Uncertainty remains after Gaza deal

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This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Alex Ritson and in the early hours of Tuesday the 14th of October, these are our main stories.

Mixed emotions as Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners are freed under the deal to end the Gaza war.

President Trump has hailed a historic new dawn for the Middle East, but we ask in this podcast, what are the chances for peace?

Madagascar's embattled president has said that he's fled the country following weeks of youth-led protests calling for his resignation.

Also in this podcast, the second smallest nation ever to qualify.

It has been absolutely incredible here and I think this party is not going to end anytime soon.

Cape Verde's Football World Cup finals for the first time.

After Monday's emotional scenes in Israel, Gaza and the occupied West Bank, there are now countless questions which which need answering.

There is a ceasefire, but is one of Israel's longest ever wars at an end?

Can Palestinians in Gaza have any confidence that there won't be a return to the conflict which destroyed vast swathes of the territory?

On both sides, though, there is relief after Monday's hostage and prisoner exchange.

Twenty living Israelis were freed.

One of them, 23-year-old Bar Kooperstein, last saw his mother Judy before he went to work as a security guard at the Nova Music Festival which was ambushed by Hamas gunmen on October the 7th.

Here they are reuniting after two years.

Also Freed was a father of two little girls, Henri Moran.

His wife Liché spoke to the children on a video call.

Do you remember when I told you that daddy will come soon?

So daddy came.

Daddy's back from Gaza and we will be with him today.

You'll see Daddy today.

I see you are happy.

I can see you smiling.

After the hostages were safe, almost 2,000 Palestinians were released from Israeli jails.

In Gaza, Palestinians gathered in their thousands to welcome the former prisoners who arrived by bus.

There were tearful reunions in the West Bank.

Some Palestinians who served lengthy prison sentences met their families in Ramallah.

There, Khadir Mohammed Aburab expected to see her brother Murad, who'd been in prison for more than twenty years.

It's a

big surprise for us because

my dad,

my dad, would

wait him for many years.

But

suddenly he has a cancer, so he died.

But Gadia later learned that Murad was among prisoners who were deported to Egypt.

Israel has accused Hamas of failing to uphold its end of the deal by not releasing all the bodies of the dead hostages.

Only four out of 28 have been returned so far.

In Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt, President Trump signed off his plan for bringing peace to Gaza by declaring that he had done so across the Middle East.

The first phase of the deal, the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, is done.

But what next?

I asked our correspondent in Jerusalem, Barbara Platt Usher.

First, though, she told me about Monday.

I would say a day of overwhelming joy and a day of overwhelming sadness.

The hostages' release, really heartfelt stories.

Two twin brothers released who had been held separately, a father who had two little girls.

Every reunion seemed to be just very emotional, very happy, people hugging as if they couldn't let go.

And then on the Palestinian side, also great joy when they saw their loved ones coming off out of prison.

So there were 250 prisoners and 1700 detainees released.

And I was in Ramallah and saw some of those reunions.

Again, lots of tears, lots of happiness, but also sadness because some of those prisoners were deported to Egypt and Gaza, and the families waiting in Ramallah only found out at the end of the day when their loved one didn't get off the bus.

And so it was kind of quite crushing, really.

And some sad stories in Gaza, too.

A man coming back and finding that his wife and children had been killed.

Equally a woman who said that she thought her children were dead and then she found out she got a call and they were coming home.

So huge range of emotion really, Alex.

Quite hard to take in all of it, really.

Is there any chance of Israel or of Hamas returning to fighting?

Oh, yes, I think there is.

I think everybody realizes that there is.

What's different about this process is that there's this huge international

momentum behind it.

The summit that's taken place in Sharm al-Sheikh was a real effort to show that everyone was standing behind President Trump's plan, including the regional leaders who are closest to Hamas, and they have been pressing Hamas.

And then, of course, you have President Trump's involvement, which is quite unique and has also been able to exert pressure on Israel.

But yes, I mean, on the Israeli side, they are afraid that President Trump's plan is going to basically give Hamas room to regroup.

And on Hamas's side, they are afraid that this whole process is going to cause them to be finished as a movement because they're not going to have a role in governance and they're supposed to disarm.

So it's very possible that both sides could return to fighting in some form.

I think it's a very fragile situation.

However, as I said,

there is momentum behind it.

And there also is a plan.

It's the first time they've actually had a plan written down for the day after in Gaza.

Let's look ahead to the next phase, Gaza and what's been called the Board of Peace.

When can we expect any progress?

Well, I'm not aware of a timetable, to be honest.

There has been very little detail in this framework.

I think some of that was worked out at the summit.

People seem to have signed up for different roles.

So I expect that the first priority will be to get this stabilization, this international stabilization force in place.

It's supposed to be made up of officers from Arab and Muslim countries and work alongside Palestinian police to provide security because right now there's a security vacuum where the Israeli forces have withdrawn and Hamas has filled it with its own fighters and in fact there's been civil conflict there have been clashes in the past couple of days as Hamas has been fighting fighting rival clans, more than two dozen people killed.

So that is a worry and they will want to get that stabilization force in place as soon as possible.

And then the government is supposed to be a committee of Palestinian technocrats overseen by this Board of Peace, which is an international transitional body, which has already been criticized by Hamas as a foreign guardianship.

Not just Hamas, other factions as well, saying the Palestinians shouldn't have a foreign guardianship.

So that will be controversial, I think.

But at least the Hamas has said that they would hand over control or administration to a technocratic government.

So getting that in place will be done as quickly as possible.

And I am...

I don't think Hamas will be prepared to disarm.

No, the officials have always said that they would only disarm when they could hand their weapons over to a Palestinian state.

And they have shown no interest in disarming now.

And in the kind of talks where there's been some discussions about what it might look like if it could happen, one of the ideas raised was that they would be able to keep small arms and give up heavy weapons because they do have armed rivals in Gaza and they would feel completely exposed if they didn't have the weapons.

This will be one of the big difficulties going forward.

Barbara Playette Usher.

Among the leaders at the talks in Egypt with President Trump was King Abdullah of Jordan.

He's warned that real peace will not be achieved unless there is a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

The king, whose country is home to millions of Palestinian refugees, spoke to our special correspondent Fergal Keen in the Jordanian capital, Amman.

King Abdullah is the longest-serving leader in the region,

sharing a border with Israel and with Palestinians, making up more than 50% of his country's population.

So, Your Majesty, you're there, your chair, yeah.

A lasting peace is a personal and a national imperative.

If we don't solve this problem, we're going to be at it again.

So, in my view, two-state two-state solution is the only way forward.

If we don't find a future for Israelis and Palestinians and a relationship between the Arab and Muslim world and Israel, we're doomed.

So much is unresolved.

The physical recovery, let alone the mental trauma left by war.

Who will really run the Gaza Strip in a political landscape devoid of trust?

Do you trust Hamas when they say they accept not being part of the political future?

Well, I don't know them, but those that are working extremely close to them, Qatar in Egypt, feel very, very optimistic that they will abide by that.

Is it possible with

Prime Minister Netanyahu and the right-wing coalition in power to have a lasting peace?

From my experience, is no.

Most nations, when they look at strategic challenges, look at what is the end game.

I believe that this Prime Minister and his group, their strategic end game is perpetual conflict.

By perpetual conflict, they stay in power.

But there are those in Israel that believe in inclusion, that want to change the way that this government has gone.

And these are the peace builders that I think we can work with once there's an opportunity to do so.

By His Excellency Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's Prime Minister has pledged there be no Palestinian state.

In fact,

they effectively had a Palestinian state in Gaza.

So what did they do with that state?

Peace?

Coexistence?

No.

They attacked us time and time again.

The king says it's vital President Trump stays engaged with the process.

I think it's important that him and his administration do because it develops us in the details.

So we are dealing with phase one at the moment.

Where it could go awry would be as we get into the technical issues of phase two.

And then is that an opportunity for mischief?

I believe the president understands this, and it's the responsibility to all of us in the region to make sure that the president gets us across the finish line.

History does not encourage hope, but the king does believe this is a moment of genuine possibility.

King Abdullah of Jordan being interviewed by Fogelkeen.

Aaron David Miller is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

He was an advisor serving different U.S.

presidents on Arab-Israeli negotiations.

My colleague Evan Davis asked him whether a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians is now possible.

Let me just refer to the only time an American president brought an empowered PLO leader who actually had a monopoly over the forces of violence within Palestinian society, Yasser Arfan, and a risk-ready Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, to Camp David for two weeks.

That was the only time you tested the possibility of a conflict-ending solution.

I was there.

The gaps on the five core issues, borders, security, refugee Jerusalem, and end of all conflict and claims in July of 2000, that's 25 years ago, were as wide as the Grand Canyon.

Today,

they are galactically wide.

You need leaders of a caliber, of Saddad and Begin, Rabin and King Hussein, Mandela, and de Klerk to envision what you and I would consider to be an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

And with an extreme right-wing government in Israel, with Israel's annexationist policies on the West Bank and everything but name, it strains the bounds of credulity to imagine a straight line between phase one and end of the war.

and a viable negotiating process.

Could it happen?

Yeah, I believe it could, but not with the leaders we have.

So, where then does it land?

A settlement of sorts in which there's some democratic institutions on the Palestinian side, a sort of half-state, if you like, in Gaza and the Palestinian-controlled parts of the West Bank?

I mean, what do you...

It has to go somewhere.

Or a one-state solution.

I mean, I don't know.

This is the thing.

I mean, I can't.

I mean, look, I mean, I don't.

You're asking a question that, frankly, is impossible to answer.

On the Palestinian side, the Sinekwanan,

for even what you're describing,

would be a monopoly over the forces of violence in Palestinian society by a leader or a cadre of leaders.

Let me shorthand it for you.

One gun, one authority, one negotiating party.

Have you got that on the Palestinian side?

Who knows what might happen.

But right now,

who leads the Palestinian effort in a negotiation right now?

I just,

it's almost unimaginable to me, which is why, if you want that,

then you need to deal with the three problems that right now there are no answers for.

Number one, a governing structure.

Number two, Hamas's decommissioning, demilitarization of its weapons.

And number three, an international stabilization force.

I mean, can you imagine Muslim and Arab boots on the ground with the Israelis deployed in Gaza and Hamas still with his weapons as an insurgency, forcing peacekeepers to shoot at Palestinians or hold Israel's coat while the Israelis kill Palestinians?

I can't imagine that.

Just compare where we are now, if you would, relative to October the 6th, 2023, before

all of this erupted on October the 7th.

I mean, Hamas must be much weaker.

Israel must feel it's much stronger, correct?

I mean, that they are.

They are.

Israel has something now it's never had before, which is escalation dominance.

The capacity to control the pace, the focus, the intensity of military conflict, escalate against all their adversaries, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, and prevent their adversaries from escalation.

So in the hands of a wise Israeli prime minister, you could convert this escalation dominance into meaningful and durable political arrangements.

But what I'm suggesting is that I don't think Benjamin Netanyahu envisioned himself as the midwife, the father, the creator.

of a of a state which departs with the majority of the West Bank and dividing Jerusalem.

No,

that's not him.

Trump won't support that either.

So where do we go?

Anybody who's had any experience 25 years in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations would say this is a remarkable moment.

But show me the rest.

Aaron David Miller.

Still to come in this podcast.

Even after being a paleontologist for, you know, over 20 years, it still gives you that tingling feeling to be the first people to see these footprints.

It's humbling.

Discovering the footprints left by a dinosaur 166 million years ago.

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following weeks of growing anti-government demonstrations, the president of Madagascar, Ange Rud Zuel, has fled the country and is rumored to be heading for Dubai.

The youth-led protests, which began over high unemployment and the cost of living, have at times turned violent and at least 22 people have been killed.

And in recent days, Mr.

Rud Zuel's tenure has become increasingly uncertain after elite army units sided with the demonstrators.

Luke Freeman from University College London is a specialist on Madagascar and is there.

He told my colleague Sean Lay what's being said about the president's apparent departure.

People have been expecting that the president would be gone as there's been no news of him for the last 48 hours.

There's There's jubilation on the streets.

People are very excited, especially the young, about the events of the last two days.

And no surprise at all to learn today that the president has left and is in Dubai, having been picked up in a French military airport from Nussie Sainte-Marie, which is a small island off the east coast of Madagascar.

What's gone wrong for the president?

I mean, he's been in office for what, 16 years now.

He made water and electricity one of his election promises back in 2023 when he came back into power and nothing has moved instead he's been focusing on showy vanity projects such as a new football stadium and the population have been asking for real change in their basic daily living and he hasn't delivered that uh he promoted himself as the voice of the new generation back when he was what in his mid-30s he he could claim to have some sense of what the younger generation wanted.

It is a young nation, isn't it?

Has he simply lost touch?

About 60% of the population is under 30.

So it's a very young nation.

He is now in his 50s.

So it could well be argued that he lost touch.

And he's lost touch by instead of focusing on what...

the population is actually asking for, he's been focusing on things which he thinks make the country look good.

Some of the military have effectively given protection to the protesters, to the young people who've been on the streets.

Is this really something that has been ultimately determined by the men in uniform?

It was the fact that this unit of the army on Saturday came onto the streets on the side of the young protesters and swept aside the military police who'd been repressing those protests.

That's what brought about the change.

There's no doubt that we wouldn't be in a situation we are now with the president having fled the country if that army unit hadn't intervened, what do you think the chances are of him coming back?

I think the chances of Radzuelana coming back to Madagascar are very, very slim indeed.

He doesn't have a government, he doesn't have the support of the people, he doesn't have the support of the armed forces, he doesn't even officially have a Malagasy passport.

He has a French passport, which he got from France in 2014.

Constitutionally, that means his Malagasy passport is no longer valid.

He doesn't really have any way back.

Luke Freeman.

Torrential rain in Mexico has caused widespread flooding that swept away entire roads and bridges in some states.

Dozens of people have been killed and many are missing.

Thousands of soldiers have been deployed to the areas worst affected to help those who are trapped.

Our Mexico correspondent Will Grant gave me this update.

We've heard from the head of the civil protection agency, Laura Velasquez, who described the situation in Mexico as dire when it came to the flooding, which has caused so much havoc in several states, five to be exact.

We understand there are very large numbers of people still outside their homes, unable to return, particularly in the states of Veracruz, where some of the largest numbers of dead and missing have been discovered.

The same in Hidalugo.

100,000 homes have been damaged.

Many of those have been completely destroyed, wiped away by mudslides.

And for her part, the President Claudia Schoenbaum has been on the ground in some of those worst affected areas.

She was putting out messages from the state of Queretaro, trying to calm fears that there will be sufficient funds for the emergency operation and that those who are in a dire situation will be attended to.

Record amounts of rainfall.

Should the authorities have been better prepared?

It was a tricky one.

There were record amounts of rainfall in several states.

I mean, we saw 28 centimetres of rain in just three days in two of those affected states, Veracruz and Puebla.

It was a difficult moment in that there were two tropical storms at the same time, coming mainly on the Pacific coast, but also there was a tropical depression and that was affecting these Gulf states and parts of the country in the east.

So it was a lot, I think, not just for the emergency services, but for also people, I think, to capture the scale of what was happening to them as it was happening.

I think the flash flooding and the speed with which rivers burst their banks was something which really caught a lot of people off guard.

There's always more that can have been done, and I think the government will admit that, particularly at the local level.

But I can see that Mexico's president, Claudia Schaenbaum, is very much trying to show that she's coping with probably her first major natural disaster or serious crisis in the country since her presidency began with efficiency and organising the resources well.

Yeah, promising money, but I mean, actually, what can a government do to help people in a situation like this?

Well, I think the first thing from the Mexican Government's point of view is to get the military involved.

And we've seen that some ten thousand military personnel have been deployed.

That's a mixture of the army and the marines.

And of course that brings with them rescue vehicles, heavy machinery, a number of helicopters, military planes distributing aid.

There are so many parts of these states that are actually being cut off and are only now being reached both physically and in terms of getting the power back that we're still kind of getting the full scale of this crisis.

But certainly they've underlined at the federal level that both the funds will be there, that the organisation is there, that they are in daily and constant contact with the governors of the states, the local governments, and that the military are deeply involved too.

Will Grant in Mexico City?

One of the longest paths in the world formed by dinosaurs has been found in a quarry in England.

The footprints were made 166 million years ago by sauropod dinosaurs, which could reach 18 meters long.

It's the second year of excavations at the quarry, and the new discoveries there have made this site in the county of Oxfordshire one of the most significant dinosaur superhighways found anywhere on Earth.

Our science editor, Rebecca Morrell, spoke to those involved in the excavations.

Sometimes even the most delicate excavations need something a bit more powerful to get going.

At Dewars Farm Quarry in Oxfordshire, layers of limestone are cleared in a controlled explosion.

What's emerged from beneath the rocks has surprised and delighted scientists.

They're all working on excavating individual footprints of a sauropod dinosaur from the Jurassic, about 166 million years old.

Dr.

Emma Nichols is a paleontologist from the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

The footprints stretch as far as we can see.

They go under the quarry wall to the south of the quarry.

And 220 meters of a single dinosaur trackway is amazing.

These footprints are insanely big.

Anosauropot dinosaur is the type of dinosaur that walked on four legs, big long neck, vegetarian.

Absolutely right, yeah.

The ones here are probably Cetiosaurus, which is a dinosaur that we know was found in this area.

It's the second year of excavations at the quarry, and the new trackway that's now been unearthed is one of the longest found anywhere in the world.

We have a left impression, we've got a right.

Professor Peter Fulkingham is a paleobiologist from Liverpool John Moores University.

But then we've got this strange thing here, and this looks to me like a forefoot or a hand imprint far out from the track.

So it's like the animal is leaning out and pausing for a moment.

Trackways can provide very different information from fossils.

So, we might have a skeleton we say the leg is this long, so its stride must be this long, and then we have a number.

But with a trackway like this, we've got hundreds of meters of the animal doing its own thing.

And it's so important to look at the way animals move freely and naturally.

And tracks are the only way we can do that for dinosaurs.

All of the prints at the site were made over a matter of weeks and were preserved by a perfect set of conditions.

As Professor Kirsty Kirsty Edgar from the University of Birmingham explains.

Footprints require the Goldilocks effect.

You need the sediment to be of the right consistency, the right type, and in the right environment, first of all, to make the footprints.

And then, you, of course, need them to be preserved very quickly so that they're not eroded away by tides, winds, storms.

And it is quite unique to get that confluence of events where they're both made and they're quickly preserved, particularly in this kind of quantity.

The environment was very different back in the Jurassic period.

Oxfordshire was covered by a shallow sea and it wasn't just a time of giants.

We've got little seashells, things like bivalves and brachypods.

Right here is a little sea urchin.

Dr.

Duncan Murdoch is from Oxford University's Museum of Natural History.

That's really important for us because it tells us that these were marine conditions in open sea water before the dinosaurs came and walked here.

Something like a lagoon or setting, a bit like the Florida Keys or the Bahamas today.

It's rare to find a site like this, to see the echoes of a lost world in the footprints these dinosaurs left behind.

Oh my goodness, it's fantastically exciting.

Dr.

Emma Nichols again.

Even after being a paleontologist for, you know, over 20 years, it still gives you that tingling feeling to be the first people to see these footprints.

Tumbling.

That report by Rebecca Morrell.

The small African nation of Cape Verde has been celebrating after its national team secured qualification for the twenty twenty six men's football FIFA World Cup.

Thousands of people parted into the night following their side's three-nil win over Eswatini.

It secured them the top spot in their qualifying group ahead of Cameroon, one of the giants of African football.

Cape Verde has become the second smallest nation ever, after Iceland in terms of population, to qualify for the World Cup finals.

The sports journalist Ali Howarth was in Cape Verde to watch the game against Eswatini.

The scenes here have been incredible.

There was a lot of tension in the match.

It was nil-nil at halftime, but once that first goal went in from Dylan Livermento, they were absolute scenes.

Only 15,000 fans in the stadium, but I think they probably could have sold about 300,000 tickets.

It has been absolutely incredible here.

They already called half a national holiday today.

They gave everyone at the afternoon off so they could watch the game across the eight islands that people live on here in Cabo Verde.

The players actually on the moment are on the bus from the national stadium where we are outside the city and heading to the original national stadium, the Estadio de Barzia, which 50 years ago was the first place where the Cabo Verde flag was raised when they gained independence in 1975.

There are thousands and thousands of fans waiting for them there.

They've been watching the game on the big screen there.

And I think this party is not going to end anytime soon.

I suppose what it means is when you're a small nation with very, very few resources like Cabo Berd, if you run things right, you can reach the World Cup.

They overcame Cameroon, you know, who beat Brazil at the last World Cup.

This isn't any fluke.

This is off the back of decades of investment from the Federation, building structures, bringing in players from the diaspora.

And they've even appealed to FIFA.

And essentially, FIFA helped them with technical support, helping them with transport costs and getting around the continent.

Because Cabobert is one of Africa's poorest countries, it is tremendously difficult to play an away game.

I suppose what it means for other African nations is you bring in the right people and you will get to the World Cup.

Ali Howarth.

And that's all from us for now.

But there'll be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later.

If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email.

The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.

We'd also love to hear from you if you think there's a story that we've missed or one that you want us to revisit.

Do please send us your ideas.

You can also find us on X at BBC World Service.

Use the hashtag global newspod.

This edition was mixed by Caroline Driscoll, and the producers were Muzaffar Shakir and Daniel Mann.

The editor is Karen Martin.

I'm Alex Ritz, and until next time, goodbye.

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