'There has been a barrage of rockets coming in from Lebanon'
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00:00 The latest happens on two fronts in the north and the south.
00:04 I'll start quickly with the north because there's been a barrage of rockets coming in
00:08 from Lebanon, the furthest south they've reached inside Israel to the town of Haifa.
00:15 And there's been a claim of responsibility for those 16 rockets from a Hamas group inside
00:22 Lebanon.
00:23 And then, but the IDF says there's actually been 30 rockets fired in total today coming
00:27 from the north.
00:29 And in any event, nothing could happen from Lebanon, from Lebanese territory, if Hezbollah
00:34 didn't agree.
00:35 So there is a Hezbollah agreement to this, perhaps a little further push, despite what
00:40 we heard from Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah in his speech a couple of days ago.
00:45 You know, it sounded more equivocal, but there's been an escalation.
00:48 There's no doubt about that.
00:50 In the south, there is a kind of a fog of war, but I can tell you what we can now see.
00:55 Israel has in effect split the Gaza Strip in two, South Gaza and North Gaza, and it's
01:01 tightening a band around Gaza City, which it has encircled and is entering with its
01:06 troops.
01:07 It's released some footage tonight suggesting that as it goes in, they're going in quite
01:13 slowly at the pace of a D9 bulldozer, as an Israeli military analyst put it.
01:17 They go in slowly.
01:19 They find either tunnels, or as they have produced video of tonight, they find rockets
01:26 and rocket launchers in a youth club with Palestinian Islamic Jihad rockets nearby,
01:32 or just outside a mosque with an electricity cord running into the mosque so that the rockets
01:38 can be launched from inside the mosque.
01:40 So definitely Israel suggesting that Hamas has embedded itself against all the rules
01:46 of war in places where it's very hard for them to be, for Israel to fire back at them.
01:53 But I have also read an Israeli military analyst suggesting that Hamas is letting Israel proceed
01:59 because it wants it in the heart of Gaza City, where it will be hardest for Israel to function
02:04 and easiest for Hamas to draw them in.
02:07 Israel's narrative coming up against personal tales on the Palestinian side.
02:12 There was an emotional moment this morning during the cabinet meeting of the Palestinian
02:19 Authority.
02:20 Let's take a look.
02:21 Children are writing their names on their bodies to be identified.
02:28 The mother of the three children who were buried under the rubble says to her children,
02:33 let me see you.
02:34 The prime minister of the Palestinian Authority
02:45 having to contain himself in reading out that message, Iris Machler.
02:52 You know, you couldn't accuse anyone in the Palestinian Authority of having any love lost
02:57 with Hamas.
02:58 But this now has become a story as well as the fight between Israel and Hamas about Palestinian
03:03 suffering.
03:04 Sorry about suffering, human suffering.
03:06 And on both sides, you know, you see Palestinian civilians running from massive aerial bombardments
03:12 while the people who began this war are safely ensconced beneath the ground in tunnels that
03:18 they don't make available to the population, to the ordinary population.
03:22 The suffering is enormous.
03:23 We have heard a number of 10,000, which, you know, it's a Hamas figure.
03:28 They don't include their fighters in that figure.
03:32 But let's say it's half, it's 50/50.
03:35 Then you've got thousands of civilians dead.
03:37 That includes children.
03:38 We know that because we've seen their funerals.
03:40 So this is just terrible suffering on the Palestinian side and terrible suffering on
03:45 the Israeli side.
03:46 So what you get if you're observing this and reporting on it like I am, is just every so
03:51 often you're overwhelmed because one image or another from one side or the other, just
03:57 it just it's like a knife to your heart.
04:00 And where you are in Jerusalem this evening, the focus for many is on the families of those
04:06 242 hostages now.
04:10 That's right.
04:11 The families of the hostages, I think, are uppermost in the minds of almost every Israeli.
04:18 It's a burning pain, you know, because it's been a month now.
04:23 There's really very little information, all the talk that there are negotiations, that
04:28 something's going to happen in the end.
04:30 Nothing has eventuated.
04:31 The families speak to the media every day.
04:34 They have meetings, vigils.
04:36 They meet Israeli leaders.
04:38 They meet foreign leaders.
04:39 And yet nothing seems to progress.
04:41 I think every Israeli can tell you the name of a small three-year-old girl called Abigail,
04:48 who was taken hostage in Gaza without her parents because they were killed.
04:52 Her eight-year-old brother and her six-year-old sister spent 12 hours squashed into a closet
04:58 to avoid being killed themselves.
05:00 And everyone here knows her name because it's as if she's everyone's child.
05:04 So the feeling that something has to be done and yet nothing is being done is an ongoing
05:10 trauma for Israelis, who I think are still traumatized by the marauding, by the events
05:16 of the attack, the brutal attack here on October the 7th that began this whole conflict.