 The United States believes 350 to 400,000 people remain in northern Gaza as the Israeli offensive against that part continued for another day. Reports indicated from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, for example, that all kinds of targets are being hit. An ambulance was hit outside Al-Shifa Hospital, killing 15 people. Israel responded to these reports by saying the ambulance was being used by Hamas. Hundreds of Palestinians continue to be killed on a daily basis. The humanitarian crisis, as I was saying earlier, is worsening by the hour. The United Nations relief agencies who are working on the ground are saying that aid is just not coming in, the kind of aid that is required. At the time of going into recording on Saturday, no foreigners or injured people had crossed into Egypt from Gaza at the Rafa border. That crossing also, that little small trickle of people that were being allowed to leave also apparently has come to a standstill. There's no break or such in the bombardment, despite the presence of US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in the region he's meeting with his counterparts, of course, Egypt, Jordan, as well as in Israel. Hassan Nasrullah of Hezbollah made a much anticipated speech that was watched keenly throughout the region and by analysts around the world, of course. Abdul has been covering for several days now what is an increasingly desperate situation with very little good news. And he's with us again today. Let's go over to him for the latest on both fronts, what's happening on the humanitarian front as well as the diplomatic aspects. Abdul, thanks for joining us on Daily DP once again. First up, as our first question has been to you all these days, what is the latest? Well, in last 24 hours, of course, Israeli aggression, Israeli airstrikes, as well as the ground offensive inside Gaza and inside the West Bank has continued as it was the situation before. In fact, there has been reports that some of the schools which were kind of sheltering a large number of Palestinians displaced due to the earlier bombings in northern Gaza in particular have been targeted and scores of people have died, Palestinians have died there. One school in Jabalia. So, Jabalia has been under attack for many times by the Israeli aircrafts in the last week at least. This was the fifth time when Jabalia camp very densely populated Palestinian locality has been attacked again and again by Israel. There have been reports that even the hospitals, Al-Sifa and Al-Quds hospitals inside the Gaza Strip have come under attack again. You can say there is a pattern that every few days Israel basically attacks the hospitals, the schools, the shelters and then tries to justify that these places were hiding quote unquote Hamas terrorists. So, and in that every time when the data comes out, when the real figures come out, when we see that most of the people who have died are either children or women and that has been the case in the last few weeks at least consistently. So, the Israeli offensive is about to complete a month soon and in that around as if as per the reports so far the overall Palestinians who have been killed in the Israeli attack so far has crossed 10,000 mark. As for the latest figure it was around 9,900 figures were there given a few hours back and of course because the bombing continues that figure has crossed 10,000 for sure. Apart from the what is happening in Gaza Strip when it comes to Israeli attacks on it, there are also reports from a massive continuous raids on Jenin in particular in the occupied West Bank and there have been other localities Palestinian localities in the occupied West Bank which have come under attack by the Israeli occupation forces and there also the overall death toll has crossed 150 since October 7. Apart from the people who have been killed around 2,000 Palestinians have been also arrested by the Israeli occupation forces from the occupied West Bank and Israel and there have been if we just count the number of people who have been injured a very small number has been able to move out through the Rafa border in the last few days around which is not even crossing 1,000 people. The majority of around 20,000 plus people who have been injured in the Israeli attacks since October 7 are still trapped inside the occupied Gaza in particular. We are also seeing reports of strikes targeting places that you would consider part of daily life so not even in that sense anything to do with state functioning or that kind of mega infrastructure fishing ports for example restaurants which of course places of worship have been targeted but also things like solar panels that are providing this kind of power supply to ease the situation where fuel is desperately short as well. All of these things compounding the kind of already total siege that is going on. Exactly, in fact that it has been Israeli strategy part of Israel's strategy inside Gaza in particular to target civilian infrastructure deliberately to make the life difficult for Palestinians there around 2.3 million Palestinians there as difficult as possible and the blockade which was imposed on the food and fuel and other medical supplies even including medical supplies on October 9th has basically continued despite repeated appeals given by the United Nations given by the Red Cross societies, Red Cross society is working there and the other groups which are trying to help people who are trapped under debris people who are injured and that number is quite huge. So there are reports of even the ambulance is being targeted in fact one of the ambulances which were targeted on Friday there were dozens of people in and around that ambulance including the people inside the ambulance were killed. The overall humanitarian that brings us to the overall humanitarian situation inside the Gaza Strip because the so-called humanitarian supplies have been very slow to reach because of the restrictions imposed by Israelis on the Rafa border because of the bombings because of the lack of fuel which basically also hampers the transportation of whatever material reaches these territories and because of the repeated attacks on hospitals and so on and so forth. It seems that the majority of the Palestinians inside Gaza have been completely deprived of any kind of basic humanitarian assistance which they need as a majority of the patients or the people who are injured are treated in hospitals which do not have adequate supplies of medicines of doctors of infant beds so people are being treated on the floor and so and so forth in whatever way possible. So yeah so that is of course it seems that it's a part of Israel's attempt to kind of what some some of the activists have called attempt to ethnically clean Gaza territory from the Palestinians and kind of create a kind of what they think buffer zone inside that territory and for that they are basically trying to demoralize the Palestinians as much as possible kind of make them feel that they are not secure anywhere and with of course the ultimate objective to force them to leave the territory. Abdul since we last had a chance to speak here on daily debrief Hassan Nasrullah has made a speech on the leader of Hezbollah. It was closely watched and you know various analysts depending on what perspective you're looking at it from had various things to say before of course as well as after how do you look at the speech and how it was received? Well the speech some of as you rightly pointed out some of the analysts were expecting some kind of big announcement kind of declaration of war against Israelis and so on and so forth which if we follow Hezbollah closely has not been their strategy to do so. They never go all out and kind of announce an all out war against Israel has never done that in the past and of course that's exactly what Hassan Nasrullah did but his message was quite clear. He basically said that what is happening inside Palestinian territories is basically a result of the US unconditional support and involvement in the Israeli massacre inside Gaza and other Palestinian territories and therefore if US want such that any escalation of the war it becoming a regional war then it has to basically do something and make Israel stop from carrying out the genocide inside Gaza. That's exactly what Hassan Nasrullah said if after his speech there have been reports that Hezbollah has fired much more intensively inside the Israeli territories in the last 24 hours and there are of course counter strikes carried out by the Israeli forces inside Lebanon. This is happening at a time when Blinken is again in the reason trying to give a message that the quote unquote the threats from threat of war in Palestine becoming a regional war has been neutralized because Hezbollah is pacified or at least Hezbollah's threat has been deterred. Of course that is I think is a misreading of the situation and what Nasrullah was saying is a clear indication that if something is not done to stop the war in Gaza nothing can prevent it from becoming a regional war. But in that context if we look at the overall situation about international diplomacy what is the condition of international diplomacy on the Gaza so far of course we are seeing in the previous weeks that despite the attempts made in the UN Security Council and in other places despite the appeals given by some of the Security Council members permanent members like China and Russia Israel has not bothered to kind of listen to what whatever these kind of appeals were made and that situation that status quo continues despite the fact that there are much more much despite the fact that there are many countries at this moment who have basically the number of countries who have severed their diplomatic ties with Israel has increased. This includes apart from the Latin American countries like Bolivia and Honduras Honduras being the latest that one of the countries which basically severed its diplomatic relationship with Israel was Bahrain. Bahrain once should remember was one of the first countries Arab countries which signed the Abraham Accord the so-called normalization deal with Israel in 2020 under the U.S. pressures and it was considered to be a big achievement for the Israeli diplomacy and so and so forth. So if there are if the clear messages if the situation in Palestine continues and if Israel refuses to listen to the appeals made by the world community if there will be greater number of countries who will basically take such steps in the coming days before shooting. In fact, Turkey's President Erdogan has clearly stated that they don't see any more Netanyahu as a partner or a person with whom we can have even a civilized talk. So these kind of statements are indications that the patients with which the Arab countries or the neighboring countries in the countries in the region have basically which they have shown in the last few weeks is basically gradually becoming primarily because of the popular pressures created by the people who have marched to the streets have demanded forcing their governments to take certain urgent steps to help the Palestinians. All right thanks very much Abul for bringing us up to speed with the latest developments both in Gaza of course and what's happening on the diplomatic front and our second and final bit for the day is on the visit as we had reported a few days ago of Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to the Philippines where among other things he became the first Japanese Prime Minister to address a joint session of both houses of the Philippine Congress. Among the discussions the most talked about is a potential security deal, a defense deal, a military deal between two countries that will allow for visiting forces to access each other's facilities. What does this mean for the region? Of course Anish is with us, he gave us a primer as well as a few days ago. We have him again to sort of get a sense of what actually went on when Kishida visited Manila. Anish we had the chance to do a bit of a primer on this visit a few days ago and now that it's on and happening and indicators are that this deal at least discussions on it will move forward in terms of you know the visiting forces agreement. How significantly do you view these developments in the context of what's going on in the region? Well as we have spoken about before in the show as well, this is actually just an indication of how significantly Philippines is shifting back to the U.S. full of access in the region right now and you know basically executing a lot of U.S. pro-U.S. policies into its foreign policy matters at the moment and so this is a very peculiar situation where you have a country where obviously you can't have permanent military bases of other countries but you can have deals in a manner that gives access to you know existing Filipino military bases and so U.S. already has that sort of situation a sort of agreement that which is called the visiting forces agreement and that pretty much allows it to make use of a lot of Filipino armies and navies military bases and very recently we spoke about how a lot of these bases and this access was actually expanded to include areas that is that are closer to you know the disputed territory that Philippines has with China in the South China Sea and also closer to Taiwan in the Luzon in the north of Philippines. So very clearly there is a very similar attempt because we have seen the statement that Ishida has made in the current you know visit that he has had in the Philippines in Manila where he spoke about how the attempt is to coordinate with U.S. and Philippines to deal with the situation in South China Sea he does not really mention China but it's very clear who the you know the target is in this round of you know diplomatic action and it's quite interesting also because Japan unlike other unlike Philippines does not have any stakes in the South China Sea does not have any claims as such in fact it has a very imperialistic history in the region and also in the Philippines as well but nevertheless it is becoming like combined with Japan's attempt to move away from its pacifist constitution and its pacifist past it is pretty much in line with both of these governments you know a very reactionary very warmongering kind of very confrontational sort of tendency against China and that is actually creating a sort of situation where you can actually draw a clear line of who you know who wants to confront China and who doesn't want to at this point in time and this you know the sharper this line gets it's going to create more tensions in the region as well. Anise in the context of Japan you were mentioning you know going back on the pacifist aspects that are at the core of its being as such but and Kishida has I mean this process has been going on we've discussed it often on on daily TV as well is it now looking to use I mean we always know or there are many instances of Japan lending capital as a tool of its foreign policy but some of that now also being tailored through security arrangements and security assistance this sort of networks that are being created is that also part of Japan's kind of policy going forward going. Yeah I mean if you look at the current set of agreements that have been signed in Manila especially with focus on tourism it's quite and over the next five years it's quite clear Japan is obviously trying to use you know investments and capital to and also maybe aid in some ways maybe maybe not in the case of Philippines but also definitely in case of other countries as a way to project its influence and it's not just in the east Asian or southeast Asian region but across Asia that has been pretty much the case with Japan especially a visa we trying to compete with the influence or you know the goodwill that China has in Asia as well so that is definitely there but obviously at the current moment you see there being a heavy attempt like an attempt to heavily invest in militarization and obviously a large part of that will definitely go into creating deals with neighboring countries with governments that that are aligned to its foreign policy rather than and create a network of you know military presence in the region which should you know ideally alarm you know people in the region and it does it actually does alarm a lot of people many progressives have spoken against such moves and maneuvers and obviously Japan's attempt to exert its military strength region because obviously there's a very you know gory and you know bloody past that is behind whenever Japan try to militarize itself with the region but that aside this is definitely going to be part of the focus right now with its relationships and that clearly also indicates a break from the past like even Bichin Gurabe who was usually seen as the more far more right being among the previous Prime Minister Kishida has actually taken Japan a step a couple of steps forward actually in towards the sort of right wing tilt or militarization tilt that no other Prime Ministers either tried but failed but generally Kishida is far more successful in that respect and that has made and that is really going to create concerns for everybody in the region as well because any kind of militarization or competitive militarization definitely is going to have its own impact in how you know it's a it's a region that does not have conflict or harm conflict for you know more than half a century actually I'm talking about East Asia the fact that but there are still you know simmering disputes there in the region that have not been resolved and the fact that Japan is doubling down on these disputes and you know also adding to some of the other tensions like in the current peninsula it is going to create a situation where you know tensions are going to be the new normal in East Asia and it is already becoming the new normal we are already when we talk about the region we are usually talking about the tensions and that is really the most concerning part at the moment. To Anish, thanks very much for bringing us that update today and that's all we have on this episode of Daily Debrief from Anish myself and the entire team here at People's Dispatch thank you very much for watching we'll be back next week with more of the news of course and also beyond the headlines the real stories being goes to you on peoplesdispatch.org as well so head over there for details on all of the work that we do don't also forget to follow us on the social media platform your choice. Until Monday, goodbye.