hello, this is bbc news with tim wilcox. the headlines... as students protest against the downgrading of a—level results in england — more confusion as the exam regulator withdraws its guidance on appealing against grades — just hours after publishing it. the search for two teenage brothers who went missing in the sea near lytham st annes in lancashire is called off by the coastguard. a huge crowd of opposition supporters gathers in the centre of the belarussian capital minsk —

to protest last weekend's disputed election. now on bbc news it's time for dateline london. hello and welcome to dateline. this week... breakthrough or betrayal in the middle east? recession hits borisjohnson‘s promise of a decade of prosperity. and "that little girl was me" — the "bussed to school" daughter ofjamaican and indian immigrants becomes only the fourth woman ever on a us presidential ticket. my guests on socially distanced screens are mina al oraibi,

editor of the national, a news service for the middle east. and michael goldfarb of the podcast frdh, or first rough draft of history. and here in the studio the bbc‘s business editor simonjack. welcome to you all. now, president trump called it a historic peace agreement between two great friends of the united states. palestinians said their friends had sold them out. iran has called it a huge mistake. the deal between israel and the united arab emirates will make the uae only the third arab state to have full diplomatic ties with israel. in return, israel has agreed to suspend annexation of parts of the occupied west bank. mina, this is one to start you off with. is this a case of the uae recognising the reality that was already there? in some ways, yes.

there are realities on the ground but also a very important moment after the fear of annexation only a few weeks ago. annexation is part of a larger problem. ...which is the larger occupation of palestine but the realities on the ground and in 2020 are different from 1967 and the palestinians have slowly been losing land and the israelis have been trying to create the realities on the ground and have been made for all intents and purposes a point wanting to annex a new palestinian territories in july. the uae put out both a private and also a very public stance calling on israelis not to do so. the uae ambassador to the us penned an op—ed in hebrew. first time you had a gulf official speak directly to the israeli people and said to them there are two routes you can go. we can have a route of relationship,

we can build towards peace, or we can have annexation and further disruption in the region and that will complicate matters beyond the possibility of ever having a palestinian state and it seems that the israelis he did that ——headed that word so from then we saw the coming to this point which was the announcement and the trilateral call between us president donald trump, crown prince mohammed bin zayed, and the israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu. so in some ways the uae itself has had some behind—the—scenes discussion with the israelis and important collaboration on certain issues including covid—i9 that sees the whole world is needed to come together and try to come to solutions to deal with the pandemic but it is also an important point that the annexation was a very serious threat and while it is a suspension, this is a processjust like the process towards establishment of the bilateral relations between the uae and israel is going to be a process. so is the matter of suspending annexation, so it is important to see it in that context. michael, i want to ask

you whether you agree that the... israel has heeded the uae‘s views on annexation. obviously the israeli prime minister has had something to say about annexation. are they clear or is it clear what they amount to? i'm not sure about that. i think there are two more parties that we will come onto but the first is of course the trump administration in washington and washington is always a major player and intercessor between israel and its neighbours. the other player is iran and we will get to that. what happened was, to a certain degree this comes out of israeli domestic politics. people who pay attention will know that they have already had three elections in i think under 12 months. bibi netanyahu has had so many escapes and has been predicted to lose and he doesn't and he always ends up being the person that cobbles together the coalition that

governs and it is very interesting that even now he is in a coalition and it is agreed that... gantz, who leads the other large party and the coalition will succeed him as prime minister yet he didn't bother to tell him a thing about these negotiations. the annexation was a promise to the right wing of israeli politics. netanyahu made a promise to continue as prime minister which is important because he is being investigated for i guess fraud and might face charges when he leaves office. this met with total disapproval from the trump administration and they worked very hard to find a way to walk israel back from this and at this point, the united arab emirates ambassador to washington played a key role meeting withjared kushner, the president's son—in—law

who is his chief adviser on middle eastern matters and we end up where we are today, with his unexpected announcement that there would be this diplomatic relations for the first time between the uae and israel. but now we come to iran quickly, which is the relationship between the uae and israel was quietly going on. they are part of the anti—iranian alliance. an "entente cordiale" is being built quietly between certain arab states and israel because they fear iranian influence in libya and in lebanon. we will come back to that in a second. while we are dealing with these three players in the negotiation, we talked about the politics and the economics of it but what about the economics of it, what are the players stand to gain?

there is almost always an economic angle, otherwise some would say these deals don't get done. looking at the economic interest, the uae wants to be a major player politically, economically in the region and what this does is it gives it access to the israeli technology base, the universities of israel. 15% of students at israeli universities are arab, they have got some of the best technology out there and an opportunity for them to diversify the economy and for israel you have a less interruptible supply of oil because a lot of their oil comes via iraq via turkey, and also you have got a big new defence customer for the us. one of the biggest trade... one of the biggest businesses in this conflict—torn area is of course arms and they have

already got a $0.5 billion order for some anti—mine vehicles and there is a prospect that they could sell f35, which is the most expensive defence project in world history, and they want to sell as many f355 as they can, which they can't really sell to the uae because they have got this agreement with israel that they will only sell them the top—notch stuff and not their neighbours, but this possibly gives them the opportunity to increase that trade. what more can the palestinians do to push back to prevent other arab states following the uae‘s example? the palestinians are in a difficult position and notjust because of the uae. the situation on the ground in palestine is difficult, the difficulties politically, economically and so forth. the palestinian leadership at this point should be looking at ways to take advantage of this time that has been created to halt the annexation, and try to find ways to manoeuvre, to gain some momentum, and that is what the emirates have said that they want to get out of this. trying to push back doesn't really

win the palestinians anything down on the ground and one of the things they should be building upon is the status of eastjerusalem. the uae, like the rest of the arab league, continues to hold onto the need for a palestinian state to protect the status of eastjerusalem. that won't help the palestinian cause which i think it is important. ..michael spoke about the sort of alliance that is in—built in the region when it comes to iran. it is really notjust about iran. the region is going through so much turmoil and in some ways, how are the palestinians trying to say we want to find a way to get out from the difficult corner that the occupation has put them in? it is notjust about iran, it is about the different voices in the region that try to use the palestinian cause for their own benefit.

we have seen the turks say that they want to pull their ambassador from the uae even though turkey have had ties with israel since 1949 and is the largest muslim—majority country trading with israel. so instead of helping the palestinians they are trying to just put up rhetoric without, in reality, cutting off their ties with israel. mina, the iranian warning that this is a serious mistake, is there any way that they can make that a self—fulfilling prophecy? you're sitting there in the uae yourself, is that something that the emirates are concerned about? the iranians are forever threatening and they have their proxies threatening to put their realities of what the region should be. i don't think this is actually a threat that should be of concern but what is of concern is that you do have militias and proxies that are waging civil strife in iraq and syria, have created all sorts of havoc in lebanon and don't serve the palestinian cause in any way

but actually have hurt other arab countries along the way. michael, just a quick one on the electoral advantage or otherwise for donald trump. he promised when he came into office that he would get deals in north korea, deals with iran — this is a deal from the man that claims to be a proponent of the art of the deal. how much will it matter to him in november? it won't make any difference in novemberand i am reminded of something that mina told me in 2017 when he took over. he will get on really well with the saudi rulers etc because he deals through family which is the way the monarchies in arabia like to deal. mina is right, he deals with family and it is working for him. thank you for being concise on that point because we now move on to economics. at the start of the year, borisjohnson predicted an exhilarating decade of growth, prosperity and opportunity.

but within six months the pandemic has pushed the uk into its deepest recession on record. the chancellor now admits hard times are here but promises to leave no—one without hope. why is the uk at the back of the european pack? it is, we have the worst of both worlds, the highest deaths and the biggest economic hit in the second quarter of any country in the developed world. one of them is the fact that the uk economy is incredibly focused on services, and services, face—to—face stuff whether it is hairdressing, restaurant, hospitality, leisure, other stuff that makes up the uk economy, that has been very hard—hit. the pandemic has not allowed that part of the economy to operate at anywhere near its full capacity. services 80%, manufacturing 10% of the economy but in germany manufacturing makes up 30% of theirgdp. others say that the lockdown came a bit late in the uk even though

they had knowledge of it. what happened now is that the chancellor is playing, i don't know if you remember the game kerplunk — do you remember that? when you have all the marbles there at the top and all the little struts here. what he is trying to do now with a very generous, very big programme of government spending and protection forjobs, he has now got to try to carefully remove the supports without all the marbles crashing down. for some people, his plan is not nearly delicate enough. he plans to remove the furlough scheme which has supported 9.5 million jobs uniformly across the economy by the end of october, and there are some businesses and some industries which are not going to be anywhere near operating at full capacity by then, and some people are saying that isjust too blunt. i mentioned that the chancellor said he is going to leave no—one without hope or opportunity.

of course, this is a government that came in at the end of last year promising to level up social mobility. is thatjust talk, or a way that he can win this game? look, he is writing some very big cheques. the uk borrowed 300 billion and perhaps even £400 billion this year and a lot of that priority will be spent on areas where they won votes in traditionally labour seats, but i think what is going to happen is you have got a situation where what is going to emerge from this is a kind of state—sponsored capitalism of the kind that you would not have... borisjohnson would not have been dreaming of when he first got the keys to number ten. i think you will see that reflected across the rest of the global economy. whereas capitalism usually, let it do itsjob, let all these companies go bust and see what goes in its place, i think you will see much more state intervention. michael, let us take it to the us because state—sponsored capitalism is also in the air there,

the economy has fallen by less than the uk but of course donald trump wanted to go into november with a roaring economy. how good are his chances of an economic recovery by november? i would say they are pretty small. it is interesting that gdp has fallen by about half of what is has fallen in the uk and there are reasons for this and simon will have better details than i do but it is a more diverse economy but more importantly, we never shut down nationally. i mean, there have been tighter restrictions in one part of the country or another but the economy takes over more, people got on planes and flew to business meetings, you know, without protection, and the downside of that of that is that the us never flattened the curve on covid, so we are still having outbreaks all over and eventually that will have an impact on the economy, and it will be still going on in november, when people go to the polls, but the whole idea of using gdp of the measure at this moment

strikes me as probably not being helpful, because going back to 2008, when we had the crash, gdp recovered across the developed world much faster than employment. people were onlyjust getting back to earning the same amount of money on average in america that they were earning in 2008 just before covid hit. now we have the situation in the us where the unemployment rate is in double digits, and unlike the uk, there was no furlough scheme. there was a little extra top up from the federal government to states in unemployment cheques, but that stopped this week, and an attempt to find more emergency funding for that met with the typical congressional response — they went on summer holiday. so a lot of people are going to see their unemployment checks reduced by several hundred dollars a week. all of this adds up to gdp going down but more importantly, and the reason why we should look

at employment before anything is that clearly that it was the shattering of employment norms in 2008 which led to the political response in the united states that culminated in donald trump, and in this country, in brexit, where a lot of people, you know, just are so dissatisfied with the status of their lives they are willing to go for a populist line in their political activities and i think that is what we have to look for over gdp because gdp will recover. it will recover long before the vast majority's economic prospects will recover in the us and the uk. mina, we have looked at the us and the uk. the gulf is a good place from which to observe the globe on trade and economic integration. how does it look from there? well, this year has had the double whammy of the slump in oil prices at the beginning of the year

and a very erratic oil market and then of course we had to covid—19. the gulf countries and the oil producing countries the the situation is different from those that are not oil—producing. in the gulf, particularly the two largest economies, saudi arabia and uae, there was an early lockdown in march and april and may and they are now slowly emerging from those lockdowns and in the uae you have some cautious optimism for the rest of the year and what it will look like. the problem, and i completely agree with michael here, is the issue of unemployment in other parts of the arab world and particularly for those who rely on daily wages and lost those day wages with covid—19 lockdowns but also with the concerns that there will be second and third waves. that is where the concern is. but in the gulf the opec plus deal has helped maintain oil prices and we are seeing them steady and you can see wealth funds continuing to be strong and pumping some of the money into the economy

but the concern is for other countries in the arab world is already fragile and this has been a real blow to them. mina's point is really true to many countries, strict lockdowns are unsustainable, containment is the name of the game but it has real economic applications. a lot of people have been disagreeing about how quick the recovery would be. one of the senior economics of the bank of england expected a v—shape recovery, others say that when you go this far down you are bound to go back pretty quick, gdp 9% increase from may tojune, so you have gone back up already, it is this next bit, and what we don't know is of the eight million people that are now on furlough — there were 9.6 and they are coming down because of those people counted twice — how many of those people are unemployed but just don't know it yet? so that will be the thing and mina

and michael talking about jobs, it will be about jobs but economically it will be about how much demand is going to be lost from the economy as people find themselves without a job. that is the unknown here. no confetti, balloons or big hats. the democrats will hold their 2020 national convention virtually, but the line up this week includes many of the party's big names and barack obama has already waded into the election campaign by accusing president trump of attempting to kneecap the us postal service. joe biden talks of an assault on democracy. michael, we're going to have to keep this fairly concise all three of you because we have only got a few minutes left on the programme but tell us how serious this row on the postal service is in the run—up to november. well, actually, it is very, very serious. postal voting was going to be an issue anyway — donald trump politicised it before covid hit.

now you have got this pandemic it might actually be an unhealthy thing to go into a crowded polling centre in your local neighbourhood and vote, people would like to vote by mail, and clearly the government is making it...more difficult. overnight there were reports of postboxes being removed from the street in montana as a way of preventing people from voting. i applied for my postal ballots this week and, you know, i got an e—mail back saying they had accepted it and you will get your full ballot in september, late september, early october, and then then this morning, you know, you read that, well, you need to get your ballots in perhaps a month beforehand. well, that is a month before election day and i am mailing from the uk so it is a very nervous—making thing, and on top of that states usually don't know how to count postal ballots anyway. i mean, pennsylvania has...

two important swing states in 2018 midterms, pennsylvania state had about 4% of ballots sent in by post, wisconsin was about 6% by post. what is going to happen if they get 30 or 40% by post? this is going to be a huge, huge problem on the federal government... i'm just going to intervene because we're so short of time, but we definitely got the message from you — it really matters and we need to watch it. secondly, kamala harris, i mentioned her at the top, the little girl bussed to school, the child of immigrants, fourth ever woman on the us presidential ballot. trump is calling her "phony kamala". what is that about and will it stick? ifjoe biden picked a man he would be calling the man a name as well. he just calls people names and it is part of his brand. kamala harris is the best pick, in my opinion, thatjoe biden could have made — she is a strong, influential senator

and people have made their decisions by large and what she does is shore up one constituency, african americans, who drifted away from the party in 2016 but who came out in numbers for obama and less so for hillary clinton, and more importantly women, who will all remember how she questioned brett kavanaugh, who was one of the turning points of the trump administration. so it is a strong pick and whatever donald trump chooses to call her, she shores up the democratic vote and that is the most important things you can possibly do. mina, how does it look, the presidential campaign? obviously it is huge amounts at stake for everybody in the world in a us presidential election. how is it seen from the uae? there is interest of course what these elections will bring about and i will speak here as an iraqi actually because biden is remembered by iraqis as somebody who as senator

proposed the biden plan, which was to carve up iraq based on very crude sectarian divides, and many iraqis have not forgotten that. so there is a concern in iraq and other parts of the region that sort of foreign policy that looks very crudely on sectarian and ethnic divisions coming with a possible biden administration. on the flip side, donald trump has been very unpredictable so for many people it is almost equal what happens because we deal with the ramifications of what american voters decide. mina, michael and simon thank you all so much. simon, you are going to have to get your say on the us presidential election next time. whoever wins, the biggest issue they are going to have to face as the economic cold war between the us and china. policy on that is something that will sum up the difference between the two. thanks to something that up so briefly. goodbye for now. that's it for dateline london for this week — we're back next week at the same time. goodbye.

it is very cloudy across the uk right now. there are a few scattered downpours as well and will continue to see these storms over the next couple of days. very little change on the weather fronts. the air has become very stagnant across the uk and quite humid ever since the heatwave ended days ago in the south and central areas. we are seeing the same pattern day on day. clouds re—form in the south, move northwards and bring the threats of showers, downpours and thunderstorms. this is what the picture looks like this evening. you can see where the showers are. some of them are quite small,

only a few miles across. one minute dry, the next the heavens‘ open. there will be a tendency for these two driven authors as we go to the evening and overnight period. the temperatures overnight will be pretty high. 16 degrees in norwich and london, 1a in belfast. that is an indication of how much moisture is in the atmosphere. when you have a lot of moisture temperatures don't tend to fall away much during the night. the low pressure so with us on monday with the threat of showers. they circle gently around this area of low pressure. the wind is our light. we'll have to wait before ones ramp up in the atlantic to sort of waft away all this humid weather. thick clouds and storms. the weather will change in the coming days but notjust yet. the same weather pattern will continue into tuesday.

again, the threat of downpours with some sunshine in between. actually, you will notice the storms become more widespread across the north. wednesday we see a change. this area of low pressure within it mixed in has the remnants of a tropical storm. the weather will be very unpredictable towards the end of the week. there's the chance things will warm up in the south—east but overall unsettled weather for the end of the week.

this is bbc news. the headlines at five. as students protest against the downgrading of a—level results in england, more confusion as the exam regulator withdraws its guidance on appealing against grades just hours after publishing it. the common thing is anger. a lot of people are really sad and the stress, it is a really stressful time. like, yourfuture is uncertain. i think the general attitude is, people want change. people want the government to be held accountable. it's about time that boris johnson takes personal responsibility for this and stops making it up as he goes along, because it's far too serious for that, and i think in the next 24 hours he's got to come and explain to students, parents and teachers, how he will address this historic injustice. the search for two teenage brothers who went missing in the sea near lytham st annes in lancashire is called off by the coastguard.