Trump says Hamas has agreed to disarm

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

0:30And then we'll be learning about Francis Galton and the racist, discredited pseudoscience of eugenics with Desiree Birch. We'll meet many medieval saints in their bone boxes with Rachel Parrott. So if that sounds like your sort of thing, listen to You're Dead to Me wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. Bye. I'm Simon Jack. I'm Zing Zing. And on Good Bad Billionaire, we're exploring the life and fortune of music megastar Sir Paul McCartney. Macca. As one of the primary songwriters in The Beatles and with an extensive solo career, his work generates vast and continuous royalty streams. But were song royalties alone enough to break the billion?

1:10And earn him the title of the first British billionaire rock star? Find out in Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Listen now, search for Good Bad Billionaire wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

1:29Hello and welcome to News Hour from the BBC World Service. We're coming to you live from London. I'm James Menendez. And we're going to begin the programme today in Gaza, something we haven't done for a while. That's partly a reflection of other stories, such as the Iran war rising to the top of the agenda. And partly a reflection of the fact that there's been so little change in Gaza, with Israeli attacks continuing and living conditions for hundreds of thousands of displaced Gaza and still woeful, despite the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that took effect nine months ago. Today, though, came some movement, at least on the political front.

2:07An announcement from President Trump that Hamas had agreed to its complete disarmament and that Israel would withdraw from the devastated territory. Let's talk to our Middle East correspondent, Yolande Nell, who joins us now from Jerusalem. Yolande, the devil is always in the detail, isn't it? Do we know any more about how this might work in practice? Well, we've just had a 15 point roadmap published by the US led Board of Peace. We're looking at that at the moment alongside a document that the BBC was sent by a senior Palestinian official close to the recent talks between Hamas and regional mediators in Cairo.

2:46And, you know, this really relates the document we've seen to the revised proposals that Hamas had previously sent to the Board of Peace. So the new ones from the Board of Peace, the new outline seems to be what was presented to President Trump, what he has basically hailed as a major milestone. And first, quite a key point. It says that a timetable and implementation mechanisms of this roadmap will not be prepared until all parties approve it. And then they'll be prepared within a fortnight, within two weeks. Now, Hamas has been consistently saying that the first phase of the initial ceasefire plan has not been completed.

3:24It's brought up a lot of humanitarian commitments. It says that Israel has not kept to. And this document is saying that, you know, Israel and Hamas, the different Palestinian factions, must cease all military operations as they're moving into phase two. And then there's this kind of key point around the decommissioning of Hamas weapons. that we've all been paying such attention to because this is talking about a process to decommission and store heavy weapons, military production sites, depots of weapons and tunnels, saying that that will begin. It will be under the auspices of this new National Committee of Palestinian technocrats.

4:04It's been agreed. It's yet to go into Gaza. But saying that then this disarmament will take place in a gradual, sequential and time-bound manner with the suggestion that it will be linked to a phased Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. And then there's also in there, as the original document that we saw had suggested, commitments to the tens of thousands of civil servants in Gaza that had been part of the previous Hamas-run administration to say that they will be basically treated fairly and that those who don't pass security verification will be found compensation, that they will be dealt with fairly.

4:48Is there any talk about outside verification of this process of disarmament? There is a lot of reference to a kind of verification committee supported by the International Stabilisation Force, which has also yet to go into Gaza, although last Sunday the Israeli cabinet authorised that international force, some 200 troops, we were told, from friendly countries to go into Gaza at some point in the future. So yes, there are external sort of oversight mechanisms that are built into all of this. But, you know, inevitably, this roadmap does not go into the nitty gritty detail. And you talked about a sequential process, because it seemed a bit confusing to me from my reading whether Israel's complete withdrawal wouldn't happen until Hamas had disarmed, or whether it would be a sort of step-by-step process.

5:42What's your sense? I mean, yeah, that's still not totally clear. And the initial reaction from a number of the Israeli politicians who have talked about this has been reasserting that Israel will not withdraw before Hamas gives up its weapons. What complicates that, of course, is the fact that, you know, Israel, under the terms of the original ceasefire deal, was supposed to be left in control of 53 % of the Gaza Strip. But as the BBC has recently been reporting, that yellow line, as it's known, demarcating the area of control has been moved westwards with new displacements of hundreds of Palestinians even in the past few weeks, so that Israel is now in control of more than 60 % of Gaza And, you know, the prime minister has said a couple of months ago that that would increase to 70%.

6:33But just to be clear, we haven't yet had any official Israeli response to this, have we? That's right. Still no formal response from the Israeli government. And I don't think we'll be getting anything now until the end of the Jewish Sabbath. So that's coming, you know, on Saturday night at the earliest. And it's interesting that, you know, not that many Israeli politicians have come out to comment on this. I think, you know, they will have wanted to wait for this roadmap to be published and will be very aware that, you know, President Trump's response, calling this a monumental step towards lasting peace and security.

7:09Israel has to tread very carefully if Hamas has signed up to this. You know, it has to choose its next steps very, very carefully. Yeah, Yolan, thank you very much indeed. I'm a list correspondent, Yolan, now joining us from Jerusalem. Well, Bashar al-Baba is a Palestinian-American who's been a go-between between the Trump administration and Hamas. In 2024, he established Arab Americans for Trump, which was later rebranded as Arab Americans for Peace. That was in the beginning of 2025. So how serious does he think Hamas is about giving up its weapons? I believe that Hamas is very serious about giving up its weapons.

7:45About three weeks ago, they sent me a proposal, which I passed on to the White House, that effectively, in their terms, they were calling for a 10 to 15 year ceasefire. But at the same time, they talked about giving up their weapons to a Palestinian entity, which would be the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza. and they talked about no development of weapons. They talked about no smuggling of weapons into Gaza and they talked about no usage of the tunnels in Gaza. So I believe that they are very serious. I think that Hamas has been under a lot of pressure from other Palestinian groups to accept that formula because at the end of the day, the Israelis are looking at the disarmament of Hamas as an excuse not to go forward with any development of Gaza, any withdrawal from Gaza.

8:56And the Palestinians are aware of that. So everybody on the table wants to make sure that there is no excuse that is on the table for the Israelis to not withdraw from the Gaza Strip or at least begin the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and begin the reconstruction of Gaza. What do you think changed in the minds of the Hamas leadership? I mean, Hamas is an armed resistance organisation, presumably without weapons. I mean, it ceases to exist. It's nothing, right? You know, I have always told Hamas, It's either you or the people of Gaza. And, you know, there is a very important point that I think most people have not paid attention to it.

9:47Hamas is concerned about the security of its own elements as well as its leadership. And for any formula to work going forward, there has to be a guarantee that Hamas elements would not be pursued. would know their leadership be pursued in the future. And that is very important. Whether Hamas admits it publicly or not, I know it for a fact that that is a major concern of theirs. And do you think then that Hamas leaders, Hamas fighters, I mean, do they see themselves staying in Gaza? Or, I mean, would they leave? Yeah, I don't see them leaving, but I see them handing over their weapons, particularly the various elements within Hamas, handing over their weapons and abiding by the rules and regulations of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza and later on the Palestinian Authority.

10:51I don't see it. There's nowhere else for them to go. There is no place for them to go. I mean, can you see some of them being incorporated into a new security force for Gaza? I mean, in other words, just changing their badges. And I wonder what Israel would make of that. You know, Israel insists on vetting anyone that would be in the future Palestinian security forces. And so if they don't pass Israel's muster in that regard, they're not going to be in that force. And nobody is going to argue over the future of Gaza with regard to 100 or 200 people being in the security force. People in Gaza are so tired of the living conditions that they live through right now.

11:44They live on the beach without tents, no sanitation, no sufficient food, nothing of the most important components of a person's living conditions. And so the people of Gaza don't really care about whether there is going to be 100 or 200 people of Hamas in the security force that is going to ensue or not. And so at the end of the day, people want relief and Israel wants every single excuse possible in order not to allow Gaza to rebuild itself and not to allow the people of Gaza to have a decent living. What do you think the timeline for this is likely to be? I mean, is this a process that's going to take years?

12:41And do you see it as a gradual process with some weapons being handed over, Israel starting to pull back a bit, more weapons handed over, more pulling back? Is that how you see it working, if indeed it ever gets off the ground? I believe that it all depends on the United States, because the United States is the ultimate arbitrator in this situation. And President Trump is the one that can tell Netanyahu, go through with this proposal. Otherwise, there will be consequences that would affect you and Israel. And if the President of the United States does not put his weight behind this kind of proposal, then nothing is going to happen.

13:26I can assure you of that. And do you think President Trump is minded to put that pressure on Israel? And I also just wonder, I mean, who's leading the efforts on this for the administration? Well, I mean, presumably it's Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner leading the efforts. Realistically, I see Aryeh Lightstone being the person who is on the ground representing the Americans. But Aryeh, who is a very good friend of mine, has described his role as babysitting the Israelis. I mean, if you're going to sit and babysit the Israelis, it means you're going to accept a lot of things that the Israelis are willing to do that are not acceptable.

14:10You know, so it is the president that has to step up. It's either the Trump 20 point peace plan or it is not. Period. Bashar al-Baba speaking to us from Washington, D.C. still to come on the program the moment a young australian wildlife photographer captured the birth of a humpback whale and it was suddenly when she diverted her path and went 200 meters or so further out to sea i saw this incredible red plumage and i realized this is something unforgettable and rare it only took a second or two before that beautiful white oval shape shot up to the surface and to my relief it was a calf an incredible vision that i'll never forget Well, watchers think it's a first to it was recorded by a drone.

14:59That's coming up in about five minutes. One other headline this hour. Spain's Prime Minister has condemned the influx of tens of thousands of people from Morocco into Ceuta as an attack on Spain's territorial integrity. We'll be hearing more about that story in 15 minutes.

15:27This is James Menendez with News Out Live from the BBC. Let's turn now to the crisis engulfing football's world governing body, FIFA, over its proposal to sell stakes in the World Cup and other tournaments to private investors. That plan would seem to be unravelling spectacularly, despite FIFA's insistence that it'll press ahead with it. That's after the Asian Football Confederation joined its European counterpart and the federation that represents North and Central America and the Caribbean in rejecting the idea. And now an even more direct blow to the FIFA president, Gianni Infantino, after his senior advisor, Carlos Cordero, resigned, calling the proposal, quote, a bad deal for football.

16:07So what now? David Goldblatt's written extensively about FIFA. He's also the author of The Ball Is Round, a global history of football. Well, it all depends what you mean by FIFA. The national associations that make it up are not going to push it forward. It turns out the executive council of FIFA has had no discussions of this. Even Infantino's inner circle didn't know about this plan. So only one person is pushing ahead with anything, and that is Infantino. Is it dead in the water? I mean, if what I hear of the decisions made by three of the large federations, the Asian Football Confederation, UEFA in Europe and CONCACAF, North America and the Caribbean.

16:53And if I've said, you know, we're boycotting the World Cup, if this guy's ahead, we're not having it. And everybody toes the line within those confederations, then yeah, it's dead in the water. What is the essence of this story? Is it a failure of governance at FIFA, a failure of the way decisions are reached? Is that what's really irked people, particularly those federations? I mean, there is a fundamental structural problem in the political and economic organisation of FIFA and its global legal status. And this has been going on for 40 years. This is just series four of intractable governance problems, non-transparency and corruption at FIFA.

17:36This has been going on since the 1980s. And the problem is that FIFA sits in a complete grey area of international law, where only the Swiss law regarding NGOs, which is a completely pathetic legal instrument for regulation, actually has any oversight over it. So they can do what the hell they want, and nobody can touch them in jurisprudential terms. Secondly, it's made up of 211 football associations, all of which are non-transparent, or nearly all of which are non-transparent, undemocratic, patronage, transaction, politics-driven organisations. You put those two together inside FIFA, you have no opposition, no ideological debate, you just have a transaction of votes for money between the executive and the members.

18:27Nobody wants to rock the boat. While that is happening, there will be no oversight, no challenge, no transparency. And a space is created for those with the will to power, like Infantino, to basically go freelance and make pay and no one can touch him. So this requires the most profound structural reform. I wonder whether there'll be people listening to this who say, you know, that may all be true. It may be a highly imperfect organisation. I mean, life itself is messy. And yet FIFA was able to put on a fantastic show at this World Cup. So perhaps it's doing something right. Please. The miracle here is football.

19:15That's the point, is that football is such an extraordinary thing. and we, the global football public, have chosen to invest it with meaning. That is what makes it such an incredible experience. Without that, you know, no amount of branding or sorting out stadiums, right, or putting on bad halftime shows and hydration breaks means a damn thing. We are the people that make football great. And that is why we deserve better custodians than what we've got. We make the show, not FIFA. The writer David Goldblatt. Now, they say that as with so much in life, the key to success in wildlife photography is patience, luck and timing.

20:03Well, at just 20 years old, Alexander Forrest is almost too young to have had to deploy much of the first. However, he certainly had the other two in abundance when he managed to capture what's believed to be the first ever drone footage of a humpback whale giving birth. Alexander lives and works in New South Wales in Australia, where every year tens of thousands of the whales pass by on their winter migration north. It is one of nature's great spectacles, but the real spectacle was yet to come, as he's been telling me. So day to day, I'm actually an expedition filmmaker and photographer. When I'm not interstate or international, I am at home.

20:41I'm checking out what we call the humpback highway. That's where all our huge humpback whales, fifth largest whale, travel along the coast. We're so lucky to see them every year. And it's currently peak season. I was just going out for a routine flight, trying to make the most of this part of the season. And I could see from my aircraft and from the coast, every humpback whale just going up and down the coast at extremely fast speeds, really, really migrating. But there was this one whale, Solemn, right behind our beautiful crystal clear waters, right just there next to the surf break, going unusually slow.

21:18and this is a behaviour I'd never seen in my thousands of hours filming whales, thousands of whales seen. I've never seen this. I just knew I had to hit record. My first instinct was that perhaps this whale was sleeping. You see sleeping behaviour, but it's nothing like this very slow, consistent, laboured behaviour. And it was suddenly when she diverted her path and went 200 metres or so further out to sea, that was about 600 or 700 metres from the shoreline, that I saw this incredible red plumage and I realised this is something unforgettable and rare. And did you know at that point that she'd just given birth?

21:57I mean, you see red in the water, you think blood, you think possibly an attack by a shark maybe? Yeah, you see red in the water and perhaps you think the worst. I initially thought maybe an interaction with the predator, but it only took a second or two before that beautiful white oval shape shot up to the surface and to my relief, it was a calf, an incredible vision that I'll never forget. I can imagine. And what does a baby humpback whale look like? Just describe it for us. A baby humpback whale is beautiful, uncoordinated, playful. They're about 25 % smaller than their mothers. They are pale grey.

22:39Their colours are still setting in. They have to earn their stripes. to catch those first seconds on camera is just an experience I'll hold with me forever. And tell us what it is that you were able to see with the drone that perhaps you wouldn't be able to see if you were underwater. I mean, that's assuming you're in the right place. I mean, I guess it's the framing of that image, the crystal clear water, as you described it, the blue and the red, isn't it? That's so striking. Yes, it's so incredible to have captured this perspective from the air. It's rarely documented perspective. We believe it's the only drone video of a live humpback whale berth in the world.

23:21It was seriously incredible. And I was shaking after I got the footage, just putting the pieces together. I had no idea what I had just filmed initially. I was crying on the inside, a surprise on the outside. Absolutely adrenaline through the roof. What's happened to mum and baby now? Are they being monitored or are they just doing their own thing? So we were lucky to monitor the calf shortly after. I called up the organisation for the rescue and research of cetaceans in Australia. And with them, we coordinated a monitoring for about four hours, as much as we could until the sunset. Mum just nurturing behaviour and calf, figuring everything out.

24:03the first moments of a hunt back whale's life caught on camera and what that means for science will be fascinating to find out the very lucky wildlife photographer videographer alexander forest uh speaking to me from australia you're listening to news ad do stay with us lots more to come

24:44The End

24:51And then we'll be learning about Francis Galton and the racist, discredited pseudoscience of eugenics with Desiree Birch. We'll meet many medieval saints in their bone boxes with Rachel Parrott. So if that sounds like your sort of thing, listen to You're Dead to Me wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. Bye. I'm Simon Jack. I'm Zing Zing. And on Good Bad Billionaire, we're exploring the life and fortune of music megastar Sir Paul McCartney. Macca. As one of the primary songwriters in The Beatles and with an extensive solo career, his work generates vast and continuous royalty streams. But were song royalties alone enough to break the billion?

25:31And earn him the title of the first British billionaire rock star? Find out in Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Listen now, search for Good Bad Billionaire wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

25:48Welcome back to News Hour. Next week, Myanmar's military ruler, Ming-ong Leng, will get a significant boost to his quest for international legitimacy when he makes an official visit to neighbouring Thailand. Earlier this year, he turned himself into a notionally civilian president after holding an election which was widely condemned as rigged. Meanwhile, his army's retaken much of the territory it lost to the armed opposition movement, thanks to backing from Russia and from China. Our South East Asia correspondent Jonathan Head has been to the Thai border town of Maysot to hear what those who have fled the civil war think about the military's growing strength.

26:25In an old house down a side street in Maysot, a group of teenage boys cook their evening meal together. What are you cooking? Fish eggs. Fish eggs? Some are as young as 13. Yet not long ago, they were armed and fighting. So you're the chef? Yeah. It's a shelter for the children who are under 18 years old, who are involved in the war or conflict. I work with them. Like the boys she cares for, Kine is a refugee from the civil war in Myanmar. It's not her real name. She still fears retribution on her family by the military regime against which she too once took up arms. But she's now decided she can do more good by helping the war's victims.

27:12We are not born to be a soldier. And after five years, for me, I learned a lot about the real situation. And I start to see the children. I see what I have to do. I understood, you know, my muscle is not in my arms. It's in my brain. I can do it a different way for the long fight. Revolution is not a short time. We don't know how many years we have to keep going on.