voice-over: this is bbc news. we'll have the headlines and all the main news stories for you at the top of the hour, which is straight after this programme. welcome to hardtalk with me, zeinab badawi. the spiralling death toll in gaza, triggered by the killing and abduction of israelis by hamas on october 7, has led many to wonder what happens the day after the conflict stops. can palestinians and israelis look to a peaceful future based on mutual respect? or has this painful chapter in their history set back the prospects of renewing the path towards reconciliation?

my guest is a palestinian doctor, izzeldin abuelaish, whose three daughters and niece were killed in an israeli tank strike on his home in the gaza strip in 2009. at the time, he said he felt no bitterness. and, soon after, he published his award—winning autobiography called i shall not hate. now, he has lost 22 more family members in these current bombings. is he still preaching his message of forgiveness and peace? dr izzeldin abuelaish, welcome to hardtalk. now, nearly 15 years ago,

you lost three of your eight children when an israeli shell fell on your home in gaza. please do relate to us what happened. 16th january 2009... ..were what we called a war. and what is war? war is not the soldier who is going to kill and to be killed. it's about innocent human being, in particular, women and the children. during the 21 days of the war, with my children at my home, expecting the worst, who will be killed? i used to let three of my children to sleep beside each wall, in case any shell to come, not all of them to be killed. then, 16th january, 4.45pm, i didn't believe it,

because shelling, bombing was from everywhere around us. then it was my daughters and my niece that on that time... and now history repeats itself. i don't want anyone on earth to see what did i see. where is bessan? where is mayar? where is nour? where is aya? they become parts, drowning in their blood. mayar was decapitated. i can't recognise them. i lost faith in humanity at that time. and you had lost your wife to leukaemia just... four months before. ..a few months before. so i lost...faith in humanity, the world, who is watching. as a medical doctor, when i see a bleeding patient, i rush to stop the bleeding. as what is happening now in 2023, with the toll of killings of the innocent people, and the world

is watching it. the world locked... the world was locked for three years because of covid. and no—one can stop the bloodshed and the killing of innocent children and women. so now, in this current conflict, you've lost more than 20 family members, including your niece, her husband and four children. and one of them was named after one of your dead daughters, aya. tell us what you know about the circumstances of their death. yeah. on that day, i was watching aljazeera, watching the news, and then they came with an urgent news, telling that there was an attack, a missile at the house of abuelaish in block two injabalia camp. me, that i realised this is my sister's house and the news dripping... i didn't want to hear anything that moment. then it took us about 2k hours to count the number of those who were killed.

and 12 of them were under the rubble. they were suffocated. the 21, two of my nieces, one nephew — one of them was a graduate of medical school. she was supposed to start her residency just lately. and another architect, engineering, even i was following what she wrote on facebook. she said, "i hope the war will end. "i will have new maps for gaza. "we will build it. we will make it more beautiful." mm. and my...my nephew, ali, who was a physiotherapist. my niece, hanan, with herfour children, who named her daughter aya to follow the name of my daughter, aya. so you lost two ayas. at the same age, she was killed. for nothing. they did... she was 13? yeah.

and she was killed, the beautiful... this lovely girl who was killed, what she did in life. and that's important. we need these people to see them. it's important for us... ..to give them the names, the faces. yeah. this is aya. yes. this is aya, who was killed 1st november. and this is aya, my daughter... ..who was killed the same. mm. it's very, very, very tragic. the situation now in gaza is a dire humanitarian crisis. and drtedros, director—general of the world health organization, has said there's a catastrophe that's getting worse and worse, the collapse of the health system. he's talking about the fact that there is one toilet for every 150 people, one shower for every 750 people. around a dozen of the 36

hospitals in gaza are functioning, and even they are not working at full strength. tell us what your family and friends are telling you about the suffering that's going on. as i said before, i was there in august. gaza, before even the war, for the last 15 years, it was described as a hell. now gaza strip is a ghost. the people are not the people. the streets are not the streets. gaza strip is characterised now by mass murder, mass destruction, mass displacement, mass pain, mass starvation, mass thirst, mass trauma. can i ask you, because you were born and raised in the jabalia refugee camp, you're one of the most talented palestinian doctors, you know, in the community, the diaspora and so on, cos you now live in canada —

you moved there after the attacks in 2009. how do you feel when you hear reports that around 550 health personnel have been killed in this conflict? how do you feel? i feel where are we, from our international law? where are we from the respect of the human rights? the hospitals and the health care professionals... and health care professionals, doctors, are messengers of humanity. they are doing the job. they don't do harm to anyone when they target, but the war, it didn't save anyone. hospitals, schools, streets, mosques. the oldest mosque in the gaza strip was targeted. one of the oldest churches was targeted in the gaza strip. yeah. so there is no mercy in times of war. but when you see how your

fellow doctors in gaza are struggling to treat their patients, i mean, i tell you what the un special rapporteur on the right to health, tlaleng mofokeng, said — and he himself is a doctor. he said, "i cannot fathom "what my gazan colleagues are enduring, "and they are working while their colleagues "and loved ones are under attack. "many have been killed while treating their patients." i mean, does it make you feel helpless? of course. but i feel it's the moral, the courage of these doctors who remain there inside the hospitals and not to leave the hospitals or the patients in spite of the challenge they face. they sacrifice their life. and that's the medicine where we humanise. we give. medicine is a human equaliser, where you give without any agenda. you want to save lives, and nothing is more precious than saving lives. i hope politicians to take, to adopt this message, to humanise for once, to have the moral courage to humanise and to say to stop the war and to stop the bloodshed. you were the first palestinian doctor to receive

an appointment in medicine at an israeli hospital. so you have treated, in the past, both israeli and palestinian patients. a colleague described you as "a magical secret bridge "between israelis and palestinians". how do you feel now about relations between israelis and palestinians? of course, i see the relationship based on the current context. we are... the divide is bigger, and the gap is huge. and i speak with many israeli friends that i know and they are outrageous and they call for retaliation and the revenge and the anger, without asking themselves — and that's the question we need to ask — "why all of this happening? why it happened?" the world is not created october 7th, and that's what is important. my daughters were killed not after october 7th, but before october 7th, and i was born before as a palestinian refugee. my parents were expelled from their homeland before �*1i8. so we need to dig deeper and to find the root causes

of what is happening, to ask why that's important. and this will lead us to put an end to the current situation. but, i mean, ishould say that your case became so recognised because you were speaking in fluent hebrew, live on israeli television, when the tragic news of your daughter's deaths... i mean, you actually... your grief was caught live on airand, you know, your grief was very, very visible. but now i wonder if you believe that the suffering of the people in gaza is visible to people in israel, because you and many others have spoken of this widening gulf. from what i see, it's not visible to them. each of them is focused on their pain, and that's what we need, to show compassion to it, even outside the... outside the gaza strip, or outside is...the world. now they started to see the

suffering of the palestinian people or to speak about it, and to see the numbers what we are talking. but palestinians... you describe me as talented. palestinian people are smart and there are... even the gaza strip, it has the high literacy rate. it has the highest number of phd candidates. but gaza strip is lifeless, jobless, hopeless, helpless. and now it will be childless, because of the number of children who are killed. butjust going back to the point i was making is, you know, there's a great deal of trauma and pain, obviously, on both sides, because a lot of israelis who had sympathy for the palestinian cause have lost it because of the atrocities that happened on october 7, the raping of the women, the killing, the maiming, the kidnapping of babies and elderly people and so on, and i want to put to

you somebody you know well, an israeli expert on gaza, shlomi eldar, put to you what he says. in his award—winning books and documentaries, he's tried to tell the stories of palestinians beyond the wall, he says, to put a human face on the repeated cycles of violence. but he says october 7 has left him in deep shock and said he never imagined that they could become the monster that they did. are you worried that those previously sympathetic israelis, that you've lost, you've alienated them? they have to ask themselves not to be focused on what is happening october 7. and it never changed, and that's what we need. you speak about both sides, but both sides are not equal. and that's the mix of the situation, both sides, palestinians and israelis. palestinians are occupied under oppression and that's what we need, to see it in that way. they are not free, both sides.

iam sad. i met with my friend shlomi eldar afterwards. i was disappointed. i was expecting him, if he carries a human message, to continue to advocate for this human message. as medical doctor, i have to continue with it without being biased or anything else to deviate me from the moral cause. i will continue to advocate for life for all, freedom for all, justice for all and dignity for all. and do you also say that message to the palestinian leadership? because you're a prominent member of the palestinian diaspora, civil society, because now, as the israelis are saying, and many others, that the actions of hamas on october 7 have brought about this wave of destruction and death on the people of gaza. do you believe that hamas could be losing support amongst the people

of gaza as a result? first, hamas doesn't represent the palestinian people. in gaza, it does. in 2006, they won the elections. no, but even in gaza — even in gaza strip, they don't represent the palestinians in the gaza strip. they are part of the palestinian people. we have to understand, and we should not mix between palestinian people and hamas. but as hamas is a faction, is a movement in gaza strip as other movements. this is important, and there is — in gaza strip, we have fatah, we have many other factions who are active there. but they won the election... they won the election in the most free... ..the last election in �*06. they won the election in the most free democratic election recognised by the international community. we need to ask... i want to ask you why the world turned against the palestinians when the palestinians choose in a free democratic election who will represent them? all right. but, i mean, let's look at the widerfailure

of palestinian leadership, because there are also strong criticisms made about the palestinian authority, which is based on the west bank in ramallah, and for example, ghaith al—omari, who's from the washington institute for near east policy, says the palestinian authority has been losing credibility not only diplomatically, but among the palestinian people. you know, there's talk about growing authoritarianism both within the pa on the west bank and also hamas in gaza. is the palestinian leadership letting the people down? i will tell you, the palestinian leadership and the current situation, it's because of the failure in the political approach, in putting an end to the occupation. we have oslo agreement, and then failure in oslo agreement and the performance and the methodology of the current israeli leadership, which is shifting to the right wing. you see it, netanyahu... when you hear netanyahu and his team,

there is no palestinian state, there is no palestinian nation, there is no for the �*67 borders or eastjerusalem and all of the current situation, this created the divide between the palestinians, and to start to weaken the palestinian authority and to strengthen the hamas and the playing on this divide, divide and conquer, and that's why where we are now in the current situation. ok, so, then, if there is this kind of, as you said, many people have observed, israel's divide and rule tactics between the palestinians. so if you wish to negotiate from a position of strength, do you think there should be a combined government for the palestinians, a new pa authority operating in gaza after the conflict? it's important we are looking to have a new election, because the election, when hamas was elected, it was 2006, and since 2006, we don't have elections. we are calling to have elections.

and even the palestinian authority, they called for election in �*21 - in 2021. israel refused to have elections in the occupied palestinian territories, west bank, gaza strip and eastjerusalem, and we are appealing to call the international community to come to support election in the occupied palestinian territories, to have a new leadership, and that's what we are looking for. we need a new leadership to match and even to be consistent with the dynamic changes in the world and within the palestinian community. do you mean, for example... 75% of gaza's population, for example, is under 25, and mahmoud abbas, the president of the palestinian authority, is 87 years of age, so if he were to have a new authority, because he says the pa could return to gaza on the condition that there was a political solution there — do you think that perhaps he's too old

and it's time to look for a new leadership? let the election decide. let the palestinians... give the opportunity to the palestinian people to decide who will lead them, and that can happen only... it only happens through a free democratic election, and that's what we are looking, and we are calling the world to help us to have a free democratic election in the occupied palestinian territories, gaza strip, west bank and eastjerusalem. all right. i want to... ..and the world to respect it. ok. i want to put to you for the day after the conflict is over, as the british defence secretary, grant shapps, has said, when something really terrible happens, what we absolutely need to do is get something that is better than what was there before. if we can grab this moment and have the world pay attention, we would actually create a better world afterwards. do you believe that the day after that there could be a new momentum towards finding some kind of resolution? always, i believe. in every bad thing, there is something positive. even october 7 happened,

which was very painful to all and the consequences of it. but it can be a positive opportunity where the palestinian issue was thrown and neglected. now, the palestinian issue, it comes to the surface to be the core and the critical issue in the world, not only for palestinians. it's regional, it's global. and that's the responsibility of the international community. you see it. it crosses barriers. the conflict, from there to cross barriers. you see it in uk, in canada, everywhere. so there is a stake for the whole world in putting an end to this conflict. and i am sure now because all are impacted either directly or indirectly by it, so i hope the war will end. and what can we do after? they are talking about the two—state solution, and even the

american administration who are supporting even now president biden... yeah, who's... ..who voted against... ..he voted against even the ceasefire and the second day to provide israel with iii tank shells. so he is calling for a two—state solution. he didn't say when, how and what can be done. we need to define it. so, who could be the honest broker? you talk about the international community... the international community, the european union... that is quite divided. i mean, european union's... ..and the united states are pretty much similar, britain and others not wanting a humanitarian ceasefire. you've got middle powers... why? you've got middle powers... why they don't? i want to ask. no, i was asking you, the international community, you talk about it as if it was cohesive. the russian government has hosted leaders of hamas. at the end of october, president erdogan of turkey describes hamas as a liberation group. so we have the united nations. the united nations

is not trusted by israel. so, i'm asking you — when you talk about the international community, who can broker a peace? so if one country took control and to dominate what the united nations — if the americans to dominate what the united nations and the world is asking for. this is not a world we... that's why we have disorder in this world. right. we need to have order, and no—one is above the law. but who's the broker, then, amongst the international community? we have the arab league. yeah. we have the arab league, we have the european union. let us have the different, and to agree on it not to be dominated and to provide impunity to one side and to be biased, polarised or even indifferent about it. all right. you have talked about wanting a shared future for the palestinians and israelis, as you're saying now. and you said, you know, we have to reach the shore together safely, peacefully. you said at the time when your daughters were killed in 2009

"that i feel no bitterness and i could not hate." is that how you still feel now? you know, ifeel angry about what is happening. i am in pain, heartbroken. i don't want even to touch my cellphone to hear some bad news, because my family, they moved about eight times. they are homeless now. there are homeless running everywhere. you don't know who will be next. in gaza strip, most of them moving graves that are living now, but no—one knows what will happen to them with their suffering. and what next? but i will never hate, because hate, for me... what do we mean by hate? hatred breaks me down, makes me weak, collapsing. if i am full of hatred, i will never be here facing you and meeting you to speak loudly for the palestinians' cause,

for the humanity, for the world we live in, and to expose the truth. so with hatred, we are broken, we are defeated. hatred is a contagious, destructive disease. it's a disease which consumes the one who is afflicted with it, and it's the result of exposure. so i say to people, if you face any tragedy, you are a victim of that. don't be a victim of hatred. we are not seeking to take us to the moon. we are seeking our freedom to be equal to others, and that's what we are looking for and that's what we want. dr izzeldin abuelaish, thank you very much indeed for coming on hardtalk. thank you. thank you so much.

hello there. given all the rain that we've had over the past few weeks, it's still pretty wet out there. but the next few days at least will turn drier and also the temperatures will be rising. now, this area of low pressure brought cloud and some rain and drizzle to eastern parts of england. that's moving away. the next weather system is coming in from the atlantic. but in between the two, well, we did have some sunshine earlier on, particularly in northern ireland and here in scotland. but where we have the clearer skies in the first part of the night, there's the risk that temperatures could fall just below freezing in places. but that window of clearer skies will close as the night goes on because all that cloud will come in from the atlantic. it's going to bring some rain and briefly some snow over the scottish mountains, perhaps the northern pennines, but it should turn back to rain later on in the night as temperatures start to rise. so these are the numbers by first thing thursday morning. and by this time, the rain will have cleared away from northern ireland and just about the whole of scotland. but we will see

some further patchy, mostly light rain and drizzle affecting england and wales, and that cloudy, damp weather could continue across the southeast well into the afternoon, but otherwise, we'll get some sunshine following on behind, a few showers for northern ireland and scotland, mostly in the north of scotland, where it's still quite blustery. but if anything, temperatures are going to be a degree or two higher than what we had today. as one weather system moves away, we look to see another one coming in from the atlantic as we move into friday. this is going to be focused more to the northwest of the uk. we'll see more cloud coming in to northern ireland and also in scotland, showers in the north of the country being replaced by some rain and drizzle. elsewhere, it should be dry and a lot more sunshine more widely across england and wales, where the winds will be lighter. still, temperatures 7 or 8 degrees across eastern parts of england, but further west, it is much, much milder. and this milder atlantic air on some brisk winds will come rushing in across the whole of the country in time for the start of the weekend. we've got colder air to the north of that weather

front, which may move southwards on sunday to bring some patchy rain. but on saturday, it's staying to the north of us, just bringing the chance of some rain in the north of scotland. again, it looks like it's going to be windy here and across northern ireland. the winds are lighter as you head further south, but there won't be as much sunshine for england and wales on saturday. but it is mild air and those temperatures will be widely 12 or 13 celsius.

live from london, this is bbc news. israeli prime minister benjamin netanyhu says the war against hamas will continue, with or without international support, as america calls for restraint. the republican—led us house of representatives votes to formally authorise its impeachment inquiry into president biden. the russian president will hold a major news conference this morning — his first since the invasion of ukraine. ambulance bosses say patients are being put at risk by dangerous delays, as winter pressures are already beginning to affect the nhs.

a warm welcome to the programme. the white house national security adviser is expected in israel on thursday amid mounting international criticism of its offensive in gaza. us officials say jake sullivan will call for greater precision in strikes against hamas following the vote in the un general assembly for a ceasefire. the israeli prime minister, benjamin netanyahu, has said he'll continue regardless of the mounting international pressure but there's disquiet in the biden administration as the number of palestinian casualties continues to mount. with me is bbc arabic�*s said shehata. if we start with the arrival of

a jake sullivan in if we start with the arrival of ajake sullivan in israel