Global News Podcast: UN operation in Gaza on verge of collapse

Hello, this is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service with reports and analysis

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I'm Charlotte Gallagher and in the early hours of Tuesday the 17th of October these are our

main stories. The desperate situation facing people fleeing their homes in Gaza. Is there hope

any aid will get through? We have nothing that we need to live says one man. We're living in a dump

and if we move we will die. Iran says the prospect of the war between Hamas and Israel

spreading to other fronts is becoming inevitable and two Swedish people have been shot dead in

Brussels. The gunman is still on the loose. We have the latest from the Belgian capital.

Also in this podcast the US is reeling after a six-year-old boy is stabbed to death

reportedly for being Muslim. It hits home. You don't feel safe now. Someone on Facebook literally

I was going after me right now. Call me a terrorist. And another art gallery in the UK admits to

having lost more than 1,700 items including a piece that's worth more than three and a half million

dollars. But first there were hopes on Monday morning that a temporary ceasefire would allow

the only border crossing between Gaza and Egypt to open which would allow foreign nationals to

leave and humanitarian aid to enter. But so far that has not happened. We'll hear about the

diplomatic negotiations to break the deadlock in a moment. But first the humanitarian situation

in Gaza. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have now fled from the north to the south

and are in urgent need of help. John Donison reports.

Amid the destruction in southern Gaza the homeless and the hungry in their hundreds of

thousands are trying to survive. We have nothing that we need to live says one man

who's fled from the north. We're living in a dump and if we move we will die.

Workers are shifting huge piles of rotting rubbish and with too few toilets

there are fears about the spread of disease. There's food but not enough.

In Canunis Amir is stirring huge pots of soup and rice by the roadside.

Once a town of 400,000 suddenly they're having to provide for more than a million.

All this will feed less than 2000 people says Amir. It's just a fraction of those in need.

There are long queues to get bread but it's being rationed.

We've been waiting here since six in the morning one man tells us just to get food to feed the kids.

We left our homes in the north because we thought there would be aid but where is it he goes on.

Give us electricity, give us water. And all the while the hospitals in the south,

like in the rest of Gaza, are overwhelmed with patients from the old to the very young.

How many days? Seven days? Ten days?

In Rafa a doctor holds a tiny baby in his arms.

Pua al-Bach was born amid the chaos less than a week ago. What kind of life lies ahead of her?

That was John Donison reporting. So is it any clearer if or when this border crossing will open?

Our Middle East correspondent in Jerusalem is Tom Bayman.

No, there were some hopes raised that first thing this morning it might open today.

Not only has that not happened but the fighting has intensified. The Israelis have bombed an

area close to the Rafa crossing and part of the road there is damaged. Now that in itself

may not make a huge amount of difference. They bombed it a couple of times last week and it's

still passable or was still passable at that particular point. But it's obviously not a

very good sign when what the Egyptians are saying is they desperately want the crossing

to open so that they can get that aid into Gaza and they've effectively made that conditional

on them accepting foreign passport holders or Palestinians with foreign passports

to come over to the Egyptian side which many are desperately trying to do and that's why

there are thousands of people gathered at that border. So it's very hard to see that there'll

be a breakthrough in the coming hours but clearly the diplomatic efforts are continuing.

And we've been expecting the Israeli army to go into Gaza. What's the latest on that?

Well there's an absolutely huge force of Israeli military arranged and gathered around the Gaza

perimeter. The sense we had over the weekend on Saturday from the Israeli military was that

you know they released a fairly detailed statement which suggested they were ready.

A bit more work to do on logistics and sort of supplying their forward operating bases

that they were installing in that area there but the word at that point was that it's now a

political decision. So we're waiting and you know it seemed unlikely that anything might happen today

given that Anthony Blinken was in Israel but the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

has invited US President Joe Biden to Israel. Now that seemed a fairly extraordinary sort of

invitation. There has been continuing speculation. We have nothing confirmed at all in the Israeli

press that that could be that offer could be taken up. It seems unlikely I have to say but if

there is any move on that front then obviously it would seem very unlikely a ground invasion

would start. And when you look at some of Israel's previous land invasions in some cases for example

in the last war with Hezbollah in Lebanon I mean it was around three weeks or so of preparations

before the ground troops moved. So we don't know but clearly what the message they're trying to get

out is that they are ready to go. Tom Bateman in Jerusalem. Meanwhile there's been a warning from

Iran about the dangers of any conflict between Israel and Hamas spreading. The warning comes as

violence continues along the Israeli-Lebanese border. The armed movement Hezbollah which is

backed by Iran has been exchanging fire for days with Israeli troops. Our diplomatic editor James

Landale told me more about what the Iranian Foreign Minister said and why it matters.

In recent days Iran has been stepping up its rhetoric trying to warn Israel that if it does

launch a ground offensive there will be consequences. So they've used phrases in the past like well if

Israel goes in no one can guarantee what's going to happen or they said if Israel goes in you know

there's a risk of a huge earthquake. Today Iran's foreign minister Hussein Amir Abdelhalian went much

further and saying that there is now a possibility that the war between Israel and Hamas will spread

to other fronts and that moment is reaching what he calls the unavoidable stage and that time is

running out for political solutions. In other words just again putting more pressure on to Israel

say look if this ground offensive begins then potentially there are consequences and everybody

is inferring from those words that he's talking about Hezbollah. The Iranian-backed militants

based in Lebanon launching some kind of escalated attack on Israel from the north which is something

that everybody is trying to prevent and the Americans are trying to deter. The American

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken back in Israel today after several days of frantic diplomacy

let's hear what he had to say at an appearance alongside the Israeli Defense Minister.

You know our deep commitment to Israel's right indeed its obligation to defend itself and to

defend its people and in that you have you always have the support of the United States.

Interested to hear what you think about that and whether the U.S. diplomatic push is making any

progress. I thought what was fascinating is that those words that Mr Blinken spoke are the only

words he spoke. Normally when he comes to every country he does a press availability and he'll

take two or three questions and say this is to deliver his messages. Today he wanted to say as

little as possible apart from a sort of routine support for Israel so I suspect that things are

moving he doesn't want to say anything publicly about it at the moment that's just my inference

from from what he just said. As of any success so far we haven't seen any border opening we haven't

seen any foreign nationals taken out we haven't seen anything that seems to give greater protection

to the civilians and that's because those are all important issues but the overriding issue

is still this one of trying to prevent this situation escalating and that means not just

sending messages to Iran to try to deter them launching some kind of second front but also

sending messages to Israel saying look the way you attack Hamas in Gaza will have an impact on how

the wider world and particularly in the region will respond and the more aggressive and excessive

you are the more likely it is to trigger some kind of second front. James Landale. Social media has

been inundated with claims many of them false many conspiracy theories and other malicious content

about what's happening in Israel and Gaza. There are questions over whether fake accounts are being

used to manipulate the conversation. The BBC's disinformation and social media correspondent

is Marianna Spring. I'm sure a lot of people have been spotting all kinds of conspiracy theories

disinformation hate on their feeds. When I opened up my TikTok feed last week I was met with a

very distressing video of a young Israeli woman being taken by Hamas militants being put into a

car being held hostage but when I looked at the comments I was quite surprised to see that as

well as some shock there were several people suggesting this woman was not a civilian but

instead a soldier or that this was somehow staged in order to frame Hamas militants and

this was a video that we at the BBC had verified it was very clearly a civilian and there's been

disinformation from everywhere there are other claims seeking to cast doubt on violence happening

in Gaza there was one video that showed a woman a makeup artist applying makeup to people's faces

it was from an old news report from 2017 but the poster is suggesting that somehow people in Gaza

who have been hurt or lost their lives were actually faking their injuries in some way

and who's behind it? There are some more obvious sources of misinformation take for example pop

star Justin Bieber who posted on his Instagram story saying pray for Israel but underneath he

showed a picture of destruction in Gaza by Israeli forces and then you've also got accounts that are

renowned certainly in the world of disinformation for pushing conspiracy theories whether that's

about the war in Ukraine or the pandemic and they've turned their attention to this maybe sharing

footage from other conflicts or sharing video game footage to try and either downplay or exaggerate

violence on the ground but in some cases it's a little bit harder to work out who they are and

where they're based and I looked into several some of them seem to be real young people who were

also sharing videos of football games and other kinds of memes but who seem to believe some of

the disinformation others were accounts that were newly set up sharing quite divisive misleading

content everything from support of Russian president Vladimir Putin and talking about

former US president Donald Trump to then turning their attention to this and those are some of

the clues that an account might be inauthentic if it's newly created and it's sharing divisive

misleading content and ultimately it can be really hard to get to the bottom of whether an

account isn't real or not basically because we rely on the social media companies to share that

information with us disinformation online can really muddy the water and it can make it much

more difficult to work out the truth of what's going on and that's really important because

especially when you're relying on social media for updates it can really make it hard to figure

out what's going on it can make it hard for the international community who are tasked with

providing aid or investigating allegations of war crimes so it's a reminder to just stop and think

before you share that was Marianna spring as we've been hearing hundreds of thousands of

Palestinians have fled northern Gaza after Israel told them to leave ahead of an expected ground

offensive the Israeli military puts the figure at around half a million that have left one of

those is Kamal al-Masha Rawi he spoke to the BBC last week when he was stuck in a basement shelter

with around 65 people and no water in Gaza city now he's in Khan Yunus waiting to cross the border

into Egypt with his family when it opens he's been speaking to Nula McGovern my first plan is to stay

alive with the kids and with the family and just keep them safe we get injured many times and we

face death many many times and then I'm just fine with anything even if I stay in the street in Egypt

because there is no any safer place to go to hopefully they'll get long-term ceasefire agreement

in the next few days and we're gonna be able to go back to Gaza because we have our house it was

partially destroyed by pulling the place the whole building so I wasn't able to take much of my

clothes and things the first thing I took is my passport are you okay yeah we're fine just

what happened I think they've pumped something very close to us are you okay to continue speaking

to me if you need to move just go it's fine I can hear that so yeah I think they just

pumped one of the neighboring houses so when that's happening what's going through your mind

goes through my mind is that there's another one happening yeah so usually it's two or three heads

at a time so when I hear the first one I just make sure to put my hands near my ears

away from the windows and the places where I could get a fragment in my face or hopefully not

I'm struck though that you are smiling that you are laughing a little bit I mean is this

a way of coping it's not a smile because I'm happy it just it's ridiculous you know because

everybody's sitting here has his own own lifestyle which was destroyed in the past eight days every

one of us has his own routine and we're not able to do that anymore to have your life flipped upside

down in one woman and you're not even part of this conflict you literally lose everything

in one second and you're not even part of anything we're just laughing because we feel that this is

I could see your hands over your ears again so you may be hearing that's the airplane getting

close to us so when it gets close to us it's gonna pet so that's why we make sure that we close our

ears we open our mouth because otherwise we're gonna get our ears bleeding from the inside.

Are you able to stay in contact with people I'm also curious about food, water, how are you managing?

Actually I'm using solar energy now we do our best to drink as often as possible

we're running out of food but luckily we're living in a garden early in the morning two of my uncles

went to the city they thought that the owner was giving some aid to people and turned out to be

incorrect on their way back they just went to a few shops and it was all empty and packed with

people they just came back with two pieces of bread for 85 people. That was Kamal al-Masharawi

speaking to Nula McGovern and here's Jackie with some news about another special edition of the

global news podcast. You might have heard the special edition we recorded answering listeners

questions on events in Israel and Gaza and international reaction to them. A lot of you

have since been in touch to ask us to do it again so we will. Send us your questions anything you

want explained and our correspondents will endeavour to provide context and clarity. Please record us

a voice message or simply write your question and email it to globalpodcast at bbc.co.us

Thank you.

Europe is being shaken the words of the French president Emmanuel Macron after two people of

Swedish nationality were shot dead in Brussels. Belgium was hosting Sweden in a Euro 2024 qualifying

match on Monday a match that has now been abandoned the attacker is still at large our

correspondent Sophia Battista is in the Belgian capital. The government opened fire here in central

Brussels at around seven in the evening he had an automatic rifle and he shot dead two people

in the street now that area has now been codoned off by the police. Now a short while ago we were

sent a video of a man who was filming himself on a scooter he's speaking in Arabic and he's saying

that he's killed three people in the name of God. The federal prosecutor here in Brussels

is treating this as a terror attack but the motive of the shooting remains unclear what a few people

are saying is that the two victims were wearing Sweden football shirts and they could have been

football fans as you mentioned there there's a match tonight here in Brussels Belgium against

Sweden that has now been called off and fans are being asked to remain in the stadium as a matter

of safety the government remains at large and the police are still looking for him and that's why

the alert level here in Brussels has been raised to four which is the highest level and it means

the threat could be imminent. A six-year-old boy has been stabbed to death in the US state of Illinois

reportedly for being Muslim his mother was also stabbed but is expected to survive.

The family's landlord has been charged with murder detectives say he was motivated by the

conflict between Israel and Hamas targeting the victims because of their religion. Our North America

editor Sarah Smith reports. President Biden has said he was sickened by the attack that killed

Wadiah Al-Fayyum just weeks after his sixth birthday. He and his mother Hanan Shaheen rented

a floor in Joseph Zuba's house as he attacked them on Saturday he allegedly told them you Muslims

must die before stabbing them with a military-style knife. Wadiah died later in hospital. Mr. Zuba

has been charged with a hate crime and first-degree murder at a memorial for Wadiah Iman Nagretty

a Palestinian mother who lives in the neighborhood described how the attack affected her. It hits home

you don't feel safe now I live in Plainfield for over 20 years you don't feel safe I don't feel safe

someone on Facebook going after me right now call me a terrorist. Wadiah was born in the US

while his mother originally from the West Bank sought asylum in America 12 years ago. Muslim

organizations have warned of a spike in threats and hate calls since last week's deadly Hamas attacks

in Israel. The director of the FBI Christopher Ray said communities had to remain vigilant to

protect against an increased threat of violence against Muslims. There's no question we're seeing

an increase in reported threats and we've got to be on the lookout especially for lone actors who

may take inspiration from recent events to commit violence of their own. FBI director Christopher Ray

ending that report by Sarah Smith. The Russian president Vladimir Putin is traveling to Beijing

for talks with his Chinese counterpart and to take part in Xi Jinping's pet project the Belt and

Road Forum. With the Kremlin ever more isolated on the world stage the Chinese government has

offered Russia significant moral backing refusing to criticize its invasion of Ukraine and saying

it'll boost aid to make up for the economic pain caused by Western imposed sanctions.

Our China correspondent Stephen MacDonald traveled to the border region in northeastern China

to find out if trade between the two countries has really increased that much.

Over the past hundred years China and Russia have been close allies and also bitter enemies

but in recent years Beijing and Moscow have found themselves being frozen out on the world stage

so they've turned to one another for support and in an attempt to build something of an alliance

against the West. To do this Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have declared to their people

that their countries now have a so-called no limits partnership. So if this partnership is real

you'd expect to notice that having an impact in northeastern China's Heilongjiang province

which borders Russia and where some places have been under both Chinese and Russian control

the different points. Russia and China have a strong friendship. Putin is a responsible leader

a man with a sense of justice. Many local tourists have a good word to say about Russia's leader.

Putin is a man with iron fists he's tough and tough is good.

I asked if this man knew why Russia's leader was at war with Ukraine.

Ordinary people like us shouldn't comment on that.

Leaving Harbin and heading right up to the border you reach the point where

Heilongjiang province is separated from Russia by a river. Here according to China's state media

the small city of Heihe has experienced a significant recent increase in trade

when we visit this doesn't seem to be as healthy as has been claimed.

Standing on the cold windy riverbank in Heihe

underneath a newly built flagpole with the Chinese flag flying you can see across the water

and straight into Russia. A nearby tour boat is playing some music in an attempt to attract

customers but at the moment there aren't any and it's just sitting still. Russia is so close you

could swim across the water to the blocks of flats where Russian people are living

and so you'd think this would be the obvious place to build trade between the two countries

but when you speak to business people on this side of the border

many are saying that actually economic activity between the two communities hasn't been that great

lately. Business isn't good there aren't enough tourists. A woman now selling her goods out of

the back of a car after the shopping centre where she had a stall closed because of a lack of customers

says trade has been flat for years but even worse recently.

After Covid the borders haven't been open for long there aren't enough Russians coming across

they are poor and they are at war. We did however find one group of people who were upbeat about

Russia-China trade in Heihe the truck drivers waiting to enter the riverboat port. I'm carrying

soybeans wheat and barley all from Russia and it's busier than before. I'm transporting sand

and coal from Russia others are moving containers with food. China has been helping out an increasingly

isolated Kremlin by piping more Russian natural gas into Heilongjiang and there are great

expectations regarding the potential for cooperation in this region but realistically

economic links have a long way to go for China's trade with Russia to match what it currently has

with many other countries. Stephen MacDonald when the British Museum in London was forced to admit

earlier this year that around 2000 items had been stolen from its storerooms many people were shocked

and the story made headlines worldwide. Now Glasgow Life which runs museums in that city

has revealed it's lost 1,750 items including Le Bourgeois de Calais a Rodin sculpture worth

almost four million dollars. Jerome Leblay is the director of the Rodin committee which publicizes

and catalogues the sculptor's work. He's been speaking to Sarah Montague. Actually I found

the letter from the Glasgow Museum from the 1980s saying that the world was unlocated the world was

actually displayed after the Second World War repatinent so they changed the color they applied

bronze paint on it and then it was damaged and destroyed. So one of my colleagues at the Rodin

Museum 10 years ago was in contact with the Glasgow Museum and they said it was destroyed.

Now let's just be clear what we're talking about here this is one of the plaster moulds.

So just to make the things correctly the bronze which is in front of the parliament in London

is a bronze version of the group of six characters so the burgers of Calais and Rodin decided in his

mind actually the group was supposed to be like a chain of walking men not a group together

so every character was important as a single character the one in Glasgow is just one character.

So what do you think about the fact that as you understand it it has been destroyed Glasgow I think

still just saying it's unlocated. I'm not familiar with the warehouses of Glasgow but the fact is

that it's two meter high but I would say that there is a second plaster which is of another

subject called Saint John the Baptist which has been purchased in 1901 from Rodin at the same time

has the genre. This plaster Saint John the Baptist was also exhibited in 1949 and is currently

missing and according to the books of the Rodin Museum destroyed. What do you think of that because

a lot of people might think it's strange to understand how that can happen. First of all

vision of value of plasters and of works of art generally speaking have changed over time.

Plaster as a medium itself was considered for centuries has a poor medium and has a kind of

lower medium. So France won't be any better at looking after its artwork. No we have destroyed

or lost a lot of plasters over the years. Should we be just a lot more relaxed about this after

the what happened at the British Museum. There will be some people going can't we look after work

better. I would say considering that it happens almost 70 years ago yes we should be more relaxed

but the fact that generally speaking there are hundreds of thousands of works of art in museums

every work every item is important for history. Human mistake happens but we have to be more and

more careful. Well Glasgow Life have told the BBC they refuted the allegation that Saint John

de Baptiste was destroyed and said they have bits of it stored in pieces. To Japan where an

airline had to lay on an extra plane because there were too many sumo wrestlers on a flight

Iona Hampson has more. On average sumo wrestlers weigh about 120 kilograms almost double the

weight of an average person in Japan. So there was concern when staff at Japan Airlines saw a group

of 27 professional sumo wrestlers on the passenger list of one of its planes including some of the

country's heaviest men. The main worry was the fuel capacity needed to get the athletes to a sports

festival from Tokyo to the southern island of Amamiishima via Osaka. As the airport they were

flying into was very small the airline said it had to take the extremely unusual step of putting

on an extra plane to ease the load. Unlike other sports like wrestling and boxing there are no

weight divisions for sumo wrestling. The heavier you are the more force an opponent has to exert

to get you moving and push you out of the ring. The heaviest sumo wrestler of all time was Russian

born Aurora who retired in 2018. At his peak he weighed over 292 kilograms. Iona Hampson

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 the topics covered in it you can send us an email.

The address is globalpodcastatbbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X formerly known as Twitter

at Global NewsPod. This edition was mixed by Caroline Driscoll and the producer was Emma Joseph.

The edition is Karen Martin and I'm Charlotte Gallagher. Until next time, goodbye.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.