 Israel has launched a fresh set of attacks on southern Lebanon over the past few days killing a number of people. This marks yet another escalation in the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which has continued unabated since October 7th. For the latest from the region, we go to Abdul. Abdul, thank you so much for joining us. So yet another Israeli attack in Lebanon, could you take us the details of what has happened and what has been the kind of impact of these attacks? Well, Prashant, Israel has been targeting Lebanon for quite a time now. In fact, ever since the war in Gaza began, they have been carrying out some kind of attack inside southern Lebanon as well. So in the similar context, there were attacks on Tuesday and there are reports also coming that on Wednesday, there were attacks as well. There are also attacks in Syria, Damascus, where there is a reportedly two people were killed. The number of casualties in Lebanon, of course, in Wednesday's attack is yet not clear. But on Tuesday, some civilian lives were lost and apparently some of the people were also wounded. And in the last few days, if we combine it, more than two dozen people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the Israeli attacks. And these attacks are quite widespread, unlike what were there in the initial days, kind of limited to southern Lebanon. Now they're attacking almost every part of the country. Mostly, of course, most of the attacks remain in the southern part, but there are reports coming of attacks in Beirut or in other parts of the country as well. In fact, Israeli Defense Minister claimed that the entire Lebanon, Syria and Syria are basically under their radar and they have the capability to launch attack. At any place in these two countries at any time and therefore Lebanon should be kind of careful when kind of they express their solidarity or kind of stand with Palestinians because that would invite similar kind of destruction as which is happening in Gaza at the moment. So this he repeated on Tuesday as well, while visiting one of the advanced military bases in northern Israel, kind of claiming that they will carry out, Israel will carry out destructive attacks in different parts of Lebanon. So if you see, most of the time they claim that these attacks are carried out against so-called military installation. But there are reports coming that on Tuesday and on Wednesday also, the Israelis airstrikes practically targeted civilian facilities, civilian homes and kind of destroying a lot of physical infrastructure apart from, of course, killing and wounding the civilians. Right, Abdul, in this context, how do you sort of see Hezbollah's response over the course of the past few weeks to what has been happening? Well, Hezbollah, which has basically maintained that it supports the Palestinians who are suffering Israel's brutal aggression in Gaza and therefore they basically whatever they are responding to the Israeli aggression are basically are responses to basically attempt to kind of express their solidarity to the Palestinians in Gaza. But Hezbollah has repeatedly also warned that if they want, they can carry out attacks to all the places in Israel. And in fact, they have shown that their missiles, their drones are capable of flying deep inside Israel without being detected. In fact, there are reports coming that some of the missiles fired by Hezbollah on Tuesday went as far south as Akra without being discovered by the Israeli so-called Israeli air defenses. But Hezbollah has maintained that it does not want to escalate the war to the reasonable level and has basically maintained that it responses are primarily against the military installations. Inside Seba form, the occupied territory or inside the northern Israel. And it has avoided, of course, as much as possible attacking or targeting any civilian infrastructure. But despite that, of course, Israelis are worried about it. And because of that around hundreds of thousands of Israeli civilians have been evacuated from the northern Israel. And they are forced to live in different parts of the country. But despite all those displacement, Israel has not taken any measure to address the concerns raised by Hezbollah. And that basically, and in fact, even threatening to escalate the war because it seems that as we have talked about this on this show before, that how Israel, particularly the administration of Benjamin Netanyahu wants to drag Lebanon into the war so that the war in Palestine can be prolonged as much as possible for the interest, which basically serves Netanyahu personally, if not Israel at large. And that Hezbollah understands and therefore its responses have been very measured, very restrained and only targeted to the military installations. Of course, with kind of unaligning the fact that they have the capacity to attack anywhere inside Israel. And Israel should be careful about kind of provoking Hezbollah unnecessarily. Abdul, thank you so much for that update. Negotiations have begun on the pandemic treaty, a proposal to learn from the mistakes and conclusions of the COVID-19 wave that hit the world. We talked about this on the show before and this round of discussions in Geneva is the second last round before a draft is finally discussed at the World Health Assembly in May. The current draft, while better than earlier versions, continues to be a site of struggle between the global North countries and developing countries to get a sense of the issues it's taking. We go to Jozna. Jozna, thank you so much for joining us. We have talked about the pandemic treaty quite often on this show and now it's an important moment. Discussions are resuming. But for the benefit of viewers, could you first take us through what the treaty is and what has happened till now before we go into what's likely to happen? Yeah, thank you Prashant. So yes, we have been discussing pandemic treaty for as long as it has been discussed at the level of World Health Organization, which is two years. The discussions have started in February 2022. Actually, even before the COVID pandemic was over. So but that was an effort by primarily by the developed countries to discuss a treaty which can guide the world about how to respond to a pandemic if it comes back in future. So they were not talking about COVID pandemic at all. And let us not forget that that was a time when the developing countries, especially Africa was still facing the heat of COVID-19 and still they were forced to discuss a future pandemic when they did not have access to vaccines even that time. So there was a lot of opposition to the way the negotiations started. But well, now we are two years into those negotiations and the mandate of the discussing group was two years. So it is expected that in May this year, when the World Health Assembly happens, there should be a final text in place. Those are the expectations that is the mandate. So that is where we are. And we can already see there is a lot of heat that is there in Geneva at the moment because a very, very long negotiation is going on. It started on 19th of February, which will go on till first of March. If I'm not wrong, this is the longest round of negotiations in this while discussing a pandemic treaty. And again, there will be another round in March itself later in the month. So we are seeing a lot of things happening and let us see how it goes. So what is the current draft that is there and what are some of the features of it considering some of the issues we talk about on this show which is equity, health for all and access to medicines for instance, considering all that. Right. So over the last two years, the battlegrounds have been clear. On the one hand is primarily the developed countries and some other countries would support them where they are absolutely guided by the big pharmaceutical companies, be the US or the UK or Switzerland. EU in general, the European Union, they have been backing for more and more intellectual property barriers in these negotiations. They do not want to give access to people to the medical products, be it medicines or vaccines or say ventilators as we saw that there was such shortage of ventilators or a particular valve of ventilator wasn't available why so many countries could not have enough ventilators. So or PPE kits, masks, etc. So these countries are clearly saying that it is more important for us to protect the big pharmaceutical companies are capitalists on the one hand. But on the other hand, are the developing countries which are saying and actually led by the African Union. For instance, it has African Union has made very, very strong comments saying that we cannot have things repeat what we saw during COVID. So those that is the battlegrounds, we have seen ups and downs. So the current text is not the worst that we have seen we saw much worse texts in the past, but at the same time, this is not it is far from the ideal. There is some language in the text, which is talking about transparency which is talking about that the countries should be able to review their national laws to ensure that the intellectual property barriers can be reduced during a pandemic. But at the same time, so what we are seeing is that there is that language but it is not a mandatory language. It puts an obligation that you should do it, but you must do it. And what definitely should happen, not leaving it on the voluntary nature, but a mandatory nature for certain very important provisions that is still lacking. So that is still happening and one is fighting for apart from that, from the very beginning, and not just during this pandemic, for all types of infections influence us. There has been a debate regarding access and benefit sharing provisions for access and benefit sharing, which means that if there is a new pathogen that is coming up. And it is a pathogen of concern. Then information about it should be put out in the public domain. Now it will be used by the companies and developed countries to make vaccines and medicines. Now, if you have received this information free of cost and as public good, then they should also be able to share those vaccines and medicines with the others with the countries with the developing countries that the developed countries are not agreeing to. So on the one hand, you are ensuring mandating that you get the data of pathogens, but the products that you make, you don't want to give it to the poor populations. So that battleground is still very strong and one has to really fight. The other thing on 19th of February, you saw many civil society organizations and activists making statements based on a text that was shared. They are constantly appealing and that has been again and again asked for from the activists from the beginning that there should be transparency and accountability about the negotiating process itself. And it is important because in November, we heard Geneva Health Files, which is a media house which reports global health from Geneva. Preeti Patnayak leads is the editor. She reported that the African Union's negotiator actually had to step down and go back to their country because under pressure of US and UK because this negotiator was making very strong points. So there are these things that happen in civil society saying that we also need to be part of the process. These things should not happen if there should be more transparency. For example, the text come out very late and before you can read and analyze the negotiations begin. So it has been a problem. We do not know how the negotiations are happening. Finally, there was a presentation made by the WHO but it was too little too late. So we need to know how things are happening because there are also fears that the private sector has a lot more intervention and backdoor talks are happening with the private sector and by private sector I would say the big companies. But those kind of consultations and negotiations are not happening with the civil society formally or informally in both ways. So that process itself, how negotiations are happening should become transparent accountable and again and again that is something that the civil society is asking for. Thank you so much for that update. We'll come back to you once the negotiations are over to see what the new draft that we have. Definitely. Thank you Prashant. And that's all we have in today's daily debrief. We'll be back with a fresh episode tomorrow. In the meantime, do visit our website peoplesitspatch.org. 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