Israel to cut electricity supply to Gaza “immediately”
Newshour
BBC
4.4 • 984 Ratings
🗓️ 9 March 2025
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Last week, US President Donald Trump threatened Hamas with “hell” to pay if hostages from the October 7th attack on Israel were not released. Today, Israel’s energy minister, Eli Cohen, says the country will now cut its electricity supply to Gaza “immediately.”
Also in the programme: Canada’s governing Liberal Party prepares to elect a new leader following the resignation announcement of PM Justin Trudeau; the Pompidou Centre in Paris is preparing to close for five years; and after the announcement that female tennis players can get twelve months’ maternity leave, tennis star Victoria Azarenka gives us her reaction.
(Photo: A tent of internally displaced Palestinians set up next to a destroyed building in the east of Gaza City, 9th March 2025. Credit: Mohammed Saber/EPA-EFE-REX/Shutterstock)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to News Hour from the BBC World Service. We're coming to you live from London. |
| 0:08.9 | I'm James Menendez. Now we're going to begin in the Middle East because the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is in trouble and there are still 59 Israeli hostages left in Gaza. |
| 0:20.3 | It's thought that out of those, 25 are still alive. |
| 0:24.4 | Well, last week, President Trump once again threatened Hamas with hell to pay if they weren't all released. |
| 0:30.1 | And Israel is now turning the screws on Hamas too. |
| 0:33.1 | It's already stopped food, fuel and other aid from getting into the territory. Today it announced it was |
| 0:39.1 | also cutting off electricity supplies. Here's the country's energy minister, Eli Cohen. |
| 0:46.8 | I've just signed the order to stop supplying electricity immediately to the Gaza Strip. |
| 0:52.6 | We will use all the tools at our disposal to bring back |
| 0:55.9 | the hostages and ensure that Hamas is no longer in Gaza. |
| 1:01.2 | Well, I've been speaking to the Israeli journalist Nogatana Polsky about the impact, |
| 1:06.2 | first of all, that this decision to sever the electricity could have. |
| 1:09.9 | Well, despite the energy minister's kind of bombastic public declaration, |
| 1:15.9 | its meaning on the ground is very, very little. |
| 1:18.4 | Israel is supplying electricity or was supplying electricity until today |
| 1:22.3 | just to one desalienization plant in Gaza. |
| 1:26.0 | It's not supplying electricity to Gaza. So this declaration seemed |
| 1:30.7 | more destined to either impress the Netanyahu government's base or to impress Hamas in one way |
| 1:38.8 | or another, or to try and show that Israel is still relevant in these negotiations as the Americans appear to |
| 1:46.4 | have basically taken over. Yes, I mean, as I mentioned, Donald Trump has once again weighed in |
| 1:51.6 | and it emerged, of course, that the US has been holding direct talks with Hamas. Has that not |
| 1:56.0 | gone down well with the Israeli government? The Israeli government has been absolutely mute. |
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