This is a special edition of the Global News Podcasts from the BBC World Service.

I'm Nick Miles, and we're about to bring you a debate hosted by the BBC

examining a deeply contentious issue regarding the Gaza conflict.

The question we will consider with a panel of expert guests offering a wide range of views is this.

Over the course of the last 20 months, starting with the Hamas attacks on Israel in October of 2023,

have we witnessed war crimes in Gaza and Israel?

I'm going to hand you straight over now to my colleague Anna Foster here at Broadcasting House in London.

A week ago, the former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert

wrote an opinion piece for the Liberal Daily newspaper, Hararets.

He described how he defended Israel's military campaign in Gaza to audiences

around the world. But now, he said, his opinion had changed. Yes, he wrote, Israel is committing

war crimes. The decision on whether someone is guilty of war crimes will always be made in a court,

not in a radio studio. Words like genocide are a legal definition of a specific crime

rather than an emotive description of events that upset us.

The latter use, incorrect until a judge decides, is increasing.

Normally, many decades pass before perpetrators are convicted of war crimes.

Some die without ever going on trial.

But although the passing of judgment takes time, it shouldn't negate a conversation about events

in the moment when they happen. Israel is refusing to let international journalists into Gaza to report

what's happening on the ground in real time. Local journalists do their best,

but there's much that we're not seeing in the way that we would with other conflicts.

On October the 7th, 2023, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups broke through the fence

...