Israel-Gaza war: UN chief calls Israel’s airstrikes in Rafah an ‘unbearable escalation’ | BBC News

Israel-Gaza war: UN chief calls Israel’s airstrikes in Rafah an ‘unbearable escalation’ | BBC News

the UN Secretary General Antonio gues has just said that an Israeli offensive on Rafa would be an unbearable escalation he was responding to Benjamin netanyahu’s comments that Israel will carry out an operation in Rafa regardless of whether a ceasefire deal is reached with Hamas the Israeli Prime Minister was speaking at a meeting with the families of hostages where he reiterated that Israel would eliminate Hamas and Achieve total Victory take a listen we will inter refa because we have no other Jo we will destroy the Hamas battalions there we will complete all the objectives of the war including the repatriation of all our abductees well the Israeli Prime Minister there saying Israel would enter Rafa regardless of a deal and despite its main Ally the US repeatedly saying it doesn’t support an allout offensive there well Rafa is a city in southern Gaza where more than a million Palestinians are Sheltering after being ordered to evacuate there on the grounds that it was a safe Zone this is what it’s like in Rafa now many residential buildings reduced to Rubble large camps for displaced Palestinians like that one have sprung up around Rafer and thousands of children live there you can see plumes of smoke from an Israeli air strike close by well the UN Secretary General Antonio gues urged Israel against invading Rafa recent weeks have seen air strikes on the Rafa area a military assault on Rafa would be an unbearable escalation killing thousands more civilians and forcing hundreds of thousands to flee while a retired Israeli Army Kel told us why she believes Israel’s assault on Gaza will go ahead regardless of a ceasefire deal the only place that Kamas still has full military capability like what they did on October 7th is under Rafa it’s not in Rafa it’s under Rafa in that Subterranean Arena so I do think it would be postponed I don’t think it would ever be cancel so what does Miss netanyahu’s latest pledge mean for the ceasefire deal currently on the table well Israel says it will wait until Wednesday for a response from Hamas a reminder the deal put forward includes a 40-day truce in return for the release of some hostages it would also allow for displaced families to return to Northern Gaza it’s also reported to involve new wording on restoring calm to Gaza designed to satisfy hamas’s demand for a permanent SE fire well Naf Alani is the former Qatari director of Defense intelligence operations remember Qatar is a crucial player in the talks here’s his assessment on the likelihood of the deal going through Hamas and other factions in Gaza have said that they don’t may not have a clear number of all the hostages where they’re located there is the possibility in fact we know that there have been uh hostages that have been killed uh through either bombings or or internally in in Gaza depending on on the story it’s quite unclear uh so getting back all the hostages is the unclear bit about this now moving forward this is structured differently now will the Israelis stick to the plan and not attack Rafa before that that is the big question because if that continues to happen it’s very um unrealistic to expect that Hamas would agree to AAS fire well the top us diplomats Secretary of State Anthony blinkin has just arrived in Tel Aviv these are the latest pictures of that arrival he’ll be discussing the ceasefire negotiations he arrived there from Jordan and here’s what he had to say before boarding that flight our Focus right now is on getting a ceasefire and hostages home that is the most urgent thing and it’s also um I think what is achievable because the Israelis have put a strong proposal on the table they’ve demonstrated that they’re willing to compromise and now it’s on Hamas Let’s cross live now and speak to our security correspondent Frank Gardner who is in Jerusalem and Frank how hard is Mr blinken’s job going to be now given the rhetoric from Mr Netanyahu today about the inevitability of a Rafa offensive well he hasn’t put a time scale on that offensive I’m sure that um the US state department won’t find that particularly helpful um they’ve also reiterated their View that they have not yet seen what they say is a credible Israeli plan that would address their humanitarian concerns about the plight of the Palestinians in Rafa the US does not want to see a US operation in Rafa um yet the mood music that’s coming out of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu today is very robust all about total victory of pursuing the last remaining Hamas battalions to some extent he’s throwing a boat to the hardliners in his own cabinet um people who said that if there is a ceasefire deal that um lets Hamas off uh without a ruar offensive they will walk so you know Benjamin netanyahu’s got a lot of juggling to do he’s trying to please all people at the same time the Americans the negotiators and the right- Wingers in his own um party as well as the families of the hostage uh the hostages who are not impressed so far by the failure of the Israeli government to get those hostages out the last time we saw a mass release of hostages was in November how was it done was it done by military pressure no it was done by a mediated deal by the cutteries and the hostage families believe that that’s the only or at least the best way to get their loved ones out that doesn’t seem to be the view ofe of prime minister Netanyahu who seems determined to press on with this operation it’s risky stuff because you know if you’re going to be fighting to get the hostages out there’s a high chance that those who are Left Alive could be caught up in the crossfire Frank thank you we’ve been talking over the past few days about those protests springing up in campuses across the United States well Pro Palestinian students are demanding their universities divest from Israel over its war in Gaza today we’ve received these dramatic pictures from The Chapel Hill Campus of the UN University of North Carolina many protesters were detained after the university sent them a demand to vacate their encampment well this is the campus at Colombia’s University the unrest there shows no signs of abating it’s here that the protest camps and demonstrations first began before spreading elsewhere well Susan Bowski is the professor of writing at Columbia University School of Arts she’s also a Jewish faculty member I asked her whether she ever felt the pro tests were unsafe or anti-semitic So I myself who have been on campus for many of the last days um have not personally experienced anything anti-semitic um I do not feel in any way unsafe on campus and I know that a large number of other Jewish faculty members feel that way I’ve also heard reports of anti-Semitic incidents and I know that some Jewish faculty members don’t feel safe on campus but I myself most certainly do I have seen many words being thrown around that are strongly against Israelis Israeli policies and Israel’s um you know Slaughter of civilians in Gaza over these last months and certainly there’s a great deal of anti-israeli government speech happening on campus I have not felt speech that individually targeted me as a member or specifically Jews as Jews well that was a professor from Colombia Let’s cross live now and speak to the BBC’s nomia ikbal who is at Columbia University New York and Tom bitman who’s at the University of Texas in Austin uh nomia to you first of all if I may uh we’ve been reading that there have been threats of exclusion expulsion in fact of students who are involved in the encampment what more do we know about these threats that’s right the protest escalated as we saw last night when some Pro Palestinian demonstrators uh took over Hamilton Hall and we saw some scenes of uh people smashing through windows and and what have you and so that sparked the university to release a new statement I’m just going to quote you exactly what they said they said we regret that protesters have chosen to escalate their situ the situation through their actions our top priority is restoring safety and order on our campus and so those people that were involved in that we don’t know exactly who they were the university is saying they face expulsion on top of that you’ve got students who are being suspended now uh yesterday the university issued this 2 p.m. local deadline for them to clear out the encampment that didn’t happen in terms of uh the students doing that they stood St strong they said they wouldn’t they wouldn’t move uh what I can tell you also is that one of the lead negotiators that was talking to the university sort of like a conduit between uh students uh the protesters and University leadership has been suspended I spoke to him just uh moment ago and he said he doesn’t know on what basis he was suspended because he had an agreement with the university as a negotiator that he could go back and forth he said he never entered the encampment after 2 p.m. he’s a Palestinian uh student uh who has come from Syria he said that he just doesn’t know now what where where his future is uh if this hearing does go ahead he’s due to have a hearing at some point along with many other students he could permanently be kicked out of the us but he did also say to me that he doesn’t think the protests are over the ends just by the means and that’s to quote him Mahmud KH he said to me it doesn’t compare to what people in Gaza are going through right now so despite what the the University is doing and it’s becoming very robust and taking action against students for many of them uh this hasn’t that this hasn’t quelled what they’re doing it hasn’t uh put their protest to an end we’re still seeing outside the the gates here uh at Columbia University there are still some protests going on outside but security has tightened up here okay n yet thanks uh let’s cross live now to the University of Texas at Austin and speak to Tom bitman and Tom we heard their Nomo talking about uh those those threats of arrests of uh uh of uh disciplinary action not putting students off at Colombia what’s the feeling in the University of Texas and Austin well so far here today all very calm all very quiet we’ve seen in the last 20 minutes or so a group of uh well we’re about two dozen or so protesters but I think even more Gathering now um as you can see there but it was yesterday that um the EXP the tensions really exploded here um when once again for the second time in a week uh the situation was that the state police the troopers were called in armed with batons with uh mace um pepper spray uh and they were um they came here after the University Administration called in those forces they say that the protesters who at that point hadn’t encampment here had refused to heed uh the university rules that the encampment should be removed and so there was some pretty violent scenes as some of the protesters were dragged out um by the uh Texas Troopers and uh I was just chatting to a couple of protested too said uh that uh pepper spray was used against them a bit further up as a van a police van was moving taking some of those arrested away one of the protested telling me that he was maed himself and two others uh he said quite badly hurt when that pepper spray was used this had all really escalated significantly last week because here in tin it’s one of the places where the protests really gain momentum in solidarity with what was happening in Colombia when the police earlier this month first went into Colombia to remove the encampments uh and as far as the the protesters were concerned in an extremely heavy-handed way we then saw the protest spread uh significantly and build momentum in many other parts of the US one of those was here and it was really the encampments that the University Administration was saying um was unacceptable uh the university for its part saying that it had given repeated warnings to the protesters to move it says they hadn’t and accuses them of escalating the situation it talked about for example baseball siiz rocks being strategically placed on the lawn here I was just chatting to one of the protesters he said that um there was you know there are stones on the lawn here and people have been using them as they do to weigh down their papers in the wind so they’re saying that was complete nonsense from the University Administration but clearly more potential here for things to escalate again we saw some more uh police just watching on over the protests and more protesters likely to gather now Tom bitman in Austin and nomia ikbal Columbia University thank you both for joining us today well let’s just take you briefly now to show you these live pictures coming into us from North Carolina the campus at uh at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill you can see a group of protesters gathered around a Palestinian flag being flown on a m we know that police on this campus have detained multiple protesters already during demonstrations today in fact the university has said that uh roughly 30 people were detained earlier on this morning local time when they clash with campus police they were refusing to leave the area so there we have a bit of more of a flavor of these Pro tests happening in another University campus that is in uh the University campus of North Carolina in Chapel Hill

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel will launch an invasion of the southern Gaza city of Rafah regardless of truce talks with Hamas.

It comes amid ongoing attempts to try to reach an agreement for a ceasefire and hostage releases.

His comments follow renewed warnings by the US and UN against a Rafah invasion.

The US secretary of state Antony Blinken hopes Hamas will accept what he has called Israel’s “extraordinarily generous” offer for a Gaza truce and hostage release deal. He was speaking as a Hamas delegation discussed the new proposal with mediators from Egypt and Qatar.

Meanwhile in the United States, pro-Palestinian student protesters at Columbia University, who have barricaded themselves inside a campus building, could “face expulsion”.

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