Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
Speaker 1: It's Thursday, July three, twenty twenty five. Fijian military personnel
Speaker 1: should be allowed to serve in the Australian Defense Forces.
Speaker 1: That's the call from Fiji's Prime Minister Sidaveni Rambuoka. He
Speaker 1: also says China mustn't be allowed to develop a military
Speaker 1: base of its own in the region. Reckoning for the
Speaker 1: childcare center as the Victorian government re yields from allegations
Speaker 1: a serial predator abused children across multiple daycare centers. Mobile
Speaker 1: phones and other devices will be banned and they'll possibly
Speaker 1: be CCTV surveillance of kids and staff. That huge story
Speaker 1: is live now at the Australian dot com dot au.
Speaker 1: Peace in the Middle East, Donald Trump seems to think
Speaker 1: he's got it sorted. Ben Jamin Nettania, who is heading
Speaker 1: to the White House and the deal maker in chief,
Speaker 1: says they'll have a deal today. On the Front are
Speaker 1: correspondents Joanni Bishan and Liam Mendez on the new push
Speaker 1: for a ceasefire. There's been conflict in the Middle East
Speaker 1: for a couple of thousand years now, the Romans, the Crusaders, Jews, Christians, Muslims,
Speaker 1: and now Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: Israel has agreed to the necessary conditions to finalize the
Speaker 2: sixty days ceasefire. I hope for the good of the
Speaker 2: Middle East that Hamas takes this deal, because it will
Speaker 2: not get better, it will only get worse.
Speaker 1: That was an Ai voice reading the president's social media post.
Speaker 1: The deal maker in chief says he's got a deal,
Speaker 1: or he's going to get a deal, or there's a
Speaker 1: deal to be done.
Speaker 3: How far were you going to be with Matt Yahoo
Speaker 3: about ending the war? And he wants it to He's
Speaker 3: he wants to tend to but is there a point
Speaker 3: where you're told not Yahoo, Like you've got to endless
Speaker 3: Now you've got to stake a he wants to.
Speaker 1: I think we'll have a deal next year, that's right.
Speaker 1: Benjamin Netanya, who the Israeli Prime Minister, is heading to Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. Early next week and says he'll be meeting
Speaker 1: with Trump, Vice President j d Vance, and top dogs
Speaker 1: Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth and Steve Wikoff. He's the former
Speaker 1: property developer and Trump buddy who's been leading negotiations for
Speaker 1: Mideast peace.
Speaker 3: Can't be in there, and.
Speaker 2: Then I see vance in the skirts.
Speaker 3: Look at the Michael Rubil.
Speaker 1: It's been a hell of a month, a twelve day
Speaker 1: shooting war with Iran, American strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities,
Speaker 1: civilian deaths in Gaza at food distribution sites. Donald Trump swearing.
Speaker 2: We have we basically have two countries that have been
Speaker 2: fighting so long and so hard that they don't know
Speaker 2: what the fuck they're doing. Do you understand that?
Speaker 1: And now maybe peace on the ground in Israel. Our
Speaker 1: correspondents Joanni Bishan and Liam Mendez are just getting used
Speaker 1: to life outside the bomb shelter. Liam, what's life like
Speaker 1: in Tel Aviv these days?
Speaker 4: Well, it's been like night and day compared to when
Speaker 4: Israel was at war with Iran. About an hour after
Speaker 4: the ceasefire was announced, things just completely changed. At first,
Speaker 4: before the ceasefire, all of Tel Aviv was empty. It
Speaker 4: was amazing, almost in a way where we could get
Speaker 4: a park very easily. We'd get from one hour of
Speaker 4: town to the other in a matter of ten to
Speaker 4: twenty minutes, that's how empty it was. It was like
Speaker 4: Covid again. But then an hour into the ceasefire, everyone
Speaker 4: came out, it was impossible to get a reservation at
Speaker 4: a restaurant. It's quite remarkable to watch everyone just emerge
Speaker 4: out of the bunker and resume life and go back
Speaker 4: to normal, you know, after being through what was very
Speaker 4: traumatic twelve days. We saw a lot of people genuinely
Speaker 4: terrified and panicking when the air raid tyrants would go off,
Speaker 4: and when people would file from the beach or from
Speaker 4: the streets into an air raid shelter. And then all
Speaker 4: of that sort of disappeared. It went into the distance,
Speaker 4: and it seems like everyone's just forgotten about it.
Speaker 1: Only something that hasn't changed is the hostage situation. There
Speaker 1: are still about fifty hostages remaining in Gaza of the
Speaker 1: two hundred plus who were taken by Hamas back in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three. What's happening with those hostages and what
Speaker 1: do you think their fate is going to be if,
Speaker 1: as Donald Trump is saying, we get some kind of
Speaker 1: deal next week.
Speaker 3: Well, it's extremely depressing to think we currently have fifty
Speaker 3: hostages that are being held in Gaza, but not all
Speaker 3: of them are alive. The estimation is that roughly about
Speaker 3: twenty three or thereabouts still living and the rest bodies
Speaker 3: that are being held by Ramasen that itself is so
Speaker 3: abhorrent to think about that this terrorist organization is holding
Speaker 3: the bodies of people, and around Tel Aviv and around
Speaker 3: the rest of Israel, you'll walk around and you'll see
Speaker 3: the posters that are calling for the living hostages to
Speaker 3: come back, but they're also posters for those who have died.
Speaker 3: And they didn't die in captivity, although some of them did.
Speaker 3: Some of them died on October seven, and ramas has
Speaker 3: just been holding their bodies for almost two years. So
Speaker 3: the families have no eeed to agree for them, and
Speaker 3: it's truly an appalling situation that they're still there. But
Speaker 3: I guess what the hostage families here have been saying
Speaker 3: is that the ceasefire that was managed to be broken
Speaker 3: with Iran that presented an opportunity for further negotiations and
Speaker 3: discussions over the hostages in Gaza. In fact, what the
Speaker 3: hostages and families for them, that's the organization that advocates
Speaker 3: for families here. What that forum one we're saying is
Speaker 3: that the ceasefire with Iran was a missed opportunity to
Speaker 3: broker a further deal to get the hostages out, and
Speaker 3: that the ceasefire with Iran should have been predicated on
Speaker 3: such a deal. It shouldn't have been a ceasefire that
Speaker 3: only focused on stopping the ballistic missiles coming into Israel.
Speaker 3: The hostages should have underpinned those talks the entire time,
Speaker 3: So at this stage it wouldn't appear as though people
Speaker 3: on the ground think that there's much hope of getting
Speaker 3: the hostages out through a military campaign. That's been the
Speaker 3: government's position from the start that military campaigns are what
Speaker 3: provide the leverage for the Israeli government to negotiate the
Speaker 3: hostages released. But what we know is that the hostages
Speaker 3: get out through agreements. In the main, some hostages have
Speaker 3: been released through rescue operations, but the numbers are very small,
Speaker 3: and the hostage families here are saying that the only
Speaker 3: way they'll get their loved ones back is through a deal,
Speaker 3: and that's what the hope is now.
Speaker 1: Moving forward here in Australia, we see a lot of
Speaker 1: distressing footage of humanitarian suffering in Gaza, people who are
Speaker 1: hungry and queuing up at distribution centers for aid. The
Speaker 1: Israeli Defense forces have admitted that some of the people
Speaker 1: seeking aid were killed by Israeli troops. What's going on
Speaker 1: as far as we can tell, Yonian and why is
Speaker 1: this so difficult?
Speaker 3: Well, what appears to be going on is that the
Speaker 3: distribution of aid has been shambolic. It's high risk and dangerous.
Speaker 3: We know that there's no screening process for the Palestinians
Speaker 3: who are rightfully queuing up for food at those aid
Speaker 3: distribution centers, and what that means is that mixed within
Speaker 3: the crowds of ordinary people are members of Hamas. And
Speaker 3: what we also know is that the IDF has made
Speaker 3: admissions to several dozen people having been killed. They've admitted
Speaker 3: to mistakes, grievous grievous mistakes in the process of distributing
Speaker 3: that aid. And what we've had in the last few
Speaker 3: days is the IDF updating its protocols and instituting a
Speaker 3: range of new infant structure around the delivery of aid,
Speaker 3: to include signage and directions and concrete barriers to allow
Speaker 3: for the better flow of the human traffic in the
Speaker 3: area in order to access the aid distribution. And the
Speaker 3: hope is that moving forward this will be cleared up
Speaker 3: and the food that is available to be delivered into
Speaker 3: Gaza can actually reach the people who need it.
Speaker 1: Coming up more from our Middle East correspondents Joanni Bishan
Speaker 1: and Leam Mendez. Liam, You and Yonni have been traveling
Speaker 1: around the country talking to ordinary Israelis as you complete
Speaker 1: your reporting of this story, do you get a sense
Speaker 1: from Israelis since Donald Trump has started talking about peace
Speaker 1: that they are hopeful, more hopeful now than perhaps they
Speaker 1: were before the Iran War broke out.
Speaker 4: There is definitely a sense of hope. But one theme
Speaker 4: that keeps coming up is that the Israelis are just
Speaker 4: locked into the fact that these wars come up every
Speaker 4: six to eight years. There's an expectation that people need
Speaker 4: to be ready for either a terrorist attack or some
Speaker 4: sort of attack. Someone was saying to me a couple
Speaker 4: of days ago that they are constantly on the lookout
Speaker 4: for someone that's trying to kill them. The Israelis are
Speaker 4: living in this constant state of peril where they are
Speaker 4: just waiting for when is the next siren going to happen.
Speaker 4: For the first time in a week since the ceasefire,
Speaker 4: we had an alert go off preparing us for a
Speaker 4: potential attack. Now, a ballistic missile from Yemen, a single
Speaker 4: ballistic missile was intercepted by the IDEF yesterday. But there
Speaker 4: is never a true sense of peace and quiet that
Speaker 4: we're so used to having back at home. People are
Speaker 4: still on edge, and it's a fact of life that
Speaker 4: Israel is going to be at war with at least
Speaker 4: one neighbor at any point in time.
Speaker 1: On Benjamin Nettanna, who's on his way to Washington, we
Speaker 1: can only assume that he'll have an Oval Office meeting
Speaker 1: with the President and JD. Vance and the other top brass.
Speaker 1: Some of those meetings haven't gone so well for the
Speaker 1: foreign leaders who've put themselves up. What do you think
Speaker 1: it tells us that Benjamin Nettanna, who is agreeing to
Speaker 1: go to Washington at this stage, does this mean that
Speaker 1: a deal is actually in the office.
Speaker 3: Well, I think, first of all, I'd say that Benjamin
Speaker 3: nettannia who is a very shrewd and very savvy politician.
Speaker 3: So I'm not expecting to see any scenes, as we
Speaker 3: might call it, in the Oval Office like we saw
Speaker 3: with Vladimir Zelenski of Ukraine. I'm not too sure as
Speaker 3: yet how people should read this visit to Washington. On
Speaker 3: the one hand, we've had Donald Trump quite insistently and
Speaker 3: quite typically getting on truth social and calling for a
Speaker 3: ceasefire to occur as soon as possible, and effectively imploring
Speaker 3: the Israeli Prime Minister to acquiesce to that. There is
Speaker 3: a school of thought that says that Netna, who could
Speaker 3: viably agree to some sort of ceasefire deal because he's
Speaker 3: in such a strong position politically in Israel, given the
Speaker 3: successes that occurred in Iran, so he could agree to
Speaker 3: a cease fire, even if it means causing some degradation
Speaker 3: of his coalition here. On the other hand, I think
Speaker 3: it's also worth considering that there have been many opportunities
Speaker 3: to rake over the coals of a cease fire and
Speaker 3: they have mounted to nothing. And it's worth examining another
Speaker 3: aspect of this, which is that Benjamin Netna, who is
Speaker 3: currently on trial here in Israel, a criminal trial, and
Speaker 3: he was due to give two days of evidence this week.
Speaker 3: In fact, his legal team had called for that evidence
Speaker 3: to be postponed on security grounds and diplomatic grounds of
Speaker 3: the highest order. A judge rejected that claim, asking for
Speaker 3: further evidence, and in response, Benjamin Netanya, who turned up
Speaker 3: to the court on Sunday with no less than the
Speaker 3: head of the Mossad, David Barnaya and the head of
Speaker 3: IDF Intelligence, And after they gave evidence in a closed court,
Speaker 3: the judge agreed to postpone his evidence by a week
Speaker 3: and we'll hear further evidence next week to put that
Speaker 3: off as well. So I think people should keep that
Speaker 3: in mind when BB goes to visit Donald Trump. There
Speaker 3: has been a war with Iran and there is going
Speaker 3: to be a meeting of minds there in Washington, and
Speaker 3: I think top of the agenda will be discussions about
Speaker 3: regional security and the potential for further operations to take
Speaker 3: place in light of what's just occurred. So I think
Speaker 3: there's hope that there may be talk of a ceasefire,
Speaker 3: but the suggestion is that there could be broader security
Speaker 3: discussions that are going to take place.
Speaker 1: To Leam Mendez and Johanni Vashan are in Israel for
Speaker 1: The Australian. You can check out their reporting live at
Speaker 1: the Australian dot com dot au