00:00 Rob Parsons, hello to you.
00:02 Rob, nearly two months into this fighting and it feels like another major offensive
00:08 could be coming.
00:09 We heard of these leaflets being dropped in southern Gaza.
00:14 What more can you tell us about that?
00:15 Yeah, I mean, I think no great surprise that hostilities have resumed.
00:19 Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has been under immense pressure from his own
00:24 right wing within his government to resume hostilities as soon as possible, to go after
00:31 Hamas.
00:32 He's resisted because he's himself been under immense pressure from the international community,
00:37 including the United States, to stay with the hostage releases.
00:42 But we've had this hiatus.
00:43 Apparently, Hamas were not fulfilling their terms of the deal and now Israel has resumed.
00:48 What they seem to be doing, you refer to the leaflet thing, is to try to force people out
00:54 of the area to the east of Khan Yunis, which is one of the main towns in southern Gaza.
00:59 After they had already left northern Gaza.
01:01 After they had already left northern Gaza.
01:03 To persuade them to move to areas near to Rafa, which the Israelis are saying are safer
01:10 and have more conditions acceptable for refugees moving away from the areas which are going
01:17 to come under attack.
01:18 It describes Khan Yunis as a very dangerous combat zone and offers that advice.
01:23 It is also creating a map, a zone map of Gaza, hundreds of different zones in it, which it
01:31 will use in the future, it says, to advise people where to move.
01:35 So it will, for instance, say, look, we're going to be targeting such and such a zone,
01:39 best for your own safety if you move to another zone near the coast or whatever.
01:44 Perhaps that is in response to the criticism and the demands that he's been getting from
01:49 the Americans, particularly Anthony Blinken, who was in that joint press conference with
01:53 Netanyahu on Thursday.
01:56 Other criticism coming from the Americans is from the U.S. media, the New York Times
02:01 reporting that Israeli officials knew of the surprise attack by Hamas a year in advance.
02:09 There's been a certain amount of evidence coming out over the last few months since
02:12 this conflict started on with the attack on the 7th of October, that there had been intelligence
02:18 available to the Israeli military and to the government that this was a possibility.
02:23 But the New York Times has published something which seems to be much more concrete than
02:28 that.
02:29 It's called the Jericho Plan.
02:30 It's a 40-page document of intelligence analysis based on telephone conversations and documents
02:39 of one kind and other, emails, which points to a very specific plan developed over some
02:46 time and which was available to the Israelis over a year ago, over a year before the 7th
02:51 of October attack, in fact, detailing in pretty much precise form exactly what Hamas did on
03:01 October the 7th.
03:04 The question, of course, is, you know, why was this ignored?
03:07 One of the explanations for that is that in the past, Israeli intelligence had also received
03:15 information of this sort of kind, suggesting something was planned, but nothing had happened.
03:20 And they've become so inured to news of these sort of plans that, whether it actually did
03:24 happen, they were taken completely by surprise.
03:27 But one analyst was insisting, you know, just before the attack itself, that this was for
03:31 real and that Hamas had indeed carried out an exercise in July of this year based on
03:39 the plan, which the Israelis have nicknamed or called the Jericho Wall.
03:44 He forwarded her assessment or analysis to her seniors but was ignored.
03:49 All right, Rob.
03:50 Thank you very much, Rob Parsons, our chief foreign editor.
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