This video explores an ongoing political story involving high-profile ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas. The potential deal, discussed by global leaders including President Biden, draws near, aiming to free hostages, cease the fighting, ensure security, and escalate humanitarian aid to Gaza. While the situation remains fluid, the video delves into the implications of such negotiations and how they might alter with the upcoming U.S. presidential transition from Biden to Trump. The podcast also reflects on the collaborative efforts and complexities involved from the parties in conflict and their mediators. The intricacies of politicking, decision-making, and responsiveness among involved countries illustrate the multilayered nature of such negotiations.

Driven by a dynamic international landscape, the discussions shine a spotlight on complex political maneuverings on a global scale, focusing on U.K. politics in particular. The situation involving Tulip Siddiq, the City Minister, takes precedence as she resigns following corruption allegations linked to Bangladeshi politics. This segment uncovers the background details of Siddiq's resignation, responses from the British political system, and the consequential reshuffles in the Treasury. Viewers gain insight into how these local political events interplay with and influence broader geopolitical developments.

Main takeaways from the video:

Please remember to turn on the CC button to view the subtitles.

Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. ceasefire [ˈsiːsfaɪər] - (noun) - A temporary pause in fighting or conflict, typically one that is officially agreed upon. - Synonyms: (truce, armistice, suspension of hostilities)

The signs are positive that there's going to be a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas over the conflict in Gaza.

2. proximity [prɒkˈsɪmɪti] - (noun) - The nearness or closeness of something in place, time, or relationship. - Synonyms: (nearness, adjacency, closeness)

And could it be because he is working with Donald Trump just before he takes over the presidency?

3. probity [ˈproʊbɪti] - (noun) - The quality of having strong moral principles; honesty and decency. - Synonyms: (integrity, honesty, morality)

Her day job, which was overseeing probity and regulation and fighting corruption in the banking system.

4. resignation [ˌrɛzɪɡˈneɪʃən] - (noun) - An act of resigning from a position; a formal statement announcing this action. - Synonyms: (departure, stepping down, withdrawal)

The City Minister, Tulip Siddiq, who's the Labour MP for Hampstead in North London, has resigned from her ministerial job.

5. extrajudicial [ˌɛkstrəˌdʒuːˈdɪʃəl] - (adjective) - Not legally authorized by a court; done beyond the authority of the law. - Synonyms: (illegal, unauthorized, vigilant)

Including enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings.

6. allegation [ˌælɪˈɡeɪʃən] - (noun) - A claim or assertion that someone has done something illegal or wrong, typically without proof. - Synonyms: (accusation, claim, assertion)

This follows days, weeks really, of claims reports, allegations in newspapers about her relationship with Bangladeshi politics.

7. surge [sɜːrdʒ] - (verb) - To increase suddenly and strongly. - Synonyms: (boost, soar, escalate)

A structure would free the hostages, halt the fighting, provide security to Israel and allow us to significantly surge humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians.

8. confound [kənˈfaʊnd] - (verb) - To cause surprise or confusion, especially by acting against expectations. - Synonyms: (baffle, confuse, perplex)

But equally, it's possible that nothing has changed because we've been here before.

9. protracted [prəˈtræktɪd] - (adjective) - Lasting for a long time or longer than expected. - Synonyms: (extended, prolonged, lengthy)

The complexity of mediating between conflicting parties involves a multitude of actors, plans, and unforeseen obstacles, underlining the protracted nature of peace-building efforts.

10. repercussions [ˌriːpəˈkʌʃənz] - (noun) - Unintended consequences or impacts of an action, especially when not immediately apparent. - Synonyms: (consequence, aftermath, outcome)

This segment uncovers the background details of Siddiq's resignation, responses from the British political system, and the consequential reshuffles in the Treasury.

Has the return of Donald Trump made a Gaza ceasefire 'closer than ever?' - BBC Newscast

Pressing hard to close this. The deal, we have a structure would free the hostages, halt the fighting, provide security to Israel and allow us to significantly surge humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians. President Biden makes it sound like a deal for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza is getting ever closer. And could it be because he is working with Donald Trump just before he takes over the presidency? We'll discuss that on this, the BBC's daily news podcast Newscast. But first of all, we're going to dive into a big breaking political story in the UK hello, it's Adam in the newscast studio.

And as we're recording this episode of Newscast on Tuesday, late afternoon, early evening, the signs are positive that there's going to be a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas over the conflict in Gaza. But it has not happened yet. So what we'll do later on in this episode is catch up with James Landale, our diplomatic correspondent, just so we can lay the groundwork for when there is a deal. And that could potentially be when you are listening to this podcast, because that's how quickly but also unpredictably, that news is moving. But first of all, we're gonna focus on some news that broke in Westminster on Tuesday afternoon. The City Minister, Tulip Siddiq, who's the Labour MP for Hampstead in North London, has resigned from her ministerial job. This follows days, weeks really, of claims, reports, allegations in newspapers about her relationship with Bangladeshi politics because her aunt, Sheikh Kasina, was the former Prime Minister of Bangladesh, and she left that role under quite a cloud last year in Bangladesh.

So today we got an exchange of letters between Tulip Siddiq and the Prime Minister and also a letter from the from the Prime Minister's independent advisor on minister ministerial standards, who had been looking into it. And this involves things like Tulip Siddiq's properties that she owns and lives in in London, her relationship with the Awami League, which is her aunt's former political party in Bangladesh, and of course, just her day job, which was overseeing probity and regulation and fighting corruption in the banking system. So let's catch up with all the many threads that need to be untied and then tied together.

Let's chat to Chris Mason at Westminster. Hello, Chris. Hello. And welcome back to newscast. Joe Pike, political and investigations correspondent at Westminster. Hello, Joe. Hi, Adam. Right, Joe, you're gonna get to go first because you're gonna do kind of the essential background that we need to know to understand why this became a story in the first place. It's complicated, but I Suppose the key fact is that Tulip Siddiq's aunt is Sheikh Hasina, who until last August was the Prime Minister, the leader of Bangladesh. She fled that country amidst violent and deadly student protests against her leadership.

And human rights organisations in recent years have made very serious accusations about alleged human rights abuses in Bangladesh under her regime, including enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings. So that's the important context. Chulip Siddiq, until very recently, was a Treasury minister responsible for tackling financial corruption and all the allegations surrounding her. One is investigations in Bangladesh in relation to alleged corruption. One of them is about a nuclear deal struck between Sheikh Hasina and Vladimir Putin back in 2013. The allegation, a nuclear power plant, we should say, yeah, a nuclear power plant deal. The allegation is that around a billion pounds was siphoned off from that deal into private hands.

We should say Sadiq denies all of the allegations, including that one. There doesn't seem to be a huge amount of evidence for certainly that allegation about the nuclear power plant. But it is early days in terms of the investigation. It's important. With that allegation, we point out it was first raised by a political rival of Tulip Siddiq's aunt. The second anti corruption allegation in Bangladesh only came out in the last day or so. That relates to some land. Tulip Tziddiq is accused of trying to get some land or take some advantage from her aunt's position in government so her family could benefit from some land. So that's part one, which is early stage investigations in Bangladesh, corruption allegations which Tulip seek denies. The second set of allegations are in the UK and it concerns property and property in London.

There are various homes, flats in central and north London that Tulip Sleep and her family either live in or have lived in, that have at some stage been owned by people with links to her aunt. That includes one particular flat that Tulip Sleep currently owns that was gifted to her by somebody who's a friend of her parents, who has links to the Awami League. Now we've seen Adam in, in recent weeks, a drip drip of quite small revelation, some might say in the Sunday Times, in the Financial Times, in the Mail on Sunday, all around alleged corruption. There doesn't seem to be a smoking gun, but people within government have been open, when I've spoken to them in recent days, that this drip drip was damaging. The whole load of different allegations were complex and murky, according to one person in government. And ultimately Keir Starmer would need to make a political decision.

Now, we don't know what's happened behind the scenes and Chris maybe will have more intel on this, but some would argue that today, after that report came back from the Ministerial Standards Watchdog, that Keir Starmer made a political decision. Yeah. And the last thing that happened in this process, after all these stories had bubbled up, was that Tulip Siddiq herself referred herself to Sir Laurie Magnus, who is the Prime Minister's independent advisor on ministerial standards. Actually, that's a. That's a new thing that's only come in in the last few months that ministers can. Can send themselves through his door. Previously, it had to be the Prime Minister that started something. So, Chris, we then got an exchange of letters today, including one from Sir Laurie Magnus to the Prime Minister about his take on all of this.

Yeah. So we've got a letter from Laurie Magnus to the Prime Minister and then we've got the usual ritual exchange of letters between the resigning Minister and the Prime Minister. So Laurie Magnus's letter says that in his view, she didn't breach the Ministerial code, which is what an investigation or an inquiry by the Independence Advisor seeks to get to the bottom of. But it says, I've not been able to obtain comprehensive comfort in relation to all of the UK property related matters referred to in the media. It goes on to say that Tulip Siddique had acknowledged that over an extended period she was unaware of the origins of her ownership of her flat in King's Cross in North London, and then says that she'd ended up exposing herself to allegations of misconduct by association.

And then the key paragraphs right at the end of this letter from Laurie Magnuson. Yeah. Read the whole thing because actually, it's worth reading the whole thing, I think. Yeah. So it says, given the nature of Tulip Siddique's ministerial responsibilities, City Minister with responsibilities for anti corruption, quote, which include the promotion of the UK's financial services sector and the inherent probity of its regulatory framework as a core component of the UK economy and its growth. It is regrettable that she was not more alert to the potential reputational risks both to her and the government, arising from her close family's association with Bangladesh.

I would not advise that this shortcoming should be taken as a breach of the Ministerial code, but you will want to consider her ongoing responsibilities in the light of this. That is the sound of a tennis ball being whacked back across the net, as is always the case in these things, because it's a political decision in in the end, whatever an independent advisor says. And then in the exchange of letters between Tulip Siddiq and the Prime Minister, they're warm. They are. They're old, they're old friends. They represent neighbouring constituencies in North London. There's a picture of them on the day they were both elected for the first time in 2015, with their kind of arms around each other and their spouses there, etc. Etc. And the Prime Minister acknowledges in his letter that Laurie Magnus has said there was no breach of the Ministerial code or didn't find any evidence of a breach in the Ministerial code, no evidence of financial improprieties.

And the Prime Minister says, to be clear, that the door remains open for you going forward. In other words, he is explicitly saying he might hire her as a minister again in the end. Adam, for all of the complexities and nuances of this story, of which there are plenty of both, it's actually quite simple. If you are the minister responsible for anti corruption and you are named in a corruption investigation, your viability as a minister is not going to last very long. And that's the reality of what we've seen play out.

Well, just adding together all the things you've both been saying, it just makes me think, if Tulip Siddiq had been a Health Minister or a Transport Minister, she might still be in that job tonight, despite all of this stuff. Possibly it would have been. Yeah, possibly it would have been. It would have been a key strand and an easy element of this story to write, which was, she's responsible for anti corruption and she's in a new corruption investigation wouldn't have been writable. I mean, I still think there have been quite a lot of questions for her because, you know, there's. There's quite a lot in here that I think would have led number 10, as they have to think, oh, crikey, it's quite complicated, this. And for complexity read. Plenty of scope for a journalist to investigate and generate more stories from.

It's not been a quick process. No. Referring this to Laurie Magnus has meant that this has taken what, week, week and a half. So that was on the 6th of January, she made the referral. So. Yeah. Which is. Yeah, yeah. Beginning. Beginning of last. Last week. Of course, the other name for that is due process, though. Yeah, yeah, no, totally, that the name is. Is due process. It means there's a government and an individual can then deflect inquiries. Once that process starts onto the fact that there's an inquiry ongoing, I think that tweak in the convention allowing a minister to refer themselves is an interesting one because it allows.

Well, it gives agency to the. To the accused minister, doesn't it? And it also gives a bit of distance to a Prime Minister who doesn't have to almost pass judgment by decision making by saying, I want the, you know, the independent advisor to. To. To look into this. We shouldn't maybe be too surprised that Keir Starmer as a lawyer is focused on process and he likes fairness. But there are people, Adam, it's worth pointing out within labor who believe, and I'm sure number 10, would contest this, that Tulip Sadiq's closeness to Keir Starmer as a constituency neighbour, as Chris has said, maybe changed the timeline of this, that this was a little bit slower than other people in the situation may have faced.

And Louise Haig, the Transport Secretary who was sacked pretty quickly, is the comparison some to the left of Labour have been making. And there are people who have said that even though this was an important process, and it wouldn't, of course, have been fair to purely judge Tulip Sadiq on the actions of her family or the alleged actions of her family, the fact that this has dripped out over quite a long period, giving journalists more time to try and find new lines and new revelations, some would say is unnecessarily damaging to the Labour brand at a time where Keir Starmer doesn't need more challenges on his plate.

And, Chris, do you want to update us on the new cast of characters at the treasury then, as a result of this? So we have. This is a good test. I haven't written this down, but Emma Reynolds is coming in, who was a Labour MP a while ago and then has come back in as a Labour MP at the election to replace Tulip Sadiq as Economic Secretary to the Treasury. And Torsten Bell, formerly the figurehead of the Resolution foundation think tank that looks into the lives and financial realities, if you like, of people on lower incomes.

He became a Labor MP at the election in Swansea in South Wales, and he is going into a job in the Department for Work and Pensions and then retaining a sort of, kind of oversighty kind of PPS role, as it's known, Parliamentary Private secretary role in the Treasury. I think that's right. Is that right? Yeah, that's correct. At the same time as his identical twin brother is getting a big policy job in Downing Street. He's a civil servant. Indeed he is, yeah. Lots of celebratory drinks. Yeah, no, exactly. This, this.

This is all part of Downing street and Keir Starmer's attempts to sort of boost the kind of, if you like, firepower intellectually and economically at the heart of government. Also, Chris, talking about the Treasury, I mean, is this yet more trouble at Treasury? I mean, Rachel Reeves was in Parliament today, ostensibly doing a statement about her trip to China last week, but also the heavy on the subtext of, oh, there's been a bit of an issue with the cost of government debt. Few days about. Maybe talk about it. Yeah.

I mean, there's a lot been going on in the treasury, hasn't there, really? So you've got a ministerial kind of comings and comings and goings and then all of these questions that have got nothing to do with the whole tulip Sadiq thing, but that, you know, if. If Kia Starmer is sort of staring out of the window, wondering where sort of bits of political heat are coming from this week, it wouldn't be unreasonable for him to see a sort of bright red light in the. In the. In the Treasury.

So, yeah, you know, Rachel Reeves has faced this pressure because the market pressure has been real. Let's be. Let's be direct about this. You know, as Faisal's been saying on newscast, the markets are not a thing. They're a collection of lots of individual decisions. But the bottom line is they are collectively asking searching questions and raising an eyebrow about the government's economic credibility. Is that awkward for a Chancellor? Yes. Is it awkward for a Prime Minister who binded in Rachel Reeves to his project about making the Labour Party viable electorally and key to that was being seen as economically credible?

Well, yeah, because now the markets are kind of saying, well, we're not quite sure that you are. Now, Reggie Reeves got a lot of heat the other day because there was a urgent question in the House of Commons just before she set off on a trip to China. She didn't turn up. She sent along Darren Jones, her deputy, the Chief Secretary to the treasury, then off she went to China. There's a kind of separate but related rail relating to the UK's engagement with China and the extent to which that is a savvy kind of geopolitical as well as economic thing to do.

There are some who think it is not. It was also kind of arguably unfortunate that that trip was happening at just the time that all this heat was on her and there was all of this market pressure. Anyway, she came along to the Commons, she was talking principally about China with this backdrop of the markets, with an emphasis from her, which is in line with what we've heard from the Prime Minister yesterday and others in the last few weeks that they are absolutely looking at where they can trim from budgets in the context of the spending review that's going on within government because they don't want to put taxes up any further and they don't want to break what are known as their fiscal rules, their self imposed rules around borrowing.

In other words, they don't intend to borrow more as a proportion than they've already said that they will. Right, Chris, thank you very much and Joe, thank you very much for your high speed PhD in Bangladeshi politics. Thanks, Adam. Now, as we are recording this episode of newscast, the mood music from talks between Israel and Hamas over a ceasefire in Gaza, which had been taking place in Qatar, are looking quite good. Everyone is sounding very positive about there being a deal on the horizon and maybe closer than there ever has been at any point in the conflict.

But as we're recording it this episode, the deal has not materialized yet. It may have done in the intervening period between us recording it and you listening to it. If so, we will then update you at the earliest possible opportunity. But we thought we'd just lay some of the groundwork about what the contents of a potential deal could be and just what are some of the factors that have brought the deal closer than it's ever been before. So I've been Speaking to the BBC's diplomatic correspondent, respondent James Landale, who has had his eye on all the different moving parts.

Hello. Shall we be uber transparent and say exactly when we're recording this bit of this episode? Why not? Yeah. So it's Tuesday afternoon, 5:22 UK time. What do we think is happening in these negotiations as we're speaking now, bearing in mind what might be happening when people are listening to this could be different. Yeah. Look, everything is moving quite fast, but equally, it's possible that nothing has changed because we've been here before. In my experience, whenever Europe negotiations, they always take a little bit longer than expected, simply because there's always something that sort of comes up that no one's thought about.

Because the key thing to understand is this is a very, very complex deal with lots of moving parts and there are lots of different people who need to be consulted. We know, for example, that representatives of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the pij, which are another armed militant group described, you know, described as terrorists by lots of Western governments, are sending their own delegation to DoH so that they can join the discussions that are taking place. That's because they have a role in Gaza. Well, they have a role in Gaza, but also because there is some suspicion that they hold hostages and that not all the hostages are being held by Hamas.

So there's an awful lot of complication. But the talks continue, and everybody's using words like, we're on the brink. It's closer than we've been before, but it's not the deal yet. What are the kind of structural factors that make it feel a bit closer now than, say, the 23rd of December, where we were all kind of on standby for it happening, or last July when we were all on standby for it happening? A lot's happened. There's a lot. You know, time has passed. More people have died. People have got more tired on all sides. Our armies of fighters are tired. Civilians are exhausted.

Just the sheer passage of time changes the mood music for an awful lot of conflict. So that's just a sort of basic, almost a truism, but it's something that we sometimes forget when we're looking for the specifics. There have been certain individuals like, you know, the. The leader of Hamas on the ground, Mr. Sinwar, has been killed by the Israeli forces. He was holding out much more in a more hardline way than it was thought other Hamas leaders were. Hamas now seems to have reached a point where it realizes that, you know, it's not getting more from Iran, it's not getting more support from Hezbollah.

And so they are in a place where they are more willing, for example, to make compromises. They had said that they would not stop fighting until every Israeli force would be. Well, they've clearly. They've made compromises on that. Then you've got the fact that in Israel itself, political pressure has been ramping up Even more on Mr. Netanyahu, the prime minister from the hostage families who are just saying, look, end this war. Bring our people home, accusing him of sustaining this war for political purposes. Then you've got the one factor that we're all talking about, Mr. Trump, his inauguration next week.

Clearly, in the minds of many of the parties, the inauguration has become a meaningful deadline in a way that lots of other deadlines that are generated by politicians and. And diplomats has have been less effective in the past. So I think all of those things have brought it to a place where people are more willing to compromise and say, yeah, maybe now is the time for a deal. And also, Benjamin Netanyahu probably feels a bit stronger, having been very successful in taking out the leadership of Hezbollah in Lebanon. So therefore, he was looking a bit weaker before because the October 7 attacks had been a failure of intelligence and security in Israel.

Whereas he's now projecting kind of a bit of strength. Yeah, and, and that might give him, that might give him more confidence to take on the ultra nationalists, the hardliners in his own government on whom he relies. But they at the moment are being very critical of what they believe is happening in Qatar and the talk taking place. But they have yet to openly declare that they are going to clap, try and collapse this government. We know that the opposition parties have already said that if that they try to do that, the opposition parties will come in and support Netanyahu's government so that it doesn't collapse.

Let's talk about the elements of this deal. And we don't know for definite because we haven't seen it in black and white, but lots of things have been leaked and the parameters have sort of seemed to have stayed the same throughout this whole process. One of the elements is swapping people, so hostages for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. What do we think is, is going on with that? Well, the, the, you're absolutely right. The deal is pretty much as we understand it, largely based on the one that President Biden outlined last May, namely three phases. The first phase would be a partial exchange of hostages and also Palestinian prisoners and detainees.

We're talking maybe around in the 30s for the hostages, you know, the most extreme case, so the elderly, the sick, the wounded women, and then hundreds of Palestinians alongside. That would be some form of Israeli withdrawal of the idf, their forces from some positions, we don't know precisely what. At the same time, there's greater access for humanitarian aid. And then while that's taking place, you know, sort of 42 days, there are lots of different numbers. But a number of weeks during that first phase, talks and negotiations continue about what happens in the second phase, which is essentially when you're in a place of having a permanent ceasefire, a more significant withdrawal of Israeli forces, and then you get into, and also some more hostages released. But at that point, you know, for soldiers who are being held, things like that, and then final phase, which is essentially what you do long term with Gaza governance, security, reconstruction, all of that area that was being addressed by Anthony Blinken in a big speech he gave today, it's just, I mean, that's quite mind boggling when you just lay it actually out, like in bullet points like that.

Because you realize those phases, the negotiations get harder the deeper you go into the next phase. And you look how hard this first phase was to get. And, and the first phase could collapse because there's an awful lot of issues about sequencing. You know, who are we talking about? Who has control of which hostages are these hostages? These hostages who are alive, Are they hostages who are dead? What are their identities with the Palestinian prisoners and detainees? Which of them, which order? Who, who goes first? What happens if there's a problem? What mechanism do you agree to resolve problems if there's a hitch? What happens if somebody doesn't come out on time because they're real or because they can't be found or if there's some incident that upsets all of this?

So there's, there's many a slip, Twix, cup and lip in this, as you say, before we even get to the longer term issues, namely, you know, the politics and the administration of some of Gaza in the day after, as it's referred to. You mentioned that the Biden Trump handover happening next week. Do we think this could end up looking really different if it happens under President Trump rather than under President Biden? Like, does Trump have a very different plan for how to handle this situation?

Well, we don't know. We know that he's very keen to get some form of ceasefire before the inauguration. He's made that very clear publicly and privately. And that's clearly been been a factor in some of the thinking that's shaped to get us into this position. What we don't know is precisely how will he try to deal with this, because there are some Israelis who are particularly, you know, the ultra nationalists and the settlers who are hopeful that he might actually give them more support in the long run. He might, you know, endorse increasing settling settlers, settler settlements in, in the west bank might even get into the space to discuss annexation and these kind of things we simply don't know at the moment.

But Mr. Trump very clearly has made it clear what he does want is he wants this, the ceasefire to start by the inauguration. And the other thing he's very keen on is to pursue normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which he sees as sort of unfinished business from the Abraham Accords that he agreed and started the process of in his first term, namely the normalization of relations between some Arab nations and Israel will and just in terms of how these negotiations have been taking place, it might surprise some people to hear that actually the two sides are never in the same room at the same time. Sometimes they're not even in the same building.

Yeah, most of the time they're not in the same building. And that's because, you know, Never, never the twain shall meet. And that takes time. That means you've got to have intermediaries. And the thing about intermediaries is that, you know, people have to say, well, that's what, you know, their account of this and their account of that and their piece. So it just makes the whole process of negotiation laborious. Imagine, imagine too what it was like when these messages had to get sent to the Hamas leadership in Gaza that were obviously hiding in, in tunnels.

So that just meant these negotiations, the logistics of them are incredibly complex. But as we now understand, they're in the same building. So that speeds things up so that you can actually just have people nipping from one floor to another. One of the elements of the deal would be allowing people who live in Gaza to move from the south where they've been displaced, to back to their homes in the rest of Gaza, so in the north. But when you see the pictures, or at least the pictures we're allowed to see by the, because the Israeli government doesn't let us go and report ourselves or the pictures that local journalists produce for us, it's rubble.

What do we know about any kind of reconstruction effort or what there is for people to go back to do? I mean, I know that's not the diplomatic picture. That's not your area of expertise necessarily. There is, you know, we know there is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. That humanitarian crisis will remain, you know, when there's a ceasefire. But if there is a meaningful ceasefire, then that means the capacity to get humanitarian aid in theory increases substantially.

But as you say, there is a massive, massive, multi billion pound, decade long reconstruction need that at some point needs to be addressed. So, yeah, people might be able to go back to their homes, but a lot of destruction. So the idea that that sort of, you know, solves things, I think is, is ambitious. I think what it does is it starts the process of people, you know, there are over just over 2 million people in Gaza. Almost all of them are, have, are displaced as, as. Mr. Yeah, Mr. Blinken said, to quote him, he said most people in Gaza are displaced.

Most people in Gaza are hungry. Most people have lost a family member as a result of this conflict. You know, a ceasefire starts the process, but, you know, Gaza has a long road ahead of it. James, thank you very much. And that's the situation now at 32 minutes past 5 on Tuesday afternoon in the UK.

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