 Our focus today is on Israel's ground offensive on Gaza. The debt toll among Palestinians has gone above 8,000. And the onslaught continues. We look at what's happening on the ground, whatever information we have thus far. We also ask what the diplomatic community is doing and what will be the fate of the United Nations resolution, the latest resolution on the subject, whether it will gain any momentum, carry any weight, and what sort of impact it will have on the lives of the over two and a half million people in Gaza, as well as those, of course, in the other occupied territories. We're also focusing on elections in Taiwan 2024, there's going to be a spate of major elections that will determine how some of world politics goes. Of course, India is having an election, the United States is having a major election. And in Taiwan as well, now, the opposition parties are talking about coming together in a coalition. We ask what this might mean for a potential flashpoint between the United States and China, the two biggest economies in the world. And finally, there's a study out that shows how much private spending on health care in the United Kingdom has gone up and what kind of impact that has on the national health service. Now, we will try to understand the dynamics between private spending on health care and how that works out and the kind of pressures it puts and exacerbates on a public system. Salams, as always, you're watching Daily Debrief, brought to you by People's Dispatch. Before we go any further, take a second, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. We've been consistently overshooting our time here on Daily Debrief, our top story, as it has been pretty much consistently since the 7th of October, is Israel's onslaught on Gaza after Hamas launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. And so I'm going to bring Abdul in right at this point to give us the latest updates on what's been going on, what's what he's been hearing. Of course, the ground offensive Abdul is the main docking point and battles already happening on the outskirts of Gaza City. Yeah, exactly. So, in fact, there are reports and claims and counterclaims made by both the Israeli forces and the Palestinian resistance forces that the tanks, a large number of course, went inside the Gaza territory. They basically were about to reach Gaza City where there was a huge battle, which ultimately led to, as the claims made by the Palestinian resistance, the kind of withdrawal of those tanks again. So, and this, of course, has led to some civilians being killed, particularly by the Israeli tanks targeting them, the Al-Zazira reported the attacks on the civilian vehicles, despite it being clearly identified as such. Apart from that, there is a major concern emerging about the fate of the Al-Quds hospital inside the occupied Gaza, where around 14,000 Palestinians, both those who are injured and the other people who are basically taking shelter in it are in danger of being kind of attacked. There have been bombings in and around the hospital in the last 24 hours, which has led to kind of severe damages in and around it. And Israel has repeatedly warned the asking people, the injured and the relatives, entire hospital staff, in fact, to move out of that hospital, which basically both the authorities which are running the hospital and the other human rights organizations have claimed is not possible to evacuate all those people now. This will basically endanger more lives. So those things are happening in and around Gaza. Meanwhile, the Israeli relentless bombing has continued all across the Gaza Strip, leading to scores of more Palestinian dying. As for the latest figure, more than 8,100 Palestinians, the latest figure which says have been killed. And it seems that Israel does not have any kind of thinking or thought about kind of stopping or implementing the demand which has been made by different sections of the world community to have kind of some kind of humanitarian ceasefire at there. So this is about Gaza Strip. Of course, on the other side, there is a heavy Israeli raid going on on the Jenin refugee camp, which has been repeatedly targeted. And on Monday morning around four people, poor Palestinians were killed. Another couple of Palestinians were injured. And there have been reports of other kind of attacks in different other parts of the occupied West Bank. So if you see, it seems that we are repeating what happened on the last day. And every day it is kind of a similar story. Only thing that the number of Palestinians being killed is increasing every day. And the humanitarian situation on the ground in Gaza is becoming worse and worse. There were reports that the people desperate, without food and medicine, basically barged in inside an UNRWA facility to get some kind of access to food. And that basically shows the level of desperation which people are in in the Gaza Strip, where millions are basically on the verge of, you can say, apart from being killed by the Israeli forces, also killed by hunger and lack of medicine, lack of water, and so on and so forth. So the number of trucks which are basically moving in, the humanitarian aid, whatever is very limited so far since it started last week, only 100 trucks or 113 trucks have moved inside the besieged territory. And that is not enough for more than 2 million people living inside Gaza. Yeah, fair enough. Abdul and maybe we can take a minute to kind of talk about, because there have been mentions about the telecom blockade or shut off, the number of journalists that have been killed and the journalists that are operating in the region, what kind of conditions they operate in, on either side, it's either only those who are sort of secured by security forces, by the Israeli military, or those who are going at it without any sort of insurance or assurance even, that they will be able to do the job that they're doing. And that becomes extremely important because all of the conditions that you were talking about are what militaries describe as force multipliers. That's the entire philosophy behind this kind of offensive. So if you can just elaborate on that bit and then we can come back to what is happening on the diplomatic front, maybe to conclude. Well, Israel has, if you see Israeli armed forces have not bothered about kind of observing the minimum laws related to war in the international law, which basically talks about protecting civilians, protecting all kinds of non-combatants, including the journalists and the health workers, by the way. The most, if you see the number of Palestinians, sorry, the number of journalists killed and number of health workers killed, if you club them together, they are quite a big number, that is quite a big number. And that indicates that the complete lack of any concern shown by the Israelis when it comes to targeting them. As you rightly pointed out, this is deliberate. This many people have kind of indicated that, have underlined that, that this particular attempt to kind of target journalists, target the health workers, target the aid workers who are there on the field, whether it is from the UN bodies or the local human rights groups or the NGOs operating, trying to do something, all of them have been repeatedly attacked, despite being clearly identified, wearing the marks for identification. And that seems to be very deliberate. And this basically has created, as you rightly pointed out about the internet shutdown or the telecommunication being blocked. Now there are reports that there has been partial restoration of internet and telecommunication inside the Gaza territory. But for almost 36 hours, Israelis deliberately kind of cut the Gaza off from the rest of the world. All of this is basically a part of their war strategy, whatever it is called by them, basically to kind of create a situation where panic is instilled among the people there, to kind of force them to move out. And even then, by the way, that is another thing, which basically, if you go by the common sense, cannot explain, asking people, scaring them to move out of their houses, their residential blocks, homes and other places. But when they are moving out, attacking them. In fact, today, sorry, on Monday morning, there were reports that a large number of vehicles who were basically carrying out the people who were trying to move out because of the ground offensive in the northern Gaza, northern Gaza, those vehicles were bombarded by the Israeli warplanes. So this particular strategy, whatever we call it, is beyond anyone's comprehension and there is no other way to describe it, but a deliberate attempt to kind of massacre, to kind of commit genocide on the ground in Gaza. Yeah, and do it behind as much of a veil as possible and at the same time, of course, Abdul-An. And like we were saying in the last time as well, when we spoke on this subject, that it also hampers the ability of whatever little relief effort there is to be coordinated. I mean, I think everyone can appreciate and relate to how important a thing like maps are now that we have smartphones and the internet and how important coordination is on that front. So even there at every level, there is an impact. But what you were pointing out brings us very nicely into the bit about what's happening on the diplomatic front, Abdul-An. We can take a couple of minutes to just focus on that. US Vice President Kamala Harris saying that the United States isn't telling necessarily Israel what to do, but nobody seems to be. And how is it that still the level of impurity with which they are operating is being allowed to progress on the diplomatic front? Well, as we are discussing, there is going to be another discussion, emergency meeting by the United Nations Security Council kind of discussing another round of resolutions this time called by the UAE. While we are saying that there can be a resolution by the Security Council, even if US agrees with it. US has not agreed so far. And despite the claims made by Kamala Harris, okay, there are no US personnel in the occupied territories or in Israel. But there are US weapons on the ground and there is a US diplomatic support, which basically provides Israel immunity, impunity. If you see what happened to the resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly on Friday, nobody is talking about it. More than 120 countries voting in favor of it. I say asking Israel to stop for humanitarian relief, stop its war on Gaza for humanitarian relief has not even bothered anyone to kind of ask Israel to implement it. So this is happening primarily because there are strong international backers for Israel, which basically ensure that even if the entire world turns against you and we are not talking about the popular uprisings which are happening all across the world in support of the Palestine against the Israeli aggressions, against the Israeli genocide. We are talking about the governments which have their own diplomatic and political concerns to calculate before they take a decision on such resolution. Even then 120 countries agreed and voted demanding the ceasefire, nothing happened. And so we can debate. And it's not the post-revolution either of them? Of course, if we go, if we take the history of Palestine, this can be the 100th or more than 100 hundreds of the resolutions which have been adopted both by the UN Security Council and the General Assembly, none of them have been implemented. And each time Israel's position has remained the same, that is, UN has lost its legitimacy. If it has lost legitimacy, why you are a member of it? One should ask. But of course, there is no point talking all those things. The central argument remains, central point remains that Israel does not care as long as there is strong UN permanent members which basically are behind it completely without any second consideration, a kind of thinking about backing whatever Israel is doing. And so Israel can do whatever it wants to do without any concern and thinking about the repercussions. And that's exactly what has happened this time again. And I'm not sure whether the UN Security Council agrees to pass a resolution tomorrow, whether Israel will follow it, whether it will be asked to implement it. So it's complete, on diplomatic front at least, there seems to be no hope at this moment. Right. And in the same sort of press statement or interview that we were talking about earlier, there is the reiteration just to remind that Israel is receiving diplomatic military and other kinds of, all kinds of backing from the United States. Yeah, so we'll leave it there. Thanks very much for joining us today. I know it's an extremely challenging situation even to report on from far away because like you're saying, the movement and the action is too little from the outside world that it becomes much more of the same and it's difficult to come up with words in which to describe exactly what's going on. But thanks always for giving us your time. We'll move on to Taiwan where there's an election upcoming like I was saying, there's some big elections upcoming in 2024 that will also of course have an impact on how the world that is currently in conflict will develop, will grow and will sort of try to get out of some of these or not try to get further maybe entangled in them. But this week, the two main opposition parties have announced intentions to form a coalition. The incumbent of course, President is as far as I know, if I might be wrong here, but ineligible to stand personally, but Anish is with us and has all of the details and the information on what's going on and why also this is important but at a slightly wider level as of now. Anish, first the news update of course, what was this coalition look like and what sort of impact is it likely to have on the upcoming elections? So from what we understand right now, the upcoming coalition would be more or less something that they have fixed for the legislative election, which is the major legislature, the national legislature of what they call the Republic of China. So there might be some level of arrangements because they have a sort of mixed member proportional voting system. And so you have, you know, a certain sort of party list, if these two can actually come together to hold their votes for the party that in the party list that will be significant. On the other hand, there might be constituencies and that is not and so what we need to understand is that it's not very common in a place like Taiwan or, you know, in most electoral democracies for them to have a sort of seat sharing agreements on a national level. And this is something that is very true for Taiwan as well. And so then the constituency seats, we do not know how they're going to share or, you know, create an arrangement that can actually work for both of them, considering especially the fact that the two parties of the two parties, the Coventa, has presented itself as, you know, the leading opposition front. And it has always, it will always try to present itself as the, you know, the major alliance partner if a coalition or an arrangement comes together. On the other hand, the TPP, which is trying to present itself, you know, in a very national manner, has a very popular presidential candidate, Covenje and he is somebody who's leading over the Coventa presidential candidate as well. And so we have to wait and see how much this kind of arrangement is going to work. But obviously coming together, if it's a, you know, it's simple arithmetic, the two parties together combined can actually take on the ruling democratic people's party. And, you know, obviously, because both of them actually share more or less the same set of constituency in the sense that the people who vote for the two of them have very similar ideas and ideologies. And, you know, they're understanding of what they want their country to be in the short and even long term. Unlike the TPP, which presents itself as a sort of, you know, a very soft, has a soft corner for, you know, the Taiwan secessionist movement or what calls itself as the independence movement and a certain set of, you know, economically liberal policies that kind of align with the US and who actually have a more confrontational policy against China when it comes to these two other opposition parties and have pretty much been the reason why there has been significant tensions in the region because they have allowed for the US to, you know, to exploit that and become a major political in this conflict that exists between these two entities. Yeah. Anish, we've talked before about visits that have been happening on both sides and how they've at some times inflamed and other times also kind of worked towards creating a political balance at least domestically within Taiwan. So how do you balance the factors, what's happening, the outside influences and what's going on within Taiwan? How do you balance these two when we look at it from as well as outsiders as we are? Yeah, that's a very good question because there is always this tendency to and, you know, even a temptation to speak of countries like Taiwan in just foreign policy terms because a lot of their domestic politics is definitely informed by domestic issues and the fact that the ruling DPP did very badly in the local elections recently that happened last year and was routed, you know, even in places where it held otherwise a significant hold or control shows that it is primarily because of domestic policies that people are looking at the party and the government as incapable of dealing with the present set of crisis that the country is facing, not least of which is the cost of living crisis, but also the fact that many of them do not identify with the kind of, you know, Taiwanese secessionism or Taiwanese nationalism that the DPP kind of encourages, even if it doesn't say it out loud, it definitely encourages and emboldens them in many ways. And that is something that most people in Taiwan who identify as Chinese because definitely their country is still called China, whatever manner or form it exists in and have a closer affinity with the mainland than, you know, anywhere else in the world. In many ways, they do not align with that ideology that the ruling party kind of encourages very often at the cost of relations with China. So obviously, the foreign policy part, especially relations with China as and will always be a major part of any election that comes up in Taiwan. But at the same time, we need to remember there are significant set of domestic issues that the ruling party has failed to deliver it. And that is primarily the reason why you see their, you know, popularity has also dipped compared to previous elections in 2020. Saiyan Wei, when she stood for re-election, she actually pulled in opinion polls upwards of 40-45 percent and she eventually received some 50-52 percent votes. That is not something that can be expected in this round of elections, no matter how they present themselves. And you can see that sort of warm-up ring also happening at some level by the ruling party because they are provoking, they are actually expanding military presence for the US in the region and also trying to rope in the US and maybe other countries like Japan into this conflict and stoking certain kind of, you know, very reactionary nationalistic tendencies. Exactly. And that is something that reads of desperation obviously from the ruling party. So, this coming together of two parties that have very similar ideas when it comes to their relations with China is significant because it's not that they want Taiwan to merge with China as mainland China wants, but they do believe that having a more open dialogue and, you know, more open relations with the mainland is far more beneficial to the Taiwanese people than, you know, having a confrontational position and even, you know, being a flashpoint for a future possible war. And that is something that a large number of people in Taiwan also share. A good point to think on also for the two larger, at least in terms of number of voting people in the population size, other elections that we mentioned in both India and the United States where we see, you know, similar trends, similar sentiments being stoked, similar kind of positions being taken. Thank you very much, Anish, for that. I was supposed to keep it short, but we are still running out of time and we still have Ana with us. So we're going to jump to her very quickly. In the United Kingdom, more people are spending money on private healthcare and this is making worse the issues faced by the National Health Service, which a majority of Britons have lauded as the single most thing they are proud of as being British. Ana, the sort of dichotomy cannot be more clear, but anyway, explain it to us. Well, exactly, what's happening now in the NHS in the UK is what people have been warning about since the beginning of, you know, of this kind of informal dismantling, if we can call it off the NHS. So by introducing the private sector, by strengthening the role of the private sector in the UK. And so, you know, the first symptom of this that we are seeing is that waiting lists in the NHS are soaring. So literally, in just in a couple of years. So since in 2019, there were a little over 4.5 million people on waiting lists. That number is now 7.7 million. So in September 2023. It's an enormous amount of people. And of course, people are looking for ways to avoid waiting lists, which are, which essentially mean that you cannot access the healthcare that you need at the time that you needed. In some cases, the waiting times are so long, a year or so, that it essentially means, you know, that by the time that you reach a doctor, there might be no more help. The condition might have gone so much worse that you will need more treatment, you will need more expensive treatment and so on and so on and so on. So essentially what we're seeing is an increase in both private consultations when it comes to treatments, but also when it comes to diagnostics. And when we talk about treatments, it's not about, it's not all about, you know, the extra treatments that one might think of. So the things that are elective, for example, but they're very basic things. So people in the private sector, they're getting eye surgery. They're getting treatment for chronic back pain. They're getting hip replacements. So all of these things are very basic. It's something that affects many, many people. And yet in the private sector, it can cost a lot of money. So, you know, for, for some of these procedures, we're talking about 10 to 15,000 pounds, which is not something that people in the UK can afford right now as the cost of living is soaring. And as, as a matter of fact, most people are reporting that they now have no savings at all. So at the same time, as this is happening, the government is not, is not actually tackling the issues that it's seeing on a day-to-day basis. In contrast, what Richie Sunak's government is doing is siding even more with the private sector. So we have had reports and information coming in that the most recent plans that the government introduced included also establishing and launching independent, so-called independent, in practice, private health centers that essentially replace the role of the NHS. And what this kind of approach is also doing, it's also expanding the reliance on the NHS on the private sector. So essentially, it's, it's inter, interlinking the two so much that it's at times very difficult to see, to see what's going on. But the things that we do know that because of the approach that the current government has been taking and the previous governments have been taking is that first thing, you know, we have seen working conditions plummet. So they're nowhere to be seen. Health workers have been on strikes repeatedly over the past year. They have demanded better working conditions, better salaries, more employment. The government has taken a very problematic approach to this, avoiding any meaningful conversation with the trade unions, with the health workers, with other representations. And what this has caused is not only not, yeah, not only a worsening of the conditions in the NHS, but to a growing number of health workers leaving the NHS for the private sector. So you already have a shortage of health workers in the NHS. And now that's made even worse, because people are essentially saying, well, the private sector has better working conditions, I might just, might just as well work there. The second thing that we really need to point out is that what we're seeing now is the forming of a two-tier system in the UK. If the situation persists, it means that people will be the people who cannot pay will be forced to stay in the NHS, which will still continue to struggle with long waiting times. But it will also get defunded and it will not be able to keep track of all the needs that people have. It will not have enough money to invest in the equipment that it needed. It won't have the money to pay the health workers as it should. At the same time, the people who can pay, of course, will go to the private sector and that's going to make the private sector happy, but not more than that. And so final point on this is that essentially, it also needs to be taken into account that the private sector is not taking up all the roles of the NHS. So it's not willing to take up the procedures which are not profitable, which are very rare. For example, if you have a rare disease, you will probably not be able to find help for that in the private sector because it's not profitable. They're not going to invest hundreds of thousands of pounds in equipment in the education of health workers to help a couple of people. A public health system like the NHS will do that. And also in doing that, push the bounds of research and development for future so that when those rare diseases become less rare, more people have access to it. Thank you very much, Anna. I realize, I mean, we can talk again on this forever and ever. As always, we've gone over time. But what I did ask Anna to do was to kind of weave together quite complex web of how things work and what these kind of policies have consistently done to public health systems over the course of several decades, actually. And so it will take, like she was pointing out a consistent effort to reverse some of that and great political will to begin with. With that, we bring another overtime episode of Daily Debrief to close for myself and everyone here. Thanks very much for watching. We will ask you, before we leave anyway, to go to our website, People's Dispatch.org. We'll see you tomorrow. Until then, goodbye.