 Israel's brutal assault on Gaza has crossed 130 days and killed close to 29,000 people. Hospitals have been under attack and the prospect of an offensive on Rafa looms. This is despite warnings from aid agencies and leaders that it will have a disastrous impact on the over 1 million Palestinians who are seeking shelter in and around Rafa. Meanwhile, while even Israel's closest allies have cautioned against such an assault, there is no appetite for serious action that might deter it. For the latest from Gaza, we go to Abdul. Abdul, a horrifying situation prevailing in Gaza despite international warnings from across the political spectrum, including close allies of Israel. So, could you maybe first take us through what is happening with the fighting right now? Well Prashant, this is a 133rd day of Israeli offensive in Gaza and it seems that whatever they were planning to achieve in Gaza, they are not, either they are not able to achieve it or they don't want to achieve it. If you see, Karniunis is again under tremendous attack. The hospitals which have been already attacked several times in the past, Israeli forces have laid siege to it. For example, Nasir Hospital, Amal Hospital, both in and around Karniunis. And in fact, there are reports coming that a couple of patients have been killed because of the siege and the assaults undertaken by the Israeli forces in last 24 hours in that locality. Apart from that, there are also the plan to attack Rafa is already there on table. And it seems that there is now, you can see that US, which basically makes noises. But when it comes to actually conceding the ground to Israel, they do. But if you see the change in the statement which US has made in the last few days, when it comes to saying that attacks on Rafa is unacceptable to the fact that now they're saying that the civilian casualties need to be taken into consideration, and so on and so forth. So these subtle changes which in their statement reflects that they are now more willing to accept it than they were a few days ago. And that has been the practice of the US throughout this war, Israeli war in Gaza. The result of the Israeli war in Gaza is already the number of Palestinians killed is going up every day. Now it is touching 29,000, around 28,700 people, more than 700 people have already been reportedly killed. And the number of wounded is basically touching 67,000, 69,000. This is when we are talking about it. There are also basically attacks going on in different other parts of the territory, which basically also reflects how they are basically, as you rightly pointed out, despite the concerns raised by the international community, then in fact, do not care about it. If you see the fate of the talks which has basically that reflects how Israel sees its role in the war and its kind of complete impunity, it recognizes that the world beyond a point is not able to do anything against it. And the attacks on hospitals, the attacks on the civilian population continues, the humanitarian aid has been again blocked, in fact, to a massive level where even has raised again a concern that this will lead to further deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Gaza, which is already bad. We have talked about it in the past. So overall, this is the condition at this moment inside Gaza. Apart from that, there are also regular attacks going on in West Bank. And now, in the last two days, there has been an attack in Lebanon carried out by the Israeli forces. So it seems that the war on Gaza continues as if it is the first day of the war for Israelis. Right, Abdul, of course, in this context, I also wanted to take a look at how international players are responding. You talked about the United States, of course. But what has been, especially considering the assault in Raafa on the one hand, there have been cautionary statements, so to speak. But not definitely not accompanied by any concrete political action which would deter or stop Israel from it. Exactly. As I said before, that if you see, read the statements made by the U.S., it basically is same as it has been in the past that, okay, first Raafa, attack on Raafa will be devastating and so on and so forth. Now, if there is an attack, be careful about the number of civilians getting killed. This is the pattern in the U.S. statements or your policy which we have, you can say, seen throughout the war in Gaza. Apart from U.S., of course, some of the European players have made much more critical assessment and saying that Raafa should not be, at least there should not be a ground offensive inside Raafa. But their statements, of course, is not backed by any action and therefore Israel knows it. So, and that's why it seems that Israel will carry out this attack. As far as the regional players are concerned, for example, Egypt, which basically will be directly impacted, it is considered that a large number of Palestinians will be forced to kind of flee towards Egypt if there is a ground offensive inside Raafa, has basically expressed concern and in fact, in few days back has threatened that if such attack is carried out, it will break its peace agreement or it can suspend its peace agreements with Israel. We should remember that Egypt was the first country which basically signed, had signed a peace agreement with Israel in 19, way back in 1979. So, issuing that threat itself shows how concerned Egyptians are. But again, that concern does not mean that Egypt will really take some drastic measures because there are reports coming that even Egypt is preparing for if there is an attack assault inside Raafa and there are Palestinians forced to flee. Egypt is in preparation, basically preparing a contingency plan related to that. Of course, Hezbollah and other regional resistance forces have basically, in fact, their position has been backed by their action also. They continue to basically try to pressurize Israel not to do any such thing in Raafa. But of course, they are not in a position to kind of substantially influence Israeli plan. Express concern and they have demanded not to take such action. And they were hoping that there will be a negotiation, a successful negotiation in which was going on inside Egypt related to ceasefire. But it seems that the Netanyahu, as we have talked about before, wants to prolong the war as much as possible and therefore has basically withdrew its delegates from the talks. And that would mean that Israelis come ready to carry out the attack on Raafa any day. Well, Abdul, thank you so much for the updates. We'll come back to you with more questions as in when things develop. Initial estimates by independent agencies show that Prabowo Subianto is said to become the next president of Indonesia. Elections were held on February 14th and while the final results might take a few weeks, Prabowo has already declared victory. So who is this new president of the country? What is his record and how has he been depicted by the media in recent times? We go to Anish for all these details. Anish, thanks so much for joining us. Very significant elections, not only for the country, but for the entire world, Indonesia is one of the key economic powerhouses, the large population of course, all making it a very important player. So maybe first take us through what are the trends that have come out? It will take time for the full results to come out of course, but what are the trends? Who is winning? Yes, Prashant. So like two major elections, we have to remember that the election that happened is one of the most comprehensive exercises right now in the world. It has happened at multiple levels ranging from federal presidential and parliamentary elections to local elections as well or provincial level elections. So in many ways, these election results are going to be many, but two main things are going to be significant. One is the presidential election where we see Prabowo, so we are leading by a massive margin from the quick count results, which are not proper official results, but are based on a quick count of early counting that is happening in different electoral offices. Prabowo is expected to secure up to about 58% of the votes, but the quick count results are being validated by the current provisional results as they are coming in with more than half of the votes being counted. The margin still holds. It is quite interesting how his content is after. Anees Biswadan is the one who is coming second, but it is Ganja who is coming a very distant third with around 70 to 80% of the national vote share is quite interesting because in the parliamentary election that Anees, sorry, Ganja is representing the PDIP, which is also the former party of the current president of Kovidodo, is holding its lead over other parties, but Ganja is so distantly far away from the presidency that it is quite interesting how the reworked alliances have actually worked out in favor of Prabowo, who was able to bring together his core constituency along with Kovidodo's core supporters to create a momentum for himself. And this is not necessarily reflected in the parliamentary elections where we still have the PDIP, the more moderate group among the parliamentary parties right now still holding its lead, even though a slightly declined vote share. We cannot, as of now, tell the number of seats they are going to get because of the kind of manner in which proportional seats are being divided and the fact that final results will only be announced in much. What we can see is that PDIP is still holding its lead as the largest party in terms of vote share. And all of the same goes for every major party like Kireta and Korkar, who are close second and third behind the PDIP. The final seat share is still to be declared because the final results of the final counting will only be done by March 20th. So it is a long time still. Nevertheless, what we can expect is that for the major parties, the bigger parties, their presence in the parliament will be more or less unchanged. So the same kind of parliament is expected. But the Islamist groups have lost ground quite significantly. And that is what, that is one of the biggest outcomes of these elections, where the more far right Islamist groups, if not necessarily all far right because get addressed in the race, but the Islamist groups have found themselves on a packed food in the current election campaign. And the results are showing that many of them may lose even their parliamentary representation at the current point of fact. So we are looking at this sort of situation where reworked alliances have only affected the more extreme, the more religious-based extremist groups, but more or less in the parliamentary election, the seat shares might only change by some margin. And it may not really affect the balance between different political groups that already existed. Right Anish, now to go a bit more in depth into the potential new president of the country Prabhava Subhiyanto. We know that he's been a political player for a long time, has contested multiple elections in the past. But what is his record? What has he been known for? And also, how has he been portrayed in recent times? There have also been reports of a particular whitewashing of his image. So how is he being portrayed at this point of time? Yes, it is quite interesting how things have worked out for Prabhava because for a long time he definitely, while being a long-time contender for the presidency, he definitely held a certain kind of ideological ground that differed quite drastically from Joko Widodo again. And that has quite a dramatic change from one thing, obviously, his past week throughout the election season. We did not see much mention of his time under the new order, the Suhattu's new order, his relationship with Suhattu, who was his father-in-law, or for the fact that he played a prominent role in some of the most gruesome massacres during the Suhattu erratic leadership in Indonesia. Besides East Timor, the fact that he was part of the May 1998 riots that pretty much targeted Chinese in the capital, Jakarta, and killed more than a thousand people, and was also particularly infamous for the large-scale use of sexual violence against minorities at the time. And that was one of the reasons why he was you know, dishonorably discharged from his position in the ministry. It clearly shows that, like that was the time, that was the kind of pro-bobo that Indonesia had known for a very long time. But a new generation is definitely here who did not grow up during, or do not have the kind of memory that the older generation might have of the Suhattu era crimes, and definitely may not know, or maybe do not really care about pro-bobo's significance, a significant or prominent placing in that sort of, you know, atrocious dictatorship that existed. But definitely all of that was kind of muted. The criticism raised on that past was muted to a very significant level in the current election, can be even among his opponents. And the backing of Joko Bidodo, who is, you know, seen as the more moderate figure of all the most moderate precedent for a very long time by a large part of the Indonesian population, really did make a difference in how he was also being perceived. That backing really made an impact on his image, which changed quite dramatically as well. He was kind of seen as this very, you know, friendly grandpa kind of figure that many reports have been talked about. But definitely this image may co-work also brings with itself a lot of questions, because one of the legacies, the better legacies of Joko Bidodo was to bring in a reconciliation and reparations plan for the crimes of the Suhattu era dictatorship. And he actually campaigned for it. He created an entire, you know, state-funded campaign around it, creating awareness. And that happened just last year. And this was also around the same time when the alliances were being reworked with Prabowo. So we do not know how Prabowo is going to take that forward, even though he kept saying that he will continue Joko Bidodo's legacy. Joko Bidodo's son is going to be the vice president. So there will be some checks and balances to his policies. We do not know how much influence his original ideological support base will have in the upcoming government. But it is definitely something that is to be that we need to wait and see. Definitely we can expect he's going to be far more extreme when it comes to dealing with, say, the West Papuans who have been struggling, who were already facing significant repression, political repression under Joko Bidodo, that is going to continue for sure. But when it comes to like reconciling with the past, you know, reparations, the process which is still incomplete and is still ongoing, how much of that is going to gain the presidential support remains to be seen. And this also brings out a significant other set of questions about how the new presidency is going to treat minorities if there is going to be the same kind of alarmist and xenophobic tendency that Prabowo was known for for a very long time. And that sort of, if we are going to see that sort of right wing tendency, because the first thing that Prabowo did was to pay homage to his father-in-law, Suharto. And that itself clearly shows that Suharto era has been normalized to the current political sector because of Prabowo's victory. And that normalization is not necessarily good at the time when Indonesia has been widely criticized from within and outside of for, you know, infringement of press freedoms, infringement on attacks and, you know, political repression of activists, especially trade unions and grassroots activists. So we need to even see how things are going to unfold. But the situation doesn't look very good, definitely for progressive moments at the moment. Thank you so much, Anish, for that update. That's all we have in today's episode. We'll be back with a fresh daily debrief tomorrow. In the meanwhile, do visit our website peoplesdispatch.org. Follow us on all the social media platforms. And if you're watching this on YouTube, please hit the subscribe button.