 Israel's brutal offensive on Gaza continues and the death toll is soaring at a horrifying rate. What is the latest from this war? Elections to key states or provinces in India saw the ruling Bharati Janata party make substantial gains. What does this mean for the national elections scheduled for next year? This is the daily debrief. These are your stories for the day. And before we go any further, if you're watching this on YouTube, please hit the subscribe button. 1.9 million people in Gaza have been displaced since Israel began its genocidal war. The UN relief and works agency set on Monday. Israeli bombardment continued unabated over the weekend, with a death toll in Gaza since October 7th, rising to close to 16,000. Israeli raids are also continuing in the occupied West Bank. We go to Anna Rachar for more details. Anna, thank you so much for joining us. Another week beginning with a very brutal round of Israeli attacks. The death toll is quite horrendous. So can you maybe first take us through what happened to developments over the past few days, especially since Israel resumed its bombing? Well, when we look at the past weekend, we can talk about one of the deadliest periods since October 7th, since the bombardments on the Gaza Strip began. Some of the approximations on the death toll are saying that between 800 and 1000 people have died until throughout Saturday only. So we're talking about mass casualties and mass casualties which were caused by bombardments again of civilian infrastructure on residential blocks, which have again erased whole families from the Gaza Strip. Now, what we're seeing as well is that something that has been happening since the attacks resumed after the end of the one week pause is that people are being told now not only to leave the north of the Gaza Strip, but also to evacuate the south. So formally, it is only very small areas have been designated as so-called safe areas, but again, reports that are coming in are saying that the attacks are so ferocious all over the Gaza Strip that there is essentially no safe place for people to go. And again, if there was an area which was not currently subjected to the bombardment and to the attacks, the problems related to access to essential services like health like bakeries or buying food would be essentially nonexistent. The status has been changed minimally since some limited aid had been let in during the during the duration of the pause. But again, international organizations, international programs have warned that this has only been a drop in the ocean and that most people actually remain cut off from potable water. They remain cut off from access to any kind of food, increasing the possibility of families spreading throughout the Gaza Strip and the affecting people even more. And in this context, would you also maybe talk a bit about the certain health infrastructure specifically because once again, we hear about attacks on hospitals. So what's taking place on that? So today, most of the hospitals which are still operating in the Gaza Strip, which are not many that has to be kept in mind, we are talking less than 10 hospitals of the 30 plus in the Gaza Strip still operational right now. Since this morning, they have been saying that they're receiving an influx of dead bodies following the attacks of tonight and of this morning. So again, the concern grows that even more hospitals will be forced to shut down as fuel runs out as electricity shut off and as medical supplies are not in reach. Now, again, what we have been seeing over the past weeks is that it's not only about the access to health services, but also the living conditions that are representing a very high risk to people's health. We know, and again, the WHO has warned over and over again that in the conditions that we are seeing right now, outbreaks of diseases are more likely. So outbreaks of cholera or flies of all kinds of diseases that are very strictly related to how people live and to what kind of infrastructure they can rely on. And in that context, one of the news that has come out over the weekend is a warning by the World Food Program, which is particularly worried about the access to food for the people of Gaza. Since they're saying that the prices have skyrocketed so much that people cannot afford the food that's still available. But even with the high prices, the shells remain empty. So people essentially do not have anything to eat anymore. That kind of thing is not likely to change unless the attacks stop permanently. And then, of course, you know, as we talk about the attacks on hospitals, which continue, the proximity of hospitals continue to suffer either because of indirect shelling or sometimes because health workers and ambulances are stopped. They are blocked from reaching people who are trapped under the rubble of buildings. We are also seeing and hearing about attacks on bakeries on the places where people rely on getting their food from. So essentially, it's an increase and a continuation of the attacks that we have seen since October the 7th. Right. And thank you so much for that update. We'll come back to you as for the developments take place. The election results for five state or provincial governments in India were announced on Sunday and Monday. The ruling Bharati Janata party won three states in the northern part of the country, while the opposition Indian National Congress won one in the southern part. While each state has its own dynamics, it's inevitable that these results were also seen as a reflection of the mood ahead of the crucial national elections in 2024. We go to Pragya Singh to analyze these results. Pragya, thank you so much for joining us. Interesting results on Sunday and Monday. We had five states going to the polls, of course, and the BJP, the ruling Bharati Janata party has won massively in three of them, the opposition Indian National Congress winning in one. And of course, a lot of speculation, a lot of discussion about what this means for 2024 and the general elections are going to be held. But maybe we could start this out by giving a quick update on some of these major elections. Yeah, Prashant, like you said, the election for four state assemblies has gone mostly in favor of the party that rules at the center, the Hindu Nationalist Party Janata party. Now the Congress party, which has been in opposition since 2014, has managed to risk control of one state from a regional party. Now, this is significant because the Congress party also succeeded in another state to raise power from another regional party. But at the end of the day, the regional party swung over to the side of the BJP. So when it comes to predictions for 2024, it's really all up in the air. There are those who feel that the Congress party's losses in these assembly elections, that they are the run up and they are a clear indicator of what will happen next year. And there are those who feel exactly the opposite that, well, maybe now the opposition, which is actually a large grouping now, it's not just the Congress party, but the Congress, along with a bunch of other regional parties, that they will restrategize or perhaps strategize on how to go forward. Because now one thing is very clear that it's something akin to a existential crisis for a lot of parties, not just the Congress party, but a lot of parties who start thinking that, hey, this is a real challenge before us. Right, in this context, of course, looking at the three states in the northern part of the country, that is Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, there was at least exit polls that pointed to a far less decisive result for the ruling BJP. And in fact, they had given one state to the Congress that is Chhattisgarh and said that it would be maybe a close fight in the other two areas, six degrees. But it turns out that the wins have been quite decisive. Absolutely decisive. It seems almost as if it is scripted for the BJP, for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has no doubt gone out to his party colleagues already to declare this victory as important as it is actually, as significant as it is, but there's also another aspect to all these regions. Prashant, most of the elections were held in what we know as the Hindi belt, where the Hindi language is the most popular language, most spoken language. They're also resource rich states. I'll give you an example of Chhattisgarh, which is just about 2 to 4% of India's land mass, 2% of India's population, but 16% of just coal deposits. So and also one of the poorer states in India. And that is true for most of these large and small Hindi belt states. So the politics there often wears, you know, it's actually the responsibility of politics to, you know, to make make people head in whatever direction they wish, right? It seems that religion, religion, religious politics has had an influence that that is something that the BJP squares by. And at times you saw the opposition, the Congress Party, which was in a head to head collision with the BJP in these states, trying to, you know, toe that line, they've invited some criticism. All you can say right now is that maybe they're re-strategized, maybe they think this didn't work. It's very hard to say what parties do and how they decide. And it's easy to sort of go in retrospect and say, well, you did this wrong with that, or that right. But the point is that these are the poor parts of India. These are also the resource rich parts. And the irony of development here has been that the people are poor in places where most of India's mineral wealth lies. And that actually is perhaps where some of the criticism that the Congress Party has been facing, that they haven't presented an alternative model of development. There has been sort of one upmanship on trying to soften the blow of economic policies. But if the BJP is already doing that, then what is the opposition operating? Perhaps be a big question. Right, Pragya. Interesting. I guess also for 2024, all parties now drawing their own strategies and conclusions from this election. But this area is also very important for 2024 because the sheer number of seats. Right. I was making a quick calculation about 88 seats went to the polls this time. That's, I think about 15 to 16% of the total seats in the country that had for the polls. But these things have a sort of momentum of their own. And, you know, so that's where the risks for the opposition lie. Right. Thank you so much Pragya for that analysis. And that's all we have time for in today's episode. We'll be back tomorrow with another episode. In the meanwhile, do visit our website peoplesdispatch.org and follow us on all the social media platforms.