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>> gaza becoming a graveyard. hundreds of girls and boys are reported killed or injured every day. >> our home, where we used to feel secure, was destroyed by rocket engine instant. we came here hoping to find safety and security but that does not exist. we survived death to find death again. >> any decent person can not not be heartbroken that this is the root cause of everything have that -- bad happening in the gaza strip tod. >> do netanyahu and his poor cabinet leave that and be achieved by purely military means, or are israelis prepared to try to get a political deal with the palestinians to end the conflict once and for all?

christian: the u.n. secretary general has called for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in gaza and warns that no party to any conflict is above the law. a number of palestinians killed has surpassed 10,000, according to the hamas-controlled ministry of health. we will hear later from the red cross. overnight, it hit over 450 targets in one of the most intensive environments so far, but what are they targeting? an expert you on that tonight. a year out from the 20 pretty for u.s. elections, why is joe biden trailing donald trump in all the key battleground states? christian: in nearly a month of fighting, 1400 israelis have

tortured many palestinians in gaza. some killed were children. we cannot independently vouch for the numbers but the u.n. said today that during hostilities in 2014, there figures were not entirely dissimilar from those hamas had put out. last night, and gaza sustained one of the most intense bombardment since the bombardment began, some around the hospitals in the north and shortly after telecommunications went down for a time. israeli defense forces say they have now cut a gaza city from the south but they are well aware that tunnels provide means of escape for hamas fighters. conflict not confined to the north of the gaza strip. 50 people killed yesterday in an attack on a camp. the u.n. continues to press for humanitarian ports. 18 agencies said enough is enough.

it is unacceptable that the population is denied essential goods and services, as well as being bound in their homes, shelters, places of worship. antony blinken was in turkey this morning and says they have discussed how to expand humanitarian assistance and prevent the conflict from expanding to other parts of the region. this report from jerusalem. there are disturbing images in his report. >> israel promised maybe vengeance. israel's justification is defending the living as well as avenging dead. palestinians call this genocide. >> is asked what happened to her. she says a missile came down on,

bricks on us. i where is my dad? where's my mom? is asked where were you? i was here. we were at home. the roof came down on us. we looked in on this afternoon from the closest israeli border town. israel's ruthless campaign in gaza is powered by the way how mass killed more than 1400 and took over 200 hostages. this was beach refugee camp this morning in gaza city, where israel restricts killed dozens during the night. palestinians reject israel's justifications for killing so many. further south, living in their cars, some of the more than one million displaced palestinians hoping for safety are not finding it.

>> our home, where we used it competent and secure, was destroyed by rocket in an instant. we came here hoping to find safety but that is not exist. we survived death to find death again. >> the israelis seemed to be making steady progress in terms of territory. inside the gaza strip, at the cost of a large number of civilian lines. israel has set itself an ambitious objective, to make sure that hamas can never again threaten the lives of its citizens. do prime minister netanyahu and the rest of his war cabinet believe that can be achieved by purely military means? or, longer term, are israelis prepared to try to get a political deal with the palestinians to try to end the conflict once and for all?

>> antony blinken, u.s. secretary of state, is back in the region. >> we know the deep concern for the terrible hole that gaza is taking on palestinians, men, louis, and children in gaza. that is a concern that we share and are working on every day. we have engaged the israelis on steps they can take to minimize civilian casualties. >> on it way out of this with the u.s., u.k., and of the independent palestine alongside israel, an old idea that two decades of talks cannot deliver. the horrors of the last month and those two, make it harder to achieve. christian: let's get to paul adams in jerusalem. the month-long anniversary will greet upon us tomorrow.

extraordinary things what has happened. it has been an intense 24 hours. >> it has. we seem to have said that times. maybe some people see the scenes from gaza and they think this is the way things go in gaza, what israelis and palestinians do to each other every so often. what we are seeing at the moment is completely unprecedented. the events that triggered at were totally unprecedented in terms of pain and suffering inflicted on israelis. everything that has happened since has been unprecedented in terms of the dreadful told this is taken on the palestinian population of the gaza strip. not in their phone, bitter history has each side inflicted so much pain and death on the other. it is mind-boggling to wrap your head around it. christian: what date you make

this worsening relationship between the u.s. -- israeli -- he said, shame on you, more than 30 miners are being held against their will in the gaza strip. hamas is the problem, not israel's actions. where does that lve the relationship and efforts to get aid into gaza? >> israel and the um have got a complicated history. they have ever been seen on a -- keen on a body that they see as instinctively hostile to isrl, more prone to criticizing israel than other countries who views human rights. they are particularly angry with the secretary-general week or so ago he cap about the events not taking place in a vacuum, that

they was linked to what he called decades of suffocang occupation that he palestinians had experienced. they felt he was not recognizing the share of what was done to israeli civilians and that somehow he was excusing the actions of hamas. they had not forgiven him for that. when he spoke again today, yet -- the reaction was the same. it does not change the picture as far as he is concerned. it is not really a u.n. business. the u.n. will deliver whatever egg gets into the gaza strip, but it is up to the egyptians, israelis, americans and other players to create a situation where the 80 situation can be improved. -- aid situation can be

improved. we are still seeing remarkably few tracks getting through, only a few dozen today. we are still not seeing any sign of the humanitarian posits that americans have now been talking about a couple of we. -- weeks. the israelis do not seem to be interested in allowing such a thing. they believe that anything that gets in the way of their military operation will allow hamas to regroup. christian: john kirby just said in the briefing that fewer than 30 lorries got in day, nowhere near enough, but the border did open to foreign nationals. it has been closed over the weekend. >> yeah. there has been a round going on almost every day about who exactly -- a row going on about

who exactly is allowed to cross. i suspect that even though we are not the ins and outs of this, this is the big debate about whether or not hamas may be trying to seize its fighters across the border but it was closed yesterday, did open for a bit today. we do think that some injured people and some foreign nationals who and when we to get out did manage to get out. -- who has been waiting to get out did manage to get out. they, this is proving to be a slow process, because aid gets wrapped up in the politics and military business that is going on day today. christian: thanks for that. the u.n. secretary general spoke again today.

the clear violations, as he sees it, no party to a non-conflict is above international humanitarianaw that help israel is selecting its targets is shrouded in secrecy, making it hard to judge the legality. americans do not know how their threshing -- assessing the threshold for civilian casualties. mike palmer, good to see you. how do we know that they are taking every possible precaution to limit these casualties? who is watching over that targeting to ensure that they do? >> the answer is there is no official overseeing authority of what the targeting process is. more importantly, the rulesutilt

hamas militants. the u.s. is the highest the ability to place pressure on the ivf and has been doing so over the last days in terms of reducing collateral damage but from the u.k. perspective, i worked in the targeting chain in baghdad number of years alongside the u.s. we had stringent offensiveorce rules of engagement. in order to drop the soap weapons, you needed offensive rules of engagement. there are tellers inside those rules that need to be satisfied. there is a collateral damage estimate, a fairly digitized process that can assess the height -- the type of balm --

bomb. it can assess the collateral damage if any of those bombs dropped with a precision of less than 10 meters. if this target is in the middle of the desert, the chances of collateral damage are very low. therefore, there is less risk to civilians but if there is a school or hospital nearby, and her pillars of offensive rules of engagement come in, meaning is there a drone attacking -- tracking a hamas target? that is an example of pid. christian: obviously, the israelis are operating in a densely populated environment. are you saying that because of that and because of the existential threat that they see that they therefore have reader

tolerance for civilian casualties? >> no. i would say it was less of a deterrent for civilian casualties. you are talking about, yes, gaza is a massively populated area. the collateral damage estimate will, in my experience, show a maive risk. from the pictures we are seeing, clearly and actuality of severe deaths for women, children. there comes the human component shared in the u.k., triggering zero-tolerance for any civilian casualties on a target. if the scotus passively targeted at three 5 p.m. every day, there no chance that you could prosecute that target 3:00 p.m. from the pictures of gaza as the

missile strikes going in, the tolerance for civilian casualties is, in my experience, way less than what the u.k. the u.s. ever approached in afghanistan or iran. mistakes do happen. i was in mosul in 2017 when the americans hit a civilian target. it took a wile for the americans to admit that they will wrong but they eventually did. mistakes happen. they are terrible, but the execute on the target is never committed knowing you will then have a severe amount of civilian damage. i do not think the americans have the influence or the overarching responsibility. the idea of doing what they want to do and the americans are trying to put a soft approach on the idf. what actually makes up for a

legitimate target? we all heard about the ambulance targeted a couple of days ago. under international law, ambulances carry civilian casualty, to restrict the ambulance would be a war crime. however, havg interviewed the one star brigadier intern 17, he made it clear that if an ambulance, a school, a hospital is being used by relatives as a firing point, it loses that protective status. once is that status, he process as we collateral damage estimate still has to be carried out in order to minimize collateral damage. just because protective that dos

not mean you could prosecute it and have message colteral damage. it is a nuanced targeting check. christian: respect your professional opinion on how these targets are selected but i want to give some context. by the end of the second week, the israeli air force dropped 65,000 bombs in 14 square kilometers. the u.s. led coalition dropped 7300 on the entire land of afghanistan during the heaviest year of bombardment. what a lot of people have difficulty squaring, given the density of the population, is how you can drop that amount of bombs in adult built-up civilian area and yet at the same time have a high threshold for civilian casualties? how do you square that? >> i do not understand it.

i do not respect it. i think it is against all the international rules of war. you cannot drop 6000 bombs in a couple of weeks on the size of gaza without expecting a massive amount of civilian casualties. the fact that america is not speaking up against that and nato entries are not speaking up against that, there is something severely wrong here. israel has the right to defend itself but not to prosecute targets and kills women and children. i do not square that. all i am trying to explain is that there is a targeting process that has been used by the u.s. and u.k. for 20 years. the appetite for follow damage is zero unless the target is someone like osama bin laden.

christian: quickly, there would have been a number of striking occasions that they had presented before they begin the conflict. if those are exhausted and we switched to dynamic targeting, does it become more dangerous to civilians? >> dynamic targeting is: time sensitive targeting. you get less time to commit to the collateral damage estimate, less of an opportunity to study it. therefore, they never targeting means decisions are made waving our, without the usual assessment of collateral damage. from experience, there is a disconnect between the value of life that they're putting on civilian casualties is the targets. but when it comes to dynamic and

time sensitive targeting, it reduces that window of opportunity to assess the intelligence, the collateral damage estimate, and whether people are going to get injured. depending on the nure of the target, i do not see this getting better in the short term. christian: good to get your expertise. thank you for coming on. this is bbc news. let's take a quick look at some other stories. reddish steel planning to shut down its blast furnace, putting up to 2000 jobs at risk. the business wants to replace it with electric arc services. constructed -- construction is expected to take two to three years. up to 20,000 health workers in england will receive a bonus of at least 17,000 pounds after missing out because they work for non-nhs organizations.

some staff are not included. after employers launched legal action, the government has now agreed to provide the funding. several police officers injured in edinburgh after a ashes with groups to through fireworks and petrol bombs last night. it was called a concerted, planned attack on officers. also bombs disturbances in moscow and dendy. -- glasgow and dundee. today, the u.s. -- u.n. lodged an appeal to hp the entire population of the gaza strip and half a million palestinians in the west bank. lifesaving aid is getting into gaza and egypt through the rafah crossing, but not enough. there is a split between israel and viewing agencies. the israeli government not think

the u.n. is doing enough to pressure hamas who is holding hostages. with us is robert martini of the red cross. you probably heard the exchanges between the u.n. secretay-general and the views coming from the foreign minister the other way. you are somewhat stuck in the middle. what can you tell us about how difficult it has become to operate on the round now that the gaza strip is split? >> every child killed is one too many. every civilian field is one too many. the rules of war are here to protect everyone. we have that unequivocally awoken in the wake of the tragic events of the seventh of october. what is unfolding in the gaza strip is untenable from a humanitarian perspective. nothing short of catastrophic on

the ground. i work medical team operating in hospitals are sending us heartbreaking, terrifying photos every day. the influx of severely people in spitals have reached unprecedented levels. hospital coronaries are overflowing. christian: can you get your staff from the south to the north? >> yes. today, our teams have accompanied four ambulances from the north to the south. this is possible. the working conditions are extremely difficult, but it is possible. there are moments where our dialogues allow us to carve out

spaces of humanity where civilians can get to safety. christian: sorry to press you but what are you prioritizing? can you set up a small enclave in the south to feed people? >> where we are at present in the south, our priority is to support hostages with critical needs. we also need to get the water flowing back in pipes and ensure drinking water to the civilian population. conditions are horrendous. we are doing a wonderful job saving lives every day. christian: we are talking to robert mardini of the red cross. narrator: funding for this presentation of this program is provided by... narrator: financial services firm, raymond james.

man: bdo. accountants and advisors. narrator: funding was also provided by, the freeman foundation. and by judy and peter blum kovler foundation; pursuing solutions for america's neglected needs. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

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