Israel-Gaza: Is it turning into a regional conflict?
The Briefing Room
BBC
4.8 • 731 Ratings
🗓️ 11 January 2024
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As if the conflict in Gaza wasn’t bad enough, the fighting has ignited old and new tensions elsewhere across the region. Since the surprise attack by Hamas on 7th October, clashes on the Lebanon-Israel border have restarted, attacks on US troops stationed in Syria and Iraq have escalated and a group of Houthi armed rebels from Yemen has started firing rockets at cargo ships trying to access the Suez Canal from the Red Sea. So in this week’s programme David Aaronovitch asks how close the war in Gaza is to becoming a wider conflict across the Middle East.
David is joined by the following experts: Frank Gardner, BBC’s Security Correspondent. Dr Elisabeth Kendall, Arabist & Middle East specialist and also The Mistress of Girton College at the University of Cambridge. Jane Kinninmont, Policy & Impact Director at the European Leadership Network. Scott Lucas, Professor of International Politics at University College Dublin’s Clinton Institute.
Production team: Nick Holland, Kirsteen Knight and Charlotte McDonald Production Co-ordinators: Sophie Hill Sound: Neil Churchill Editor: Richard Vadon
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:08.8 | This week, the US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken arrived in the Middle East for his fourth visit in three months. |
| 0:16.6 | This time, he said, the main aim of his trip was to ensure that the Gaza-Israel conflict, |
| 0:21.9 | dreadful enough in itself, doesn't spread and become an all-out regional conflict. |
| 0:27.9 | On Tuesday in New York, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution |
| 0:32.0 | demanding the Houthi rebels on the coast of Yemen, |
| 0:35.2 | who have ostensibly been acting in solidarity with the Palestinians of Gaza, |
| 0:39.8 | immediately cease their attacks on merchant and commercial vessels. |
| 0:44.6 | Meanwhile, exchanges of fire continue across the Lebanese border between Israeli forces |
| 0:49.1 | and those of the numerous and well-armed Iranian-backed militia, Hezbollah. |
| 0:54.5 | So, are we witnessing the expansion of the war in Gaza |
| 0:58.0 | to one engulfing other parts of the region? |
| 1:01.4 | Step into the briefing room, and together we'll find out. |
| 1:07.4 | First of all, let's start by identifying the flashpoints |
| 1:10.7 | with the BBC's security correspondent, Frank Gardner. |
| 1:14.6 | Frank Gardner, outside Gaza and outside the Palestinian West Bank, what's been happening in the region as a consequence of the events following October the 7th? |
| 1:25.6 | Well, rather a lot. I'm just to give a quick up some of this. |
| 1:28.8 | First of all, in Lebanon, you've had the assassination of Salah La Ruri, Hamas number two. Big shock |
| 1:36.2 | to everybody. He was killed by a drone strike in a Beirut suburb that was widely assumed to be |
| 1:41.7 | an Israeli targeted assassination. You've got a low-level conflict |
| 1:46.2 | on the Israeli-Lebanese border that's getting slowly, gradually worse. 80,000 Israelis have had to |
| 1:52.7 | evacuate from northern Israel. Thousands, an unknown number, have had to evacuate from southern |
... |
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