Hello, I'm very delighted to welcome back Omar Badar, who was a huge hit with all of you,

when we last chatted to him.

I think near at the beginning of this horror.

And there was quite a lot of demand to have you back, which is why we're talking to you, obviously, because of your huge insights.

You're, for those who you can't remember, a brilliant Palestinian-American political analyst, and it's so important at the moment that we

particularly of course elevate Palestinian voices not least because most of the media are failing to do so and if they do

Palestinians are put in the dock and interrogated in a way that Israeli government

spoke to people on.

So hello, I'm all, first I hope you're well given the circumstances as ever.

Yeah, thank you and I'm really glad to be with you.

I just want to start with just before we we began this interview there was a strike an Israeli strike in Lebanon obviously the

council of so Bayre at the capital Lebanon which has killed the deputy head of

Hamas Salé L. Al-Rory I'm just wondering what you think about the significance of that

given the potential for an escalation into a regional conflict. We've already seen obviously

Yemen, the Houthis, the prospect of Iran, obviously there's Hezbollah in Lebanon.

What's your thoughts about what this could mean in terms of that potential for

wide escalation?

Yeah, I think this is an extremely significant step in the

direction of a major escalation. It's not so much the individual target as the

area in which the target had taken place. Hezbollah is the single most powerful military group

that is essentially affiliated with Iran

and is an adversary of Israel. And they have long made it a red line a declared one based on the aftermath of the 2006 war that if Israel ever touched either Beirut or even the southern suburb of Beirut that Hezbollah

...