Prime Minister Netanyahu defends his plan to seize Gaza City
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 10 August 2025
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Israel's Prime Minister defends his plan to seize Gaza City - but the cousin of an Israeli hostage tells us it's a terrible idea, and explains why he's supporting the call for a general strike in protest.
Also in the programme: what Russians want from the Putin-Trump summit on Ukraine; and the last news hawker of Paris, about to be honoured by President Macron.
(IMAGE: Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu holds a press conference for international media, Jerusalem, Israel - 10 Aug 2025/ CREDIT: ABIR SULTAN/POOL/EPA/Shutterstock)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to NewsHour. It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service studios in central London. I'm Tim Franks. |
| 0:10.7 | And we're beginning with Israel's plans to expand and to intensify its war in Gaza, plans which were announced at the end of last week by the Prime Minister, Binimin Netanyahu, |
| 0:28.1 | and which today have been the subject of intense scrutiny and intense criticism in two international arenas. |
| 0:34.2 | There was an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council about which we'll hear more in a moment. |
| 0:39.5 | But ahead of that, Mr Netanyahu chose, and this is a relative rarity for him, |
| 0:46.0 | he decided to give a news conference to foreign journalists in Jerusalem. His aim to explain what was behind his order to the Israeli military to begin what he hopes will lead to total |
| 0:51.2 | control of the Gaza Strip by emptying Gaza's city of its current one million |
| 0:56.4 | inhabitants. There was, he said, a simple strategy here. |
| 1:00.9 | Five principles for concluding the war. One, Hamas disarmed. Second, all hostages freed. |
| 1:07.6 | Third, Gaza demilitarized. Fourth, Israel has overriding security control. And five, |
| 1:14.0 | non-Israeli, peaceful civilian administration. By that I mean a civilian administration that |
| 1:19.4 | doesn't educate its children for terror, doesn't pay terrorists, and doesn't launch terrorist |
| 1:25.2 | attacks against Israel. That's what we want to see in Gaza. |
| 1:28.7 | This is a plan, though, which has sparked fury among many in Israel, despair in Gaza, |
| 1:34.1 | and wide international condemnation. |
| 1:36.9 | Our correspondent in Jerusalem, John Donelson, was at the news conference. |
| 1:40.3 | Was it for that reason, the international condemnation? |
| 1:44.1 | I asked John that Mr. Netanyahu had decided to speak to the foreign press just ahead of the UN Security Council meeting? |
| 1:50.9 | It was a bit of a coincidence, wasn't it? |
| 1:52.8 | It's the first time he's given a press conference to foreign media in Israel for almost a year, and he chose to give this one one just as that security council was meeting and as ever |
| 2:05.4 | he was pretty slick he spoke in fluent english he had a slideshow presentation and he was absolutely |
| 2:13.3 | defiant and he squarely rejected not the specific criticism coming out of the Security Council, |
... |
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