Ceasefire starts as Gaza returns begin and aid poised (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: and it's entitled the ceasefire agreement goes into effect at 12 o'clock so 20 minutes ago since 12 o'clock it says the IDF troops began positioning themselves along the updated deployment lines in preparation for the ceasefire agreement and the return of hostages the IDF troops in the southern command are deployed in the area and will continue to remove any immediate threat so that sounds like official confirmation Hugo from the IDF and we have been hearing reports haven't we for the past two days that Hamas has already started gathering the hostages getting ready for the handover and looking for the remains although it's been made clear that they may not be able to retrieve the remains of the 28 who either died in captivity or were killed during the events of October the 7th

[00:01:03] Speaker 2: exactly so we're likely to see now the preparations for the release of the of the hostages who remain in captivity in Gaza 48 hostages are still there 20 of these these hostages are believed to remain alive and they are expected to be released if not all together very you know in the same moment but it also seems that Hamas needs a little bit of time to locate the bodies of some of the hostages who've been killed in captivity it says that it doesn't have the precise location of all bodies so it is going to be obviously a very difficult moment for some of those families it will be a moment for happiness for the families of the hostages who will be returning home but for some of the families their wait will continue

[00:01:56] Speaker 1: so it's Hugo Bechaga and I spoke to him about an hour ago we're going to keep an eye on all of the latest but let's also look ahead a bit we can join Menachem Klein who is emeritus professor of politics at political science at Bar-Ilan university he's also an expert in Israeli Palestinian negotiations and helped in the past advising previous Israeli delegations to peace talks but I'm glad thank you very much for joining us on BBC News

[00:02:28] Speaker 3: thank you for having me

[00:02:30] Speaker 1: when you look at the details of this first phase of the peace plan how does it look to you does it

[00:02:38] Speaker 3: look set for success there is a chance of success because there is a supervision and guarantee supplied to Hamas by the mediators in particular the United States in my view Netanyahu has an interest to stop the plan after getting back the hostages and the bodies the very fact that the right-wing ministers that voted against the deal stay in the cabinet shows I conclude from it that Netanyahu promised them that he will do his best in order to end the implementation of the plan after the first stage because Netanyahu and the right-wing face a problem they promise total victory and they promise also that the Israel is just one inch before achieving its absolute victory over Hamas now the plan in the plan Hamas stays Hamas is not vanished Hamas is will not govern Gaza but still exists and if Hamas decide to go into politics to refresh and reframe its political plan from 2017 it can achieve much support in

[00:04:24] Speaker 1: the Palestinian public opinion yes and I should mention that as we're speaking the prime minister there's a he's put out about pre-recorded statement now speaking in Hebrew about the process so far the agreement by the Israeli cabinet and looking ahead we're going to get a translation of that shortly so let's let's continue to discuss you mentioned the Israeli public as you know the Israeli public their view of peacemaking of relations with the Palestinians has changed and hardened over the years now you have president Trump saying to the Israeli public he's going to work with them to try to achieve peace one of the relatives of one of the hostages said to me that he thought president Trump could provide some leadership going forward

[00:05:17] Speaker 3: how do you see that we have a divided society one part of the Israeli society demonstrates in favor of having a deal and the demonstrations took place over two years the Israeli government Netanyahu in particular refused to make a deal unless he was imposed to agree by Trump this deal could have been and in my view should have been implemented and agreed many months ago but then the United States was unwilling to impose it on on Netanyahu so the other part of the Israeli society resisted the proposals the deals that were on the table now those who support the government those in the right wing have a cognitive dissonance the cognitive dissonance between seeing the hostages back at home ending the war the Israeli army is fatigued but the price of releasing many Palestinian prisoners and not achieving the war goals the war goals that the right wing believed in and consumed what Netanyahu told them that we are one inch ahead of achieving a total victory and and deleting Hamas finishing Hamas forever this is unachievable this cannot be achieved and this is not included in the in Trump's plan moreover Hamas stays and no Israeli a civil administration will manage civil affairs in Gaza Strip it will be an international force international task force and international army will be deployed in in Gaza Strip this this never happened in the West Bank even not in Oslo agreement the the very fact that Trump's plan mentions the the option of having a Palestinian state sometime in the far future is also a a new component in in the Middle East politics this was not included in Oslo agreement this is against Netanyahu's life mission

[00:08:10] Speaker 1: yes as you know in the 20-point plan it refers to a political horizon without mentioning the controversial issue of a Palestinian state which as you mentioned is rejected by the current Israeli leadership there is of course an alternative scenario that some of the opposition parties have said they will provide a safety net to Prime Minister Netanyahu if his far right-wing allies do pull out and of course the country is heading to elections at some point in the next in the next year is that possible that a new leadership will emerge with or without Prime Minister Netanyahu

[00:08:49] Speaker 3: maybe but the politics will remain almost the same the style will be different the personalities will are different but the policies are very very similar we don't have a real opposition right now the political imagination of the Israeli opposition the Jewish opposition I must say is very very limited they they lack political imagination and I do think that it's the the mission of the international community and and the peace lovers Israeli civil society members to influence on the opposition to go ahead and have a vision they don't have their own vision they buy what Netanyahu put forward as the Israeli government vision

[00:09:55] Speaker 1: so do you do you see you don't seem to find any cause for optimism at a time when President Trump is hailing peace in the Middle East where you've got a coalition of actors working together in unprecedented ways to push this forward

[00:10:15] Speaker 3: I see some optimism in the very fact that this Israeli government this Israeli administration failed what on whatever it wanted to achieve it put forward unachievable war goals and failed to achieve them Netanyahu ordered to attack Qatar and and made all Arab countries and Turkey to turn against him and put pressure on on Trump to stabilize the the region by imposing a deal on Netanyahu the attack on Qatar signaled to Turkey to Jordan to Egypt that they are also exposed to Israeli aggression so Trump was called in by his allies and it was and this shows that the main partnership is between Qatar and United States not between Israel and United States so what Netanyahu is very proud of being the his own league leader international politics shows that this is not true he failed he failed to block the deal and he failed President Trump from putting forward a plan that the end of the road far and there is a Palestinian state it is against Netanyahu's vision

[00:11:51] Speaker 1: Menachem Klein thank you very much Professor of Political Science at Bar-Ilan University thank you very much for joining with your reflections founded in your law as an advisor to former Israeli delegations so as you can see still a lot of great deal of skepticism about the long-term future of President Trump's 20-point peace plan which was of course drawn up but with the cooperation the input the advice of many of the Arab states across the region who will be expected President Trump spoke about that that they would put money in to begin to redevelop Gaza but look at some of these live pictures now we're getting from the Gaza Strip now that the ceasefire is in force Israeli forces have pulled back to the agreed lines and there's been warnings about which routes that Palestinians can use if they want to go north some of them going along the main Al Rashid coastline leaving the south where they have been living in tents displaced time and again many are now finally moving north yesterday when they tried they were pushed back now with the ceasefire they can move along that road and the reports that we're getting already going to you it's hard to say their homes what's left of their homes in Gaza City these are bittersweet moments they feel at last they don't have to live in a tent but when they go back to their homes it is just the rubble but so many say to us they prefer to be in a tent next to their rubble than in a part of Gaza where they don't have access to resources and where they really feel they can't they find it very very difficult to provide for themselves these are the kind of images we're going to continue to see as this first phase of the peace plan unfolds and what are we watching for most of all is that now about 70 hours to go before the last of the hostages according to this plan 20 alive the remains of as many possible that can be retrieved 28 will be returned to their families and the hundreds of Palestinian prisoners also reunited with their loved ones this is a very political a moment very secure a lot of us intense security but also a very human moment great overwhelming human emotion we're going to keep an eye on all

[00:14:15] Speaker 4: the developments of back to you Katherine in London and as Liz was saying that this is really overwhelming a huge moment we've waited for two years to get here previous ceasefire agreements falling to the wayside that we had had previous hostage releases and that's one aspect of the ceasefire agreement but what we see right now is that coastal road in central Gaza as Palestinians are now moving as the airstrikes have now ceased for the past hour and 20 minutes they're now moving back to the north the north which is reduced to rubble as Liz was saying so much destruction across Gaza so little left and yet people want to return to where their homes once stood now just some updates for you the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the Israeli forces will remain in Gaza and that is in his words to exert pressure on Hamas until the group disarms Netanyahu also said that all the hostages will return in the coming days so our understanding is this initial part of this ceasefire agreement part of the wider peace deal plan in which Donald Trump has been instrumental on pushing forward the initial phase is the ceasefire which has been holding now for the past hour and 20 minutes enabling Palestinians to move back to their homes or what is left of their homes and that will facilitate Hamas to be able to bring the hostages the remaining Israeli hostages who are still alive to bring them to to places of safety where they can be returned and of course that means as part of this initial phase Israeli troops the IDF will be moving back to an agreed line they will still be in Gaza they will still be within just over half of the area of Gaza so 53 percent but they will be moving back from these types of areas but as we hear Netanyahu saying that the forces will remain in Gaza in order to exert pressure on Hamas until the group disarms now due to the nature of the peace deal itself the 20 points outlined by Donald Trump that he was instrumental in pushing forward it is very vague in terms of what disarmament actually means for Hamas because they have consistently said that they refuse to disarm and that is exactly what the Israeli government want so with the ambiguities and the complexities of this plan I caught up a little bit earlier with our international editor Jeremy Bowen

[00:17:43] Speaker 5: well first of all the ceasefire clearly hasn't quite started yet I think that's absolutely the case whatever people are saying and maybe the next 24 hours or so that is going to happen that they will stop those strikes I think the IDF is pulling back and that's probably why they're continuing them in terms of this all goes back to the Trump 20 point plan that was that he put out a week or two ago and the thing about it is that if you look at it there is very little detail there isn't just a lack of detail there's ambiguity there's there's some things that even seem quite contradictory inside it so the really big diplomatic challenge now that they've done the first phase or agreed to that and it's going to unfold over the next couple of days it seems pretty certain is is filling in all of those gaps and that is the difficult stuff because ambiguity is something that works quite well where you're trying to get people to agree but when it comes to actually implementing you need hard uh deals and that's a really important point because we are quite

[00:18:49] Speaker 4: unclear when it comes to a timeline for a transfer of authority how the governance mechanism will even work across Gaza who is even involved in that Jeremy well it hasn't been worked out

[00:19:03] Speaker 5: uh in the 20 point plan there are various aspirational things and there is they've said that here's the structure there'll be this councillor piece at the top uh Donald Trump will be the chair uh Tony Blair is going to be involved as well um and then there's going to be some kind of technocratic institution and there will be some kind of international force it's very vague there have to be a lot of very um hard details worked out and and that's the tough thing uh and that things have to happen too like a UN Security Council resolution to authorize the presence of these foreign troops there I don't think that um Arab or Muslim countries are going to really want to get involved in something that legally would be an illegal operation lacking that kind of legitimacy that you get from a Security Council resolution I think they could get the resolution but it takes time and with the difficulties in Gaza and the complexity of things maybe they don't have indefinite amounts of time and on that point of course aid getting in

[00:20:11] Speaker 4: is absolutely critical in that first stage uh given the the famine given the humanitarian uh issues there the acute malnutrition but what about the rebuilding because we see the absolute devastation across Gaza is there even any idea of who will be undertaking that the contracts that potentially will be implemented to to get Gaza rebuilt we're still not even clear on that are

[00:20:37] Speaker 5: we Jeremy no that's a long way off that's a long way off uh there's there's you know hundreds of thousands of tons of rubble apart from anything else I think that that will have to wait quite a while because first of all what they need to do is to get some stability for more than two million people almost all of whom have been displaced on multiple occasions who it was already with the entire Gaza Strip uh which is a tiny piece of land was already one of the most densely populated places in the world and now more than two million people have been pushed into a fraction of it by the IDF by the Israeli military so question mark how to what extent will they be allowed to go back to where they came from what about what happens in the north of Gaza Israel seems to want to stay in that particular area there's pressure inside the Israeli cabinet for uh permission to allow Jews to settle there and I don't think that's going to be happening certainly not as yet and they're very disappointed that it's not but it's not off the agenda so there are lots of things in the future in the immediate future that we don't know about and the challenge is going to be to try and deal with some of these ambiguities and uncertainties and come up with a tangible diplomatic agreement which you know Trump is not a details man he's been a bulldozer pushing this through getting to the detail will take a sustained diplomatic effort and agreements it's not something that necessarily can be imposed in the same way that he actually said with you know after the 9th of September attacks on on Doha on the Hamas leadership in Doha by the Israelis that's that clearly was uh Netanyahu overplaying his hand massively and the consequences that he's dealing with now is that Trump has gone in there because attacking Qatar is bad for America Trump has gone in there and he's grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and said Israel is going to the table and you're going to stay there until there is a deal based on my 20 points now that has happened but what happens next the detailed stuff very difficult to achieve

[00:22:51] Speaker 4: Jeremy Bowen there our international editor just outlining the the amount of work that still needs to be done and when we had that conversation it was a few hours ago Jeremy was just emphasizing that the ceasefire hadn't been implemented and that kind of gives you an idea of the level of confusion and the nuance and the vagueness of this plan because our understanding had been that once the Israeli cabinet had ratified the plan then the ceasefire would come into force and yet that happened last night uh we heard the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu just after midnight BST so uh two o'clock in the morning local time describing it as a momentous development the confirmation coming through that both that the Israel and Hamas had agreed that ceasefire and hostage release deal after the Israeli cabinet had ratified and voted through that deal and yet overnight we still and into the early hours of this morning we still saw sporadic air strikes into Gaza now we know that the IDF have said that that ceasefire is now implemented we're now an hour and a half into it so it seems to be holding and that's why we are now seeing thousands of people make their way along this coastal path along this what was once a road in Gaza all going to the north where huge swathes of Gaza has been reduced to rubble and yet they still want to return to the places where their homes once stood so that confusion around the timing of the ceasefire we now know that it is now implemented and it is now holding uh we also know that Israeli troops have moved to the agreed line which means that they are still occupying Gaza they're still within 53 percent of the Gaza Strip but they've moved back somewhat now and we also know that U.S. the U.S. has moved around 200 troops to Israel and that's in order to help coordinate this whole operation they themselves the U.S. troops will not be entering into Gaza itself it's the aid organizations that are organizing and will be moving aid in aid has been approved to go into Gaza it's desperately needed uh the UN UNRWA was saying they've got 172,000 tons of aid ready to get into Gaza aid that will sustain Gaza the whole of Gaza for the next three months it's not just food but also medical supplies also tents but we don't yet know if that aid is already going through so a lot of unknown still but that aid desperately needed to get into Gaza and of course the other aspect of this ceasefire deal this initial part of the overall peace plan that Donald Trump has been instrumental in getting over the line is the release of the hostages we know that Hamas has time to gather the hostages to get them to the aid organization so that they will be then finally returned to their loved ones and that's the living and the remains of the deceased of whose whereabouts Hamas know about but this when that will happen and where that will happen is still unclear so much is still unknown and that's not even talking about the next stages of what happens with the governance of Gaza and the rebuilding of Gaza now a little earlier on my colleague from Radio 4 Amal Rajan was able to speak to the UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher and he began by asking him what Tom Fletcher was hearing from his colleagues on the ground in Gaza itself

[00:27:07] Speaker 6: I'm in very close touch with our teams inside Gaza but also with survivors in Niros Kibbutz and and civilians in Gaza as well they have long waited and hoped for this moment and we've worked hard to get here it must not be a false dawn we need to ensure that President Trump's plan isn't blocked by hardliners on either side we're hearing there have been strikes overnight I think Jeremy Bowen was reporting that about an hour ago as well today is crucial we need the guns to go silent and we need this ceasefire to be implemented and as far as you understand Tom who is now responsible for aid in Gaza so the UN has a plan there's been unimaginable suffering in Gaza tens of thousands killed including over 18,000 children that's a child killed on average every hour for two years and this agreement's a real breakthrough but the real breakthrough will be when the hostages are home when children are fed when they can sleep without terror under a roof when they're not bombed and maimed when they can be operated on with anaesthetics when they can go back to school when families are reunited again and so we will deliver that plan we've got a 60-day plan to get that aid in to save lives at huge huge scale we have fought and beaten famines before and we will do it again

[00:28:22] Speaker 7: this time very very keen to talk about the specifics of that plan in just a moment I've got one other practical question if I may before we get there which is how confident are you that the restrictions previously placed on aid deliveries by Israel who say that those deliveries have been hijacked or vandalized that those restrictions will now be lifted so that's the big question

[00:28:42] Speaker 6: for the coming hours and days and obviously we're in very close touch with the Israeli authorities in country to make sure that those impediments those obstacles are now removed we need all the crossings open we need safe routes for our convoys we need our people protected hundreds of my colleagues have been killed in the last two years we need the removal of red tape and physical barriers we need the power back on to our bakeries our hospitals our water stations it's a massive massive job ahead we need access for our NGO colleagues and partners as well and as you say we need the international media to get back in and tell the world what is happening and hold us to account for saving lives well let's go through some of your plans for the coming

[00:29:26] Speaker 7: weeks and months then let's do this in stages if we can first of all we'll get to the health system which has been decimated and water and sanitation but first of all just on food I think you're understanding if I'm correct me if I'm wrong but there is now a significant famine and acute malnutrition across the 2.1 million people of Gaza what are your plans for increasing food

[00:29:47] Speaker 6: deliveries immediately so that's objective number one we've got to get high nutrition food in we've got to get hundreds of truckloads convoy we need to overwhelm Gaza with food and generosity and aid and help right now we need to get food to two million people across the strip in every part of Gaza north and south and we have those supplies pre-positioned we've got 172,000 metric tons of food medicine and tents all cleared ready to go in the teams are on standby at the crossings the trucks are ready to roll and we'll use our community networks our expertise our experience to get that food where it is most needed what are your plans when it comes to the health system it's a massive massive challenge I saw for myself when I visited in in January the scale of destruction of the hospitals and of the medical sector and of course it's got even worse since then so we've got to rebuild those hospitals we've got to get the essential anesthetics in painkillers in we've got to ensure that full medical supplies are flowing but also medical expertise because many of those working nurses and doctors in that sector have also been killed it's a massive massive task ahead that has to run alongside that effort to feed everyone in Gaza and presumably

[00:31:06] Speaker 7: one of the most urgent tasks concerns water and sanitation we need to get water to 1.4 million

[00:31:13] Speaker 6: people as part of this plan we also need to help people prepare for the winter ahead it's getting much colder already and so we're looking to get thousands of tents into Gaza in the coming days and weeks to give them that shelter but also to give them the means to start to go back and begin to rebuild their lives we also want to get the kids back to school so we have a plan to get 700,000 school-aged kids back into temporary classrooms at least and supplied with the books and the pens

[00:31:44] Speaker 7: and pencils to begin studying again. To what extent can you just explain your the principles you apply to the extent to which Tom you will work with Hamas who remain in place who've not been completely disarmed to get that delivery to get those health services to get the water and sanitation through what's your principled position in terms of what you'll do with a group which Israel says still needs to be disarmed urgently. So our major priority is to get that aid to

[00:32:10] Speaker 6: civilians where it's most needed and here in Gaza as everywhere we have to work in a neutral impartial independent principled way now everywhere we work and you know I've been on the phone today to colleagues in Sudan who are getting past armed groups in Sudan we always have to negotiate access with whoever is on the ground but we shouldn't have to ask to get to civilians we'll work with everyone we need to work with to get past the blockages whether those are on the border or whether those are the armed groups inside Gaza and reach the communities of the mums and dads and kids the families who need the support right now and can't wait. This is obviously an extremely

[00:32:47] Speaker 7: precarious fast-changing situation we're very grateful for your time speaking to us Tom what's your biggest concern about what could go wrong in the coming days?

[00:32:56] Speaker 6: So many things can go wrong you know the devil's in the detail of this I think President Trump deserves real credit for having got us to this point and having set up this framework for a ceasefire and potential peace now we have to get the details right we've got to move on from this vicious cycle of cruelty and terror and revenge and complicity indifference and inhumanity and then we have to rebuild Gaza and beyond that somehow start to rebuild trust and hope between Israelis and Palestinians and that's going to be a really really long hard process we've got to rebuild confidence in international law that's been so corroded by this war we've got to have patience and we've got to have massive generosity in the time ahead and hope that people who've been moved by what they've seen in Gaza will now be moved to be generous we're only 25 funded on our appeal so please you know pick up the phone get online visit crisisrelief.un.org call your MP and let's flood Gaza with aid. So Tom Fletcher there the UN

[00:34:00] Speaker 4: humanitarian chief outlining the enormous job it will be to to bring some kind of normality back to Gaza given the level of destruction after two years of airstrikes of bombardment uh as we continue to monitor Palestinians making their way to the north of the country some parts of which the worst destructed moving back to what is left of their homes most of which are in rubble so a massive massive job but that initial phase critical in in having the airstrikes stop and being able to bring in the bring out the Israeli hostages who have been held in captivity for these past two years now we heard Israel's leader Benjamin Netanyahu just confirm a little bit earlier on that 20 hostages remain alive in Gaza sadly 28 are deceased so the hope is that those 20 hostages will be released now that this first phase of the ceasefire part of the overall peace plan looks like is it's holding looks like it's being implemented uh Hamas has now 72 hours in which to release those hostages who are still alive and bring the remains of the deceased to a place to place of safety where they can then be brought out of Gaza and brought back to their loved ones the understanding is there are a number of the remains of the deceased where Hamas is still yet to to find the locations of which it's feared that some remain underneath the rubble in the buildings destroyed in Gaza but when specifically that's going to happen we still don't know because as I keep reiterating there is still so much vagueness in this plan there is still so much that needs to be really ironed out but the understanding is that Hamas has 72 hours in which the hostages have to be released and then Benjamin Netanyahu saying that he hopes that Israel can then go on to mark a day of joy from nightfall on Monday if the hostages return so many ifs there are still so many ifs but as we creep up to the second hour of this ceasefire this first phase seems to be holding now my colleague Liz Doucette who is in the region she was able to speak to Yehuda Cohen Yehuda is the father of Nimrod Cohen and Nimrod was taken hostage by Hamas after the October the 7th attacks is still being held in Gaza it's hopeful Yehuda that Nimrod will be released within this 72 hour window he explained to Liz just how he felt about the efforts to bring his son to bring Nimrod home

[00:37:28] Speaker 8: it's gonna take a few days as you said ceasefire gonna start 12 o'clock local time so we're counting 72 hours three days and we know Hamas will push the limit let us stall another few days but feelings are we are getting finally to the end getting finally to the end uh yeah thanks to President Donald Trump he did it for some other reason but he did it at last forcing Netanyahu to take the plan go to a ceasefire and release the Israelis not the American the Israeli hostages Israeli soldiers like my son so we're looking forward mixed feelings along with happiness is the moment we will meet our son Nimrod in what condition physically mentally psychological condition we will meet him what needs to be done to re-elevate him it's going to take time and of course looking beyond beyond Nimrod beyond our family looking at our country there's a lot to do to fix our country got to start with this person called Netanyahu being dragged out of any power on Israel government or any decision he's a danger to Israel well it's not just a warning it's a fact he had the one of the biggest contribution to the event of the 7th of October this is the person and yeah I'm concentrating on Netanyahu not on Nimrod but we have to understand the source of the problem he is the one who made Hamas get the capabilities of launching this heinous attack on the 7th of October he was the one that used this attack to prolong his position as a prime minister conducting an endless war sacrificing Israeli soldiers sacrificing hostages who he is the one responsible for them being taken at least 42 hostages were murdered during captivity because of his position sustaining his position games so we have to remember that and we have to make sure this will never happen again

[00:39:57] Speaker 1: yeah and as you know Yehuda he constantly said that he had two war aims one was to destroy Hamas the second was to bring the hostages home he kept saying and for a while President Trump agreed with him that military pressure would work but do you think without this huge intervention by President Trump this this day that you're now hope there you're

[00:40:21] Speaker 8: now just waiting for would never have happened yeah absolutely yes because first of all regarding Netanyahu's announcement and I always said that Netanyahu before he opened his mouth is lying okay his target was his securing his position as a prime minister escaping his criminal trial he's on here in Israel that's his only purpose and I'm saying it as one who looked him in the eye and saw the lies behind his eyes I was meeting him not one one by one but I was meeting him several times last time I was about two and a half months ago when he was in Washington in a reception in the Blair house promising us that the first thing we'll do after the partial deal which never came through we will talk about releasing all the rest of the hostages okay sitting in front of you and lying brute force this is Netanyahu regarding Trump and of course I can't say any bad word about Trump right now because he forced Netanyahu to go for the deal but we know that Trump was working from his own interests right now you know you you're you are going to give the report of in one hour they're going to be a decision who will get the Nobel Peace Prize and he is looking for that it's not a coincidence that everything is closing up towards the 10th of September in that in that angle we have to remember the pressure on Trump from Arab countries especially after the stupid attack on Doha Netanyahu conducted we have to remember the European declaration including the UK including Australia Canada France etc regarding recognition of Palestinian state this is a full collaboration with modern Arab countries that kind of closed everything that Trump has to decide if he's only supporting Netanyahu not Israel only supporting Netanyahu and going again against the rest of the world and even you know inside US public opinion even the MAGA people the clear Trump supporters were starting losing patience of how Netanyahu is kind of controlling

[00:42:39] Speaker 4: Trump that was the voice of Yehuda Cohen his son Nimrod Nimrod Cohen who has been held by Hamas in Gaza since October the 7th understandably upset throwing accusations at Benjamin Netanyahu saying that this military offensive against Gaza against Hamas was purely to keep Benjamin Netanyahu in power it's an accusation we do hear a lot it's an accusation that of course Benjamin Netanyahu would dispute but it's understandable that Yehuda Cohen is upset and is awaiting the release of his son two years on since he was taken hostage in the Hamas attacks on October the 7th now within the past five minutes or so Benjamin Netanyahu has said he's confirmed that 20 hostages remain alive in Gaza 48 are deceased and that's the next part of this deal that Donald Trump has been very forceful with really pushed for the first part the ceasefire the release of the hostages the withdrawal of Israeli troops to an agreed position still within Gaza still occupying just over half of this strip but moving back so that Hamas can now so that Hamas can now bring the hostages out in return 1,700 Palestinians will be released those held in Israeli prisons so incredibly complicated a lot of moving parts but as we see so far this first part we're into just coming up to full two hours of the ceasefire it is holding and you've got tens of thousands of people making the long journey back to what remains of their homes now we know that when this deal was initially announced by Donald Trump there was a welcome reception from the international community including the UK government and a little bit earlier the UK foreign secretary Yvette Cooper spoke to my colleague on BBC Breakfast Naga Manchetti

[00:45:20] Speaker 9: well we're hoping that this will be in place imminently the there were discussions about the timing our view is that it should be brought in straight away we we just need a desperately need the end complete end to all of the fighting alongside the release of hostages and the restoration of desperately needed aid we're already working there's already work underway to get start getting the aid back in place so we need all of the components of this ceasefire agreement this first phase of the US peace initiative have to be in place as rapidly as possible implemented as swiftly as possible we've had two years of unimaginable suffering and it's extremely important that this is a moment of peace not just a moment of hope

[00:46:08] Speaker 10: what do you understand of the deal just in terms of the reporting we understand that one report said that once the deal had been signed or the peace plan was in place the ceasefire plan was in place within 24 hours this ceasefire would take come into force another is saying that it would immediately come into force are you any clearer as to what exactly is the case

[00:46:36] Speaker 9: well we were expecting it to come in within 24 hours but our view continues to be we want it in place immediately as rapidly as possible and we hope that it will be brought in as soon as is possible but i think you could see and we've seen some of the images both from the streets of israel and the streets of gaza the the desperate need to celebrate that people have after such a long time of suffering where you've got the pain of hostage families but also the pain of families across gaza who have endured the humanitarian crisis for all of this time we have to have an end to this this provides a huge moment to be able to do so it's a tribute not just to the u.s leadership but also to qatar turkey egypt who've been in the negotiations and all of the countries including the uk have been working to support this and also to make sure it can be implemented going forward and that's why i'm in paris today indeed it leads very nicely into

[00:47:35] Speaker 10: what you are doing in paris what involvement is our european countries the uk going to have with this ceasefire agreement

[00:47:47] Speaker 9: well the uk has been one of very many countries that's been contributing to this peace process we've been putting forward proposals over the last few months we've been involved in many of the discussions to support president trump's initiative and we will continue to do so so the discussions we had with last night were also with other countries like jordan and egypt on what we need to do now to get the humanitarian aid in as fast as possible we need u.n agencies but also other agencies that have experience on the ground to be able to get that aid rapidly in place we talked to about the need to restore medical facilities hospital services basic health services in gaza as well and we talked about the longer term issues around the reconstruction of gaza and how countries can work together how we can raise the finance to invest in gaza's reconstruction for the future so a range of different things we need all countries to pull together i have a real sense at the moment and i've had this for some time that there is a sense of the whole world wanting to come together to support a just and lasting peace in the middle east and that means security for palestinians and israelis alike what um involvement do you think

[00:49:03] Speaker 10: benjamin netanyahu is willing to accept from european countries in an interview about five days ago on euro news um he said europe has basically caved into palestinian terrorism and radical islamist minorities europe has essentially become irrelevant in ceasefire plans because this is phase one there will be phase two

[00:49:26] Speaker 9: there will of course there are two different phases as part of the 20-point plan that president trump published and as i said a lot of countries including the uk have contributed to that process and to the plan to the proposals that are included and we will also continue to work together of course that this is going to involve that partnership and of course this is going to involve that partnership but of course this is going to involve uh different decisions along the way and of course look we have had many disagreements with the israeli prime minister on exactly the points that you were referring to we disagree on that but the point now is that we need countries coming together to make peace a reality and to actually make it happen because this is still a fragile process but it's one that there is huge momentum behind and huge commitment to

[00:50:18] Speaker 10: so we have to make it work do you believe that once israel receives the hostages it will stick

[00:50:25] Speaker 9: to the ceasefire well there's huge commitment from all sides to make sure that that happens that's what you've heard from the us their commitment to making sure that this agreement is maintained we saw the israeli cabinet has accepted the uh the full details of the first phase of the agreement and they have also signed up to president trump's 20-point plan so it's immensely important that of course they remain committed to that it's also immensely important urgently that hamas release the hostages and that there is no role for hamas in the future governance of gaza or palestine we've made clear that and it's also part of president trump's 20 point plan and so look a lot of work still to do but huge commitment to making that happen

[00:51:13] Speaker 10: has there been um any discussion of european or british troops um military involved in this

[00:51:21] Speaker 9: ceasefire plan that's not our plan there's no plans to do that but there is a an immediate proposal for the us to lead what is effectively like a monitoring process to make sure that this has with hostage release and also making sure that this getting the the aid in place but they have also made very clear that they expect the the troops on the ground to be provided by neighboring states and that is something that we do expect to happen and there are those international discussions about some of those neighboring countries and others contributing to this international security force this stabilization force to make sure that peace can be implemented the uk will be contributing of course in different ways one of the things that we'll be doing is working closely with egypt for example even next week we have meetings on how we can get private finance to go into gaza to help invest in the future

[00:52:23] Speaker 4: yvette cooper there the uk foreign secretary speaking to my colleague nagan manchesi and that was much earlier on in the day where there was still a little bit of confusion as to when the ceasefire would be implemented so the idea was the understanding initially was as we heard miss cooper there say that it would be pretty much soon after the israeli cabinet ratified the ceasefire deal itself but we've only we've learned now that the idf have within the past two hours implemented that ceasefire agreement so we're just creeping up to that second hour of the ceasefire so that's why a little bit earlier on this morning and throughout the night we still saw airstrikes from israel into gaza that has now ceased and that's why we're seeing this exodus of palestinians moving up moving north to find what is left of their homes so the agreement has been brought forward which has been ratified now overnight by the israeli cabinet well it calls for that initial israeli withdrawal to a temporary border and the release of the hostages the israeli hostages 20 of whom are still alive the return of the remains of the 28 deceased and the release of roughly 1700 palestinian prisoners the who were detained by the israel defense force in gaza after hamas's attack on october the 7th two years ago and also israel's release of 250 palestinian prisoners who are serving life sentences in israeli jails after being convicted of killing israelis they will be released either to gaza or go to exile in arab and muslim countries and that's why it has been so difficult to get this deal over the line when it comes to the hardliners the ultra-nationalists within the israeli cabinet but it was passed through and we're seeing those initial stages the ceasefire deal the hostage release the release of palestinian prisoners detained since october the 7th and the withdrawal of israeli i have to stress because they're not fully withdrawing from gaza they will be moving back to occupy just over half of the gaza strip and then in the next stages they will be withdrawing further along hamas has 72 hours in which to release the israeli hostages and we don't know the details of when exactly that will happen or where so still an awful amount of unknowns but for the moment the ceasefire at least is holding

[00:55:39] Speaker 1: so You join us in Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, where the anticipation is growing after a ceasefire in Gaza came into force around two hours ago, after the Israeli army pulled back to the approved lines that were part of the deal approved by the cabinet in Israel in the early hours of this morning. As we've been saying, as part of that plan, all of the remaining Israeli hostages, alive and dead, are to be returned home to Israel to their families, although Hamas has said that it may not be able to retrieve all of the remains, given that some may be buried under the mounds of rubble in the battlefields of Gaza. Israeli troops have now positioned themselves along an updated line in Gaza, which still leaves them in control of 53% of the territory. In the past hour, the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been speaking. He made a public address, the first since his government approved the ceasefire deal on Thursday evening. He stressed that he expected in the second phase for Hamas to give up its guns in Gaza and for the strip to be demilitarized, and repeated what he and President Trump have said repeatedly, either they can do this the easy way through negotiations or the hard way through more military actions. Well, let's join our Gaza correspondent, who's now in Istanbul, Rushdi Abu Aalouf. Rushdi, what are the reports from the ground? The ceasefire is now in force?

[00:58:01] Speaker 11: Yes, for the last an hour and a half, we haven't heard any report about Israeli airstrike. As thousands of people started to walk back into Gaza City since the Israeli army withdrawn its forces only from the beach road, where Salahuddin Road, the main one, is still closed and people are not allowed to leave it. It depends on how much money the people have. They can hire either a car or a donkey cart or a bigger backup car. But the majority of the people say that they don't have 4,000 shekel, which is about 900 pounds, to pay for this trip. So they walk about 20 kilometers. I was speaking to a teacher this morning. He was waiting there, and now he's walking in the middle of the crowd. He said that it is a very, very, very difficult journey without water, tired, grim faces. And they are walking to, after the news from Gaza, they received this morning that the destruction is something that Gaza never seen before, especially the main three neighborhoods, the northern neighborhood of Sheikh Redouane, Sabra and Zeytoun area, about 90 percent of the homes and infrastructure is destroyed.

[00:59:17] Speaker 1: And under the new withdrawal plan for Israeli forces, those lines protect quite a few Palestinians from returning to what's left of their homes?

[00:59:29] Speaker 11: Well, 900,000 Palestinians will not be allowed to go back to their neighborhoods during the first phase of the ceasefire, which no one knows for how long it will last. So the entire city of Rafah, all of the population of Rafah, about 200,000 people are staying in Al-Mawasi, and they will continue to stay there because no one is allowed to go back to Rafah. Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahey, the two main places in northern Gaza are also out of control, still under Israeli control. No one will be allowed. About a quarter of Gaza city, eastern neighborhoods, half of Khan Younis and 10 percent of Deir el-Balah. So we are talking about 9,000 people in total are not going to be allowed to go back to their homes.

[01:00:18] Speaker 1: Thank you so much for that update. Well, also as part of this plan, much more humanitarian aid is expected to flow into Gaza. We understand that in the first few days, it should be 400 trucks a day. This is a moment that the United Nations has been working for. Tom Fletcher is the UN's humanitarian chief. He's been speaking to my colleague, Amal Rajan, about what preparations

[01:00:42] Speaker 6: are in place. So the UN has a plan. There's been unimaginable suffering in Gaza, tens of thousands killed, including over 18,000 children. That's a child killed on average every hour for two years. And this agreement's a real breakthrough. But the real breakthrough will be when the hostages are home, when children are fed, when they can sleep without terror under a roof, when they're not bombed and maimed, when they can be operated on with anaesthetics, when they can go back to school, when families are reunited again. And so we will deliver that plan. We've got a 60 day plan to get that aid in to save lives at huge, huge scale. We have fought and beaten famines before,

[01:01:21] Speaker 7: and we will do it again this time. How confident are you that the restrictions previously placed on aid deliveries by Israel, who say that those deliveries have been hijacked or vandalised, that those restrictions will now be lifted? So that's the big question for the coming hours and

[01:01:37] Speaker 6: days. And obviously, we're in very close touch with the Israeli authorities in country to make sure that those impediments, those obstacles are now removed. We need all the crossings open. We need safe routes for our convoys. We need our people protected. Hundreds of my colleagues have been killed in the last two years. We need the removal of red tape and physical barriers. We need the power back on to our bakeries, our hospitals, our water stations. It's a massive, massive job ahead. We need access for our NGO colleagues and partners as well. And as you say, we need the international media to get back in and tell the world what is happening and hold us to account for saving lives. What are your plans for increasing food deliveries immediately? So that's objective number one. We've got to get high nutrition food in. We've got to get hundreds of truckloads. Convoy, we need to overwhelm Gaza with food and generosity and aid and help right now. We need to get food to 2 million people across the Strip in every part of Gaza, north and south. And we have those supplies pre-positioned. We've got 172,000 metric tons of food, medicine and tents all cleared, ready to go in. The teams are on standby at the crossings. The trucks are ready to roll. And we'll use our community networks, our expertise, our experience to get that food where it is most needed.

[01:03:02] Speaker 12: That was Tom Fletcher there speaking a little bit earlier, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs. My colleague Lise Doucette is in Tel Aviv. And Lise, I just wanted to ask you a very human question really, in that the people that you are speaking to, how would you describe their mood? What are they saying to you?

[01:03:23] Speaker 1: Oh, there's, we've been speaking to people here in Hostages Square ever since the news came through that there was a deal. It did just to be approved as it was last night. And the mood in this square just changed, that suddenly there was this hope, this cautious hope. But people still said that there was still some disbelief. They've been let down so many times before. They know how deals like this can unravel, even though this one seems to be more solid than efforts before. So until their loved ones are actually back in their arms, out of Gaza, out of captivity, they're not going to really breathe easily. But there's more of a lightness in this square. Of course, this square, as we've often said, has become a gathering place for the families of the hostages, those who are still in captivity, those who've returned, their friends, and the growing number of supporters across Israel. We've seen the opinion polls go up and up and up, the percentage of Israelis who have been saying month on month, it's time for the war to end, it's time to bring Israeli hostages home. And all around the square, there's the photographs of some of the 250 hostages who were taken in those horrific events of October the 7th. And there's one which has the last 48, 20 still alive, it's believed. 28, they didn't survive their captivity or they were killed on October the 7th. And Hamas has been saying they're not sure they can retrieve all of the remains, but they certainly are trying to find them in the rubble of this, you know, rubble strewn streets of the Gaza Strip. And we heard just a short time ago from

[01:05:12] Speaker 12: Benjamin Netanyahu, who said that they are going to act now to locate all the kidnapped and fallen as soon as possible in terms of the hostages.

[01:05:29] Speaker 1: Do you have confidence that Hamas is going to do their job? Yes, they are going to do their best. Prime Minister Netanyahu is under huge pressure from the right wing members of his government who didn't want this deal to go ahead. They voted against it. They're warning they'll bring down his government. They didn't want some of the prisoners released, those who are serving multiple life sentences. So there's a lot of the deal that they're not happy with. But of course, they do welcome the return of the hostages. That is, the nation as one has said they want the hostages to come home. And in that statement, Prime Minister Netanyahu warned Hamas, you know, what Hamas is going to be expected to do going forward, which is to disarm some of them to go into exile if Israel has its way and warning that they'll do it either the easy way or the hard way. So the pressure will continue on this process.

[01:06:31] Speaker 12: And how much faith is there that ultimately there will be enough US commitment to see through the plan and ultimately that Hamas will disarm?

[01:06:42] Speaker 1: Well, it's a big question. There is a monitoring commission. 200 US troops are going to join it. There'll be members from the Arab states who have played such a key role in moving this process forward, including Egypt and Qatar, who've been the main mediators, the UAE as well, Saudi Arabia, all of these countries coming together, which has been behind this new momentum and unprecedented This new momentum and unprecedented momentum, which has resulted in the deal we're seeing today, the ceasefire, which has come into place, the third ceasefire since the war began. The last one broke down in March when Israel pulled out of it, saying that there were new terms for a ceasefire. This has taken months and months of protracted negotiations, and it has been a month of deepening agony for the families and friends of the hostages, for the people in the Gaza Strip, and they're daring to hope that this is the start of a chapter which will move them forward and not back.

[01:07:41] Speaker 12: Elis, we are seeing the pictures both from hostages squares you speak, but also from within Gaza and the huge flow of people as people start to move. Again, what are you hearing from those within Gaza? Obviously, it's very difficult to get lines out from there. But again, the hopes of so many will now be that they can get food, that they can get shelter, that they can get security and peace.

[01:08:13] Speaker 1: As we heard just from Tom Fletcher, the UN's humanitarian chief, it's the message that we hear from all of the agencies who've been struggling to work in the conditions of the Gaza Strip, including the restrictions placed by the Israeli authorities. They're now hoping that they will be able to operate more freely to get those, initially, some of the 400 trucks in. Some of those trucks will be humanitarian aid, some will be commercial. And I know from having visited the rougher crossing on the Egyptian side, there are thousands and thousands of lorries backed up with those essential supplies, just waiting to clear Israeli inspection so they can enter into the Gaza Strip. We've also been hearing from our correspondent who's in touch with people on the ground in Gaza and people who yesterday were prevented from going north along the coastal Al Rashid Road. The main Salahuddin Road is still blocked. Now they're setting out today those who still have some money to afford anything from a proper vehicle to a donkey cart. They're making their way with those means of conveyance. Of most Gazans that we've seen in those heart-rending images, including very old, the elderly, people who've been weakened by months of living with so little food, trying to make the journey in the baking heat without food and water along the way. It's a long, long journey, 20 kilometres to the north. And of course, they're arriving, hoping to see their homes and finding that almost little is left. But the point for them is to go home, no matter what is still there.

[01:09:49] Speaker 12: Lisa Doucette, thanks very much indeed. We'll be back with you in a few moments. We're going to take a short break around the world and across the UK. This is BBC News.

[01:10:49] Speaker 1: So you're joining us now in Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, here as well in so many places here and across the region, waiting to see this new, the first phase of this ceasefire plan to to start falling into place. And most of all, the humanitarian aspect of this new agreement. We can cross to Almuasi in southern Gaza Strip, which has become a humanitarian hub, if you can call it that, a tented city. We can join Tess Ingram, a spokesperson for UNICEF. Tess Ingram, just tell us some of the conditions now that you're working under in Almuasi.

[01:11:46] Speaker 13: Incredibly crowded conditions. There are so many people that have been displaced here over the last few weeks, living in really, really difficult conditions. Lack of shelter, people under pieces of tarpaulin with very little to keep them warm as winter approaches, children walking through broken rubble without shoes, insufficient access to food and water. And throughout all of that, UNICEF is doing our best to respond. But like it has been throughout this conflict, we've been restricted in what we can bring in and what areas we have access to. So we are pleased. We really welcome this news of the ceasefire and we hope that it will lead to a scaling up of aid to help address conditions here in Almuasi, but across the Gaza

[01:12:27] Speaker 1: Strip. And are you seeing, Tess, that people are starting to move to go back to their homes, if indeed they can, along the lines permitted by the new Israeli deployment lines?

[01:12:42] Speaker 13: There's a lot of excitement, but also apprehension about that move around people wanting to make sure that they're going to be safe if they do move, but of course already beginning to pack up their belongings. Because as people told me when I was here during the February ceasefire, and again now, home is home and they want to go back to their communities and their lands, even if it has been reduced to rubble. But what is then critical is that the humanitarian response is there for them, providing them with that shelter, with a tent, with access to safe drinking water, with those shoes for their children. And that's going to be our focus in the coming days is to follow the thousands of people as they move back to

[01:13:22] Speaker 1: their communities. And do you have any sense as to how quickly the humanitarian aspect of this new deal is going to come into force? You may remember that in the ceasefire in January, the gates opened quite quickly and within no time at all, hundreds of trucks were rumbling across the border. What's your sense this time?

[01:13:46] Speaker 13: We're really hoping for the same. Based on our understanding of what has been negotiated in this plan and presented by the mediators, the UN is going to be at the heart of this humanitarian response. And that's what we're working around is to have the trucks ready to go. UNICEF has 1,300 trucks pre-positioned outside of the Gaza Strip ready to scale up our response. We have had trucks come in yesterday and today, but we need to see that increase, as you say, happen very quickly. Hopefully tomorrow or the next day, we can see that scale up meaningfully because the stakes here are really high. We're talking about children whose immune systems have been shattered, children who have gone years without access to nutritious food. And of course, with winter approaching that diseases will spread. So that scale up is incredibly time critical, or we risk seeing continued children dying from the humanitarian crisis on the ground.

[01:14:46] Speaker 1: Yes, of course, it will be the immediate needs, as you've been mentioning, that have to be met first. But I suppose if this calm holds, you perhaps can begin to try to ease the trauma that all of the children of Gaza have experienced and really cannot start to heal unless the bombing stops, unless that sound of the drone in the air goes away until the fear goes.

[01:15:12] Speaker 13: Yeah, that's exactly right. I can still hear the drones now. So for children, the sound of a ceasefire, the sound of peace hasn't come true yet. And we do really need that in order to address the horrors that they've experienced over more than two years now. And I think it's important for us to remember that in why this ceasefire must be sustained, why it's so critical. Children have been disappointed before they've had a ceasefire be broken, fall away in front of them, and then endure more months of loss and of trauma and of fear. So if that happened again, that would be devastating for the mental health of children, all people in the Gaza Strip. We need that peace and we need to be able to scale up that mental health response here for children in Gaza to begin to address what they have endured. It's just as important as the shelter, the food and the education that we're going to provide to kids here.

[01:16:11] Speaker 1: Tess Ingram from UNICEF, we wish you the best in your very challenging but so crucial work. Thank you for joining us from Al-Mawassi. It must be a busy day for you today. Thank you. Well, let's hear reflections from a resident of Gaza. We were hoped to join two brothers together who've been separated by war. But for now, we're going to be joined by Ibrahim Isbetta. He's a Palestinian who escaped Gaza to get some specialized medical care for his daughter. His brother Marwan is still in Al-Mawassi in the same, that tented camp where we were just speaking to Tess Ingram. Ibrahim, thank you very much for joining us here on BBC News. And we were still hoping to get your brother Marwan up on the line as well, but you must have been speaking to him, other members of your family. What have they been sharing with you now that the ceasefire has at last come into force?

[01:17:16] Speaker 14: To be honest, they are still under the trauma. They couldn't believe we have reached to this moment. This moment, it's been delayed for two years, been waiting this moment for two years. I was with my family, I was with my brother specifically yesterday. He was deeply under a very hard condition. I remember two weeks ago, he fled from Gaza City under a heavy fire. After midnight, he stayed all night, tried to follow everything until he reached to Al-Mawassi and he stayed on the street. So right now we are very happy. Nobody cares about what's the condition, whatever the circumstances, but at least right now they can sleep safely after this devastating

[01:18:05] Speaker 1: two years. And how hard will it be for your family? The ceasefire will help enormously, but as you know, I don't need to tell you, the level of destruction is also enormous. It's going to continue to be a huge challenge, is it not?

[01:18:28] Speaker 14: It's going to be difficult because we are specifically from a Sharia neighborhood. Right now, since the morning, they are saying that the Israeli will not withdraw from our neighborhood. So we are happy, but at the same time, we are devastating about, okay, this is a ceasefire, but what's the future? When we can put back to our land at least, because our home was at the beginning, at the first phase of the ceasefire, it was partially destroyed. Right now it's completely destroyed. So we were spoken about when we put back. Then some people say that our home is completely destroyed. Then right now the news came that we will not be able to go back to our houses. So it's like, indeed, we are happy it's over, but still, like, what's the future? What's coming next? We have no idea when we put back, because right now I was spoken with him. I was spoken with my sister, too. When we were back, they say that we put it because they say that the Israeli tanks are in our neighborhood. And at this stage, they will not withdraw from this area, but at least they will be sleep normal like any other people, like any other people around the world, without, like, in which way I'm going to die. I'm going to stay alive till tomorrow, or I'm going to lose someone else. At least now they have the sense to sleep well like any other people around the world.

[01:20:03] Speaker 1: And if I may, Ibrahim, I ask about your daughter who was treated for a heart condition in Dublin.

[01:20:10] Speaker 14: How is she? She's fine. Actually, you know, it's like a too joyful moment for me. I've been waiting this moment for a long time, like after 15 years of going back, going back from hospital, from different area. At the beginning, my daughter was transferred out Gaza Strip to do the surgery. She's supposed to do the surgery in January 2023, but because of the war, we couldn't access to the Jerusalem. So we, like, after seven months of the war, we went to Egypt. I stayed there for one year, tried to do the surgery there, but I couldn't. Finally, I got the chance to be in Dublin to do the surgery. Last week, we did the surgery, and thanks God it succeeded. Right now, she's in recovery mood, but she's fine. She's kind of normal like any other girl. Now she can go to school. She can use a bike. She can walk. And now I have her.

[01:21:10] Speaker 1: Ibrahim, and I'm sorry we're going to have to bring this to an end, but thank you very much for joining us with the sounds of your daughter in the background. And thank you very much for joining us as we continue our special coverage here on BBC News. Stay with us. So So So SIREN WAILS SIREN WAILS SIREN WAILS SIREN WAILS SIREN WAILS SIREN WAILS SIREN WAILS SIREN WAILS SIREN WAILS SIREN WAILS SIREN WAILS SIREN WAILS SIREN WAILS SIREN WAILS

[01:25:49] Speaker 4: SIREN WAILS You're with BBC News. I'm Kasia Madera. We're continuing with our extended coverage of this initial phase of Donald Trump's overall peace plan for Gaza. So, when I say initial phase, because there are elements to this, and at the moment we are watching the ceasefire agreement that has been implemented hold. Within the past hour and a half, two hours and a half now, we have had that ceasefire, a critical point, because up until now we have actually seen up until that ceasefire from two and a half hours ago, we did see strikes into Gaza. So, that is now in place, the IDF confirming that, and so this is why we can see this movement, this exodus of people moving up to the north of Gaza, where Palestinians will be trying to find what is left of their homes. We know that so much of Gaza has been razed to the ground, but still these people prefer to move back, to be near to what is left to their homes. Of course, this part of the ceasefire plan is also in conjuncture with the release of the remaining hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza, 20 of whom are still alive, 28 who have deceased, and the remains, their remains, will also be brought back to their families, who have been waiting for so long for this moment. As part of this, as part of this initial phase, we're also expecting the release of nearly 2,000 Palestinians, 1,700 of whom have been held in Israeli prisons since Hamas's attack on Israel, the 7th of October 2023, and also there will be the release of around 250 Palestinians who have been held in Israeli prisons for much, much longer, who have been accused of the murder of Israelis. So a very complicated part to this initial phase. Within that also, we know that the IDF, the Israeli Defense Force, is also moving back to a line that has been agreed, so they'll still be in Gaza, they'll still occupy 53% of the Gaza Strip, but they are moving back. And so that's what we're witnessing unfold here as we monitor this live shot of the Gaza Strip, Central Gaza has thousands of people move back to the north. In addition to all of this, aid will be released. Authority has been granted, aid has been allowed to move into Gaza, desperately needed aid, not just food, which is really needed given the malnutrition, the starvation, but also medical aid as well. So many of Gaza's hospitals are also raised, also in a real difficult state, in real need. And also tents as well, so that people are able to put up some form of shelter. Now what we don't know is whether that aid is already accessed in Gaza. That is still a little bit unclear. So there are still many elements to what we're seeing as being unclear, but what we're witnessing right now is just that initial implementation of the ceasefire agreement, the first phase of a wider plan in order to eventually, hopefully bring peace to Gaza. Now a little bit earlier, my colleague Lise Doucette, our Chief International Correspondent, she spoke to our Gaza Correspondent, Roushdi Abu Alouf, about the reports that he was hearing from contacts in Gaza. So let's hear his

[01:30:07] Speaker 11: answers. For the last hour and a half, we haven't heard any report about Israeli airstrike. As thousands of people started to walk back into Gaza City since the Israeli army withdrawn its forces only from the beach road, while Salah al-Din Road, the main one, is still closed and people are not allowed to leave it. It depends on how much money the people have. They can hire either a car or a donkey cart or a bigger backup car. But the majority of the people say that they don't have 4,000 shekels, which is about 900 pounds, to pay for this trip. So they walk about 20 kilometers. I was speaking to a teacher this morning. He was waiting there. And now he's walking in the middle of the crowd. He said that it is a very, very, very difficult journey without water and food. People look very tired, grim faces, and they are looking to... After the news from Gaza, they received this morning that the destruction is something that Gaza has never seen before, especially the main three neighborhoods, the northern neighborhood of Sheikh Ridwan, Sabra, and Zeytun area. About 90% of the homes and infrastructure is destroyed.

[01:31:25] Speaker 1: And under the new withdrawal plan for Israeli forces, those lines protect quite a few Palestinians from returning to what's left of their homes?

[01:31:37] Speaker 11: Well, 900,000 Palestinians will not be allowed to go back to their neighborhoods during the first phase of the ceasefire, which no one knows for how long it will last. So the entire city of Rafah, all of the population of Rafah, about 200,000 people are staying in al-Mawasi, and they will continue to stay there because no one is allowed to go back to Rafah. Bait Hanun and Bait Lahi, the two main places in northern Gaza, are also out of control, still under Israeli control. No one will be allowed. About a quarter of Gaza city west-eastern neighborhoods, half of Hanunis, and 10% of Dar al-Balah. So we are talking about 9,000 people in total are not going to be allowed to go back to their homes.

[01:32:25] Speaker 4: So Rushdi Abu Aluthair, our Gaza correspondent who is currently based in Istanbul in Turkey, just outlining still the complexities of what we're witnessing now because of course so much of Gaza has been reduced to rubble when these tens of thousands of people that we're witnessing now make their way along this coastal road to the north, they will find their homes reduced to rubble. So a difficult situation but tentatively we are seeing this initial ceasefire hold critical in order to get people back to their homes so they can see what they've lost, but also to get the Israeli hostages out, to get them returned because we know that that is so much what the families of those hostages have been aching for.

[01:33:53] Speaker 12: ... because that is of course our main focus at the moment and we are hearing that Israel's Justice Ministry has published a list of 250 prisoners who are expected to be released in exchange for hostages who are still held in Gaza as part of the deal with Hamas. A list that seems to have emerged does not include the names of several senior Palestinian militants seen as symbols of resistance but names that Israel clearly does not want to be released and Hamas had called for those names so that will no doubt have been very much part of the diplomatic negotiations that we have seen. We'll keep you across all the developments around the world and across the UK. This is BBC News.

[01:35:19] Speaker 1: ...

[01:35:31] Speaker 4: So we continue to monitor that live scene from central Gaza as thousands of people are heading back to the north to see what's left of their homes as we monitor this ceasefire. Just an update we've had from Gaza, the Hamas-run health ministry and in terms of the numbers of killed, they say that 17 people were killed in the past 24 hours, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. Its daily update adding that 71 people have been injured and this is important because obviously when the Israeli cabinet, when they ratified the ceasefire deal, when they approved and voted for that deal, there was a little bit of confusion as to when the ceasefire would be brought in. We thought that it would take effect imminently but then we waited and it wasn't until the IDF confirmed that the ceasefire was then in place from midday local time so we're just approaching up to nearly three hours of this ceasefire that we then were made aware that that was when the airstrikes stopped because yesterday we saw relief, we saw celebration, we saw just a sense of a real cautious hope but hope nevertheless that the bombing would stop and then overnight we saw that the airstrikes from Israel into Gaza, in that time we've had that update from the Hamas-run health ministry that 17 people were killed in the past 24 hours, 71 injured. This brings the overall death toll since the 7th of October 2023 to just over 67,000 and we say the Hamas-run health ministry but we do know that the UN says that those figures are pretty accurate potentially maybe even an underestimation. 67, 211 people killed since October the 7th 2023 in Gaza. So a complicated situation there as we maintain these images for you as we watch the ceasefire hold and of course this will then enable, it gives Hamas 72 hours in which to gather the 20 remaining living hostages the remains of the 28 who were deceased, 48 hostages in total still within Gaza. They will now be returned to their loved ones, their loved ones who have been waiting so patiently for this moment to happen. We don't know when it will happen, we don't know where it will happen. There are still so many unknown elements of this and we don't know whether indeed all of the remaining deceased will be returned to their families because our understanding is that there are a number of the remains of the deceased that are not accounted for. So a really complicated situation, a difficult situation but as we stand we are witnessing the first hours of this ceasefire deal of this wider plan that has been pushed forward by Donald Trump and his administration that has enabled us to reach this moment where a ceasefire is held for nearly three hours now, we're just creeping up to that three hour mark. Well earlier my colleague Lise Doucette spoke to Tess Ingram, Tess Ingram is from UNICEF, the children's arm of the United Nations. Tess is in Al-Mawassi in southern Gaza, one of those areas that were deemed a safe area by the IDF. Also as we've been witnessing through these past two years, an area that has also experienced strikes as well. Tess, describe to Lise the conditions that UNICEF are currently working in. Incredibly

[01:39:55] Speaker 13: crowded conditions, there are so many people that have been displaced here over the last few weeks living in really, really difficult conditions. Lack of shelter, people under pieces of tarpaulin with very little to keep them warm as winter approaches. Children walking through broken rubble without shoes, insufficient access to food and water and throughout all of that UNICEF is doing our best to respond but like it has been throughout this conflict we've been restricted in what we can bring in and what areas we have access to. So we are pleased we really welcome this news of the ceasefire and we hope that it will lead to a scaling up of aid to help address conditions here in Al Mawassi but across the Gaza Strip.

[01:40:39] Speaker 1: And are you seeing, Tess, that people are starting to move, to go back to their homes if indeed they can along the lines permitted by the new Israeli deployment lines?

[01:40:51] Speaker 13: There's a lot of excitement but also apprehension about that move around people wanting to make sure that they're going to be safe if they do move but of course already beginning to pack up their belongings because as people told me when I was here during the February ceasefire and again now, home is home and they want to go back to their communities and their lands even if it has been reduced to rubble but what is then critical is that the humanitarian response is there for them providing them with that shelter, with a tent, with access to safe drinking water with those shoes for their children and that's going to be our focus in the coming days is to follow the thousands of people as they move back to their communities.

[01:41:35] Speaker 1: And do you have any sense as to how quickly the humanitarian aspect of this new deal is going to come into force? You may remember that in the ceasefire in January the gates opened quite quickly and within no time at all hundreds of trucks were rumbling across the border. What's your sense this time?

[01:41:55] Speaker 13: We're really hoping for the same. Based on our understanding of what has been negotiated in this plan and presented by the mediators the UN is going to be at the heart of this humanitarian response and that's what we're working around is to have the trucks ready to go. UNICEF has 1,300 trucks pre-positioned outside of the Gaza Strip ready to scale up our response. We have had trucks come in yesterday and today but we need to see that increase as you say happen very quickly. Hopefully tomorrow or the next day we can see that scale up meaningfully because the stakes here are really high. We're talking about children whose immune systems have been shattered, children who have gone years without access to nutritious food and of course with winter approaching so that scale up is incredibly time critical or we risk seeing continued children dying from the humanitarian crisis on the ground.

[01:42:53] Speaker 1: Yes of course it will be the immediate needs as you've been mentioning that have to be met first but I suppose if this calm holds you perhaps can begin to try to ease the trauma that all of the children of Gaza have experienced and really cannot start to heal unless the bombing stops unless that sound of the drone in the air goes away until the fear goes.

[01:43:19] Speaker 13: That's exactly right. I can still hear the drones now so for children the sound of a cease fire, the sound of peace hasn't come true yet and we do really need that in order to address the horrors that they've experienced over more than two years now and I think it's important for us to remember that in why this cease fire must be sustained, why it's so critical. Children have been disappointed before they've had a cease fire be broken fall away in front of them and then endure more months of loss and of trauma and of fear so if that happened again that would be devastating for the mental health of children, all people in the Gaza Strip. We need that peace and we need to be able to scale up that mental health response here for children in Gaza to begin to address what they have endured. It's just as important as the shelter, the food and the education that we're going to provide to kids here.

[01:44:17] Speaker 4: So Tess Ingram there from UNICEF who is based in Al-Noasi in southern Gaza just giving us an indication, an insight a glimpse of the complexities of what is involved in bringing back some kind of normalcy to the Strip. A really huge operation will be needed in order to rebuild that is of course for the next stages of this peace plan endorsed by Donald Trump. At the moment though the need is great, the aid needs to get in and we're witnessing as thousands of Palestinians are now returning from southern Gaza to Gaza City after weeks of fleeing the Israeli offensive which has turned much of Gaza City and much of Gaza indeed into rubble. Many of them travelling on foot many carrying what they have for those that are able to or have a car that's being used. But just to put this into context actually, an interesting insight from our Gaza correspondent Rushdi Abu Aluf who's currently based in Turkey he's been hearing from people on the ground and the just to give you an insight into what these people are now the challenge ahead of them that even to be able to hire a car in order to move what possessions Palestinians have, it costs around 4,000 shekels which translated is just over $1,200 that's just over £900 and that is according to the people that Rushdi has been speaking to, it's far beyond what most people can afford just to hire a car to make that journey home and that's before we even talk about what home looks like because so much of Gaza City and Gaza has been reduced to rubble that these people they have no idea what they're returning to but as we heard there from the UNICEF spokesperson people just want to go back to where their homes once stood and that's what we're witnessing now, people taking advantage of that ceasefire that is coming up to the third hour of its holding they're taking advantage of that and they are on the move, on the move from the south which pockets of which al-Mawassi included have been designated as a safe area by the IDF a safe area which we also know there were strikes upon but safe compared to what was happening up in especially the north of Gaza, especially Gaza City with that continual raising of the tower blocks in in those areas of the north especially

[01:47:59] Speaker 1: so so again

[01:48:31] Speaker 4: this is a complicated deal because when we've been talking to commentators and people that have been really monitoring this closely, it is vague and arguably it's vague to get to this stage the ceasefire which has been critical in not just enabling and facilitating people to move back to their home regions but also in order to enable Hamast, give them that 72 hour window in which to get the hostages gather them and bring them back to their loved ones but moving forward there will still be an awful lot of negotiation that is needed because the vague nature of the deal means that there's still so much that is up in the air not least a timeline for a transfer of authority not least how Gaza will be rebuilt not least who will be in the mechanism the governance mechanism structure so an awful lot that still is unknown but at the moment we know that the IDF says the ceasefire is in effect and that's what we're seeing on the ground we also know that aid is due to be immediately allowed into Gaza unrestricted but we don't know if this is yet happening we know that the UN the UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher was earlier saying that they have 172,000 metric tons of food, of medicines of tents all cleared to go all cleared to go in their community networks ready to distribute that aid across Gaza and it will maintain the population of Gaza for three months we know that that is ready and waiting to go in but we don't quite yet know if that aid resumption, the bringing in of aid, whether that has indeed been resumed we know that the Israeli troops have now completed their initial stage of withdrawal of their withdrawal to the deployment lines which were agreed during negotiations but what we don't know is when the next parts of the withdrawal will take place so at the moment that line means that the IDF will be within a perimeter that means that they are still within around just over half of Gaza and then the next phase of their withdrawal will be implemented but we don't yet know when that is going to happen we know that within that withdrawal there is a 72 hour window for all the remaining Israeli hostages alive and deceased to be released they have until 12 o'clock local time on Monday in order for them to be brought to meeting points, we don't know when exactly that's going to happen, we don't know where that's going to happen but they have that 72 hours for the remaining 20 living hostages and the remains of the 28 who are deceased to be released and then our understanding is around 1700 Palestinian prisoners who have been detained since October the 7th two years ago, they will be released and our understanding is that another 250 Palestinian prisoners who have been held on a more long term basis some of whom have been accused of killing Israelis they too will be released, our understanding is that one person's name is not on that list, Marwan Varghouti, a senior figure in Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement someone that's hugely popular in the West Bank, also popular in Gaza and who's been regularly spoken about as a potential future leader of the region he is not among those to be released so like I say still an awful lot of unknowns but what we can say is that this first phase, at least the ceasefire is holding and according to a US envoy who is being who is citing the Pentagon Israel has completed that first phase of its Gaza withdrawal to the agreed line now my colleague Lise Doucette was able to speak to Ibrahim Isbata he's a Palestinian who escaped Gaza for his daughter to receive some specialised medical care he says he was telling Lise that his brother and his family still remain in al-Mawassi that part that was described as a safe area in the south of Gaza, so let's just listen to their conversation

[01:54:01] Speaker 14: they are still under the trauma they couldn't believe we have reached to this moment this moment it's been delayed for two years, been waiting this moment for two years I was talking to my family it was deeply under a very hard condition I remember two weeks ago we fled from Gaza city under a heavy fire, after midnight we stayed all night, tried to follow up with him till he reached to al-Mawassi and we stayed on the street so right now we are very happy nobody cares about what's the condition what are the circumstances but at least right now they can sleep safely after this devastating two years

[01:54:51] Speaker 1: and how hard will it be for your family, the ceasefire will help enormously but as you know I don't need to tell you, the level of destruction is also enormous it's going to continue to be a huge challenge, is it not?

[01:55:11] Speaker 14: it's going to be difficult because we are specifically from a neighborhood, right now since the morning they are saying that the Israelis will not withdraw from our neighborhood so we are happy but at the same time we are devastating about this is a ceasefire but what's the future, when we can go back to our land at least because our home was at the beginning, at the first phase of the ceasefire it was partly destroyed right now it's completely destroyed so we were spoken about when we go back then some people say that our home is completely destroyed then right now the news came that we will not be able to go back to our houses so it's like indeed we are happy it's over but still what's the future, what's coming next we have no idea when we go back because right now I was talking with my sister too when we go back they say that we couldn't, they say that it's very dangerous in our neighborhood and at this stage they will not withdraw from this area but at least they will be sleep normal like any other people like any other people around the world without like, in which way I'm going to die, I'm going to stay alive tomorrow or I'm going to lose someone else, at least now they have the sense to sleep well like any other people around the world

[01:56:55] Speaker 1: ... ...

[02:20:03] Speaker 13: ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... children whose immune systems have been shattered, children who have gone years without access to nutritious food and of course with winter approaching that diseases will spread. So that scale-up is incredibly time critical or we risk seeing continued children dying from the humanitarian crisis on the ground.

[02:21:03] Speaker 12: Tess Ingram, stay with us here on BBC News. I'm Geetha Gurumurthy.

[02:21:13] Speaker 1: Tess Ingram, stay with us here on BBC News. I'm Geetha Gurumurthy. Tess Ingram, stay with us here on BBC News. I'm Geetha Gurumurthy. Tess Ingram, stay with us here on BBC News. I'm Geetha Gurumurthy. CHILDREN SHOUTING CHILDREN SHOUTING CHILDREN SHOUTING

[02:23:53] Speaker 15: Hello, you're with BBC News Live. I'm Katharine Biarra-Hunger and we're bringing you continuous coverage of developments in the Middle East where a fresh ceasefire between Hamas and Israel has began. We're monitoring these live pictures we have coming in from the Gaza Strip. This is one of the main roads that connects the north of the territory to the south. It's right on the coast of the Mediterranean there and for hours now, almost as soon as this ceasefire began at midday local time, we saw thousands of people making this journey from the south back to the north. You remember that in the past few weeks Israel had concentrated its ground offensive on Gaza City in the north of the territory and it had demanded that people, residents in that part of the territory, leave and move further south to areas it has said were safer. But now with a new opportunity to be able to return home, Gazans are taking the opportunity to do just that. So we've been hearing from some of the residents recounting their stories of what they found when they got back to some of their neighbourhoods, talking about their, what were their homes having been flattened. They talked about their areas not being recognisable anymore. But all of this is possible because Israeli troops have pulled out of parts of the territory. They're still maintaining control of more than 50% of Gaza, around 53%, but they've pulled back to the agreed lines between Hamas and Israel. But crucially now, a lot of attention is going to be paid towards to the release of all Israeli hostages as well as the remains of those who have deceased. There's also going to be attention being paid to the humanitarian situation in Gaza. As we can see from the images we're looking at now, much of the strip has been devastated by Israeli attacks and crucially there's very little aid that's getting in there, whether that's food, medicine. Tom Fletcher is the UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and the Emergency Relief Coordinator. He's been speaking to my colleague Amal Rajan from BBC Radio 4's Today programme to discuss the UN's plans for the coming weeks and months to

[02:26:36] Speaker 6: get aid into Gaza. I'm in very close touch with our teams inside Gaza, but also with survivors in Nearoz Kibbutz and and civilians in Gaza as well. They have long waited and hoped for this moment and we've worked hard to get here. It must not be a false dawn. We need to ensure that President Trump's plan isn't blocked by hardliners on either side. We're hearing there have been strikes overnight. I think Jeremy Bowen was reporting that about an hour ago as well. Today is crucial. We need the guns to go silent and we need this ceasefire to be

[02:27:09] Speaker 7: implemented. And as far as you understand, Tom, who is now responsible

[02:27:13] Speaker 6: for aid in Gaza? So the UN has a plan. There's been unimaginable suffering in Gaza. Tens of thousands killed, including over 18,000 children. That's a child killed on average every hour for two years. And this agreement's a real breakthrough. But the real breakthrough will be when the hostages are home, when children are fed, when they can sleep without terror under a roof, when they're not bombed and maimed, when they can be operated on with anaesthetics, when they can go back to school, when families are reunited again. And so we will deliver that plan. We've got a 60-day plan to get that aid in to save lives at huge, huge scale. We have fought and beaten famines before and we will do it again this time.

[02:27:55] Speaker 7: Very, very keen to talk to you about the specifics of that plan in just a moment. I've got one other practical question, if I may, before we get there, which is how confident are you that the restrictions previously placed on aid deliveries by Israel, who say that those deliveries have been hijacked or vandalised, that those restrictions will now be lifted? So that's the big question for the coming

[02:28:15] Speaker 6: hours and days. And obviously we're in very close touch with the Israeli authorities in-country to make sure that those impediments, those obstacles are now removed. We need all the crossings open. We need safe routes for our convoys. We need our people protected. Hundreds of my colleagues have been killed in the last two years. We need the removal of red tape and physical barriers. We need the power back on to our bakeries, our hospitals, our water stations. It's a massive, massive job ahead. We need access for our NGO colleagues and partners as well. And as you say, we need the international media to get back in and tell the world what is happening and hold us to account for saving lives.

[02:28:56] Speaker 7: So let's go through some of your plans for the coming weeks and months then. Let's do this in stages if we can. First of all, we'll get to the health system which has been decimated and water and sanitation. But first of all, just on food, I think you'll understand if I'm correct, if I'm wrong, but there is now significant famine and acute malnutrition across the 2.1 million people of Gaza. What are your plans for increasing food deliveries immediately?

[02:29:20] Speaker 6: So that's objective number one. We've got to get high-nutrition food in. We've got to get hundreds of truckloads, convoy. We need to overwhelm Gaza with food and generosity and aid and help right now. We need to get food to 2 million people across the Strip in every part of Gaza, north and south. And we have those supplies pre-positioned. We've got 172,000 metric tonnes of food, medicine and tents all cleared, ready to go in. The teams are on standby at the crossings. The trucks are ready to roll and we'll use our community networks, our expertise, our experience to get that food where it is most needed.

[02:30:01] Speaker 7: What are your plans when it comes to the health system?

[02:30:03] Speaker 6: It's a massive, massive challenge. I saw for myself when I visited in January the scale of destruction of the hospitals and of the medical sector and of course it's got even worse since then. So we've got to rebuild those hospitals. We've got to get the essential anaesthetics in, painkillers in. We've got to ensure that full medical supplies are flowing but also medical expertise because many of those working nurses and doctors in that sector have also been killed. It's a massive, massive task ahead that has to run alongside that effort to feed everyone in Gaza.

[02:30:38] Speaker 7: Presumably one of the most urgent tasks concerns water and sanitation.

[02:30:44] Speaker 6: We need to get water to 1.4 million people as part of this plan. We also need to help people prepare for the winter ahead. It's getting much colder already and so we're looking to get thousands of tents into Gaza in the coming days and weeks to give them that shelter but also to give them the means to start to rebuild their lives. We also want to get the kids back to school so we have a plan to get 700,000 school-aged kids back into temporary classrooms at least and supplied with the books and the pens and pencils to begin studying again.

[02:31:16] Speaker 7: To what extent, can you just explain the principles you apply to the extent to which, Tom, you will work with Hamas, who remain in place, who've not been completely disarmed, to get that delivery, to get those health services, to get the water and sanitation through. What's your principled position in terms of what you'll do with a group which Israel says still needs to be disarmed

[02:31:36] Speaker 6: urgently? So our major priority is to get that aid to civilians where it's most needed and here in Gaza, as everywhere, we have to work in a neutral, impartial, independent, principled way. Now everywhere we work, and you know I've been on the phone today to colleagues in Sudan who are getting past armed groups in Sudan, we always have to negotiate access with whoever is on the ground but we shouldn't have to ask to get to civilians. We'll work with everyone we need to work with to get past the blockages, whether those are on the border or whether those are the armed groups inside Gaza, and reach the communities of the mums and dads and kids, the families who need this support

[02:32:15] Speaker 7: right now and can't wait. This is obviously an extremely precarious, fast changing situation. We're very grateful for your time speaking to us, Tom. What's your biggest concern about what could go wrong in the coming days? So many

[02:32:28] Speaker 6: things can go wrong, the devil's in the detail of this. I think President Trump deserves real credit for having got us to this point and having set up this framework for a ceasefire and potential peace. Now we have to get the details right. We've got to move on from this vicious cycle of cruelty and terror and revenge and complicity and difference and inhumanity and then we have to rebuild Gaza and beyond that somehow start to rebuild trust and hope between Israelis and Palestinians and that's going to be a really really long hard process. We've got to rebuild confidence in international law that's been so corroded by this war. We've got to have patience and we've got to have massive generosity in the time ahead and I hope that people who've been moved by what they've seen in Gaza will now be moved to be generous. We're only 25% funded on our appeal so please, you know, pick up the phone, get online, visit crisisrelief.un.org, call your embassy and let's flood Gaza with aid.

[02:33:42] Speaker 15: And that was the UN's humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher. It's just gone 3.38pm in Gaza and in Israel and this is the day that a new ceasefire has began. It began just a few hours ago, three hours ago, and it began with the withdrawal of Israeli forces from some parts of Gaza to a yellow line and we had this confirmation around noon Gaza and Israel time and that was the statement from the Israeli, Israel defense forces and we've also had confirmation coming in from the United States Special Envoy Steve Witkoff confirming that news adding that the 72 hour period to release the hostages from Gaza had began. The BBC has been hearing from Peter Lerner. He's a retired IDF spokesperson and general. He said the role of the IDF has changed and the war is over. I'd say hallelujah to that. I

[02:34:51] Speaker 16: think that the Israeli society has been, based on all of the polls, waiting for this moment to see a realization of a deal. It was President Trump that was able to realize that deal and this morning what we've seen in the earlier today is the redeployment of the military forces to the yellow line which is something we have to get used to saying into a new reality I would say defensive but it won't be a passive line of defense if you know if there are Hamas terrorists that we've seen in the last few days trying to have a go at the Israeli military across the different positions within the Gaza Strip I expect we will see more of these types of actions in the coming days as well so they will be defending they will be on the line but I think that all eyes will be indeed until pointed to Monday Monday morning Monday afternoon to see the hostages come home to see President Trump's visit and to see the realization of the hostage release and advance and that I would say these types of things if they actually do develop positively they can be confidence building measures in the advance of the entire process. One of the war aims of

[02:36:05] Speaker 17: course was the release of the hostages another was to destroy Hamas and arguably a disarmed Hamas is a destroyed Hamas there will be questions to come about the nature of that disarmament heavy weapons versus light weapons quite what it actually means are you clear as to what disarmament means?

[02:36:25] Speaker 16: So I think the military goals were a very very clear goal that Hamas no longer poses a threat to Israel a threat like October 7th and I was listening just before we came on to the words of Brigadier General Effie Dufferin the IDF spokesperson today and he was very very clear that that threat that existed on October 7th absolutely does not exist today of course Hamas still have weapons still have capabilities but they're extremely diminished compared to what we've endured over the last two years so I would say moving forward we need to maintain that at least the level of Hamas does not increase and I would say we need to push forward and implement the agreement to make sure that Hamas does not have a role in rebuilding Gaza because we've seen what they've done with the power of governance they build a military they build a terrorist army and they came into the Israeli communities in October 7th 2023 for me I think that the most moving moments over the last couple of days were the very very low lows of the memorial the anniversary of October 7th just a few days ago and then the immediate flip over the anticipation the jubilation of the expectations of the deal being realized and for the hostages to come home so I think Israelis over the next few days are going to be glued to their TV sets they're going to be hyper connected to what's going on and all eyes will be on who are the terrorists are going to be released in instead of the hostages being released how is the security indeed going to be realized how are we going to make sure that we can actually move forward into a more safe secure reality for Israelis and Palestinians

[02:38:09] Speaker 15: alike you're with BBC News live we bring you continued coverage of events in the Middle East a new ceasefire has been agreed between Israel and Hamas and it is now underway today is the first day of that ceasefire we're monitoring images coming into us from central Gaza one of the things that really unfolded over the last few hours is that thousands of Gazans who'd fled to the south of the territory have now started making their way back north to Gaza City this is one of the areas that Israeli forces have withdrawn from allowing residents be able to go back to what remains of their home some of them have been told that their homes have been completely destroyed as a result of the ongoing conflict thoughts also turn to the humanitarian situation they need to get food into the territory and the long-term picture the long-term goal would be the reconstruction of Gaza our chief international correspondent at least the set has been speaking to Ibrahim is better a Palestinian man who escaped Gaza for his daughter to have specialized medical care his brother and

[02:39:36] Speaker 14: family still remain in our Mawassi they are still under the trauma they couldn't believe we have reached this moment this moment it's been delayed for two years in waiting this moment for years I was I remember two weeks ago from Gaza City under a heavy fire after midnight they stay all night try to pull up with him so right now we are very happy nobody care about what's the condition but at least right now they can sleep safely after this and how hard will it be for

[02:40:35] Speaker 1: your family if the ceasefire will help enormously but as you know I don't need to tell you the level of destruction is also enormous it's going to continue to

[02:40:47] Speaker 14: be a huge challenge is it not it's gonna be difficult because we are specifically from a neighborhood right now since the morning they are saying that that is really will not withdraw from our neighborhood so we are happy but at the same time we are devastating about okay this is a ceasefire but where what's the future when we can put back to our land at least because our home was at the beginning at the first phase of the at the first ceasefire it was partially destroyed right now it's completely destroyed so like we were like spoken about when we put back then like some people say that's our homes destroyed then right now the news came that we will not be able to back our houses so this like indeed we are happy it's over but still like what's the future what's coming next we have no idea when we put back because right now I was spoken with him I was spoken with my sister too when you will back they say that we couldn't if they say that it's in our neighborhood and at this stage they will not but at least they they will be sleep normal like any other people like any other people around the world without like in which way I'm going to die I'm going to stay alive tomorrow or I'm going to lose someone else at least now they have the sense to sleep well

[02:42:22] Speaker 15: like any other people around the world and that was Ibrahim Isbetta speaking to our chief international correspondent at least is set and Ibrahim's family his brother remaining al-Mawassi so al-Mawassi is an area in the south of the territory in the far south of Gaza this was a part of the territory that Israel had demarcated as a humanitarian zone a safe zone during different periods of the conflict it urged the residents of Gaza to head to al-Mawassi where they'll be able to find shelter and food but aid organizations had continuously warned that there just wasn't enough there weren't enough resources there for Gazans they talked about the tough squalid conditions with people living in tents there with people not able to access proper water and wash facilities earlier my colleague least is set spoke to Tess Ingram from UNICEF who's in al-Mawassi in southern Gaza and spoke to her about the current working conditions there

[02:43:35] Speaker 13: incredibly crowded conditions there are so many people that have been displaced here over the last few weeks living in really really difficult conditions lack of shelter people under pieces of tarpaulin with very little to keep them warm as winter approaches children walking through broken rubble without shoes insufficient access to food and water and throughout all of that UNICEF is doing our best to respond but like it has been throughout this conflict we've been restricted in what we can bring in and what areas we have access to so we are pleased we really welcome this news of the ceasefire and we hope that it will lead to a scaling up of aid to help address conditions here in al-Mawassi but across the Gaza Strip and are you seeing Tess that people

[02:44:21] Speaker 1: are starting to move to go back to their homes if indeed they can along the lines permitted by the

[02:44:28] Speaker 13: new Israeli deployment lines there's a lot of excitement but also apprehension about that move around people make wanting to make sure that they're going to be safe if they do move but of course already beginning to pack up their belongings because as people told me when I was here during the February ceasefire and again now home is home and they want to go back to their communities and their lands even if it has been reduced to rubble but what is then critical is that the humanitarian response is there for them providing them with that shelter with a tent with access to safe drinking water with those shoes for their children and that's going to be our focus in the coming days is to follow the thousands of people as they move back to their communities

[02:45:15] Speaker 1: and do you have any sense as to how quickly the humanitarian aspect of this new deal is going to come into force you may remember that in the ceasefire in January the gates opened quite quickly and within no time at all hundreds of trucks were rumbling across the border what's

[02:45:32] Speaker 13: your sense this time we're really hoping for the same based on our understanding of what has been negotiated in this plan and presented by the mediators the UN is going to be at the heart of this humanitarian response and that's what we're being that's what we're working around is is to have the trucks ready to go UNICEF has 1300 trucks pre-positioned outside of the Gaza Strip ready to scale up our response we have had trucks come in yesterday and today but we need to see that increase as you say happen very quickly hopefully tomorrow or the next day we can see that scale up meaningfully because the stakes here are really high we're talking about children's who's immune systems have been shattered children who have gone years without access to nutritious food and of course with winter approaching that diseases will spread so that scale up is is incredibly time critical or we risk seeing continued children dying from the humanitarian crisis on the ground

[02:46:35] Speaker 1: yes of course it will be the immediate needs as you've been mentioning that have to be met first but I suppose if if this calm holds you perhaps can begin to try to ease the trauma that all of the children of Gaza have experienced and really cannot be cannot start to heal unless the bombing start stops unless that sound of the drone in the air goes away yeah that's exactly right

[02:47:01] Speaker 13: I can still hear the drones now so for children the sound of a ceasefire the sound of peace hasn't come true yet and and we do really need that in order to address the horrors that they've experienced over more than two years now and I think it's important for us to remember that in why this ceasefire must be sustained why it's so critical children have been disappointed before they've had a ceasefire be broken fall away in front of them and then endure more months of loss and of trauma and of fear so if that happened again that would be devastating for the mental health of children all people in the Gaza Strip we need that peace and we need to be able to scale up that mental health response here for children in Gaza to begin to address what they have endured it's just as important as the shelter the food and the education that we're going to provide to kids here

[02:48:08] Speaker 15: and that was Tess Ingram from UNICEF speaking to our Chief International Correspondent Lise Doucette as she was saying their aid organizations like UNICEF are hopeful that aid will be coming into Gaza unrestricted the expectation is that this will happen immediately after a ceasefire has begun but we don't know yet from our colleagues on the ground whether that is happening we do know that yesterday when the announcement about a possible ceasefire was made that an agreement had been reached aid organizations had started moving trucks to the border with Gaza but what we also know is that hostages all the remaining hostages will be released from Gaza over the next 72 hours Yehuda Cohen is the father of Nimrod Cohen who was taken hostage by Hamas after October the 7th and is still being held in Gaza he told the BBC about how he felt about the efforts to bring him home it's going to take a few days as you said

[02:49:18] Speaker 8: ceasefire gonna start 12 o'clock local time so we're counting 72 hours three days and we know Hamas will push the limit let us stall another few days but feelings are we are getting finally to the end getting finally to the end yeah thanks to President Donald Trump he did it for some other reason but he did it at last forcing us anyhow to take the plan go to a ceasefire and release the Israelis not the American the Israeli hostages Israeli soldiers like my son so we're looking forward mixed feelings along with happiness is the moment we will meet our son Nimrod in what condition physically mentally psychological condition we will meet him what needs to be done to rehabilitate him it's going to take time and of course looking beyond beyond Nimrod beyond our family looking at our country there's a lot to do to fix our country got to start with this person called Netanyahu being dragged out of any power on Israel government or any decision he's a danger to Israel well it's not just a warning it's a fact he had the one of the biggest contribution to the event of the 7th of October this is the person and yeah I'm concentrating on Netanyahu not on Nimrod but we have to understand the source of the problem he is the one who made Hamas get the capabilities of launching this heinous attack on the 7th of October he was the one that used this attack to prolong his position as a prime minister conducting an endless war sacrificing Israeli soldiers sacrificing hostages who he is the one responsible for them being taken at least 42 hostages were murdered during captivity because of his position sustaining his position games so we have to remember that and we have to make sure this will never happen again

[02:51:44] Speaker 1: yeah and as you know Yehuda he constantly said that he had two war aims one was to destroy Hamas the second was to bring the hostages home he kept saying and for a while President Trump agreed with him that military pressure would work but do you think without this huge intervention by President Trump this this day that you're now hope there you're

[02:52:09] Speaker 8: now just waiting for would never have happened yeah absolutely yes because first of all regarding Netanyahu's announcement and I always said that Netanyahu before he opened his mouth is lying okay his target was his securing his position as a prime minister escaping his criminal trial he's on here in Israel that's his only purpose and I'm saying it as one who looked him in the eye and saw the lies behind his eyes I was meeting him not one one by one but I was meeting him several times last time was about two and a half months ago when he was in Washington in a reception in the Blair house promising us that the first thing we'll do after the partial deal which never came through we will talk about releasing all the rest of the hostages okay sitting in front of you and lying brute force this is Netanyahu regarding Trump and of course I can't say any bad word about Trump right now because he forced Netanyahu to go for the deal but we know that Trump was working from his own interests we're right now you know you you're you are gonna get give the report of in one hour they're going to be a decision who will get the Nobel Peace Prize and he is looking for that it's not a coincidence that everything is closing up towards the 10th of September in that in that angle we have to remember the pressure on Trump from Arab countries especially after the stupid attack on Doha Netanyahu conducted we have to remember the European declaration including the UK including Australia Canada France etc regarding recognition of Palestinian state this is a full collaboration with modern Arab countries that kind of closed everything that Trump has to decide if he's only supporting Netanyahu not Israel only supporting Netanyahu and going again against the rest of the world and even you know inside US public opinion even the MAGA people the clear Trump supporters were starting losing patience of how Netanyahu is kind of controlling

[02:54:26] Speaker 15: Trump. The thoughts there of Yehuda Cohen father of Nimrod Cohen who has taken hostage by Hamas after October the 7th he and 19 other hostages who are still believed to be alive will be released according to the ceasefire agreement over the next 72 hours so that means according to the ceasefire agreement Hamas has to release the hostages who are alive and those who are deceased their bodies by Monday afternoon. This is BBC News Live where we continue to bring you continuous coverage of the ceasefire that's now underway between Hamas and Israel we continue to monitor the scenes from Gaza where thousands of displaced Palestinians are beginning to travel back to the north of Gaza after the ceasefire came into effect. We're just going to join our colleagues on the BBC News channel shortly for continuous coverage of these events.

[02:56:03] Speaker 12: Hello I'm Geetha Goramuthi this is BBC News. The Israeli military has announced that the ceasefire in Gaza has now come into effect. We are seeing pictures from Gaza showing thousands of displaced Palestinians filing north towards Gaza City which until recent days was a scene of a major Israeli ground offensive and aerial bombardment. Israel says its forces have withdrawn to an agreed line within Gaza. Hamas now has until Monday morning to release all Israeli hostages including 20 still believed to be alive and the bodies of 28 others. Our Middle East correspondent Hugo Bochega reports.

[02:56:51] Speaker 2: By the road they waited with a few things that were now everything they had. Unsure if it was safe to return. Unsure if the bombs had stopped falling. The deal had brought them hope but this morning they still didn't know if had finally brought them peace. My son and I slept here last night on the pavement in the cold waiting to go back home. Even if the house is destroyed even if it's just rubble we'll go back put up a tent and return to our people. After hours of uncertainty the Israeli military confirmed that the ceasefire had started. Israeli troops have pulled back from some parts but under the deal they still occupy over half of Gaza. Many now are going back even by foot to rebuilding what's been destroyed. In Israel the countdown for the release of the hostages has begun. 20 are believed to remain alive. One of them is Segev Hafon kidnapped at the Nova Music Festival.

[02:57:59] Speaker 18: We hope that he returns safe and sound and we wish that with God's help within the next two or three days we will see him. We'll rejoice together with the family and we really hope that everyone not just him returns safe and sound. It's still not clear when and where the

[02:58:16] Speaker 2: hostages will be freed. The deal brokered by Trump is a major victory but there's no clear

[02:58:22] Speaker 9: plan for what happens in Gaza next. The point now is that we need countries coming together to make peace a reality and to actually make it happen because this is still a fragile process but it's one that there is huge momentum behind and huge commitment to so we have to make it work.

[02:58:40] Speaker 2: They can now walk without fear in the war but the Gaza they know is no longer there and no one knows what the new Gaza will be. Hugo Mashega, BBC News, Jerusalem. Well Donald Trump is expected to travel

[02:58:54] Speaker 12: to Israel this weekend. A little earlier I was joined by Hugo alongside our North America correspondent Nomia Iqbal who told us what Mr Trump will be hoping for during his visit. He's going on Sunday

[02:59:05] Speaker 19: to Israel. He will be addressing the Israeli parliament. He'll be in the Knesset and it will be an opportunity for him to essentially take a victory lap over the fact that the deal has got this far. I think it's also an opportunity for him to put pressure maybe on the far right in the Israeli government who despite the deal having gone through the first phase are still not keen on it. Also worth mentioning that polls suggest that Mr Trump is much more popular in Israel than Netanyahu, something that he has mentioned to Mr Netanyahu a few times. And then there is an expectation that he might go to Cairo next week to take part in the actual signing of the deal. He has been invited by Egypt's president and when it all comes down to it Gita, Mr Trump is very much about the visuals, very much about the optics. He knows that this is a moment to take those iconic pictures to show this moment. It's a moment in history which if he does pull it off, and he is on the verge of achieving something major, it will definitely be a significant part of his legacy.

[03:00:09] Speaker 12: And let me just bring in Hugo who is in Jerusalem. Hugo, we saw your report and you said it is not clear what comes next. There is a 20 point plan, Tony Blair's name against that plan. Obviously a lot of other players have been involved in drawing that up. Is it clear that the US is going to help drive that forward, that the president's attention will stay focused on the next few days and weeks?

[03:00:41] Speaker 2: Yes, there is huge momentum here in these negotiations and President Trump has been heavily involved in these efforts, putting pressure not only on Hamas but also on the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. So what's been agreed here, you may say, was the easiest part of this 20 point plan. The release of the hostages and a ceasefire in Gaza. But what happens next isn't really clear. The details, we don't have the details. The plan is just a framework of what has to be decided. But we know that these major obstacles remain. The key Israeli demand for Hamas to disarm, which has been rejected by Hamas so far. The extent of the withdrawal of Israeli troops. Hamas is demanding a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza. And obviously the question over what happens with Gaza next, who is going to govern Gaza? Will Hamas have any kind of role to play in a post-war Gaza? These are very difficult points and there has been no indication, no suggestion, over how these negotiations are going to unfold and how these major gaps, how negotiations are going to be able to bridge those major gaps between Israel and Hamas.

[03:01:58] Speaker 12: And Namir Iqbal, in terms of the wider backdrop to today that we've also been covering, the Nobel Peace Prize is something that Donald Trump publicly mentioned at so many of his news conferences repeatedly in recent weeks. He didn't win and there has been a reaction today on that.

[03:02:20] Speaker 19: Yeah, the White House isn't happy about it, accusing the committee of putting politics over peace. But there was no real question that Donald Trump was going to win it this year. I think there are two things here. There's Donald Trump's campaign to win the Nobel Peace Prize and then there's the actual Nobel Peace Prize. And there's no doubt Mr Trump wants to win it. He's been entered for it since 2018 over his Abraham Accords. That's the policy to try and get Arab nations to recognise Israel. But the committee had probably already made their minds up and also the ceasefire in the Middle East hasn't endured yet. We have yet to see the results of it. So I don't think he was going to win today but I'm pretty sure that there's maybe a chance next year. I'm sure that the White House will be hoping that will be the case.

[03:03:10] Speaker 12: And Nomi, just very quickly, the timing of the ceasefire that we are seeing and the Nobel Award partly a spur, obviously we've had the two-year anniversary of October 7th too, so it's been a really remarkable few days, hasn't it?

[03:03:28] Speaker 19: It is. I mean, you know, there are some conspiracies that the stars have aligned in some respects, I guess. Yes, of course. And, you know, this deal has come pretty quickly in some ways. We know that Donald Trump had been pushing for it for a long time but it has all happened very quickly. But there's still a long way to go and, you know, there are plenty of people, Donald Trump supporters, his administration, who want him to win this prize, saying that there are presidents before, in their view, who have won it for less. But there are also the critics of President Trump who will say, well, hang on a minute, there's a lot going on here in the US in which they consider Donald Trump is attacking America and so he doesn't deserve the Peace Prize. So, as you can imagine, Geetha, it's all very divisive.

[03:04:18] Speaker 12: Nomi Iqbal and Hugo Pacheco a little earlier. Well, let's get more now from inside Gaza. Our chief international correspondent, Lise Doucette, who's in Israel at the moment, spoke to Tess Ingram from UNICEF, who's currently working in Al-Mawassi, and she began by asking her to describe some of the conditions that Tess and her team are now finding.

[03:04:38] Speaker 13: Incredibly crowded conditions. There are so many people that have been displaced here over the last few weeks, living in really, really difficult conditions. Lack of shelter, people under pieces of tarpaulin with very little to keep them warm as winter arrives. Broken rubble without shoes. Insufficient access to food and water. And throughout all of that, UNICEF is doing our best to respond, but like it has been throughout this conflict, we've been restricted in what we can bring in and what areas we have access to. So we are pleased. We really welcome this news of the ceasefire and we hope that it will lead to a scaling up of aid to help address conditions here in Al-Mawassi but across the Gaza Strip.

[03:05:18] Speaker 1: And are you seeing, Tess, that people are starting to move, to go back to their homes, if indeed they can, along the lines permitted by the new Israeli deployment lines?

[03:05:30] Speaker 13: There's a lot of excitement but also apprehension about that move around people wanting to make sure that they're going to be safe if they do move but, of course, already beginning to pack up their belongings because, as people told me when I was here during the February ceasefire, and again now, home is home and they want to go back to their communities and their lands, even if it has been reduced to rubble. But what is then critical is that the humanitarian response is there for them, providing them with that shelter, with a tent, with access to safe drinking water, with those shoes for their children, and that's going to be our focus in the coming days is to follow the thousands of people as they move back to their communities.

[03:06:12] Speaker 12: Tess Ingram from UNICEF speaking to my colleague Lise Doucette. Around the world and across the UK, this is BBC News.

[03:06:41] Speaker 4: So, a lot of moving parts, a lot to discuss. Who better than with our international editor, Jeremy Bowen. Jeremy, good to see you as always. Look, we've got Tom Fletcher talking about the next possible moves for the UN. They are ready to get aid in. We've just heard from Professor Saul, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, who's saying that the plan of Donald Trump is pretty vague. There are still things that really need to be nailed down. And ultimately, we're still seeing plumes of smoke across Gaza. Just help us to unpick all of this.

[03:07:28] Speaker 5: Well, first of all, the ceasefire clearly hasn't quite started yet. I think that's absolutely the case, whatever people are saying. And maybe in the next 24 hours or so, that is going to happen, that they will stop those strikes. I think the IDF is pulling back, and that's probably why they're continuing them. In terms of this all goes back to the Trump 20-point plan that he put out a week or two ago. And the thing about it is that if you look at it, there is very little detail. There isn't just a lack of detail. There's ambiguity. There's some things that even seem quite contradictory inside it. So the really big diplomatic challenge now that they've done the first phase or agreed to that, and it's going to unfold over the next couple of days, it seems pretty certain, is filling in all of those gaps. And that is the difficult stuff, because ambiguity is something that works quite well where you're trying to get people to agree. But when it comes to actually...

[03:08:35] Speaker 1: ..to get people to agree, it's a very difficult thing to do, and it's a very difficult thing to do,

[03:08:41] Speaker 20: and it's a very difficult thing to do,

[03:08:43] Speaker 5: and it's a very difficult thing to do.

[03:08:45] Speaker 4: And that's a really important point. It comes to a timeline for a transfer of authority, how the governance mechanism will even work across Gaza. Who is even involved in that, Jeremy?

[03:08:57] Speaker 5: Well, it hasn't been worked out. In the 20-point plan, there are various aspirational things, and there is... They've said that here's the structure, there'll be this councillor piece at the top, Donald Trump will be the chair, Tony Blair's going to be involved as well, and then there's going to be some kind of technocratic institution, and there will be some kind of international force. It's very vague. There have to be a lot of very hard details worked out, and that's the tough thing. And things have to happen too, like a UN Security Council resolution to authorise the presence of these foreign troops there. I don't think that Arab or Muslim countries are going to really want to get involved in something that legally would be an illegal operation lacking that kind of legitimacy that you get from a Security Council resolution. I think they could get the resolution, but it takes time. And with the difficulties in Gaza and the complexity of things, maybe they don't have indefinite amounts of time.

[03:10:05] Speaker 4: And on that point, of course, aid getting in is absolutely critical in that first stage, given the famine, given the humanitarian issues there, the acute malnutrition. But what about the rebuilding? Because we see the absolute devastation across Gaza. Is there even any idea of who will be undertaking that? The contracts that potentially will be implemented to get Gaza rebuilt? We're still not even clear on that, are we, Jeremy?

[03:10:36] Speaker 5: No, that's a long way off. That's a long way off. There's, you know, hundreds of thousands of tonnes of rubble, apart from anything else. I think that that will have to wait quite a while, because, first of all, what they need to do is to get some stability for more than 2 million people, almost all of whom have been displaced on multiple occasions, who, as a strip, which is a tiny piece of land, was already one of the most densely populated places in the world, and now more than 2 million people have been pushed into a fraction of it by the IDF, by the Israeli military. So, question mark, how... To what extent will they be allowed to go back to where they came from? What about what happens in the north of Gaza? I mean, Israel seems to want to stay in that particular area. There's pressure inside the Israeli cabinet for permission to allow Jews to settle there, and I don't think that's going to be happening. Certainly not as yet, and they're very disappointed that it's not. But it's not off the agenda. So there are lots of things in the future, in the immediate future, that we don't know about, and the challenge is going to be some of these ambiguities and uncertainties, where there's a tangible diplomatic agreement, which, you know, Trump is not a details man. He's been a bulldozer pushing this through. Getting to the detail will take a sustained diplomatic effort and agreements. It's not something that necessarily can be imposed in the same way that he actually said with... You know, after the 9th of September attacks on Doha, on the Hamas leadership in Doha by the Israelis, clearly was Netanyahu overplaying his hand massively, and the consequences that he's dealing with now is that Trump has got in there, because attacking Qatar is bad for America, Trump has got in there and he's grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and said, Israel is going to the table and you're going to stay there until there is a deal based on my 20 points. Now, that has happened, but what happens next? The detailed stuff, very difficult to achieve.

[03:12:42] Speaker 7: Let's speak to Tom Fletcher, UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. He's speaking to us from Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. Tom, good morning.

[03:12:52] Speaker 21: Good morning, Amol.

[03:12:53] Speaker 7: Let's just do a little bit on your understanding of the situation before we get into the plans that you must have for the next month or so. Journalists are still prohibited by Israel from entering Gaza. Have you heard from your people in Gaza in the past 90 minutes or so that the ceasefire has begun and is holding?

[03:13:10] Speaker 6: So, I'm in very close touch with our teams inside Gaza, but also with survivors in Niros, Kibbutz, and civilians in Gaza as well. They have long waited and hoped for this moment and we've worked hard to get here. It must not be a false dawn. We need to ensure that President Trump's plan isn't blocked by hardliners on either side. We're hearing there have been strikes overnight. I think Jeremy Bowen was reporting that about an hour ago as well, to Delint, and we need the ceasefire to be implemented.

[03:13:39] Speaker 7: And as far as you understand, Tom, who is now responsible for aid in Gaza?

[03:13:45] Speaker 6: So, the UN has a plan. There's been unimaginable suffering in Gaza, tens of thousands killed, including over 18,000 children. That's a child killed on average every hour for two years. And this agreement's a real breakthrough, but the real breakthrough will be when the hostages are home, when children are fed, when they can sleep without terror under a roof, when they're not bombed and maimed, when they can be operated on with anaesthetics, when they can go back to school, when families are reunited again. And so we will deliver that plan. We've got a 60-day plan to get that aid in, to save lives at huge, huge scale. We have fought and beaten famines before, and we will do it again this time.

[03:14:25] Speaker 7: Very, very keen to talk to you about the specifics of that plan in just a moment, but I've got one other practical question, if I may, before we get there, which is how confident are you that the restrictions previously placed on aid deliveries by Israel, who say that those deliveries have been hijacked or vandalised, that those restrictions will now be lifted?

[03:14:42] Speaker 6: So that's the big question for the coming hours and days, and obviously we're in very close touch with the Israeli authorities in-country to make sure that those impediments, those obstacles are now removed. We need all the crossings open. We need safe routes for our convoys. We need our people protected. Hundreds of my colleagues have been killed in the last two years. We need the removal of red tape and physical barriers. We need the power back on to our bakeries, our hospitals, our water stations. It's a massive, massive job ahead. We need access for our NGO colleagues and partners as well. And as you say, we need the international media to get back in and tell the world what is happening and hold us to account for saving lives.

[03:15:25] Speaker 7: Well, let's go through some of your plans for the coming weeks and months then. Let's do this in stages if we can. First of all, we'll get to the health system, which has been decimated, and water and sanitation. But first of all, just on food, I think you'll understand, correct me if I'm wrong, but there is now significant famine and acute malnutrition across the 2.1 million people of Gaza. What are your plans for increasing food deliveries immediately?

[03:15:50] Speaker 6: So that's objective number one. We've got to get high-nutrition food in. We've got to get hundreds of truckloads, convoy. We need to overwhelm Gaza with food and generosity and aid and help right now. We need to get food to 2 million people across the Strip in every part of Gaza, north and south. And we have those supplies pre-positioned. We've got 172,000 metric tons of food, medicine and tents all cleared, ready to go in. The teams are on standby at the crossings. The trucks are ready to roll. And we'll use our community networks to get that food where it is most needed.

[03:16:28] Speaker 7: What are your plans when it comes to the health system?

[03:16:31] Speaker 6: It's a massive, massive challenge. I saw for myself when I visited in January the scale of destruction of the hospitals and of the medical sector, and, of course, it's got even worse since then. So we've got to rebuild those hospitals. We've got to get the essential anesthetics and painkillers in. We've got to ensure that full medical supplies are flowing, but also medical expertise because many of those working nurses and doctors in that sector have also been killed. It's a massive, massive task ahead that has to run alongside that effort to feed everyone in Gaza.

[03:17:05] Speaker 7: And presumably one of the most urgent tasks concerns water and sanitation.

[03:17:10] Speaker 6: We need to get water to 1.4 million people as part of this plan. We also need to help people prepare for the winter ahead. It's getting much colder already, and so we're looking to get thousands of tents into Gaza in the coming days and weeks to give them that shelter, but also to give them the means to start to go back and begin to rebuild their lives. We also want to get the kids back to school, so we have a plan to get 700,000 school-aged kids back into temporary classrooms at least and supplied with the books and the pens and pencils to begin studying again.

[03:17:45] Speaker 7: To what extent can you just explain the principles you apply to the extent to which, Tom, you will work with Hamas, who remain in place, who have not been completely disarmed, to get that delivery, to get those health services, to get the water and sanitation through? What's your principled position in terms of what you'll do with a group which Israel says still needs to be disarmed urgently?

[03:18:07] Speaker 6: So our major priority is to get that aid to civilians where it's most needed. And here in Gaza, as everywhere, we have to work in a neutral, impartial, independent, principled way. Now, everywhere we work, and I've been on the phone today to colleagues in Sudan who are getting past armed groups in Sudan, we always have to negotiate access with whoever is on the ground. But we shouldn't have to ask to get to civilians. We'll work with everyone we need to work with to get past the blockages, whether those are on the border or whether those are the armed groups inside Gaza, and reach the communities of the mums and dads and kids, the families who need the support right now and can't wait.

[03:18:46] Speaker 7: This is obviously an extremely precarious, fast-changing situation. We're very grateful for your time speaking to us, Tom. What's your biggest concern about what could go wrong in the coming days?

[03:18:55] Speaker 6: So many things can go wrong. The devil's in the detail of this. I think President Trump deserves real credit for having got us to this point and having set up this framework for a ceasefire and potential peace. Now we have to get the details right. We've got to move on from this vicious cycle of cruelty and terror and revenge and complicity and difference and inhumanity, and then we have to rebuild Gaza. And beyond that, somehow start to rebuild trust and hope between Israelis and Palestinians. And that's going to be a really, really long, hard process. We've got to rebuild confidence in international law that's been so corroded by this war. We've got to have patience and we've got to have massive generosity in the time ahead. And I hope that people who've been moved by what they've seen in Gaza will now be moved to be generous. We're only 25% funded on our appeal. So please, you know, pick up the phone, get online, visit crisisrelief.un.org, call your MP and let's flood Gaza with aid.

[03:19:57] Speaker 22: So can Israel be trusted to not restart its bombardment as soon as you get your hostages back?

[03:20:03] Speaker 23: The first thing is that every time Israel signed an agreement, Israel completely fulfilled it. Israel never, never broke a deal or an agreement that it actually signed on. Unfortunately... Israel twice broke ceasefire agreements. Actually, Hamas time after time have violated those agreements. Earlier this year it was Israel who broke the ceasefire agreement. No, that's not true. That's really misleading and that's incorrect. And you heard from the Americans who were sitting around the table negotiating that Hamas was wasting time, that didn't want to advance into the second stage. You heard that from them, not from the Israelis. So please do not invent facts. The fact is now that Hamas didn't accept the peace plan. It only accepted the first stage. If it would say yes, like the rest of the international community, like Israel, like the Palestinian Authority, like Jordan, like Qatar, like Turkey, then you would know that this war would end completely. But unfortunately they didn't, right? They refused to do it and they only approved the first stage of the deal until now. This is the reality again of Hamas.

[03:21:22] Speaker 22: So can I ask you then to answer the original question, which is, will Israel restart its offensive?

[03:21:29] Speaker 23: Well, as long as Hamas accepts the deal that's on the table, like Israel did, like the Palestinian did, and like the Arab countries did, obviously they won't. And Israel doesn't want it. Every time Israel had a diplomatic path to achieve our goals, which are the return of our hostages, dismantle Hamas from its arms, which is what any country would do for its citizens, protecting them, bringing them back home. Every time we had a diplomatic path, Israel chose a diplomatic path. Okay. And can I ask before we have to let you go as well? Only when we were left with no other choice, then we started a military campaign to make sure we are able to bring them back home and dismantle Hamas.

[03:22:15] Speaker 22: Okay. And can I ask you as well, Sharon, for clarity, has the ceasefire started? It's been signed off by your government. Has it started?

[03:22:24] Speaker 23: Yes, the ceasefire started, even though just a few hours ago, Hamas's sniper have killed another one of our soldiers. Just now, the ceasefire actually entered last night, once it was approved by the cabinet.

[03:22:40] Speaker 4: Let's bring in Professor Ben Sol, who's a UN special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism. And Professor Sol, when it comes to the first stages, we're awaiting the concrete ceasefire to start. But I guess when it comes to the next stages, the Israeli troops withdrawing to a particular line, meaning that they'll still have control of around 53% of the Gaza Strip. What do we understand as to how that potentially will look in practice on the ground in Gaza?

[03:23:16] Speaker 24: Good to be with you. And I think lots can go wrong in this plan. Everybody is absolutely relieved that the killing should stop very soon and that the hostages will be released and arbitrarily detained Palestinians will be released. But this is a very complex plan with lots of moving parts. It depends upon the goodwill and good faith of both Hamas and Israel and the credibility of the US in enforcing the parties to live up to their bargains. So I think it's very early days yet to say whether this will work, whether the plan will stick. And there's so much in the 20 points, the other points and the next phases of this plan, that are so vague and that don't in certain respects comply with international law that I think in the longer term we could be in for a potential resumption of conflict and violence.

[03:24:09] Speaker 4: So talk us through the aspects that potentially do jar with international law because we know that part of this plan is the US moving troops already based in the Middle East to Israel to coordinate the multinational force which will monitor the ceasefire as and when it does come into place. Are we basically effectively moving from an Israeli force within Gaza to a multinational one? And is that within international law?

[03:24:42] Speaker 24: So at the root cause of this conflict is the failure of the international community to enforce the Palestinians' right to self-determination and statehood for many, many decades. The Palestinians were promised a state about a century ago actually and although Israel got one many years ago, the Palestinians' right has been denied and this plan doesn't fix that. There are some vague aspirational references to self-determination but there are no concrete benchmarks or guarantees that the Palestinians will get their own independent state free of any kind of foreign occupation. Israeli, and of course here the Israelis will partially continue to occupy Palestine or some other international occupation because remember this plan is not so far endorsed by the UN Security Council. It's not an international peacekeeping force of United Nations personnel. It will be a US-led occupation of Palestinian territory. Now of course the International Court of Justice just last year said the Palestinians have a right of self-determination. Israel must withdraw as soon as possible from the Palestinian territories and the court wasn't suggesting that it's somehow up to the United States to come in and impose its own occupation in place of the Israelis.

[03:26:06] Speaker 4: Arguably though, if the international community, if the UN haven't been able to reach this moment and it's the US that's pushing it, is there any kind of leeway within international law to facilitate this or is this a breach of those guidelines from the international community?

[03:26:27] Speaker 24: So the reason the United Nations Security Council has not been able to act in this situation is precisely because of the United States and its threat of a veto or its actual exercise of its veto power to prevent collective action to resolve the Palestine question. So this is the fault of the United States. In addition, of course, President Trump's been in power for almost a year. He's been supplying weapons and ammunition to Israel to continue committing international crimes in Gaza for almost a year. So at any point he could have turned off the tap of weapons and stopped the Israeli occupation much, much earlier. The other problem in this, of course, is that there is no timeline for transfer of authority to genuine Palestinian representative governance. The 20-point plan, although there are 20 points, not one of them mentions accountability and justice for international crimes. At a time when the International Criminal Court has indicted Israeli leaders for international crimes, when the International Court of Justice is considering a case alleging genocide against Israel, and quite to the contrary, the peace plan gives blanket amnesties to Hamas members for any international crimes that they may have committed. So this is denying justice and, again, fuelling one of the underlying drivers of terrorist violence and resistance to Israeli occupation in Palestine.

[03:28:00] Speaker 16: I'd say hallelujah to that. I think that the Israeli society has been, based on all of the polls, waiting for this moment to see a realisation of a deal. It was President Trump that was able to realise that deal. And this morning, what we've seen earlier today is the redeployment of the military forces to the Yellow Line, which is something we have to get used to saying, into a new reality, I would say defensive, but it won't be a passive line of defence. If there are Hamas terrorists that we've seen in the last few days trying to have a go at the Israeli military across the different positions within the Gaza Strip, I expect we will see more of these types of actions in the coming days as well. So they will be defending, they will be on the line, but I think that all eyes will be, indeed, until pointed to Monday morning, Monday afternoon, to see the hostages come home, to see President Trump's visit, and to see the realisation of the hostage release and advance. And I would say these types of things, if they actually do develop positively, they can be confidence-building measures in the advance of the entire process.

[03:29:15] Speaker 17: One of the war aims, of course, was the release of the hostages. Another was to destroy Hamas. And arguably a disarmed Hamas is a destroyed Hamas. There will be questions to come about the nature of that disarmament, heavy weapons versus light weapons, quite what it actually means. Are you clear as to what disarmament means?

[03:29:36] Speaker 16: So I think the military goals were a very, very clear goal that Hamas no longer poses a threat to Israel, a threat like October 7th. And I was listening just before we came onto the words of Brigadier General Effie Dufferin, the IDF spokesperson today, and he was very, very clear that that threat that existed on October 7th absolutely does not exist today. Of course, Hamas still have weapons, still have capabilities, but they're extremely diminished compared to what we've endured over the last two years. So I would say, moving forward, we need to maintain that at least the level of Hamas does not increase. And I would say we need to push forward and implement the agreement to make sure that Hamas does not have a role in rebuilding Gaza because we've seen what they've done with the power of governance. They build a military, they build a terrorist army, and they came into the Israeli communities on October 7th, 2023. For me, I think that the most moving moments over the last couple of days were the very, very low lows of the memorial, the anniversary of October 7th, just a few days ago, and then the immediate flip over the anticipation, the jubilation, of the expectations of the deal being realised and for the hostages to come home. So I think Israelis over the next few days are going to be glued to their TV sets. They're going to be hyperconnected to what's going on, and all eyes will be on who are the terrorists that are going to be released instead of the hostages being released. How is the security indeed going to be realised? How are we going to make sure that we can actually move forward into a more safe, secure reality for Israelis and Palestinians alike?

[03:31:20] Speaker 10: Let's talk now to the Foreign Secretary, Yvette Cooper. Yvette Cooper, good morning to you. Thank you very much for joining us here on BBC Breakfast. I just wondered if you could tell us what you know in terms of this ceasefire and whether it is in effect what you are hearing.

[03:31:38] Speaker 9: Well, we're hoping that this will be in place imminently. There were discussions about the timing. Our view is that it should be brought in straight away. We just desperately need the end, complete end to all of the fighting alongside the release of hostages and the restoration of desperately needed aid. We're already working, there's already work underway to start getting the aid back in place, so we need all of the components of this ceasefire agreement, this first phase of the US peace initiative, have to be in place as rapidly as possible, implemented as swiftly as possible. We've had two years of unimaginable suffering and it's extremely important that this is a moment of peace, not just a moment of hope. What do you understand of the deal?

[03:32:29] Speaker 10: Just in terms of the reporting, we understand that one report said that once the deal had been signed, or the peace plan was in place, the ceasefire plan was in place, within 24 hours this ceasefire would come into force. Another is saying that it would immediately come into force. Are you any clearer as to what exactly is the case?

[03:32:54] Speaker 9: We were expecting it to come in within 24 hours, but our view continues to be we want it in place immediately, as rapidly as possible, and we hope that it will be brought in as soon as possible. But I think you can see, we've seen some of the images, streets of Gaza, the desperate need to celebrate that people have after such a long time of suffering, where you've got the pain of hostage families, but also the pain of families across Gaza who have endured the humanitarian crisis for all of this time. We have to have an end to this. This provides a huge moment to be able to do so. It's a tribute not just to the US leadership, but also to Qatar, Turkey, Egypt, who've been in the negotiations, and all of the countries, including the UK, have been working to support this and also to make sure it can be implemented going forward, and that's why I'm in Paris today.

[03:33:50] Speaker 10: Indeed, it leads very nicely into what you are doing in Paris. What involvement is European countries, the UK, going to have with this ceasefire agreement?

[03:34:04] Speaker 9: Well, the UK has been one of very many countries that's been contributing to this peace process. We've been putting forward proposals. Over the last few months, we've been involved in many of the discussions to support President Trump's initiative, and we will continue to do so. So the discussions we had last night were also with other countries like Jordan and Egypt on what we need to do now to get the humanitarian aid in as fast as possible. We need UN agencies, but also other agencies that have experience on the ground to be able to get that aid rapidly in place. We talked, too, about the need to restore medical facilities, hospital services, basic health services in Gaza as well, and we talked about the longer-term issues around the reconstruction of Gaza and how countries can work together, how we can raise the finance to invest in Gaza's reconstruction for the future. So a range of different things. We need all countries to pull together. I have a real sense at the moment, and I've had this for some time, that there is a sense of the whole world wanting to come together to support a just and lasting peace in the Middle East, and that means security for Palestinians and Israelis alike.

[03:35:18] Speaker 10: What involvement do you think Benjamin Netanyahu is willing to accept from European countries? In an interview about five days ago on Euronews, he said Europe has basically caved into Palestinian terrorism and radical Islamist minorities. Europe has essentially become irrelevant in ceasefire plans because this is phase one. There will be phase two.

[03:35:45] Speaker 9: There will, of course, there are two different phases as part of the 20-point plan that President Trump published, and as I said, a lot of countries, including the UK, have contributed to that process and to the plan, to the proposals that are included, and we will also continue to work together. Of course, this is going to involve that partnership, and of course this is going to involve different decisions along the way, and of course, look, we have had many disagreements with the Israeli Prime Minister on exactly the points that you were referring to. We disagree on that, but the point now is that we need countries coming together to make peace a reality and to actually make it happen, because this is still a fragile process, but it's one that there is huge momentum behind and huge commitment to, so we have to make it work.

[03:36:38] Speaker 10: Do you believe that once Israel receives the hostages, it will stick to the ceasefire?

[03:36:46] Speaker 9: Well, there's huge commitment from all sides to make sure that that happens. That's what you've heard from the US, their commitment to making sure that this agreement is maintained. We saw the Israeli cabinet has accepted the full details of the first phase of the agreement, and they have also signed up to President Trump's 20-point plan, so it's immensely important that, of course, they remain committed to that. It's also immensely important, urgently, that Hamas release the hostages and that there is no role for Hamas in the future governance of Gaza or Palestine. We've made clear that, and it's also part of President Trump's 20-point plan. So, look, a lot of work still to do, but huge commitment to making that happen.

[03:37:30] Speaker 10: Has there been any discussion of European or British troops, military, involved in this ceasefire plan?

[03:37:43] Speaker 9: That's not our plan. There's no plans to do that. But there is an immediate proposal for the US to lead what is effectively like a monitoring process to make sure that this happens on the ground, to oversee the process with hostage release, and also making sure that this first stage is implemented, getting the aid in place. But they have also made very clear that they expect the troops on the ground to be provided by neighbouring states, and that is something that we do expect to happen. And there are those international discussions about some of those neighbouring countries and others contributing to this international security force, this stabilisation force, to make sure that peace can be implemented. The UK will be contributing, of course, in different ways. One of the things that we'll be doing is working closely with Egypt, for example. Even next week, we have meetings on how we can get private finance to go into Gaza to help invest in the future.

[03:38:44] Speaker 5: Well, first of all, the ceasefire clearly hasn't quite started yet. I think that's absolutely the case, whatever people are saying. And maybe in the next 24 hours or so, that is going to happen, that they will stop those strikes. I think the IDF is pulling back, and that's probably why they're continuing them. In terms of... This all goes back to the Trump 20-point plan that he put out a week or two ago. And the thing about it is that if you look at it, there is very little detail. There isn't just a lack of detail. There's ambiguity, there's some things that even seem quite contradictory inside it. So the really big diplomatic challenge now that they've done the first phase, or agreed to that, and it's going to unfold over the next couple of days, it seems pretty certain, is filling in all of those gaps. And that is the difficult stuff, because ambiguity is something that works quite well where you're trying to get people to agree, but when it comes to actually implementing, you need hard deals.

[03:39:47] Speaker 4: And that's a really important point, because we are quite unclear when it comes to a timeline for a transfer of authority, how the governance mechanism will even work across Gaza. Who is even involved in that, Jeremy?

[03:40:02] Speaker 5: Well, it hasn't been worked out. In the 20-point plan, there are various aspirational things, and they've said that here's the structure, there'll be this councillor piece at the top, Donald Trump will be the chair, Tony Blair's going to be involved as well, and then there's going to be some kind of technocratic institution, and there will be some kind of international force. It's very vague. There have to be a lot of very hard details worked out, and that's the tough thing. And things have to happen too, like a UN Security Council resolution to authorise the presence of these foreign troops there. I don't think that Arab or Muslim countries are going to really want to get involved in something that legally would be an illegal operation lacking that kind of legitimacy that you get from a Security Council resolution. I think they could get the resolution, but it takes time. And with the difficulties in Gaza and the complexity of things, maybe they don't have indefinite amounts of time.

[03:41:09] Speaker 4: And on that point, of course, aid getting in is absolutely critical in that first stage, given the famine, given the humanitarian issues there, the acute malnutrition. But what about the rebuilding? Because we see the absolute devastation across Gaza. Is there even any idea of who will be undertaking that, the contracts that potentially will be implemented to get Gaza rebuilt? We're still not even clear on that, are we, Jeremy?

[03:41:40] Speaker 5: No, that's a long way off. That's a long way off. There's, you know, hundreds of thousands of tonnes of rubble apart from anything else. I think that that will have to wait quite a while, because, first of all, what they need to do is to get some stability for more than 2 million people, almost all of whom have been displaced on multiple occasions, who it was already... The entire Gaza Strip, which is a tiny piece of land, was already one of the most densely populated places in the world, and now more than 2 million people have been pushed into a fraction of it by the IDF, by the Israeli military. So, question mark, how... To what extent will they be allowed to go back to where they came from? What about what happens in the north of Gaza? Israel seems to want to stay in that particular area. There's pressure inside the Israeli cabinet for permission to allow Jews to settle there, and I don't think that's going to be happening. Certainly not as yet, and they're very disappointed that it's not. But it's not off the agenda. So there are lots of things in the future, in the immediate future, that we don't know about, and the challenge is going to be to try and deal with some of these ambiguities and uncertainties and come up with a tangible diplomatic agreement, which, you know, Trump is not a details man. He's been a bulldozer pushing this through. Getting to the detail will take a sustained diplomatic effort and agreements. It's not something that necessarily can be imposed in the same way that he actually said with... You know, after the 9th of September attacks on Doha, on the Hamas leadership in Doha by the Israelis, that clearly was Netanyahu overplaying his hand massively, and the consequences that he's dealing with now is that Trump has got in there, because attacking Qatar is bad for America. Trump has got in there and he's grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and said, Israel's going to the table and you're going to stay there until there is a deal based on my 20 points. Now, that has happened, but what happens next? The detailed stuff, very difficult to achieve.

[03:43:50] Speaker 7: Let's speak to Tom Fletcher, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. He's speaking to us from Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. Tom, good morning. Good morning, Amol. Let's just do a little bit on your understanding of the situation before we get into the plans that you must have for the next month or so. Journalists are still prohibited by Israel from entering Gaza. Have you heard from your people in Gaza in the past 90 minutes or so that the ceasefire has begun and is holding?

[03:44:18] Speaker 6: So, I'm in very close touch with our teams inside Gaza, but also with survivors in Niros, Kibbutz, and civilians in Gaza as well. They have long waited and hoped for this moment and we've worked hard to get here. It must not be a false dawn. We need to ensure that President Trump's plan isn't blocked by hardliners on either side. We're hearing there have been strikes overnight. I think Jeremy Bowen was reporting that about an hour ago as well. Today is crucial. We need the guns to go silent and we need the ceasefire to be implemented.

[03:44:50] Speaker 7: And as far as you understand, Tom, who is now responsible for aid in Gaza?

[03:44:55] Speaker 6: So, the UN has a plan. There's been unimaginable suffering in Gaza, tens of thousands killed, including over 18,000 children. That's a child killed on average every hour for two years. And this agreement's a real breakthrough. But the real breakthrough will be when the hostages are home, when children are fed, when they can sleep without terror under a roof, when they're not bombed and maimed, when they can be operated on with anaesthetics, when they can go back to school, when families are reunited again. And so we will deliver that plan. We've got a 60-day plan to get that aid in to save lives at huge, huge scale. We have fought and beaten famines before and we will do it again this time.

[03:45:35] Speaker 7: Very, very keen to talk to you about the specifics of that plan in just a moment. But I've got one other practical question, if I may, before we get there, which is how confident are you that the restrictions previously placed on aid deliveries by Israel, who say that those deliveries have been hijacked or vandalised, that those restrictions will now be lifted?

[03:45:53] Speaker 6: So, that's the big question for the coming hours and days. Obviously, we're in very close touch with the Israeli authorities in-country to make sure that those impediments, those obstacles are now removed. We need all the crossings open. We need safe routes for our convoys. We need our people protected. Hundreds of my colleagues have been killed in the last two years. We need the removal of red tape and physical barriers. We need the power back on to our bakeries, our hospitals, our water stations. It's a massive, massive job ahead. We need access for our NGO colleagues and partners as well. And, as you say, we need the international media to get back in and tell the world what is happening and hold us to account for saving lives.

[03:46:36] Speaker 7: Well, let's go through some of your plans for the coming weeks and months, then. Let's do this in stages, if we can. First of all, we'll get to the health system, which has been decimated, and water and sanitation. But first of all, just on food, I think you'll understand, correct me if I'm wrong, but there is now significant famine and acute malnutrition across the 2.1 million people of Gaza. What are your plans for increasing food deliveries immediately?

[03:47:01] Speaker 6: So that's objective number one. We've got to get high-nutrition food in. We've got to get hundreds of truckloads, convoy. We need to overwhelm Gaza with food and generosity and aid and help right now. We need to get food to 2 million people across the Strip in every part of Gaza, north and south. And we have those supplies prepositioned. We've got 172,000 metric tons of food, medicine, and tents all cleared, ready to go in. The teams are on standby at the crossings. The trucks are ready to roll. And we'll use our community networks, our expertise, our experience to get that food where it is most needed.

[03:47:41] Speaker 7: What are your plans when it comes to the health system?

[03:47:44] Speaker 6: It's a massive, massive challenge. I saw for myself when I visited in January the scale of destruction of the hospitals and of the medical sector. And, of course, it's got even worse since then. So we've got to rebuild those hospitals. We've got to get the essential anesthetics and painkillers in. We've got to ensure that full medical supplies are flowing, but also medical expertise because many of those working nurses and doctors in that sector have also been killed. It's a massive, massive task ahead that has to run alongside that effort to feed everyone in Gaza.

[03:48:18] Speaker 7: And presumably one of the most urgent tasks concerns water and sanitation.

[03:48:23] Speaker 6: We need to get water to 1.4 million people as part of this plan. We also need to help people prepare for the winter ahead. It's getting much colder already. And so we're looking to get thousands of tents into Gaza in the coming days and weeks to give them that shelter, but also to give them the means to start to go back and begin to rebuild their lives. We also want to get the kids back to school. So we have a plan to get 700,000 school-age kids back into temporary classrooms at least and supplied with the books and the pens and pencils to begin studying again.

[03:48:58] Speaker 7: To what extent, can you just explain the principles you apply to the extent to which, Tom, you will work with Hamas, who remain in place, who have not been completely disarmed, to get that delivery, to get those health services, to get the water and sanitation through? What's your principled position in terms of what you'll do with a group which Israel says still needs to be disarmed urgently?

[03:49:20] Speaker 6: So our major priority is to get that aid to civilians where it's most needed. And here in Gaza, as everywhere, we have to work in a neutral, impartial, independent, principled way. Now, everywhere we work, and I've been on the phone today to colleagues in Sudan who are getting past armed groups in Sudan, we always have to negotiate access with whoever is on the ground. But we shouldn't have to ask to get to civilians. We'll work with everyone we need to work with to get past the blockages, whether those are on the border or whether those are the armed groups inside Gaza, and reach the communities, the mums and dads and kids, the families who need the support right now and can't wait.

[03:49:58] Speaker 7: This is obviously an extremely precarious, fast-changing situation. We're very grateful for your time speaking to us, Tom. What's your biggest concern about what could go wrong in the coming days?

[03:50:08] Speaker 6: So many things can go wrong. The devil's in the detail of this. I think President Trump deserves real credit for having got us to this point and having set up this framework for a ceasefire and potential peace. Now we have to get the details right. We've got to move on from this vicious cycle of cruelty and terror and revenge and complicity and difference and inhumanity, and then we have to rebuild Gaza. And beyond that, somehow start to rebuild trust and hope between Israelis and Palestinians. And that's going to be a really, really long, hard process. We've got to rebuild confidence in international law that's been so corroded by this war. We've got to have patience and we've got to have massive generosity in the time ahead, and I hope that people who've been moved by what they've seen in Gaza will now be moved to be generous. We're only 25% funded on our appeal. So please pick up the phone, get online, visit crisisrelief.un.org, call your MP, and let's flood Gaza with aid.

[03:51:29] Speaker 1: For more UN videos visit www.un.org Thanks for watching. www.un.org www.facebook.com www.twitter.com

[03:53:03] Speaker 25: www.facebook.com www.facebook.com

[03:53:07] Speaker 1: www.facebook.com

[03:56:27] Speaker 26: www.facebook.com www.facebook.com www.facebook.com www.facebook.com www.facebook.com www.facebook.com www.facebook.com www.facebook.com www.facebook.com trudging north along the coast of Gaza back towards Gaza City, which was until very recently the scene of that ferocious Israeli ground offensive and aerial bombardment. Well, Israel says its forces have now withdrawn to the lines within Gaza that were set out in the ceasefire agreement. And as for Hamas, it now has until Monday morning to release all the Israeli hostages, 20 who are still believed to be alive and the bodies of 28 others thought to be dead. In return, Israel has published a list of 250 Palestinian prisoners and detainees who are to be released in exchange. Well, meanwhile, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said in a televised address that his country's troops will stay in Gaza to make sure Hamas disarms in future stages of the ceasefire plan. Our Middle East correspondent, Hugo Beshear, has this report.

[03:57:45] Speaker 2: By the road, they waited. With a few things, there were now everything they had. Unsure if it was safe to return, unsure if the bombs had stopped falling. The deal had brought them hope. But this morning, they still didn't know if it had finally brought them peace. My son and I slept here last night on the pavement in the cold, waiting to go back home, Wael says. Even if the house is destroyed, even if it's just rubble, we'll go back, put up a tent, and return to our people. After hours of uncertainty, the Israeli military confirmed that the ceasefire had started. Israeli troops have pulled back from some parts. But under the deal, they still occupy over half of Gaza. Many now are going back, even by foot, to mourn who's been lost and to start rebuilding what's been destroyed. In Israel, the countdown for the release of the hostages has begun. 20 are believed to remain alive. One of them is Segev Hafon, kidnapped at the Nova Music

[03:58:51] Speaker 27: Festival.

[03:58:55] Speaker 18: We hope that he returns safe and sound. And we wish that, with God's help, within the next two or three days, we will see him. We'll rejoice together with the family. And we really hope that everyone, not just him,

[03:59:06] Speaker 28: returns safe and sound. It's still not clear when and where

[03:59:11] Speaker 2: the hostages will be freed. The deal brokered by Trump is a major victory. But there's no clear plan for what happens in Gaza next.

[03:59:20] Speaker 9: The point now is that we need countries coming together to make peace a reality and to actually make it happen. Because this is still a fragile process. But it's one that there is huge momentum behind and huge commitment to. So we have to make it work.

[03:59:36] Speaker 2: They can now walk without fear in the war. But the Gaza they know is no longer there. And no one knows what the new Gaza will be. Hugo Maciej, BBC News, Jerusalem.

[03:59:48] Speaker 26: Well, we can go live for the very latest to our Gaza correspondent, Rushdie Abu Aluf, who is currently in Istanbul, and also our North America correspondent, Nomia Iqbal, who's in Washington. Rushdie, first of all to you. And I know you're talking to a lot of people in Gaza at the moment. What is the mood, the mood amongst those who are returning to their homes? And we saw them in those dramatic live pictures coming into us from Gaza.

[04:00:15] Speaker 11: Well, the mood in Gaza since the morning was shifted from joy and happiness yesterday to some anger. As the videos emerge and those people who are walking back in this huge march back to Gaza, they have received information that most of them, they won't find their homes anymore standing. We are expecting this line to continue for days. Because if you look at this very small, dusty road, it takes time for about 700,000 people who fled Gaza during the fighting to return back. Well, we heard that Israel would allow also the Salahuddin Road, which is probably a bigger road to allow the people to go back. But it is a very angry mood because the images and the picture from Gaza is really showing that the three main neighbourhoods, Sheikh Erdogan in the north, Sabra and Zeytoun in the south, 90% of it is completely destroyed. And this walk is about 20 kilometres. And very few people who can afford this big payment of 900 pounds to hire a truck, small truck, or a car. Most of the people, they don't have the money to pay for this. So the mood of celebration just changed to what we can see now, a live picture from there.

[04:01:38] Speaker 26: OK. Rushdie, thank you very much indeed. And to Nomi Iqbal in Washington. Nomi, we know that President Trump is heading out to Israel. What are his plans? Can you tell us that?

[04:01:50] Speaker 19: Yes, he'll be going on Sunday. He plans to address the Israeli parliament in Knesset. It will be somewhat of a victory lap for him. He will probably also be looking to put more pressure on members of the Israeli government, the far right members, who whilst the phase one of this deal has passed, they're still pushing back on parts of the ceasefire. There were talks about him potentially going to Gaza, but that, we understand, is not going to happen. There's still a long way to go, obviously, just looking at the pictures and what Rushdie is saying there. So many unanswered questions yet. What happens to Gaza? Who governs Gaza? How do people rebuild their lives there? Mr. Trump is then expected to go to Egypt, to Sharm el-Sheikh, where he's been invited by Egypt's president to then take part in the official signing of the ceasefire. And Mr. Trump is an optics guy. He knows that this is all about ultimately how it looks. And it will be a moment for many pictures to be taken to record this moment in history. And I think if the ceasefire does fully pull off and there is enduring peace, this will definitely be a very significant part of his legacy.

[04:03:02] Speaker 26: He definitely is an optics guy. And one of the optics he was hoping for was a picture of him holding the Nobel Peace Prize. And he hasn't got that. What's been the reaction, Normia, from the White House to that?

[04:03:15] Speaker 19: Well, obviously, they're not thrilled about it. I mean, the Nobel Peace Prize has been this almost obsession, I would say, for the Trump administration, for the Trump team, for Trump himself. They released a statement saying that the committee had put politics over peace. But not to be a Parsi peeper, I don't think there was any chance of him getting it this year. He was nominated by the Pakistani government and by the Israeli prime minister in December. But by the time this first part of the ceasefire was announced, the committee had probably already made their minds up. But I'm sure that they will be hoping to try and get it next year.

[04:03:59] Speaker 26: OK, Normia, thank you very much indeed. Normia Iqbal and also Rushdie Abu Aluf, our Gaza correspondent speaking to us from Istanbul. Thanks to both of you. And we can speak now to Riyad Mansour, who's a permanent observer of the state of Palestine to the United Nations. Thank you so much for being with us on BBC News. Are you optimistic that this ceasefire plan can hold?

[04:04:24] Speaker 29: Yes, I am optimistic. Thank you for having me. I admire, and I was moved by this massive river of Palestinians returning to their homes in the north in the Gaza Strip. This is what happened at the beginning of the year when the ceasefire was announced on 19th of January. And they returned. And they are determined to go back to their houses to clean up and to begin the reconstruction and to set up tents. You cannot but admire and be moved by the resiliency of the Palestinian people.

[04:05:06] Speaker 26: Well, it is a very moving sight there. And we can see those pictures of that continuing stream of humanity, really, as the Palestinians head back to Gaza City to try to find what is left of their homes. But can I ask you, Riyad Mansour, I mean, what do you think in the longer term? This is just the first phase of the ceasefire plan. But later on, the plan says that Hamas has to disarm. Now, the Israeli prime minister has said Israeli troops will stay in Gaza until Hamas does disarm. Do you see that happening?

[04:05:42] Speaker 29: Well, let us, first of all, deal with the details of what was agreed upon. The people are returning to their homes in the northern part. They need massive humanitarian assistance. And I listened to Mr. Fletcher in your earlier program, in which he said that they have thousands of truckloads of humanitarian assistance. And they want to flood the Gaza Strip with needed humanitarian assistance, food, water, medicine, so that people can be sustained and bodies of children would be given the strength in order not to die from famine. These important steps need to take place immediately. And also, the exchange of detainees and hostages. The hundreds and maybe the thousands of Palestinian prisoners who will be returning to their loved ones. Their stories need to be told. They are human beings. They have stories. Their parents and their families suffered immensely during the years of their captivity and in jail. So that's another thing that will be put in place. And the withdrawal of the Israeli army from the Gaza Strip. I know at this stage, they withdrew to a certain lines. But they have to withdraw completely from the Gaza Strip. And we need to begin the process of reconstruction of Gaza. All these things are the immediate things that we need to deal with. They are clear things. There are no disagreement over them. And we need to be ready for moving into the following stages with all of its complexities and lack of clarity. And try to navigate through them in a comprehensive way, not only thinking of one side, but thinking of both sides. But let's just look ahead then.

[04:07:47] Speaker 26: Because in the end, this Trump peace plan envisages this border of peace running Gaza with people like Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, effectively running Gaza and Hamas out of power. How do you see all of that happening in the future? Is Hamas completely finished as a governing force? Will it try to cling on, do you think? Will it try to cling on to its weapons? Will it try to cling on to some form of power in Gaza?

[04:08:21] Speaker 29: Well, we are clinging on our national rights, the end of occupation, the independence of the state of Palestine, the Palestinian National Authority assuming its responsibility in looking after its people, including in the Gaza Strip. Some people are focusing on other issues. We are focusing on what is really connecting to the rights of our people, the eagerness of our people to run our own affair. Gaza is not a piece of land free for anyone to grab it. Gaza belongs to the Palestinian people in Gaza. And the Palestinian people have leaders. And they have responsibilities. And we are the ones who are preparing and engaging on the details of catering to our people, especially our people in the Gaza Strip.

[04:09:08] Speaker 26: OK, Riyad Mansour, thank you so much for your time. Really good to have you with us on BBC News. As Riyad Mansour, a permanent observer of... Thank you for having me. That's no problem. Thank you for being with us on the programme.

[04:09:21] Speaker 1: ..of the State of Palestine to the United Nations. Well, now, we can also speak to Olga Tarevka, who is spokesperson for the United Nations Aid Coordination Office,

[04:09:32] Speaker 26: who's currently in Deir al-Bala in Gaza. And thank you for being with us. Well, I suppose the big question is, how do we make sure that we have the right people in the Gaza Strip, in the Gaza Strip, in the Gaza Strip, in the Gaza Strip, in the Gaza Strip? And thank you for being with us. Well, I suppose the big question now is, how quickly can we get the taps of aid turned on so that we get that flood of aid into Gaza that the people there, tens of thousands of Palestinians, so desperately need?

[04:10:05] Speaker 30: Thank you very much, Ben. Yes, we are ready. We are ready to start as soon as conditions allow. And as we have said before, in order to flood Gaza with aid, we need additional crossings to be open. We need safe access. We need visas for our staff. We need, again, guarantees of unfettered and unimpeded access and unrestricted flow of aid into Gaza. So, we have 170,000 metric tons of shelter supplies, of food, medicine, and everything that people need here to meet their needs. And all of these things can be easily loaded on the trucks and come in to Gaza as soon as these enablers are in place. When do you think that will be?

[04:10:56] Speaker 26: Because, obviously, every day is crucial. We know that people are suffering in famine-like conditions and have been for a long time now, and they are desperate for supplies. So, when do you think those truckloads are going to start rolling in?

[04:11:12] Speaker 30: Exactly. That is extremely urgent, and we are hoping that it will start immediately. Obviously, the announcement of the start of the ceasefire being in effect took place at noon. It was announced that it took effect at noon today, and we're hoping that in the coming hours, at the latest days, we will have aid flowing freely into Gaza.

[04:11:40] Speaker 26: Do you think you have enough supplies in place, enough stocks to get in there in the initial phase of this sort of flooding of aid into Gaza?

[04:11:51] Speaker 30: So, yes, we have enough, and we will have more in the pipeline as this begins, the process begins. As we have said before, we have a plan for the first 60 days to target really the most vulnerable people and ensure that things like food access, medicine, shelter assistance, water and sanitation assistance is targeted directly at these most vulnerable people. And we have mechanisms in place to ensure that this is directed directly to them. And obviously, this will have to be a continuous process because the needs here are immense, and everybody is in need of humanitarian assistance. But our priority right now is to get this going and to reach the most vulnerable first, who need it obviously most urgently.

[04:12:49] Speaker 26: OK, well, thank you very much for being with us. That's Olga Cherevka, spokesperson for the United Nations Aid Coordination Office, talking to us from Deir al-Bala.

[04:12:58] Speaker 4: So, a lot of moving parts, a lot to discuss. Who better than with our international editor, Jeremy Bowen. Jeremy, good to see you as always. Look, we've got Tom Fletcher talking about the next possible moves for the UN. They are ready to get aid in. We've just heard from Professor Saul, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, who's saying that the plan of Donald Trump is pretty vague. There are still things that really need to be nailed down. And ultimately, we're still seeing plumes of smoke across Gaza. Just help us to unpick all of this.

[04:13:32] Speaker 5: Well, first of all, the ceasefire clearly hasn't quite started yet. I think that's absolutely the case, whatever people are saying. And maybe in the next 24 hours or so, that is going to happen, that they will stop those strikes. I think the IDF is pulling back, and that's probably why they're continuing them. In terms of... This all goes back to the Trump 20-point plan that he put out a week or two ago. And the thing about it is that if you look at it, there is very little detail. There isn't just a lack of detail. There's ambiguity, there's some things that even seem quite contradictory inside it. So the really big diplomatic challenge now that they've done the first phase, or agreed to that, and it's going to unfold over the next couple of days, it seems pretty certain, is filling in all of those gaps. And that is the difficult stuff, because ambiguity is something that we'll agree, but when it comes to actually implementing, you need hard deals.

[04:14:33] Speaker 4: And that's a really important point, because we are quite unclear when it comes to a timeline for a transfer of authority, how the governance mechanism will even work across Gaza. Who is even involved in that, Jeremy?

[04:14:48] Speaker 5: Well, it hasn't been worked out. In the 20-point plan, there are various aspirational things, and they've said that here's the structure, there'll be this councillor piece at the top, Donald Trump will be the chair, Tony Blair's going to be involved as well, and then there's going to be some kind of technocratic institution, and there will be some kind of international forum. There have to be a lot of very hard details worked out, and that's the tough thing. And things have to happen too, like a UN Security Council resolution to authorise the presence of these foreign troops there. I don't think that Arab or Muslim countries are going to really want to get involved in something that legally would be an illegal operation lacking that kind of legitimacy that you get from a Security Council resolution. I think they could get the resolution, but it takes time. And with the difficulties in Gaza and the complexity of things, maybe they don't have indefinite amounts of time.

[04:15:53] Speaker 4: And on that point, of course, aid getting in is absolutely critical in that first stage, given the famine, given the humanitarian issues there, the acute malnutrition. But what about the rebuilding? Because we see the absolute devastation across Gaza. Is there even any idea of who will be undertaking that, the contracts that potentially will be implemented to get Gaza rebuilt? We're still not even clear on that, are we, Jeremy?

[04:16:23] Speaker 5: No, that's a long way off. That's a long way off. There's hundreds of thousands of tonnes of rubble, apart from anything else. I think that that will have to wait quite a while, because, first of all, what they need to do is to get some stability for more than 2 million people, almost all of whom have been displaced on multiple occasions, who it was already... The entire Gaza Strip, which is a tiny piece of land, was already one of the most densely populated places in the world, and now more than 2 million people have been pushed into a fraction of it by the IDF, by the Israeli military. So, question mark, to what extent will they be allowed to go back to where they came from? What about what happens in the north of Gaza? Israel seems to want to stay in that particular area. There's pressure inside the Israeli cabinet for permission to allow Jews to settle there, and I don't think that's going to be happening, certainly not as yet, and they're very disappointed that it's not, but it's not off the agenda. So there are lots of things in the future, in the immediate future, that we don't know about, and the challenge is going to be to try and deal with some of these ambiguities and uncertainties and come up with a tangible diplomatic agreement, which, you know, Trump is not a details man. He's been a bulldozer pushing this through. Getting to the detail will take a sustained diplomatic effort and agreements. It's not something that necessarily can be imposed in the same way that he actually said with... You know, after the 9th of September attacks on Doha, on the Hamas leadership in Doha by the Israelis, that clearly was Netanyahu overplaying his hand massively, and the consequences that he's dealing with now is that Trump has gone in there, because attacking Qatar is bad for America, Trump has gone in there and he's grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and said, Israel is going to the table and you're going to stay there until there is a deal based on my 20 points. Now, that has happened, but what happens next? The detailed stuff, very difficult to achieve.

[04:18:34] Speaker 4: Let's bring in Professor Ben Soll, who's a UN special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism. And, Professor Soll, when it comes to the first stages, we're awaiting the concrete ceasefire to start, but I guess when it comes to the next stages, the Israeli troops withdrawing to a particular line, meaning that they'll still have control of around 53% of the Gaza Strip, what do we understand as to how that potentially will look in practice on the ground in Gaza?

[04:19:10] Speaker 24: Good to be with you, and I think lots can go wrong in this plan. Everybody is absolutely relieved that the killing should stop very soon and that the hostages will be released and arbitrarily detained Palestinians will be released. But this is a very complex plan with lots of moving parts. It depends upon the goodwill and good faith of both Hamas and Israel and the credibility of the US in enforcing the parties to live up to their bargains. So I think it's very early days yet to say whether this will work, whether the plan will stick. And there's so much in the 20 points, the other points and the next phases of this plan, that are so vague and that don't in certain respects comply with international law, that I think in the longer term we could be in for a potential resumption of conflict and violence.

[04:20:03] Speaker 4: So talk us through the aspects that potentially do jar with international law, because we know that part of this plan is the US moving troops already based in the Middle East to Israel to coordinate the multinational force which will monitor the ceasefire as and when it does come into place. Are we basically effectively moving from an Israeli force within Gaza to a multinational one? And is that within international law?

[04:20:36] Speaker 24: So the root cause of this conflict is the failure of the international community to enforce the Palestinians' right to self-determination and statehood for many, many decades. The Palestinians were promised a state about a century ago, actually, and although Israel got one many years ago, the Palestinians' right has been denied. And this plan doesn't fix that. There are some vague aspirational references to self-determination, but there are no concrete benchmarks or guarantees that the Palestinians will get their own independent state free of any kind of foreign occupation. Israeli, and of course here the Israelis will partially continue to occupy Palestine or some other international occupation because, remember, this plan is not so far endorsed by the UN Security Council. It's not an international peacekeeping force of United Nations personnel. It will be a US-led occupation of Palestinian territory. Now, of course, the International Court of Justice just last year said the Palestinians have a right of self-determination. Israel must withdraw as soon as possible from the Palestinian territories. And the court wasn't suggesting that it's somehow up to the United States to come in and impose its own occupation in place of the Israelis.

[04:22:00] Speaker 4: Arguably, though, if the international community, if the UN haven't been able to reach this moment and it's the US that's pushing it, is there any kind of leeway within international law to facilitate this? Or is this a breach of those guidelines from the international community?

[04:22:21] Speaker 24: So the reason the United Nations Security Council has not been able to act in this situation is precisely because of the United States and its threat of a veto or its actual exercise of its veto power to prevent collective action to resolve the Palestine question. So this is the fault of the United States. In addition, of course, President Trump's been in power for almost a year. He's been supplying weapons and ammunition to Israel to continue committing international crimes in Gaza for almost a year. So at any point, he could have turned off the tap of weapons and stopped the Israeli occupation much, much earlier. The other problem in this, of course, is that there is no timeline for transfer of authority to genuine Palestinian representative governance. The 20-point plan, although there are 20 points, not one of them mentions accountability and justice for international crimes at a time when the International Criminal Court has indicted Israeli leaders for international crimes, when the International Court of Justice is considering a case alleging genocide against Israel. And quite to the contrary, the peace plan gives blanket amnesties to Hamas members for any international crimes that they may have committed. So this is denying justice and, again, fuelling one of the underlying drivers of terrorist violence and resistance to Israeli occupation in Palestine.

[04:24:33] Speaker 1: MAN SHOUTS INDISTINCTLY WOMAN SHOUTS INDISTINCTLY HORN BLARES MAN SHOUTS INDISTINCTLY SIREN WAILS

[04:25:39] Speaker 25: MAN SHOUTS INDISTINCTLY HORN BLARES

[04:26:04] Speaker 1: WOMAN SHOUTS INDISTINCTLY WOMAN SHOUTS INDISTINCTLY WOMAN SHOUTS INDISTINCTLY

[04:26:31] Speaker 31: MAN SHOUTS INDISTINCTLY

[04:26:37] Speaker 1: MAN SHOUTS INDISTINCTLY WOMAN SHOUTS INDISTINCTLY HORN BLARES

[04:27:21] Speaker 25: HORN BLARES

[04:27:51] Speaker 1: WOMAN SHOUTS INDISTINCTLY HORN BLARES

[04:28:09] Speaker 26: Well, let's show you once again the scene live then in Gaza. And we have been watching for several hours now a steady stream of people, Palestinians, walking along that narrow road in the Gaza Strip along the coast back to Gaza City, which had been under that ferocious Israeli bombardment. But now there's a ceasefire. They are going back to their homes or what is left of their homes. And the Israeli military has posted on social media that the ceasefire agreement ratified by the government on Thursday evening came into effect at midday local time. That's a few hours ago. Now, it said its troops are positioning themselves along the updated deployment lines under the ceasefire agreement. BBC Verify has been examining videos showing Israeli troops pulling back and what it all means for those Palestinians who are returning home. Merlyn Thomas has more details.

[04:29:05] Speaker 32: Israeli troops have been withdrawing from Gaza on Friday morning and we've been verifying video circulating on social media like this, showing tanks and heavy machinery approaching and crossing the Western Erez, which is located on the Gaza Strip's northern border. Now, to recap, this is President Trump's latest plan for the first stage of Israeli troop withdrawal. You can see that here in these yellow lines. Now, it would mean Israel would still control about 55% of Gaza. Israel has already sliced the Gaza Strip into different military corridors, as you can see here in these red lines. Now, used by the army for access to move across Gaza. In some places, you can see that the White House plan roughly matches up with some existing boundaries created by the Israeli military. It's worth emphasising this is the latest map, but we don't know how closely this corresponds to what was finally agreed and that will be crucial to what happens to Israeli troops on the ground. Now, Palestinians will have the chance to return home to northern Gaza where they were ordered to flee. But what's left for them to return to? Israel has destroyed swathes of the Strip. Whole neighbourhoods in Gaza City have been wiped off the map. For now, Palestinians and Israelis will be waiting anxiously in the hopes that this ceasefire agreement holds.

[04:30:26] Speaker 26: Will it hold? That is the key question. That's Merlin Thomas reporting, but let's talk to Mikey Kaye, former British military strategist and expert analyst on the BBC's Security Brief programme. Mikey, that's the question. I mean, we're into the very early hours of this ceasefire. It's got a long way to go, multiple phases and stages. So far, so good. But what do you see as the sort of perils ahead, potentially?

[04:30:49] Speaker 33: Yeah, I mean, Ben, the next 72 hours is an incredibly delicate window for both parties. Hamas has until midday local on Monday. I think we've got actually a map which shows the yellow line, if we could just bring that up, in terms of where the IDF are pulling back to. And you can see on the graphic there, Ben, the yellow line, it's quite a significant area that they have to pull back from. And while they're doing that, you know, the IDF are going to be on edge. When it comes to rules of engagement, I've deployed in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, Northern Ireland, you know, rules of engagement are a cigarette-paper-thin decision between getting something right and getting something wrong. And if they get something wrong, and bearing in mind the tolerance of the IDF for collateral damage, if they get something wrong, it could torpedo the process. Now, I think we've got another graphic of a map as to where the current locations or the recently current locations of the IDF have been. Now, when you cross-contrast that, the yellow line with that, that's significant movements of IDF personnel pulling back from their frontline locations. Contrast that, then, with, as you were speaking about earlier, a huge displacement of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Gazans, who are now trying to go back and identify where their homes were. And I say were because 92% of homes have been destroyed since October the 7th. Now, they're going to go back and they're going to find rubble. And importantly, what we call in the military, which is UXO, unexploded ordnance, there's going to be a lot of unexploded ordnance in those areas, which is going to be massively unsafe. There's going to be no food or running water. There's going to be no sanitation. And these are all conditions that create massive instability, internal instability, within huge migrations of populations.

[04:32:38] Speaker 26: We talked about the IDF there, what are the Israeli Defence Forces. What about Hamas? Because part of this plan in the longer term, which Hamas haven't really talked about, but they're supposed to disarm. Now, what are the chances of that and who's going to monitor that disarmament process?

[04:32:54] Speaker 33: The only legal framework that I'm aware of, and I was actually on an operation in Macedonia in 2001 called Operation Essential Harvest, was called DDR, which is disarm, demobilise and reintegrate, which basically is setting up weapons points where militia can come in, drop their weapons off, and then they are assisted back into civilian life with their dependents. That obviously requires trust on both parties, but that's the only legal framework that I can identify at the moment. But that requires stability, not just on the ground level tactically, but at the political levels as well, with that sort of security stability for allowment of those things to happen. And again, go back to trust.

[04:33:35] Speaker 26: Just finally and briefly, we saw in the hours counting down to the ceasefire coming actually into effect, which was obviously an amazing day and an amazing moment for Gaza, but right up until the last minute, the Israeli military were attacking targets in Gaza, weren't they? And we saw more and more airstrikes. So they were using almost every conceivable minute before the ceasefire came into effect to keep on bombing.

[04:34:06] Speaker 33: A significant amount of that military activity was demolitions. Some were airstrikes. But what the IDF have been doing is under the pretense of what the IDF are saying, which is a lot of the infrastructure is being used for military assets by Hamas. There have been airstrikes going in. There have been controlled demolitions. But there's also been a really interesting concept of operation we call a CONOP in the military, where the IDF have been using APCs, armoured personnel carriers, which are old, obsolete. They've been filling them up with explosives and then remotely putting them into areas and blowing them up next to high-rise buildings, for example. Now, the IDF are saying... ..or OPs, observation posts, as we call them in the military. But actually, when you look at the statistics of 60% of buildings that have been destroyed and 92% of homes that have been destroyed, I would be very curious to look at the intelligence that the IDF were using to substantiate those claims.

[04:35:00] Speaker 26: Mikey, good to see you. Thank you very much indeed. You can hear more analysis from my data on the BBC News Channel. In the meantime, let's talk to the writer and former Israeli diplomat, Alon Pincas, who joins us now. And, Alon, thank you very much for your time. Is this a ceasefire agreement that you think can work and can hold, not just in this first phase, but in its later phases too?

[04:35:24] Speaker 34: No, unfortunately not, Ben, and I'm sorry to say that. Mikey described before me expertly what could go wrong. And with the missing ingredients that he also mentioned, trust, the ability to verify, and goodwill, all of which are conspicuously absent, the explosiveness of the situation, the fragility, is such that I don't see this going on. Now, here's why. To begin with, to be somewhat optimistic about this, the first phase will probably go on smoothly, meaning that the next 72 hours in which Hamas is releasing the 20 Israeli hostages who are alive and hopefully all of the 28 bodies of those who have been killed or murdered, and in exchange Israel is returning Palestinians, that'll probably go on smoothly. The Israeli redeployment, although not complete and full as the agreement would mandate, but it is sufficient to allow for this to happen. But what remains, even before the next phases that you just alluded to, is Hamas's disarmament. I don't see them disarming. And the chances of a miscalculation, a skirmish, a bad reaction, a misunderstanding, is huge. You know, there is something called, I'm sure Mikey, who's not with us now, knows the term, it's called the strategic, I'm sorry, yeah, the strategic corporal, meaning that there is a corporal out there who's scared, he's 19 years old, he wants to go home, he thinks it's all over, he's being shot at because he's scared, because it's uncertain, because he doesn't know what's going on. He starts shooting back like crazy. Before you know it, there's a skirmish and the ripple effect creates the complete breakdown of the ceasefire and you have a strategic event just because of that one frightened corporal. And so that's why I think practically the next phases are extraordinarily difficult to implement. That's on the tactical ground level. Then there's the political level, but that depends on your questions.

[04:37:44] Speaker 26: Well, my question actually on that was, on the political level, Donald Trump is hugely invested in making this work, isn't he? And people are saying he's bullied Netanyahu into this agreement, this ceasefire agreement, but surely he's going to see it through, isn't he? He's going to try to. Donald Trump is going to put so much pressure on the Israeli side, at least, to make sure this does stick.

[04:38:07] Speaker 34: I'm not sure about that. Yes, he bullied Netanyahu. Yes, he coerced Netanyahu into this. Yes, he cornered him into endorsing this publicly, by the way. There's a big, you know, people overlook this. The fact that he made Netanyahu stand up and endorse it last week at the White House in Washington, that he made Netanyahu stand up and publicly endorse this rather than give him his word or his pledge or his consent in the closed room, which Trump's learning curve has taught him won't happen, meaning Netanyahu's credibility is such that you have to make him say this publicly. But, you know, the accolades, the praise, the compliments, they're done once phase one is over. The hostages are back. Everyone is thanking Trump. Everyone is crediting Trump. Everyone says, like you and I right now, it was his bullying. It was his investment. It was his engagement. It was his commitment. But the next phases are almost intractable. They are very difficult. They are ambiguous. They are tedious. It's going to take time. There are no accolades here. There are no compliments. And we all know what his attention span is like. And so I think you just raised the most important question on them all, Ben, and that is, will he remain committed? And unfortunately, based on precedent, Ukraine, for example, I just don't see that happening.

[04:39:39] Speaker 26: Well, we shall see. Thank you so much for being with us. That's the writer and former Israeli diplomat, Alon Pincas. Thank you.

[04:39:48] Speaker 1: So a lot of moving parts, a lot to discuss. Who better than with our international editor, Jeremy Bowen.

[04:39:55] Speaker 20: Jeremy, good to see you, as always.

[04:39:57] Speaker 4: Look, we've got Tom Fletcher talking about the next possible moves for the U.N. They are ready to get aid in. We've just heard from Professor Soll, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, who's saying that the plan of Donald Trump and the U.N. We've just heard from Professor Soll, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, who's saying that the plan of Donald Trump is pretty vague. There are still things that really need to be nailed down. And ultimately, we're still seeing plumes of smoke across Gaza. Just help us to unpick all of this.

[04:40:30] Speaker 5: Well, first of all, the ceasefire clearly hasn't quite started yet. I think that's absolutely the case, whatever people are saying. Maybe in the next 24 hours or so, that is going to happen, that they will stop those strikes. I think the IDF is pulling back, and that's probably why they're continuing them. In terms of this all goes back to the Trump 20-point plan that he put out a week or two ago. And the thing about it is that if you look at it, there is very little detail. There isn't just a lack of detail. There's ambiguity. There's some things that even seem quite contradictory inside it. The really big diplomatic challenge now that they've done the first phase or agreed to that, and it's going to unfold over the next couple of days, it seems pretty certain, is filling in all of those gaps. And that is the difficult stuff, because ambiguity is something that works quite well where you're trying to get people to agree. But when it comes to actually implementing, you need hard deals.

[04:41:33] Speaker 4: And that's a really important point because we are quite unclear when it comes to a timeline for a transfer of authority, how the governance mechanism will even work across Gaza. Who is even involved in that, Jeremy?

[04:41:47] Speaker 5: Well, it hasn't been worked out. In the 20-point plan, there are various aspirational things, and they've said that here's the structure. There'll be this councillor piece at the top. Donald Trump will be the chair. Tony Blair's going to be involved as well. And then there's going to be some kind of technocratic institution, and there will be some kind of international force. It's very vague. There have to be a lot of very hard details worked out, and that's the tough thing. And things have to happen too, like a UN Security Council resolution to authorise the presence of these foreign troops there. I don't think that Arab or Muslim countries are going to really want to get involved in something that legally would be an illegal operation lacking that kind of legitimacy that you get from a Security Council resolution. I think they could get the resolution, but it takes time. And with the difficulties in Gaza and the complexity of things, maybe they don't have indefinite amounts of time.

[04:42:55] Speaker 4: And on that point, of course, aid getting in is absolutely critical in that first stage, given the famine, given the humanitarian issues there, the acute malnutrition. But what about the rebuilding? Because we see the absolute devastation across Gaza. Is there even any idea of who will be undertaking that, the contracts that potentially will be implemented to get Gaza rebuilt? We're still not even clear on that, are we, Jeremy?

[04:43:26] Speaker 5: No, that's a long way off. That's a long way off. There's, you know, hundreds of thousands of tonnes of rubble, apart from anything else. I think that that will have to wait quite a while because, first of all, what they need to do is to get some stability for more than 2 million people, almost all of whom have been displaced on multiple occasions, who it was already... The entire Gaza Strip, which is a tiny piece of the land, was already one of the most densely populated places in the world, and now more than 2 million people have been pushed into a fraction of it by the IDF, by the Israeli military. So, question mark, how... To what extent will they be allowed to go back to where they came from? What about what happens in the north of Gaza? Israel seems to want to stay in that particular area. There's pressure inside the Israeli cabinet for permission to allow Jews to settle there, and I don't think that's going to be happening. Certainly not as yet, and they're very disappointed that it's not. But it's not off the agenda. So there are lots of things in the future, in the immediate future, that we don't know about, and the challenge is going to be to try and deal with some of these ambiguities and uncertainties and come out with a tangible diplomatic agreement, which, you know, Trump is not a details man. He's been a bulldozer pushing this through. Getting to the detail will take a sustained diplomatic effort and agreements. It's not something that necessarily can be imposed in the same way that he actually said with... You know, after the 9th of September attacks on Doha, on the Hamas leadership in Doha by the Israelis, that clearly was Netanyahu overplaying his hand massively, and the consequences that he's dealing with now is that Trump has gone in there and he's grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and said, Israel's going to the table and you're going to stay there until there is a deal based on my 20 points. Now, that has happened, but what happens next? The detailed stuff, very difficult to achieve.

[04:45:49] Speaker 1: So, a lot of moving parts, a lot to discuss. Who better than with our international editor, Jeremy Bowen? Let's speak to Tom Fletcher,

[04:46:10] Speaker 7: UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. He's speaking to us from Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. Tom, good morning. Good morning, Amol. Let's just do a little bit on your understanding of the situation before we get into the plans that you must have for the next month or so. Journalists are still prohibited by Israel from entering Gaza. Have you heard from your people in Gaza in the past 90 minutes or so that the ceasefire has begun and is holding?

[04:46:39] Speaker 6: So, I'm in very close touch with our teams inside Gaza, but also with survivors in Neiroz, Kibbutz, and civilians in Gaza as well. They have long waited and hoped for this moment, and we've worked hard to get here. It must not be a false dawn. We need to ensure that President Trump's plan isn't blocked by hardliners on either side. We're hearing there have been strikes overnight. I think Jeremy Bowen was reporting that about an hour ago as well. Today is crucial. We need the guns to go silent, and we need the ceasefire to be implemented.

[04:47:11] Speaker 7: And as far as you understand, Tom, who is now responsible for aid in Gaza?

[04:47:17] Speaker 6: So, the UN has a plan. There's been unimaginable suffering in Gaza, tens of thousands killed, including over 18,000 children. That's a child killed on average every hour for two years. And this agreement's a real breakthrough, but the real breakthrough will be when the hostages are home, when children are fed, when they can sleep without terror under a roof, when they're not bombed and maimed, when they can be operated on with anaesthetics, when they can go back to school, when families are reunited again. And so we will deliver that plan. We've got a 60-day plan to get that aid in to save lives at huge, huge scale. We have fought and beaten famines before, and we will do it again this time.

[04:47:57] Speaker 7: Very, very keen to talk to you about the specifics of that plan in just a moment, but I've got one other practical question, if I may, before we get there, which is how confident are you that the restrictions previously placed on aid deliveries by Israel, who say that those deliveries have been hijacked or vandalised, that those restrictions will now be lifted?

[04:48:14] Speaker 6: So that's the big question for the coming hours and days, and obviously we're in very close touch with the Israeli authorities in-country to make sure that those impediments, those obstacles are now removed. We need all the crossings open. We need safe routes for our convoys. We need our people protected. Hundreds of my colleagues have been killed in the last two years. We need the removal of red tape and physical barriers. We need the power back on to our bakeries, our hospitals, our water stations. It's a massive, massive job ahead. We need access for our NGO colleagues and partners as well, and as you say, we need the international media to get back in and tell the world what is happening and hold us to account for saving lives.

[04:48:57] Speaker 7: Well, let's go through some of your plans for the coming weeks and months then. Let's do this in stages if we can. First of all, we'll get to the health system, which has been decimated, and water and sanitation, but first of all, just on food, I think you'll understand, correct me if I'm wrong, but there is now significant famine and acute malnutrition across the 2.1 million people of Gaza. What are your plans for increasing food deliveries immediately?

[04:49:23] Speaker 6: So that's objective number one. We've got to get high-nutrition food in. We've got hundreds of truckloads, convoy. We need to overwhelm Gaza with food and generosity and aid and help right now. We need to get food to 2 million people across the Strip in every part of Gaza, north and south, and we have those supplies pre-positioned. We've got 172,000 metric tonnes of food, medicine and tents, all cleared, ready to go in. The teams are on standby at the crossings. The trucks are ready to roll, and we'll use our community networks, our expertise, our experience to get that food where it is most needed.

[04:50:02] Speaker 7: What are your plans when it comes to the health system?

[04:50:05] Speaker 6: It's a massive, massive challenge. I saw for myself when I visited in January the scale of destruction of the hospitals and of the medical sector, and of course it's got even worse since then. So we've got to rebuild those hospitals. We've got to get the essential anaesthetics and painkillers in. We've got to ensure that full medical supplies are flowing, but also medical expertise, because many of those working nurses and doctors in that sector have also been killed. It's a massive, massive task ahead that has to run alongside that effort to feed everyone in Gaza.

[04:50:39] Speaker 7: Presumably one of the most urgent tasks concerns water and sanitation.

[04:50:44] Speaker 6: We need to get water to 1.4 million people as part of this plan. We also need to help people prepare for the winter ahead. It's getting much colder already, and so we're looking to get thousands of tents into Gaza in the coming days and weeks to give them that shelter, but also to give them the means to start to go back and begin to rebuild their lives. We also want to get the kids back to school, so we have a plan to get 700,000 school-aged kids back into temporary classrooms at least, and supplied with the books and the pens and pencils to begin studying again.

[04:51:20] Speaker 7: Can you just explain the principles you apply to the extent to which, Tom, you will work with Hamas, who remain in place, who have not been completely disarmed, to get that delivery, to get those health services, to get the water and sanitation through? What's your principled position in terms of what you'll do with a group which Israel says still needs to be disarmed urgently?

[04:51:41] Speaker 6: Our major priority is to get that aid to civilians where it's most needed. And here in Gaza, as everywhere, we have to work in a neutral, impartial, independent, principled way. Now, everywhere we work, and I've been on the phone today to colleagues in Sudan who are getting past armed groups in Sudan, we always have to negotiate access with whoever is on the ground, but we shouldn't have to ask to get to civilians. We'll work with everyone we need to work with to get past the blockages, whether those are on the border or whether those are the armed groups inside Gaza, and reach the communities of the mums and dads and kids, the families who need the support right now and can't wait.

[04:52:20] Speaker 7: This is obviously an extremely precarious, fast-changing situation. We're very grateful for your time speaking to us, Tom. What's your biggest concern about what could go wrong in the coming days?

[04:52:30] Speaker 6: So many things can go wrong. The devil's in the detail of this. I think President Trump deserves real credit for having got us to this point and having set up this framework for a ceasefire and potential peace. Now we have to get the details right. We've got to move on from this vicious cycle of cruelty and terror and revenge and complicity and difference and inhumanity, and then we have to rebuild Gaza. And beyond that, somehow start to rebuild trust and hope between Israelis and Palestinians. And that's going to be a really, really long, hard process. We've got to rebuild confidence in international law that's been so corroded by this war. We've got to have patience and we've got to have massive generosity in the time ahead, and I hope that people who've been moved by what they've seen in Gaza will now be moved to be generous. We're only 25% funded on our appeal. So please, you know, pick up the phone, get online, visit crisisrelief.un.org, call your MP, and let's flood Gaza with aid.

[04:53:37] Speaker 1: We've got to move on from this vicious cycle of cruelty and terror and complicity and difference and inhumanity, and then we have to rebuild trust and hope between Israelis and Palestinians. And beyond that, somehow start to rebuild trust and hope between Israelis and Palestinians. And beyond that, somehow start to rebuild trust and hope between Israelis and Palestinians. And beyond that, somehow start to rebuild trust and hope between Israelis and Palestinians.

[04:54:33] Speaker 31: MAN SPEAKING ARABIC

[04:55:03] Speaker 1: MAN SPEAKING ARABIC

[04:55:33] Speaker 31: MAN SPEAKING ARABIC

[04:56:03] Speaker 1: MAN SPEAKING ARABIC MUSIC

[04:56:32] Speaker 26: Hello, welcome to the programme. Well, thousands of Palestinians in Gaza are returning right now to their homes, or what's left of their homes, after Israel announced that a ceasefire is now in effect in the territory. Well, we're seeing live pictures of a steady stream of displaced Palestinians trudging north along the coast road back towards Gaza City, which was, until very recently, the scene of that ferocious Israeli ground offensive and aerial bombardment. Now, Israel says its forces have withdrawn to the lines within Gaza that are set out in the ceasefire agreement, which was part of Donald Trump's 20-point peace plan. As for Hamas, it now has until Monday morning to release all Israeli hostages, 20 who are still believed to be alive and the bodies of 28 others who are thought to be dead. Now, in return, Israel has published today a list of 250 Palestinian prisoners and detainees who are going to be released in exchange for those hostages. Meanwhile, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said in a televised address today that his country's troops will stay in Gaza to make sure that Hamas disarms in future stages of that ceasefire plan. Our first report now is from our Middle East correspondent, Hugo Beshear.

[04:57:57] Speaker 2: By the road, they waited, with the few things that were now everything they had. Unsure if it was safe to return, unsure if the bombs had stopped falling. The deal had brought them hope, but this morning they still didn't know if it had finally brought them peace. My son and I slept here last night, on the pavement, in the cold, waiting to go back home, Wael says. Even if the house is destroyed, even if it's just rubble, we'll go back, put up a tent and return to our people. After hours of uncertainty, the Israeli military confirmed that the ceasefire had started. Israeli troops have pulled back from some parts, but under the deal, they still occupy over half of Gaza. Many now are going back, even by foot, to mourn who's been lost and to start rebuilding what's been destroyed. In Israel, the countdown for the release of the hostages has begun. 20 are believed to remain alive. One of them is Segev Hafon, kidnapped at the Nova music festival.

[04:59:06] Speaker 18: We hope that he returns safe and sound, and we wish that, with God's help, within the next two or three days, we will see him. We'll rejoice together with the family, and we really hope that everyone, not just him, returns safe and sound.

[04:59:21] Speaker 2: It's still not clear when and where the hostages will be freed. The deal brokered by Trump is a major victory, but there's no clear plan for what happens in Gaza next.

[04:59:32] Speaker 9: The point now is that we need countries coming together to make peace a reality and to actually make it happen, because this is still a fragile process, but it's one that there is huge momentum behind and huge commitment to, so we have to make it work.

[04:59:48] Speaker 2: They can now walk without fear in the war, but the Gaza they know is no longer there, and no-one knows what the new Gaza will be. Hugo Mashega, BBC News, Jerusalem.

[04:59:59] Speaker 26: Well, a short time ago, I spoke to our Gaza correspondent, Rushdi Abu Aluf, who's now in Istanbul, and he told me of the feeling amongst those Gazan people heading back to their homes.

[05:00:10] Speaker 11: Well, the mood in Gaza since the morning was shifted from joy and happiness yesterday to some anger. As the videos emerge and those people who are walking back in this huge march back to Gaza, they have received information that most of them, they won't find their homes anymore standing. We are expecting this line to continue for days, because if you look at this very small, dusty road, it takes time for about 700,000 people who fled Gaza during the fighting to return back. Well, we heard that Israel would allow also the Salahuddin Road, which is probably a bigger road to allow the people to go back, but it is a very angry mood, because the images and the picture from Gaza is really showing that the three main neighbourhoods, Sheikh Redouan in the north, Sabra and Zeytoun in the south, 90% of it is completely destroyed. And this walk is about 20km, and very few people can afford this big payment of £900 to hire a truck, small truck or a car. Most of the people, they don't have the money to pay for this. So the mood of celebration just changed to what we can see now, a live picture from there.

[05:01:35] Speaker 26: That's Rushdie Abu Aluf, our Gaza correspondent, and I've also been talking to our North America correspondent in Washington, Nomia Iqbal, who told me about pressure to Israel.

[05:01:44] Speaker 19: He'll be going on Sunday. He plans to address the Israeli Parliament in Knesset. It will be somewhat of a victory lap for him. He will probably also be looking to put more pressure on members of the Israeli government, the far-right members, who, whilst the phase one of this deal has passed, they're still pushing back on parts of the ceasefire. There were talks about him potentially going to Gaza, but that, we understand, is not going to happen. There's still a long way to go, obviously, just looking at the pictures and what Rushdie is saying there. So many unanswered questions yet. What happens to Gaza? Who governs Gaza? How do people rebuild their lives there? Mr Trump is then expected to go to Egypt, to Sharm el-Sheikh, where he's been invited by Egypt's president, to then take part in the official signing of the ceasefire. And Mr Trump is an optics guy. He knows that this is all about ultimately how it looks, and it will be a moment for many pictures to be taken to record this moment in history. And I think if the ceasefire does fully pull off and there is enduring peace, this will definitely be a very significant part of his legacy.

[05:02:56] Speaker 26: He definitely is an optics guy, and one of the optics he was hoping for was a picture of him holding the Nobel Peace Prize, and he hasn't got that. What's been the reaction, Normia, from the White House to that?

[05:03:09] Speaker 19: Well, obviously, they're not thrilled about it. I mean, the Nobel Peace Prize has been this almost obsession, I would say, for the Trump administration, for the Trump team, for Trump himself. They released a statement saying that the committee had put peace... Sorry, politics over peace. But, you know, not to be a party pooper, I don't think there was any chance of him getting it this year. He was nominated by the Pakistani government and by the Israeli prime minister in December, but by the time this first part of the ceasefire was announced, the committee had probably already made their minds up. But I'm sure that they will be hoping to try and get it next year.

[05:03:54] Speaker 26: That's Normia Iqbal there, our North America correspondent. Well, let's also go now live to our chief international correspondent, Lise Doucette, who's in Jerusalem for us now. And, Lise, early days, very early days, but this ceasefire seems to be holding. We're seeing thousands of Palestinians heading back to their homes. And then, of course, the next stage, which will be very dramatic, the release early next week of the hostages.

[05:04:20] Speaker 1: Yes, Ben, hour by hour, things are slowly falling into place. The approval by the Israeli security cabinet last night, the approval by the full cabinet in the early hours of the morning, the Israeli forces withdrawing to the approved lines by midday, ceasefire in force. We are expecting the aid to start going in in much bigger quantities. And then you say it's the hostage and prisoner releases. We're also getting more details about 200 U.S. soldiers who will be part of a multinational task force, and their job will be to monitor this deal to ensure there are no violations. And Arab states, including Egypt, are going to play a crucial role in all of this. They have been throughout the process. Let's cross to Cairo to join Ambassador Tamim Khalaf, who's the chief spokesperson for the foreign ministry. Welcome to BBC News, Ambassador Khalaf.

[05:05:14] Speaker 35: Good to have you, Lise.

[05:05:18] Speaker 1: It seems we're still getting details from Sharm el-Sheikh that there's still some issues that haven't quite been resolved, that Hamas is disputing some of the names on the prisoner list that is to be released. Is the deal completely done?

[05:05:35] Speaker 35: Yes, the spirit is constructive. We are moving in the right direction. This is really a transformational inflection point in the Middle East. We are moving towards a very constructive and very positive. There's a lot of positivity in the talks, and we are moving in the right direction, in a direction that is fulfilling the many promises and aspirations of millions of people across the world.

[05:05:58] Speaker 20: ...conflict ends,

[05:06:13] Speaker 35: and I want to see an end of bloodshed and to have peace. This is a significantly important agreement that, as you rightly mentioned, will see the release of Israeli hostages, of Palestinian detainees, Israel withdrawal and redeployment of its forces in Gaza, and of course, and more importantly, to afford the necessary humanitarian aid and medical supplies to the people in Gaza. So I can categorically tell you this is moving in the right direction. There is a spirit, a constructive spirit and positivity that is hovering over Sharm el-Sheikh and Egypt in general.

[05:06:51] Speaker 1: Hamas has said that they have received guarantees that the war will not resume. Can you give us any more details about that? Because Egypt, as a key mediator, would have been involved in getting those assurances.

[05:07:04] Speaker 35: I think all parties have received assurances that everything will fall into place, including from Hamas and also from Israel. So yes, again, as I just mentioned earlier, there are guarantees that are being provided. I think there is a general mood that everyone is rising to the occasion. This is a significant inflection point in the history of the Middle East, and in the conflict. So everyone is indeed... This is the moment of truth for everyone, and it seems that all parties are rising to the occasion and the implementation of the provisions of the agreement is moving in the right direction.

[05:07:40] Speaker 1: What role is Egypt going to play going forward? We already hear that some Egyptian forces are on the ground in Gaza. They've been helping to set up camps. You'll also be part of what's being called a multinational task force to ensure the deal isn't violated. Can you take us through some of the next steps of this process?

[05:08:02] Speaker 35: Well, first of all, we are in the initial phase of the agreement, and as I had mentioned, there are several elements of that initial agreement. But of course, there's going to be sequential phases that as we move on will have to be implemented. There's a lot of issues that need to be addressed, including transitional governance and security arrangements, as you rightly mentioned. And of course, rehabilitation and reconstruction of Gaza. All of these issues, obviously, Egypt will be playing a constructive and influential role as we have continued to do. And so obviously, yes, there are going to be some significant discussions. The specifics and details will be addressed with our American partners, with our regional partners. A lot of specifics and details that will be addressed in due course. But as of now, I think there's a lot of interest to see the fulfillment of the initial phase, and hopefully that will build the necessary momentum to move on to the more detailed discussions of ensuring stability in Gaza, ensuring the security of Gaza, and as well as the issue of transitional governance, which is incredibly important.

[05:09:12] Speaker 1: What do you think will be the toughest issue going forward? For example, Prime Minister Netanyahu stressed again today Hamas had to be disarmed. We've heard from senior Hamas officials they're not ready to give up their guns. Perhaps it's an issue of heavy weapons versus small arms. Is that, in Egypt's view, one of the toughest issues to address now in this next stage?

[05:09:36] Speaker 35: Well, I think all of the issues are quite tough. They're all interconnected in a way, and I think they're all very challenging issues. It's a question of the future governance of Gaza, but as you know, we have some perspectives of how this will happen, of having Palestinian technocrats that are going to be non-factional taking charge of Gaza temporarily or provisionally before the Palestinian Authority can come and continue to govern in Gaza the way they did before in 2005. But obviously there are security arrangements. There's discussions related to the International Stability Force, obviously there's a lot of discussions that need to be made on the issue of composition, the structure, the mandate of this force, and we believe that it needs to be mandated by the Security Council. So I don't think there's an easy issue here to be addressed. All of them are quite complicated. They are complex but interconnected, but I think with the positive momentum that has been brewing in the past few days with the constructive spirit and with the incredible and quite steadfast leadership of President Trump, these agreements, we can reach to consensual outcomes on all of these issues.

[05:10:50] Speaker 1: More immediately, Egypt must be in overdrive trying to organize what's said to be a signing ceremony on Monday in Sharm el-Sheikh. As we heard from our Washington correspondent, President Trump likes the optics. Is there anything you can tell us about what kind of a summit it will be? Will other Arab leaders be invited? Does it have a name? What more can you tell us?

[05:11:13] Speaker 35: Well, there will be a public announcement obviously with all of the organizational details on the modalities related to that, so I will leave it up to the public announcement, but obviously the beginning of next week is going to be a significant inflection point. This is going to be really a transformational defining moment in this conflict, and hopefully it will be behind our backs. There is now a glimmer of hope and that this will pave the way for ensuring that we can cement peace and ensure that we are moving forward in order to have peace and security in this region and engage in a process of generational healing between Palestinians and Israelis hopefully in the long term.

[05:11:55] Speaker 1: Thank you very much for joining us. We'll have all eyes on Egypt at least in the second part of the day on Monday, and many the world over and most of all in this region will hope that it's a day of ceremony and celebration and a real affirmation that this long sought-after deal is on course. Thank you very much for joining us from Cairo. And there you go, Ben. Not many details released and perhaps that is the way there has to be an official announcement, but I would imagine it's often the case when an American president comes to the region that other Arab leaders gather at the same point so that President Trump can thank all of the people who, and there are many who have been behind this deal, so there will be a lot of, as President Trump likes to say, a lot of those made-for-television moments on Monday, but hopefully most importantly of all, that ceasefire will hold on the ground in Gaza and the humanitarian aid will flow and there will be some really emotional reunions. Yes, indeed.

[05:12:55] Speaker 26: Lise, thank you so much. Lise Doucette there, our Chief International Correspondent live in Jerusalem. And earlier I spoke to Riyad Mansour, who is Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine to the United Nations, and asked him about the ceasefire agreement currently now

[05:13:09] Speaker 29: in place. Yes, I am optimistic. Thank you for having me. I admire, and I was moved by this massive river of Palestinians returning to their homes in the north, in the Gaza Strip. This is what happened at the beginning of the year when the ceasefire was announced on 19th of January and they returned and they are returning again and they are determined to go back to their houses to clean up and to begin the reconstruction and to set up tents. You cannot but admire and be moved by the resiliency of the Palestinian

[05:13:53] Speaker 26: people. Well, it is a very moving sight there and we can see those pictures of that continuing stream of humanity really as the Palestinians head back to Gaza City to try to find what is left of their homes. But can I ask you, Riyad Mansour, what do you think in the longer term? This is just the first phase of the ceasefire plan. But later on, the plan says that Hamas has to disarm. Now, the Israeli Prime Minister has said Israeli troops will stay in Gaza until Hamas does disarm. Do you see that happening?

[05:14:29] Speaker 29: Well, let us first of all deal with the details of what was agreed upon. The people are returning to their homes in the northern part. They need massive humanitarian assistance and I listened to Mr. Fletcher in your earlier programme in which he said that they have thousands of truckloads of humanitarian assistance and they want to flood the Gaza Strip with needed food, water, medicine, so that people can be sustained and, you know, bodies of children would be given the strength in order not to die from famine. These important steps need to take place immediately and also the exchange of, you know, detainees and hostages. The hundreds and maybe the thousands of Palestinian prisoners who will be returning to their loved ones, their stories need to be told. They are human beings. They have stories. Their parents and their, you know, families suffered immensely during the years of their captivity and in jail. So that's another thing that will be put in place and the withdrawal of the Israeli Army from the Gaza Strip. I know at this stage they withdrew to a certain line but they have to withdraw completely from the Gaza Strip and we need to begin the process of reconstruction of Gaza.

[05:16:14] Speaker 17: The first stage of the deal is the movement of the IDF, Israel's military, from their positions to an agreed ceasefire line this morning. It leaves the IDF in control of just over half of Gaza. The end of the deal would see the military stationed just inside Gaza, inside a slim buffer zone. But that is some way away and Hamas must, according to the deal signed, disarm before then. Retired Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner is a former IDF spokesman. We've heard from him many times in the early parts of the conflict. He is now Director-General of International Relations for Histradrut Labour Federation. Good afternoon, Lieutenant-Colonel Lerner.

[05:16:52] Speaker 16: Thank you, good afternoon.

[05:16:54] Speaker 17: The role of the IDF changed within hours. The war is over.

[05:17:02] Speaker 16: I'd say hallelujah to that. I think that the Israeli society has been based on all of the polls, waiting for this moment to see a realisation of a deal. It was President Trump that was able to realise that deal. And this morning, what we've seen earlier today, is the redeployment of the military forces to the yellow line, which is something we have to get used to seeing, into a new reality. I would say defensive, but it won't be a passive line of defence if there are Hamas terrorists that we've seen in the last few days trying to have a go at the Israeli military across the different positions within the Gaza Strip. I expect we will see more of these types of actions in the coming days as well. So they will be defending, they will be on the line, but I think that all eyes will be, indeed, until pointed to Monday morning, Monday afternoon, to see the hostages come home, to see President Trump's visit, and to see the realisation of the hostage release and advance. I would say these types of things, if they actually do develop positively, they can be confidence-building measures in the advance of the entire process.

[05:18:16] Speaker 17: One of the war aims, of course, was the release of the hostages. Another was to destroy Hamas. Arguably, a disarmed Hamas is a destroyed Hamas. There will be questions to come about the nature of that disarmament, heavy weapons versus light weapons, quite what it actually means. Are you clear as to what disarmament means?

[05:18:38] Speaker 16: I think the military goals were a very, very clear goal that Hamas no longer poses a threat to Israel. A threat like October 7th. I was listening just before we came on to the words of Brigadier General Effie Dufferin, the IDF spokesperson, today, and he was very, very clear that that threat that existed on October 7th absolutely does not exist today. Of course, Hamas still have weapons, still have capabilities, but they're extremely diminished compared to what we've endured over the last two years. I would say, moving forward, we need to maintain that at least the level of Hamas does not increase. I would say we need to push forward and implement the agreement to make sure that Hamas does not have a role in rebuilding Gaza because we've seen what they've done with the power of governance. They build a military, they build a terrorist army, and they came into the Israeli communities in October 7th, 2023. For me, I think that the most moving moments over the last couple of days were the very, very low lows of the memorial, the anniversary of October 7th, just a few days ago, and then the immediate flip over the anticipation, the jubilation of the expectations of the deal being realized, and for the hostages to come back.