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tv   BBC News America  PBS  November 22, 2023 5:30pm-6:01pm PST

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♪ ♪ narrator: funding for this presentation of this program is provided by... narrator: pediatric surgeon. volunteer. topiary artist. a raymond james financial advisor tailors advice to help you live your life. life well planned.
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brook: these are people who are trying to change the world. startups have this energy that energizes me. i'm thriving by helping others everyday. people who know, know bdo. narrator: funding was also provided by, the freeman foundation. and by judy and peter blum kovler foundation; pursuing solutions for america's neglected needs. announcer: and now, "bbc news". >> this is "bbc world news america." israel continues its campaign in gaza less than 24 hours before a temporary cease fire and the release of dozens of hostages. an investigation sundays way in new york after a car explosion at the u.s.-canada border. and it was a firing that riled up the tech world. the events that led to sam altman's return to openai.
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♪ >> welcome to world news america. within the next 12 hour, ham says a four-day pause in fighting with israel will start at 10:00 a.m. local time thursday morning. israel and hamas have agreed a deal that will see hos readges leased, palestinian prisoners freed and more aid allowed in. but israel's national security adviser says he doesn't expect any hostages released before fray. under the agreement, 50 israeli hostages will be released and in exchange, 150 palestinians held in israeli jails will be freed and more could be freed after that. hamas which is designated a terrorist organization but the u.k., u.s. an other clint, says the deal will allow trucks carrying medical supplies, food and fuel to enter gaza.
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israel says the war will continue to ensure the complete elimination of hamas. >> i want to be clear the war is ongoing, it is continuing. we will continue it until we achieve all -- all our objectives. we will eliminate hamas. and we ensure that the day after hamas, there will be no factor who will continue educating their children to hate and to eradicate israel. so we will continue eliminating hamas in the north, by the way, and in the south, we will continue that effort. >> let go to correspondent tom batheman standing by in israel tonight. can you take us through what we're expecting to see thursday and friday, i know there's some confusion over when we might see some hos annals released. >> the understanding had been all day that it would be thursday, that there would be a
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cease fire. [no audio] >> ok, tom, looks like we are having some trouble with your audio there. we lost connection with you but we'll try to get you back late bit later in the program. tom batheman our correspondent -- tom bateman our correspondent in israel. our partner cbs news spoke to one familywaiting word if their loved one is one those to be released. the 3 momed is the youngest american being hold. >> were hoping and praying that she is in one of the first groups, but we only can know that's our hope. but we haven't had any
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confirmation. we haven't seen any lists. so we are going with the bief that because she's 3 years old and no child should be a hosage, no child should be in this situation that she will be early in the releasing. >> but for the first time you must feel some degree of hope, at least cautious optimism. we're all hope, please let this be true. we know how quickly it can turn. tell us what you're thinking. u were in israel on october 7. >> yeah. we are cautiously hopeful. every day, 46 days since october 7, has felt like october 7 for us. as we wonder and pray and as our hearts are with our little cousin. >> we're going to go back to correspondent tom bateman in israel. i think we've gotten your line sorted now. we're talking about what we're expecting to see play out over the next few days, if you can bring us up to date. >> the sense had been all day in israel that according to the agreement, that it would be
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10:00 local time on thursday that a ceasefire would begin. a couple of hours after that, around noon local time, you'd start to see the release oaf nirs batch of hostages held by hamas and then palestinian prisoners held by israel also released. this that had been the understanding all day. i have to say there's a bit of uncertainty when the -- daniel hagari, the chief spokesman for the military, gave a briefing and said there wasn't an agreement or it wasn't clear what time a ceasefire might start. that seemed odd. what we've had in the last 10 minutes is a statement from the national security adviser to the israeli governmen saying that the negotiations for the release of abductees are progressing, continuing all the time. the release will begin, according to the original agreement between the parties, not before friday. so that appears to be now quite
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a significant delay. if anything up to 24 hours. on what had bn the original plans that really, you know, as far as the entire israeli media and the sense that was coming from the parties themselves, brokered by qatar, that this would be taking place on thursday. now it looks like a significant delay. >> tom, so much hangs in the balance. we are going to see with this pause in fighting aid being brought in to gaza as well. tell us more about that. >> yeah, absolutely. because one of the -- part of the agreement when the ceasere takes place, it will allow for more humanitarian aid to get in. remember how critically needed that. is we've heard repeated warnings about how dire the situation has become for people in gaza. we've seenictures, of course, of people struggling to get water. women at the locked gates of flour mills unable to feed their
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families. now, while some aid has been coming in for several weeks now via the rarveon fa crossing, all the aid eightcies say it's not enough. what's critically needed is fuel toower generators for water desalination and also the hospitals to help in a very desperate situations to get the hospitals up and running. it's understood that fuel would have been part of the agreement, we don't know how much or what the conditions for its use were, but so important for fuel to get in for people in gaza suffering in this desperate situation. >> our correspondent tom bateman reporting from israel. thank you so much, tom. as we mentioned, 50 of around the 240 people kidnapped by hamas on october 7 will be allowed to leave gaza. that's around a dozen a day during the four-day pause in fighting in. return, 150 palestinian women and teenagers will be released from israeli prisons.
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until then, the fighting continues. our senior international correspondent reports and a warn, you may find some of the images in the report distressing. >> a reminder of how all this began on october 7. hamas gunmen storming across the boarder from gaza, hunting israelis to kill or capture. around 240 were taken hostage. among them, shari bebas, trying to shield her two young son, an image that went around the world now they and their mother could be freed as part of a deal to release 50 women and children. kaffir is just 10 months old and always smiling. arielle is 4 and loves climbing and batman.
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shari's cousin is caught between hope and tomorrow. >> i don't know what kind of children wl come back to us. the trauma, what they saw. and until i see them in my own eyes, i don't believe any lists of names and i don't believe any news coming today from anywhere. i need to see them in my own eyes. i need to hold my cousin in my arms. >> but for many in gaza, just the anguish of good-bye. hasan is mourning his niece, three brothers, and his grandmother, killed by an israeli air strike on a residential building relatives say. this was in han unas in the
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south which israel said would be safer. if a four-day ceasefire starts tomorrow, as planned, it is too late for this family. gaza is teaming with grief and desperation. this was the struggle for a few bottles of water. hundreds of trucks of food, fuel, and medical supplies are to be allowed in during the ceasefire. for now, gaza keeps burying its dead. with more than 100 bodies in this mass grave. we don't kno exactly how they died. but some came from al shifa hospital, israel releasing the remains on the eve of the truce.
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>> again on the eve of the truce, i sphoak a political analyst about how israelis are reacting to the hostage swap set to take place. >> we think in general israelis are pretty happy about it. but of course it's controversial at the same time. surveys that have been done about this in, i would say the week or even more than a week before showed that a majority of israelis support this kind of a deal but that was before it became a reality. and what we're seeing is that the families of the hostages are very happy, although of course they have mixed feelings because only about 50 people will eventually be released while there are 240 people being held. there are mixed feelings. but ultimately the families are supportive. they have been calling for this for a long time. they've been calling for a ceasefire precisely in order to have this kind of hostage deal. i think there's still majority support. the one survey published today, not exactly an unbiased survey,
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it tends to skew to the right, but it shows 52% of israelis support the deal as far as they understand it. i should say there's a deep political division. people on the further right are more skeptical about the deal. right-wing media have run a number of op-eds saying why it's bad to be doing this kind of deal at this point, having a cease fire. and one of the furthest right-wing, most extreme right-wing parties in the coalition voted against the deal. that's the jewish power party. it does represent hardline view that the deal -- that anything involving a cease fire right now is good for hamas and bad for israel. but the majority are supportive. >> what about what we heard from pre minister netanyahu that as soon as the agreement is over, fighting will resume. how much support is there for that? >> it's hard toay exactly how much support there is for it because these developments are happening so fast we don't have hard data, but it's clear that israelis do support the ongoing
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war and the prime minister made it very clear. in fact he's had to reassure the public this will not be an end to the war. i would say that there are very few communities in israel who do not want to see israel continue to strike very heavily at hamas as they see it. what israelis are not seeing, or they see it but i think that they'reot able to take into account, you know, how damaging this is for over 12,000 palestinians who have been killed, the fact that so much of gaza is uninhabitable, that so many ga zanns lost their homes. israelis don't see that. >> you've written about how polls after the hamas attack october 7, show a deeply bleak outlook for any postwar end to the conflict. can you tell us more about that and what the outlook is then for israelis? >> the main thing we're seeing in polls is a continuation of what has been a very severe deterioration in israeli support for a two-state solution and an israeli belief that the can be
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a political process that would lead to some sort of comprehensive political resolution. i should say it's a mirror image. i conduct israeli and palestinian poll, we call it joint polling. we see very similar trends on the palestinian side over the last number of years. not just that but the level of trust in one another, general perceptions of the other have become absolutely, really, the worst i've seen them in about 20 years. and that's just over the last year or two. so even before october 7, what we've seen since october 7 is that both sides registered a significant decline in the portion of people who support a two-state solution. it is not accompanied by any compensated -- compensational support for a different kind of solution. it's not that all of a sudden israeli or palestinians are supporting some other political resolution, and i think that there is a general sense that there is no hope for a process leading to political containment of this conflict right now. where does that leave israelis? frankly, confused. the government has not set out any specific political aims for
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what happens the day after the fight, the active fight, ends, other than indicating that it plans to keepecurity control over gaza for a long time or for the unforeseeable future. and so there is a possibility that this turns into another renewed form of occupation of israeli army inside gaza. i wouldn't say that's the most likely scenario but it does look like a likely scenario and there are other scenarios that have been discussed. i wouldn't say israelis are happy about any of them. >> dahla, thank you for joining us today. >> my pleasure. thank you for having me. >> the pause in fighting brings a temporary sy of relief to civilians in gaza where aid has been scarce. war has take on a toll on health care and aid workers. doctors without borders is one of the organizations with staff who have directly suffered from the war in gaza. the french medical charity sd on tuesday that two of its own doctors were killed in a strike on the hospital in northern
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gaza. i spoke to m.s.s. director in the u.s. avril benoit. our condolence we understand two doctors from your organization and another doctor were killed in an air strike on the hospital earlier this week. tell us more about what happened. >> yes. it's a catastrophe among many others. befalling the health sector and hospitals in particular. so this was a hospital, al ouda, where our staff were working on a couple of floors foe kowngs orthopedic surgery. there were 200 patients at the hospital, this is northern gaza where they lacked medicine, electricity, it was a hospital barely hanging on in terms of trying to treat people. from what we understand there was an air strike or some sort of explosion that completely destroyed two floors of the hospital where they were
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working. so two of our colleagues and another working for the hospital, for the ministry of health, died immediately in that. and for us, it just -- it's such a stark and tragic reminder of the extent to which the normal protections in war around hospitals and medical infrastructure, civilian infrastructure, including ambulances, what have you, are being taken out of operation one by one and medical staff and patients are being targeted in this way. >> i just want to make sure i understand you correctly. do you know at this point who or what caused the exploon? >> we don't. and we very much would like to know. as with all these things that may amount to war crime it's importt to have some court of credible, independent investigation of it. because with everything happening and with all the series of violence events that have happened to our staff and
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their family, we never really know. i mean there's a lot of confusion. you're ducking for cover. things happen suddenly. that's one of the reasons we think it would be very, very important, as soon as it's possible under the security situation, for there to be credible, independent investigation of some kind to determine what exactly happened here. >> your organization works in war zones around the world. how unusual is it to see what you described, that medical workers and also hospitals are now being caught up in the fighting? >> it happens. and certainly we've seen conflicts, syria comes to mind, even yemen, where hospitals were being bombarded. and of course we work in a number of places where there are attacks on medical facilities. and we denounce them all. in this case though, what we're really seeing is something that appears to be systematic. the world health organization has counted more than 150 attacks on medical facilities
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with hundreds of health workers killed while on duty. while treating patients. and so you have to ask yourself, you know what has happened to the norms of war, the international laws that -- the gegeneva conventions that under just about every circumstance would allocate a certain degree of protection to a hospital, that's functioning, that's treating patient, and of course in the gaza situation, that's also harboring, sheltering, civilians who are fearing for their lives and coming to an infrastructure like that that should normally be protected. >> you mention maryland hospitals are running dangerously low on supplies that are needed for their work. also on fuel. we're going to see a temporary ceasefire take hold later this week. how will that impact the situation for hospitals? >> honestly, we don't expect it to make enough of a difference to really put a dent -- i mean we have 20,000 people or more who are eimated to be injured.
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the hospitals are full of patients who require surgery. surgery, when it's a serious surgery, imagine for a burn or shrapnel wounds, it requires a lot of postoperative care, infection management, rehabilitation. people need a lot of poats-op -- a lot of post-op care. we know that under the circumstance it's difficult for people to even reach hospitals. they are terrified. if you have that window where maybe people feel it's somewhat safe new to go, there are no ambulance, there's no fuel, it's impossible to bring the supplies and staff to places where patients may be able to go, where the needs are greatest. and then from that point, you never know what's going to happen to the hospital, the infrastructure and the civilian spaces around it once the ceasefire doesn't continue, this temporary pause as they're calling it. >> all right. such an important aspect of this
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fighting to focus on. thank you for joining us on bbc news today. >> thank you. >> we're going to move on to other news now. two people are dead after a vehicle exploded on wednesday at rain beau -- rainbow bridge at the u.s.-canada border at nighting a rah falls in western new york. the car does driving fast before crashing and exploding. four u.s. border crossings to canada are closed. we have our north america correspondent, gary, here in the studio for more on this story. you have been following this. what's the latest? >> we've just had the governor of new york giving a press conference. she has said that there is no indication at this stage of terrorist activity connected to this crash. she gave some pretty vivid descriptions of what happened. the car was drive neg u.s. side of the border, hit a customs post and then kind of leapt into the air and exploded. that's what i think created a lot of concern about what might be behind this.
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and the closing of all those borders. the indications seem to be pointing in the direction that this may have been some kind of accident. but investigations continue. >> what are some of the -- what have some of the reactions been? >> there's been some striking eyewitness descriptions of what happened. you heard the governor as well. and she's seen the video. and of course you know, all the border crossings being closed to traffic in both direction, the day before thanksgiving, people are very nervous around traveling on television. there are a lot of security concerns. i think this is the kind of thing that will make people jumpy about this particular incident. we'll see what the f.b.i. finally says but at the moment, there's no indication of any other threats is what they're saying. for example, they've reopened the airport in buffalo. >> and the border crossings remain closed as they continue to work? >> there's a lot of debris around this particular bridge, the rainbow bridge. there are three other bridges in the area but they are still
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closed at the moment. >> gary, thank you for bringing us up to date on that story today. now the u.s. says it is treating a reported plot to kill six separatists on u.s. soil with utmost seriousness on wednesday. the financial times first reported the news, citing unnamed sources who said u.s. authorities thwarted a conspiracy to kill separatists and issued a warning to end dwhreasm 25rg9 of the plot was reportedly a new york-based lawyer for sikhs for justice, a group that calls for an independent sikh homeland in india. adrian watson said on wednesday it has been raised by the u.s. government with the indian government, including at the senior most levels. indian counterparts expressed surprise and concern. they stated that activity of this nature was not their policy. we have conveyed our expectation
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that anyone deemed responsible should be held accountable. panoon responded to the plot saying trks transnational terrorism and a threat to u.s. sovereignty, freedom of speech and democracy. now to another twist of events in silicon valley. the world's leading artificial intelligence firm, openai, says its co-founder, sam altman, is to return as c.e.o. days after he was fired by the board. the company poasd on x, formerly twitter, that the agreement in principal involves a new board being installed. this comes after almost all 770 employees at openai signed a letter to the board demand theag c.e.o.'s return. mr. altman was dismissed from openai by the board on friday, sending shock waves throughout the tech world. king charles iii honored the k-pop music group blackpink on wednesday for their work on raising awareness of climate change.
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the honor comes on the second day of the south korean president's visit to london. charles made the blackpink members members of thed orer of the british empire in a ceremony at buckingham palace. that's all for our show. you can check us out on our website at bbc.com and also on social media. thank you for watching "world news america." 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 neglecteneeds. ♪ ♪
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made for streaming. ♪ >> good evening. on the newshour tonight, israel eagerly awaits the return of dozens of hostages after striking a deal with hamas for a positive fighting. sam goldman returns as the ceo of openai just days after the company's board ousted him, raising the questions about the future of artificial intelligence. as so many prepare for a bountiful holiday, a growing number of american families are ly

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