Israeli cabinet meets to approve ceasefire
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 17 January 2025
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Israeli cabinet is meeting to approve the Gaza ceasefire and hostage release agreement. Some relatives of the hostages say it should have come months ago, but several ministers have threatened to resign if it is ratified. We hear from Jerusalem and from Gaza.
Also in the programme: why atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, were the highest ever last year, and what that means; and we get a tour of the luxury Roman spa just discovered in the ruins of Pompeii.
(IMAGE: The Israeli Security Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meeting ahead of the full Cabinet meeting which is expected to approve the Gaza ceasefire agreement, Friday 17th January 2025 / CREDIT: Israel Government Press Office / Koby Gideon)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service. We're coming to you live from London. |
| 0:08.5 | I'm James Menendez. And we're going to begin today in Israel in a cabinet meeting that's taking |
| 0:13.4 | place right now to decide whether to ratify the Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal announced |
| 0:19.0 | on Wednesday. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has enough support in Cabinet for the agreement, |
| 0:24.4 | but it may yet cost him the support of a couple of far right members of his coalition, |
| 0:29.5 | the National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gavir, |
| 0:32.3 | and perhaps the finance minister Bezal Smotritch too. |
| 0:35.9 | And last night, their supporters blocked a highway in Jerusalem |
| 0:38.7 | to show their opposition to the deal. |
| 0:47.8 | And the others in Israel, however, are welcoming the agreement, |
| 0:51.4 | especially the families of the hostages still been held by Hamas |
| 0:55.0 | in Gaza. Mr. Netanyahu says that if ratified, he expects the first hostages to be released on |
| 1:01.3 | Sunday. Gil Dickman is the cousin of Carmel Gatt, who was killed while in captivity in Gaza. |
| 1:07.8 | I believe all deals are bad in a way, because we're going to give things that we don't want to give. |
| 1:13.7 | But all deals are good in a way that we're going to get hostages back. |
| 1:18.8 | And right now, the deal that we're having is the same deal that we had on the table in May. |
| 1:24.5 | The only thing that's changed is that some of the hostages were killed in captivity, |
| 1:29.2 | just like my cousin. She was alive in May. She should have been a part of this deal. She should |
| 1:35.6 | have been one of the first to come home in this deal, but they didn't sign it in time. She was |
| 1:41.5 | murdered. And now we have the same deal on the less hostages. |
| 1:45.6 | Well, let's speak to Neri Zilber, journalist with the Financial Times, based in Tel Aviv, |
| 1:51.0 | who joins us live. Welcome to NewsHour, Neri. What's the latest on the cabinet meeting? |
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