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Speaker 1: From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.

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Speaker 1: It's Thursday, September twenty six. Australia's courts embracing for an

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Speaker 1: avalanche of appeals from international students whose visas have been

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Speaker 1: canceled or denied. More than fifteen thousand people have lodged

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Speaker 1: applications for review, compared with fewer than three thousand the

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Speaker 1: year before. Hackers targeted the email inboxes of Victoria's fire

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Speaker 1: chiefs in hopes of furthering the interests of the firefighters Union.

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Speaker 1: That story is live right now at Theaustralian dot com

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Speaker 1: dot au. First it was pages, then walkie talkies, now

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Speaker 1: rockets and maybe next a ground invasion. As Israel turns

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Speaker 1: its focus to hesblah, we explore what all sides want

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Speaker 1: from this new phase of an eighty year conflict. Today's

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Speaker 1: story on one side of the border, rocket fragments fall

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Speaker 1: to earth and huge conflagrations light up the sky. This

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Speaker 1: is southern Lebanon. What some claim is evidence of ammunition

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Speaker 1: and even rockets going up in flames in civilian neighborhoods

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Speaker 1: after being struck by missiles fired from Israel. On the

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Speaker 1: other side of the border. In Israel, Hesbella's rockets loom

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Speaker 1: above houses and fields before being destroyed by interceptor missiles

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Speaker 1: in mid air in a series of booms. That's Israel's

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Speaker 1: so called Iron Dome, a defense system designed to eliminate

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Speaker 1: incoming fire.

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Speaker 2: Well, I think this is the moment that everyone in

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Speaker 2: Israel and certainly people around the world who've been watching it,

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Speaker 2: this is the moment that everyone's been dreading.

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Speaker 1: Yonni Bishan is a journalist with The Australian who's spent

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Speaker 1: a lot of the past year reporting on conflict in

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Speaker 1: the Middle East. Israel versus Lebanon. We've been here before

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Speaker 1: in nineteen forty eight when Lebanon and other Arab nations

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Speaker 1: invaded the newly formed state of Israel, in nineteen seventy

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Speaker 1: eight when Israel invaded Lebanon, and again in nineteen eighty two.

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Speaker 1: In two thousand and six when the Iranian backed militia

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Speaker 1: Hesbelah infiltrated Israel and took two soldiers hostage, prompting weeks

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Speaker 1: of conflict. And now in twenty twenty four, it's on again.

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Speaker 1: On Wednesday, Hesbela fired a medium range surface to surface

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Speaker 1: ballistic missile at Tel Aviv. They were aiming for the

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Speaker 1: headquarters of the Mossad, Israel's secret service. The missis was

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Speaker 1: intercepted in the air. Israel says Hesbiala is hiding ammunition,

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Speaker 1: including enormous cruise missiles in domestic dwellings.

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Speaker 3: Riz Balas stores cruise missiles, rockets, launchers and UAVs inside

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Speaker 3: civilian homes, hidden behind the Lebanese population living in the village.

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Speaker 3: We are monitoring these activities, locating the weapons and destroying

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Speaker 3: them with precise intelligence based strikes.

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Speaker 2: It's the largest militia on the planet. Basically, it has

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Speaker 2: an enormous weapon stock, highly trained army, infantry, well supplied

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Speaker 2: by Iran, well funded, and a war with Lebanon would

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Speaker 2: almost certainly entail a high number of casualties, both militarily

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Speaker 2: and civilian. And who knows where this is going to go.

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Speaker 1: Israel's military is formidable, but Hesbela has the home advantage.

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Speaker 2: Whenever you have a conventional army versing a militia, one

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Speaker 2: is always going to have the unfair advantage, and we're

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Speaker 2: seeing that right now in southern Lebanon. So the footage

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Speaker 2: and the information that's being released, mostly by the IDEF,

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Speaker 2: but also by Reresbela itself is showing that it's hiding

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Speaker 2: its weapons much like Hamastid in Gaza, beneath civilian infrastructure,

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Speaker 2: and no conventional army operates in that way, and inevitably

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Speaker 2: that means that when you have a conventional army fighting

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Speaker 2: a war against such a foe, you're going to have

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Speaker 2: a higher number of civilian casualties, You're going to have

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Speaker 2: a higher level of moral calculus embedded in every decision

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Speaker 2: that's made, and inevitably makes the war a lot harder

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Speaker 2: to fight.

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Speaker 1: This round of conflict began on September nineteen with one

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Speaker 1: of the most audacious espionage operations in recent memory, the

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Speaker 1: coordinated explosion of hundreds of pages and then walkie talkies.

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Speaker 3: I have a message for the people of Lebanon. Israel's

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Speaker 3: war is not with you, it's with Habella.

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Speaker 1: That's Israeli PM Benjamin Nitya, who after Israel's apparent spycraft triumph,

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Speaker 1: telling Lebanese civilians to move north.

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Speaker 2: This would seem to me to be a precursor to

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Speaker 2: a ground invasion. They desperately wanted to avoid it. It

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Speaker 2: seems like Heresbella also wants to attempt to avoid that.

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Speaker 2: It's a very strange equation because you've got both sides

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Speaker 2: saying we don't want a war, and yet the fighting

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Speaker 2: keeps escalating, the targeting. While measured as it has been

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Speaker 2: between both sides, it continues to escalate.

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Speaker 1: Coming up what this conflict could mean for the future

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Speaker 1: of Lebanon Lehn. This is a BBC reporter in footage

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Speaker 1: from August four, twenty twenty, when Lebanon's beautiful, messy capital city,

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Speaker 1: be Route was rocked by an immense explosion. Tons of

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Speaker 1: ammonium nitrate had been unsecured at the port of Beirute

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Speaker 1: for six years. Furious citizens protested the inettitude and probable

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Speaker 1: corruption that had destroyed their city. An investigation started and

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Speaker 1: sputted out Prime Minister Hassan Di'ab and his cabinet resigned.

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Speaker 1: There are still no clear answers about how this ammonium

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Speaker 1: nitrate came to be in Beirut. It's been linked to

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Speaker 1: Russian and Cypriot interests, to Iran and to Hesblah. That

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Speaker 1: uncertainty is typical of Lebanon's complex history. Once a French colony,

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Speaker 1: independent since the nineteen forties, but lumbered with a governing

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Speaker 1: system that dictated key government jobs be sliced up between

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Speaker 1: Christians and Shia and Sunni Muslims. In the nineteen seventy

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Speaker 1: Civil War, a new force emerged, Hesbalah, a Shia political

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Speaker 1: party and paramilitary funded by Iran On. But to what end.

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Speaker 2: Iranzen game is to get us interests out of the

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Speaker 2: Middle East and to destroy Israel it always has been.

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Speaker 2: Chresbola's charter has basically sought the exact same kresbelas endgame

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Speaker 2: here is to wipe Israel off the face of the planet.

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Speaker 2: Just like Ramas as well, they are both separated by

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Speaker 2: competing Islamic ideologies. Ramas is a sunny group, Kresbela is

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Speaker 2: a shear group. Yet they have a common aim here

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Speaker 2: and the aame has always been to get Jews out

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Speaker 2: of the Middle East, to get Israel out of the

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Speaker 2: Middle East, and definitely get America out of the Middle East.

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Speaker 1: Israel and Lebanon are such close neighbors, beautiful subtropical countries

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Speaker 1: on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean. It's the same

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Speaker 1: kind of turf. It's like the difference the road between

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Speaker 1: Sydney and Brisbane. It's such a tragedy, isn't it that Lebanon,

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Speaker 1: which not so long ago was a relatively functional democracy,

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Speaker 1: now seems to have fallen into complete chaos.

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Speaker 3: Correct.

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Speaker 2: It is a great tragedy, no more so than for

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Speaker 2: the people of Lebanon, who don't have a particular fondness

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Speaker 2: for Fresbola, who don't particularly enjoy the fact that they

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Speaker 2: can't live in the south of the country without having

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Speaker 2: their homes targeted or having their lives been put at

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Speaker 2: risk because in a neighboring village, Kresbola has achieved a

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Speaker 2: foothold and decided to launch rockets from there all store

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Speaker 2: its munichtions there. This is not a winning strategy for Lebanon.

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Speaker 2: The Lebanese people know that they don't want Kresbola there,

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Speaker 2: they don't want Iran in their country, and yet this

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Speaker 2: is the situation they find themselves in. Hopefully, if anything

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Speaker 2: positive is to emerge out of this latest round of fighting,

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Speaker 2: it's that Kresbola has degraded such that it no longer

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Speaker 2: exists in its current form, and if perhaps there might

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Speaker 2: be some real change in that country.

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Speaker 1: Joanni Bishan is a journalist with the Australian. You can

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Speaker 1: read all our reporting and analysis of the conflict in

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Speaker 1: the Middle East right now at the Australian dot com

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Speaker 1: dot a u