Beyond the Headlines

The cycle of Gaza ceasefire talks has started to become predictable. Headlines initially spark hope with announcements of progress, only for other regional incidents to derail negotiations, leading to yet another collapse. Last Sunday, Lebanon’s Hezbollah launched 320 drones and rockets towards Israel in response to the assassination of its commander Fouad Shukr. This was the group’s biggest escalation since the Israel-Gaza war began. Shortly before, Israel had launched a pre-emptive attack on Lebanon’s south, killing at least three. This all happened against the backdrop of yet another ceasefire proposal that the US was strongly advocating for. But once again, it fell apart. Hamas rejected it, saying it was skewed too heavily in Israel’s favour and contradicted a version the group had agreed to in July. Meanwhile, Hezbollah said it had delayed its retaliatory attack to give this round of ceasefire talks a chance. With the death toll of Palestinians in Gaza exceeding 40,600 and the war approaching its one-year mark, the prospects for a ceasefire are diminishing. This week on Beyond the Headlines, host Nada AlTaher looks at how events on the ground could be sabotaging a ceasefire deal. She speaks to The National’s correspondents Nada Atallah and Hamza Hendawi and asks if talks still hold any weight.

Children’s lives in Gaza are riddled with uncertainty. They don’t know when the next bomb will fall, where their next meal will come from or even if their families and friends are still alive. Now, another variable poses a grave risk to Gaza’s children: polio. The first case was confirmed after a 10-month-old baby tested positive for the virus in mid-August. At least two others are suspected to have been infected. Poliovirus can be extremely dangerous, affecting nerve function and causing irreversible paralysis. Since the war began last October, inoculations have fallen in Gaza, leaving thousands of children unvaccinated. Doctors and aid workers have been warning for months that the catastrophic humanitarian conditions in the enclave would fuel the spread of disease. Now, 25 years after the virus was eradicated in Palestine, unheeded warnings are proving true. The World Health Organisation, along with the UN children’s fund, Unicef and other aid groups, has called for a ceasefire or at least a pause in the fighting to be able to administer at least 1.2 million vaccines. But will it happen? On Beyond the Headlines this week, host Nada AlTaher discusses the gravity of Gaza’s looming polio outbreak with Dr Zaher Sahloul, president of the medical NGO MedGlobal, and speaks to Unicef’s Jonathan Crickx about vaccine co-ordination efforts.

In recent weeks, human rights organisations and media investigations have documented the worsening conditions in Israeli prisons over the past 10 months. They reveal beatings and other forms of brutal physical and psychological abuse of Palestinian detainees have become common practice since October 7. A UN report on the ill-treatment of detainees was published at the end of July, detailing patterns of abuse. Within a week, a report titled Welcome to Hell was released by leading Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, containing testimonies from 55 released Palestinians. Widespread use of violence including sexual assault, tactics that may amount to torture, and accounts of humiliation and degradation is described. The Israel Prison Service rejects all of these allegations. In this week’s episode of Beyond the Headlines, host Nada AlTaher delves into the experiences of two former Palestinian detainees who share their harrowing accounts of life in Israeli detention centres. The episode also features insights from Shai Parnes, representative for B’Tselem.

Olympic fanfare has swept across Paris in recent weeks, but there is an elephant in the room that’s difficult to ignore – the glaring disparity between France hosting one of the most multicultural events in the world, while at the same time cracking down on diversity. Only weeks before the Games started, the far right gained huge momentum in a tense parliamentary election in France, reigniting xenophobic sentiment and anti-immigrant rhetoric. The country has been the subject of criticism over its hardline policies for some time. Last year, it introduced a contested immigration bill, parts of which were deemed unconstitutional. And now, even though it says it has hosted the “first gender-equal” Olympics in the history of the event, some of its own Muslim athletes were forced to remove their hijab merely to compete. Researchers say these policies have bred a mainstream culture of racism, so much so that more ethnic minorities of North African origins and French Muslims are opting to emigrate. In this episode of Beyond the Headlines, against the backdrop of the Olympics host Fethi Benaissa looks at the contrast between France’s multi-ethnic fabric and rising xenophobia. He asks what the tipping point will be for those who want to leave their country amid a growing racial divide.

On Tuesday, Israeli warplanes broke the sound barrier in the skies over Lebanon, a stunt timed to coincide with Hassan Nasrallah’s speech amid a series of threats by Hezbollah towards Israel and vice versa. In his address, Nasrallah mocked the intimidation attempt and said an uncomfortable wait for Hezbollah's retaliation is part of the punishment the group is inflicting on Israel for the assassinations of one of its senior commanders and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Meanwhile, foreign governments have issued travel warnings about Lebanon, and airlines have periodically paused flights to and from the country. The cost of flight tickets has soared as people rush to get out. Lebanon’s battered economy must prepare for more burdens as tensions rise, and people are trying to gauge just how serious the situation will become. In this week’s episode of Beyond the Headlines, host Nada AlTaher assesses the impact on day-to-day life and politics in Lebanon as Hezbollah and Israel exchange threats that grow more serious each day. She speaks to The National’s Beirut correspondent Nada Atallah and Michael Young, columnist for The National and senior editor at the Carnegie Middle East Centre in Beirut.

The anxiety in the Middle East has been palpable since Tuesday night. The killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran happened only hours after Israel struck a south Beirut suburb, claiming to have killed Hezbollah commander Fouad Shukr. Mr Haniyeh was on a trip to Iran for the inauguration of president Masoud Pezeshkian when he was killed, provoking vows of punishment against Israel by the country’s supreme leader, although Israel has yet to claim the attack. The strike in Lebanon came days after a rocket hit a football field in Majdal Shams in the Israeli occupied Golan Heights, killing 12 children, for which Israel and Hezbollah blamed each other. In the aftermath of a deadly week, we look at what happens when two major players in the so-called “Axis of Resistance” are attacked and how these escalations will affect ceasefire talks in Gaza. In this episode, host Nada AlTaher speaks to MENA programme director at Crisis Group Joost Hiltermann and Palestinian analyst Taghreed El-Khodary.

Residents in the Yemeni city of Hodeidah woke up last Sunday to plumes of black smoke filling the skies. Israel had just struck the port, a main artery for the city, killing nine people and injuring more than 80 others after hitting a fuel depot. The attack came a day after a Houthi drone hit Tel Aviv, killing one person. For months the international community has been cautioning against further spillovers from the war in Gaza. The Houthis have been routinely launching drone strikes at southern Israel and attacking commercial ships in the Red Sea. At the same time, Israel is engaged in cross-border attacks with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and has also locked its targets on Syria. But this latest attack on Hodeidah is the first time Israel has hit Yemen directly, marking an unprecedented escalation between the two sides. In this week’s Beyond the Headlines, Nada AlTaher hosts a discussion with Abdul Ghani Al-Iryani, senior researcher at the Sana'a Centre for Strategic Studies, and Kobi Michael, a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, and asks, will the latest attacks provoke a full-scale war in the region?

In the first weeks of July, the Israeli army ordered about 80,000 residents of Gaza city, in the north of the strip, to evacuate towards the south. At the same time, residents in large areas of Khan Younis were told to leave. But where to?   For nine months, Palestinians in Gaza have had to uproot and seek shelter in increasingly dangerous so-called safe zones, where conditions are dire, services are lacking, diseases are rampant and air strikes are always a risk.   The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, now estimates that nine out of 10 people are internally displaced in the strip. That’s 1.9 million people, including many who have been displaced multiple times.   Israel’s army makes the case that “evacuations” are designed to protect civilians from hostilities, but even in war evacuations must adhere to a very strict set of rules that observers on the ground say are not being followed.   In this week’s Beyond The Headlines, host Nada AlTaher speaks to Dr Majed Jaber, who describes his harrowing evacuation experience from the European Gaza Hospital. We also hear from Hisham Mhanna, Gaza spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, as well as former executive director of Human Rights Watch Kenneth Roth.

Hundreds of rioters were arrested at the start of July after angry mobs in Turkey vandalised cars and shops belonging to Syrian refugees. Fuelled by reports that a Syrian man had assaulted a young girl, nationalist Turks violently protested about their government’s alleged inaction towards the Syrian refugee crisis in their country. But it’s part of a much wider story. Earlier this week, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made the most direct statements yet that he’s willing to reinstate ties with Syria’s Bashar Al Assad. This shift in tone would mark a breakthrough since Ankara and Damuscus severed diplomatic ties following Syria’s 2011 uprisings and subsequent civil war. Today more than 3 million Syrians who fled the violence and crackdowns at home reside in Turkey. But growing discontent and xenophobic sentiments toward them, alongside the possibility of normalised relations with Assad, have led to fears that refugees might have to return to a divided and dangerous Syria. For insight into what’s going on and what may happen next, host Nada AlTaher speaks to The National’s Istanbul correspondent Lizzie Porter, Senior Researcher at TRENDS Research and Advisory Serhat Cubukcuoglu and Syria analyst Sam Heller.

The intense heatwaves sweeping across the Middle East this summer is taking a high toll on people. Temperatures have soared to unprecedented levels, causing widespread discomfort and significant challenges in many countries that might even be unequipped to face the impacts of climate change. During this year's Hajj season, which took place in mid-June, temperatures soared sometimes to almost 52°C in Makkah, leading to over 1,300 deaths. Many Arab countries are experiencing extreme heat this year. In Egypt, daily life has become uncomfortable and has also strained the country's power grid, leading to occasional blackouts. In Lebanon, many people are struggling to cope with limited access to electricity and cooling. And in Iraq, the government has taken an unprecedented step of cutting working hours to help citizens deal with the extreme temperatures. In this episode of Beyond The Headlines, host Ismaeel Naar looks at how life in some Arab countries has been affected because of the heat crisis.