Hello and welcome to the battleground podcast with me Saul David and Patrick Bishop.

The Battle of Gaza seems to have settled down into a nutritional struggle in the rubble of

Gaza City, with the Israelis making steady progress. The civilian population are firmly in the

firing line with locations like the Al-Sheifa Hospital in the thick of the fighting. Despite

mounting international calls for a ceasefire, notably by French President Emmanuel Macron. That seems a

distant prospect at this moment. At the same time, the war is dividing societies outside of the

Middle East and opening up significant political rifts. In the US Democratic Party of President

Joe Biden, there's increasingly vocal anti-Israel sentiment,

something new in a party that, along with the Republicans, has traditionally been solidly supportive

of Israel. In Britain, the hostile attitude of the Home Secretary Suella Bravaman towards pro-Palestinian

marches has cost her job. Whatever happens on the ground, it's clear that the Gaza

war is going to have diplomatic consequences worldwide. We'll be looking at what they might be and how

they might figure in a possible eventual settlement. But first, Saul, how do you assess the progress

of the IDF so far? Well, in purely military terms, they've made pretty steady progress into

Gaza City. It's hard to get a fix on exactly where they are, but they seem to have penetrated

right to the sea and are certainly in the vicinity of the Al-Shefa Hospital, which is right in the

heart of the built-up area. So I suppose technically they could be said to physically occupy much

or most of the urban area.

But that's not the same as controlling it.

And what we seem to be seeing is what we predicted.

Hammers fighters using the rubble created by the airstrikes to their advantage to launch counter strikes,

popping up and disappearing again, possibly into this fabled network of tunnels,

...