raising cash,

and seeking out safe havens like gold. Fed Chair Jerome Powell is speaking later today and that will be a key focus for investors. They're nervous in case he strikes more aggrowing. rest of note on interest rates. Policymakers have hinted that they will pause in hiking rates for the next couple of months, and more investors are betting that a rate cut is a long way off, perhaps sometime in the second half next year or even later. Elon Musk said yesterday he was concerned about the impact of higher interest rates on car buyers after Tesla missed profit

expectations. Netflix, on the other hand, smashed expectations for new subscribers, sending its shares surging on Wednesday. Republican Jim Jordan has lost a second bid for Speaker of the House of Representatives. Jordan said he would keep fighting to secure the majority of votes he needs. With Congress in limbobs, some Republicans are considering a backup plan. They're discussing giving temporary speaker Patrick McHenry the power to conduct legislative business. Russia has detained a US editor working for Radio Free Europe. Al-Sukumacheva holds both US and Russian passport.

She's the second American journalist to be detained in Russia this year. That's it for today's episode. We'll be back on Friday with our daily news show. To make sure you know what's going on in the world, listen in for 10 minutes every weekday. And don't forget to subscribe on your favourite podcast player or download the Reuters app.