Israel wants ‘genuine’ disarmament of Hamas

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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.

0:51Hello, I'm Sean Lay. Thanks for downloading the BBC's World Tonight podcast from Friday the 31st of July. Will Hamas give up its weapons? Donald Trump's Board of Peace thinks it's secured that commitment. Israel insists its troops won't leave Gaza until Hamas is disarmed. The two things are supposed to happen simultaneously. We'll examine whether there's a way through. With thousands of those who entered Spain's territory in Africa having left again, what lies behind the Suta surge? We hear from a teenage chess player who's been told a rule made to encourage women to play may now mean that she or one of her teammates has to make way.

1:28for a man. Next week, Myanmar's de facto ruler will receive some much desired international recognition for his coup when he's welcomed to Thailand. Five and a half years after the military seized power in Myanmar, we'll hear why some who've been fighting for the restoration of democracy are now giving up. Who will succeed? Annie Burnham as Mayor of Manchester. We have an update from The Count. And have you been seduced by the siren sequence in the Odyssey? We'll hear from the musician who performed it, and we'll hear the ancient instrument, the Aulus, played for us. If I've tempted you, stay with us here on The World Tonight.

2:04Hamas says it's agreed to completely disarm if Israel withdraws forces from Gaza and ends its attacks. The news was confirmed by an official from the Board of Peace convened by the US President Donald Trump. Taking questions from the press on Friday afternoon, President Trump was asked about the announcement. Do you have assurances from Israel that they are on board with this deal? And what comes first? Does Israel pull back and then Hamas disarms or does Hamas need to disarm and then Israel leaves Gaza? I have an understanding with Israel. Israel is very happy about it. Israel helped us. And they've been very good.

2:40They've been very good about it. Most people said that would be a deal that would be undoable. Now, will it go through its ups and And that is a very complex situation over there. The people are very complex and difficult. Many cases wonderful, many cases not so wonderful. But that will be a great breakthrough. Nobody's ever thought that would be possible to disarm Hamas. President Trump, apologies for the distortion at the end of the interview. That was on the original White House feed. So are the Israelis, to quote President Trump, very happy? The only official interview given by an Israeli government spokesperson has been from Danny Danon, Israel's ambassador at the United Nations.

3:21He told CNN that Israel is looking forward to implementing the deal, but... The main point is whether Hamas is actually willing to disarm or not. Because if they are playing games and they offer cosmetic solutions, it will not work for us. You know, disarmament means the weapon is out of Gaza, they have no control of the weapon, and then we can move forward. Otherwise, you know, they will start to play games and we are not naive and we are not stupid. Danny Danone, the Israel ambassador at the United Nations. And what about those whose lives would be directly affected if Hamas did disarm and if Israeli forces did withdraw from the Strip?

4:01Tala El Maghrab is 18 years old, lives in Gaza and is studying to be a nurse. What does she make of this potential agreement? We hear promises about ending the fighting. Every time people hear about a possible case fire, they hope. But when these promises are broken, it is a great more fear. And certainly all we want is to live in safety, have a normal life and see an end. However, after everything people in Gaza have experienced, it is difficult to feel completely convisted until we see a real challenge in the ground. Across the border in southern Israel is Erez Manor. We don't think this agreement will happen because we don't believe Hamas will do it.

4:55They're lying. They want to continue to kill us as soon as possible. It means that they just want to get things that will be easy for them later. They will not give all the weapons they have. They will hide some and bring some more later. No way it will happen. Well, I've been speaking to Professor Beverly Milton Edwards, a Middle East analyst who's advised multiple governments on regional policy over the past three decades. She's the author of the book Hamas, the quest for power. What does Professor Milton Edwards think of today's announcement? Well, I mean, I think there's a lot of people, including President Trump himself, who are labelling this agreement by Hamas to decommission its weapons as historic.

5:43And to be fair, I mean, if this was to happen, it would be the kind of miracle that could only take place in the Holy Land. And it would certainly need the prayers of all three faiths plus one to achieve. But in the long run of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, we've been here before. There have been many, many, many roadmaps, agreements, commissions of inquiry, all of which one way or another look to end the violence and to restore security for Israel and for Palestinians to have the kind of political horizon that is not so far away that it could never be imagined, but the kind of political horizon that gives them self-determination and independence.

6:27all of which is extremely complex. But the agreement in and of itself is not going to end the situation in Gaza, and nor is it overnight going to give security to either the Palestinians or the Israelis. There are far too many steps that are involved along the way in terms of Hamas giving up its weapons, its production sites, handing over maps to locate its tunnels, and for Israeli forces to end their occupation of the Gaza Strip. I mean, presently they occupy 73 % of the territory of Gaza. So even to get to the status quo of the original agreement that was reached last year, they need to go back to a 53 % line.

7:17So this is where all the conditionality, the monitoring, the verification, who monitors, who verifies, comes into the picture. And who wants to spoil the whole process? Yeah, I mean, spoilers have been a problem in the past, haven't they, where people have said one thing and then their actions have been different. Just in terms of what was in this agreement, one aspect of it talked about things happening simultaneously or in lockstep is another phrase that was used. So in other words, decommissioning would happen. And at the same time as decommissioning was taking place, Israel would gradually reduce its troop numbers as more decommissioning took place.

7:53Is there a mechanism to achieve that? Well, I mean, it's not really clear. There appears to be a mechanism called the International Verification Committee. Obviously, it's probably too early for us to see what kind of maps there will be in terms of Israeli withdrawals. We're unsure about buffer zones that have been created in Gaza since the 7th of October. We don't know about Gaza's border with Egypt at Rafa, which Israel currently occupies. So, I mean, in terms of both sides, and again, the whole discussion about whose weapons, do we mean weapons for personal use? And the issue here really for your listeners to think about is, yes, there's an international verification board, but do we know it, like Northern Ireland, whether it's going to be an independent international verification committee?

8:45I'm glad you mentioned Northern Ireland because a lot of people listening to this will say, well, we had decommissioning. We had it with the IRA. We had it with the loyalist paramilitaries as well. And it worked. And they will wonder why it's not possible to say that that could be achieved here, too. Well, what we can see on paper so far is not following what we would call the Northern Ireland model. The Northern Ireland model was a truly independent commission, and it was part of a substantive peace agreement to end a longstanding 40-year-old conflict with support from both sides of the border, plus funding from the European Union for peace processes to support that, to de-conflict communities, to build confidence, to build trust, to achieve accountability and justice.

9:37And unfortunately, so far, all of those things are absent from President Trump's plan for peace in the Middle East. Now, obviously, it's helpful to have some degree of ambiguity at these very delicate moments for both sides, because they have to sell it to an audience. Netanyahu has to sell it to an audience. And so does the new leader of Hamas, Khalil al-Hayr. But you do have to have the scaffolding. And what we're not really seeing is the kind of scaffolding that was absolutely essential to the kind of peace that you've just described that took place in Northern Ireland and that today that we live with, with the exception of distant Republicans.

10:20What do you think would be the motivation for what remains of the Hamas leadership or indeed what is now the Hamas leadership that's replaced all those people are dead? What would be their motivation for agreeing to decommissioning in principle? Well, I think the motivation is if we take this step, then we have to make Israel also become part of the process. So it's kind of, you know, this whole brinkmanship, who'll blink first, then they get to blame the other side for non-progression. So to be specific, Israel says we will withdraw our troops once Hamas decommissions. And if Hamas says we will decommission once Israel withdraws its troops, both sides can then blame the other and act as if they're being virtuous.

11:02Yes. And of course, this is the whole history of conflict is this kind of messaging. That is the professor talking to me, Professor Beverly Milton Edwards, about the latest announcement on Gaza. Souta is a Spanish city in Africa, where that continent comes closest to mainland Europe. At the start of the week, the territory, which measures only 18.5 square kilometres, had a population of 80 ,000 people. Between Thursday morning and Friday afternoon, it surged to around 140 ,000, as would-be migrants forced their way through the border fence, or swam around it, from neighbouring Morocco. They said they felt they had little to lose.

11:49I was in Tangier where I was working. I woke up that morning and heard several young people, boys and girls, saying that Suta had opened at 10pm. So I told the people who were with me that we should go to find work. We're already working here under terrible conditions and our rights are not being respected.

12:09This morning I heard the news and I came here, but I saw hell. We walked 14 kilometres through the mountains but we told ourselves it didn't matter as long as the border was open. Once we got here, we were told to take the road to the sea. Then I found myself completely submerged in water. I was choking. That's when I backed away. I remember that I had two children and I couldn't risk my life. And by late Friday afternoon, according to Spain's Interior Ministry, some 48 ,000 people, the vast majority of the influx, had voluntarily left Suta. CBS reporter Aidan Stretch was on the beach watching some of them depart.

12:46Over the last 48 hours, tens of thousands of people have poured across the border from Morocco into this tiny Spanish enclave of Ceuta. Many of them are now lined up here in the water, ready to come home. Many of them told us that they came here in search of jobs, of money, of food. One of them told us that he wanted to play European soccer. Some people that we spoke to said that they haven't been able to find food for 24 hours and are now lining up to return home voluntarily. Some young men told us that they had read media posts that suggested that a recent Spanish Supreme Court ruling would allow them to enter Ceuta from Morocco and claim asylum here.

13:25But as you can see, some are already beginning to swim home as that has become clear that that is not true. That's Adrian Stretch from America's CBS. The Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez hesitant to suit her where he called the scenes deplorable. With his government facing angry recriminations from the likes of Italy, Denmark and Finland, the European Commission was quick to insist that there are no onward movements towards the European continent. Reform UK's Nigel Farage was among a number of European politicians to claim the rush had been prompted by the Spanish government's decision to allow more than one million undocumented migrants already in Spain to apply to formalise their status.

14:05Let's try to get some clarity as to what may lay behind the dramatic incursion over the last couple of days and the almost as dramatic dispersal. On the line from Lisbon is Ricardo Fabiani, director of the North Africa Project at the International Crisis Group. It describes itself as an independent organisation working to prevent war and shape policies to build a more peaceful world. Ricardo, thanks for joining us on The World tonight. Just before we get into what's happened, Can you just very briefly explain to us how Spain comes to have part of its territory on the continent of Africa? Well, it's basically a piece of land, of real estate that Spain has had for several centuries, way before the wave of modern colonialism started in the 19th century in Africa.

14:55and most importantly this is a territory that spain doesn't regard as a sort of colonial you know leftover it sees it that's actually part of its national territory and because of its peculiar history of you know not being associated with colonialism and which is why and this is something that the moroccans challenge they disagree with it yeah i mean what do you think explains this sudden influx, what do you think is the most likely explanation? Because Pedro Sanchez offered two. He said one might be a decision by Spain's Supreme Court preventing migrants being sent back if they arrive by sea.

15:34And the other one was people smugglers, but he didn't mention Morocco at all. Yes, which is actually quite surprising, considering that Spain and Morocco already had a major crisis over Ceuta back in 2021, when Morocco let several thousand migrants cross the border and effectively enter Ceuta. At the time, this was because of Spain's position over the disputed territory of Western Sahara. Morocco was unhappy with it. And by letting these thousands of people into Ceuta, it sent a message to Spain that it needed to change its position. Now, five years later, we are facing the same situation. with actually much higher numbers of migrants entering Ceuta.

16:21I think it's plausible to assume that there is a message behind this. Of course, we don't have evidence for that. We don't know exactly what the message is. But it's very hard to imagine that the Moroccan authorities didn't know anything and didn't really have any role. Because presumably there are Moroccan guards on the Moroccan side of the border fence. Is that true? Absolutely. This is one thing. And we already have reports from journalists in Ceuta saying that Moroccans are telling them, Moroccan migrants who went into Ceuta, are telling them that they were encouraged by Moroccan security guards and border guards.

17:02So clearly, the Moroccans knew about this, and they didn't stop them, or they didn't play the same role that they could have played and that they did play over the previous months. Again, these are obviously, you know, indications. There is no solid evidence, but still it points in a certain direction. Pedro Sanchez visited Algiers, the capital of Algeria, recently. Algeria supports Western Sahara's independence movement rather than Moroccan sovereignty. Is it possible that Mr. Sanchez's kind of coosying up to Algeria might have irritated Morocco again because of this dispute over Western Sahara?

17:42So that is a possible interpretation, a possible explanation for all of this. The Moroccans must have not been too pleased with the visit and the rapprochement between Algeria and Spain, and they might have wanted to send a clear message to Spain that it shouldn't get too close to Algeria, given that these two countries still have a dispute and a diplomatic crisis that they haven't really solved. Another possibility, of course, is related to the fact that Morocco has aligned itself with Israel and has become, you know, obviously a very close ally of the U.S. And we know that both the Americans and the Israelis didn't really have very good relations for a while now with Spain.

18:30You know, these are obviously, again, suppositions. There is nothing to back up these claims, but are explanations that could make sense. Riccardo Fabiani of the International Crisis Group, thank you very much. Back in 1994, the Four Nations Chess League, known by the acronym 4NCL, ruled that all First Division teams that played for it would be required to have at least one player from each gender on their roster. The idea was to boost female participation in what was a largely male sport. The rule has duly been observed ever since. Now three decades on, competition has thrown up a scenario probably no one at the time had considered.

19:11What happens when an all-female team from the lower tiers finally makes it to the first division? She Plays to Win is just such a team, and it's now finding out. Emily Mayton, who's 18, is a member of the team, and when she came into the World Tonight studio earlier, I asked her first how She Plays to Win had come about. It started out with 15 of us in lockdown. That's when I first joined the team. And since then, we've now expanded to over 1 ,800 young female players who are all sort of improving their chess. And we formed this team for the Four Nations Chess League, which we've now reached the top division of.

19:45So the Four Nations League, you've got a big competition coming up. At what point did you realise there might be a problem? We've known ever since we started this team that the rule was there and that it was something we might have to deal with one day. And we have been sort of talking to them since the start and saying, you know, if we did end up getting promoted to this top division, then, you know, what would they do? They've always been like, wait until you get there. It's not a problem. And so it's only really since we won the division back in May that it's become a proper debate that they've had to deal with.

20:13What did you say to the league? Have there been sort of negotiations? Have there been discussions with the league? The rule was introduced because female chess players are so underrepresented. I think it's only 11 % at that top level of chess that are female. And so that rule... Even today? Even today, yeah. And that rule's been in place for what, more than 30 years? It's 1994, I believe, that it was introduced. and the rule was of course introduced to put more women into chess so our argument is why are you now using that same rule to exclude women from the team and make us bring a male player on?

20:39What do you now have to do? Unless anything changes with the rule we'll have to find a male player and bring them into the team and they'll have to play for us. The female players that are already there will get less game time. It might be that the girls don't get to play all of the weekends. It might be that some go and find other teams where they can play all the weekends. I mean this is quite a big thing for somebody particularly at that young age, to be told that something you've been competing in and dreaming about and you put all your effort into, you might not be able to play, even though your team is good enough to play.

21:09Exactly. We've proven that we can compete at that level, that we're just as good as all of these male players. We hope that we can be sort of an inspiration for younger players, because I know when I was growing up, I had very few older female players that I look up to. You don't speak for the team. You can only speak for yourself individually, Emily. Let me put you, just to hear what your thoughts are on this, this is what Mike Truren from 4NCL, the league, said. Since its inception in 1994, the top division has always been a mixed team competition, each team requiring a mix of male and female.

21:41We remain the only league in the UK that we are aware of that encourages female participation in chess by requiring mixed teams. Yeah, and of course, back in 1994, it was a huge step for them to introduce these mixed teams and to have that female player on the team. But when you've got this all-female team, which they probably never expected to happen back in 1994, they need to think about why the rules are in the first place. And if they are trying to encourage female participation, which I think is important given how underrepresented we are, it should be the case that the rule is changed. I just wonder what your experience has been playing chess as you've grown up and as you've become more involved with the game.

22:20What sort of things have teachers and things said to you over the years? So this was at the European Schools Championship back in, I think, 2022. This coach made, I think it was a tweet or something, saying, congratulations, Emily Mayton, you're competing to win this event, which is obviously great. But he then went on to say it takes a village to create a strong female chess player. In other words, it's because of us that you're here. And it's just those sorts of comments that make you feel, you know, am I meant to be here? Is this world built for me? If the rule were to be scrapped, it could then mean that you go back to having single sex teams.

22:54They could be all male teams again. Would that be OK? You know, you don't want to feel like you're excluding one group on either side. So it's a really hard call to make. It's also important to think about the women who are currently on the teams and making sure that they retain their place and everybody still gets these opportunities. In an ideal world, we won't be having these conversations at all about the gender of the players on the chess team. But because we're such minority and because the rule is going against what it was introduced to do, it's become this problem. Hopefully in 10 years time, it will be 50-50 or close and we won't have to debate it in the slightest.

23:24That was Emily Mayton there from She Plays to Win.

23:32Hello, Greg Jenner here. I'm the host of You're Dead to Me, the BBC comedy show that takes history seriously. Every episode, I pair up a top historian with a fantastic comedian, and we have a lovely, funny, fascinating chat about a different subject from world history. And in this new series, we're beginning with an epic voyage through the story of Homer, the Iliad, and the Odyssey. And that's with Kyle Smith-Bino joining us. And then we'll be learning about Francis Galton and the racist, discredited pseudoscience of eugenics with Desiree Burch. We'll meet many medieval saints in their bone boxes with Rachel Parrott.

24:05So if that sounds like your sort of thing, listen to You're Dead to Me wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. Bye.

24:16Now you are listening to The World Tonight. It is just approaching 29 minutes past 10. Let's bring you an up to date on the headlines so far. Coming in, the vote for the Manchester Mayor is still under. That counting in the vote for the Manchester Mayor is still underway. We'll hear from our reporter at the city's co-op live arena before the end of the programme. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has said, described as an attack the influx of around 50 ,000 migrants who entered his country's North African territory of Suta. Officials say the majority have now returned to Morocco. And Hamas says it's agreed to completely disarm if Israel withdraws forces from Gaza and ends its attacks there.