Hello and welcome to background briefing available 24-7 at background briefing.org, I'm Ian Masters,

and today we're looking to a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with the mid-level Israeli delegation joining ceasefire negotiations in Cairo

as the Israeli Defence Forces step up military operations on the Gaza side of the rougher crossing,

closing off the two main entry points for humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Joining us is Leila Hillal, an independent analyst who, until recently, was the co-director

of the New America Foundation's Middle East Task Force.

Previously, she served as a legal advisor to the Palestinian Negotiations Department

and advised the Palestinian Constitutional Committee during the drafting of the basic law.

She acted as an external advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team as part of the Annapolis bilateral peace talks of 2008,

and was a senior policy advisor to the Commissioner General of the UN Palestinian Refugee Agency

and a visiting fellow and instructor at the Refugee Study Center at Oxford University.

Then, with civilian casualties in Gaza close to 35,000 and Russia's war on Ukraine targeting civilians

and civilian infrastructure, we'll examine the history of the laws of war, which are clearly

failing non-combatants,

as responses to terror attacks like October 7th and 9-11 that target civilians

end up costing the lives of many more civilians since as many as a million died in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Joining us is Una Hathaway, a professor of international law at Yale Law School,

and a non-resident scholar at the Canadian Doundem for International Peace. She's been a member

of the Advisory Committee on International Law and a legal advisor to the United States Department

of State since 2005, and from 2014 to 2015, she took leave to serve her special counsel to the General Counsel at the U.S. Department of Defense, where she was awarded the Office of the Secretary of Defense's Award for Excellence.

And she has an article at Foreign Affairs, War Unbound, Gaza, Ukraine, and the breakdown of international law.

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