Israel faces increasing pressure amid calls for Gaza ceasefire
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00:00 Not if you listen to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, just the other day
00:05 at a closed session of the Knesset Foreign Affairs Committee, that's the Parliament.
00:10 He compared himself obliquely to David Ben-Gurion, one of the most distinguished of all Israeli
00:16 Prime Ministers, when he said that yes, David Ben-Gurion was indeed a distinguished Prime
00:21 Minister, but his failing was that he failed to stand up to the United States.
00:25 Any Israeli Prime Minister, he said, should be able to do just that, by implication meaning
00:30 that he, Benjamin Netanyahu, would not cave in to any sort of pressure from the United
00:36 States.
00:37 And make no mistake about it, he is under a lot of pressure from the United States at
00:42 the moment to shift his position, to push the direction of the ground offensive in Gaza
00:48 in a different direction, to put the emphasis on more accurate bombardment, less, as it's
00:55 often been called, including by Joe Biden, the US President, indiscriminate bombardment
01:00 of Gaza.
01:02 So at this stage, the Israelis don't seem to be moving at all in the direction of the
01:10 US, although what happens publicly and what is said publicly is often different from what
01:15 happens behind the scenes.
01:17 And it may very well be the case that following the pressure from just over the last 24 hours
01:23 from the US Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, and last week Jake Sullivan, the national
01:29 security adviser, that Israel may be coming to accept that it will have to shift its position
01:36 in the next few weeks, perhaps the beginning of January, and start moving away from this
01:41 full-on, very heavy bombardment of Gaza to something which is more sustainable, more
01:48 focused on taking out Hamas commanders, and less indiscriminate bombardment of whole districts
01:55 of Gaza.
01:56 Rob, of course, one of the big issues there in Israel are the 129 hostages who are still
02:03 in Gaza.
02:04 What's the latest on the hostage negotiations?
02:07 Has there been any movement there?
02:09 Very little movement at all.
02:13 It is true that at the moment the head of Mossad, Israel's spy agency, has been meeting
02:20 in Warsaw with the head of the CIA and Qatari representatives to see whether it's possible
02:27 to advance towards negotiations.
02:30 In other words, negotiations about negotiations with Hamas on the release of the hostages.
02:36 That at least is a step in the right direction, because after the last pause came to an end,
02:41 there was no contact with Hamas whatsoever, no talk really of the possibility of the release
02:47 of hostages.
02:48 Hamas was saying that either the Israelis would have to announce a complete, sustainable
02:54 ceasefire, otherwise it wasn't getting the hostages back alive.
02:59 There does seem to be a glimmer of hope now that things can move again in the direction
03:04 of some sort of pause perhaps in the hostilities so that hostages can be exchanged again for
03:11 Palestinian prisoners.
03:12 But we're still not there yet.
03:13 And in the meantime, the families here of the hostages are becoming more and more desperate.
03:19 We saw three hostages escape from their captors in Gaza the other day.
03:24 They were shot by Israeli troops, mistaking them for Hamas fighters.
03:30 That has really shocked, I think, Israeli society.
03:34 And then the release of a video by Hamas, which has not been shown in the Israeli media
03:39 because it's banned, but it's available on social media, of three elderly hostages talking
03:45 about their conditions.
03:46 It puts a lot of pressure on the Israeli government.