Israel's new offensive to seize "all" of Gaza
27:50 Share

The Telegraph. This is the longest and bloodiest war in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflicts, going right back to 1948. We will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars we end. Right now, all eyes are on Washington. But who's actually watching Europe at the moment?

to the Middle East now and more than 50,000 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the war began. That's according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

I'm Roland Oliphant and this is Battlelines. It's Monday the 19th of May 2025. Today, as the Israeli military launched yet another large-scale operation in Gaza, Benjamin Netanyahu has announced that Israel aims to take control of the entire Gaza Strip. What does that mean for Israel's endgame? He also acknowledged that images of starving Palestinians have seriously damaged international support for Israel.

We'll be looking at what that means for the outcome of that war. And as centrist liberals unexpectedly triumph in elections across Europe, we ask, has the populist wave finally peaked? Or is Donald Trump simply bad news for his fellow conservatives? But first, as you were recording today's episode, bring us your thoughts on the situation.

Britain and the European Union announced that they have signed a trade and defence deal. The exact details have yet to be announced, but the government says the defence agreement paves the way for UK-based arms firms to access something called the Security Action for Europe, or SAFE. That is a £150bn EU fund providing loans for defence projects. In other words, this is about the spending bonanza that is emerging.

expected to accompany European rearmament in the next few years. As I said, the details have yet to be announced. Presumably they'll come out this afternoon. But this is potentially a very significant moment for European defence. On Sunday, Israel launched a new large-scale offensive in Gaza. This one is called Gideon's Chariot. And according to Benjamin Netanyahu, it's meant to finally finish off Hamas after more than a year and a half of war.

Israel also allowed food trucks to enter the Strip for the first time in more than two months. Mr Netanyahu then explained that decision by saying that Israel had been approaching a red line, that even some of Israel's staunchest supporters had warned him that images of starving Palestinian children were unacceptable.

He also said that the objective of the operation is to take full control of the entire Gaza Strip. What does all this say about Israel's plan? Is this war finally, after so long, entering the end game?

I spoke to David Blair, The Telegraph's chief foreign affairs commentator, about what all this means. These are important developments. So two messages from Netanyahu. One, we're going to take over the whole of the Gaza Strip. Two, we're going to allow in what he calls a minimal basic bridge of humanitarian aid. And again, his phrase, just enough to prevent hunger.

One bit of background. Israel stopped the inflow of humanitarian aid to Gaza on the 2nd of March.

So approximately 11 weeks have passed by without any trucks being allowed into the territory at all carrying humanitarian aid. So Netanyahu is announcing a partial reversal of that position. And from now on, what he calls a minimal supply will be allowed in. Now, one point to bear in mind is that simultaneous with all this,

Negotiations are taking place in Doha, indirect talks between Israel and Hamas. And of course, just at the point where there's a possibility perhaps of making progress in those negotiations, it would make sense for Israel to escalate the pressure.

So this could be a negotiating tactic prior to a deal or it could be a further escalation. So it's been two and a half months without any food trucks going into Gaza. The UN's integrated food security phase classification, that's called the IPC.

said over the weekend that half a million people in the Gaza Strip are facing starvation. The entire rest of the population is suffering from high levels of acute food insecurity. The risk of famine in the Gaza Strip is not just possible, it is increasingly likely. We have seen some really, really distressing images of people, you know, children, people crowding around, struggling for food, fighting for food.

It's not new that we've seen these pictures. I mean, this has been going on for two months and so on. Why has Netanyahu changed it or why has the Israeli government changed its mind now? What I find particularly interesting is that Netanyahu is implicitly conceding that famine was a real danger.

Because in the past, the Israelis have tended to say that the UN is exaggerating and that there's no great risk of famine. But the fact that Netanyahu has changed course to allow the resumption of a minimal level of aid, again, his word, shows that they really did assess that there could have been a famine and that that would have been devastating for whatever international support Israel can rally behind its campaign in Gaza.

Netanyahu mentioned in his message earlier today, he mentioned senators, presumably he's referring to United States senators, and he's referring there to messages that Israel has received that there'll be no international backing if there are scenes of mass starvation. So Netanyahu judged it to be in Israel's interests to allow the resumption of humanitarian aid. The new Israeli

which we're told got underway over the weekend. It's called Gideon's Chariot. According to Netanyahu, it's meant to finally finish off Hamas. It's also apparently going to involve taking full control of the entire Gaza Strip. David, what do we know about this operation and its objectives? Operation Gideon's Chariot, it's happening on a large scale. There are reported to be five Israeli divisions currently fighting in the Gaza Strip.

And over the weekend, a leaked map emerged purporting to show Israel's plan for the Gaza Strip, presumably the objective of Operation Gideon's Chariot. And just to sum up what that is, the purported map suggests that Gaza will be divided up into three civilian areas, one in the north around Gaza City, one in the center,

and one further south around Khan Yunus. And those three civilian areas will be separated by four areas under Israeli military control. One in the north, including the town of Beit Lahiya, one south of Gaza City, the Netzerim Corridor, which the Israelis have controlled for quite a while.

then a completely new zone of military control stretching right the way across the Gaza Strip further south, and then a southern corridor incorporating Rafah, again, an area which these Israelis have controlled for quite some time. But all in all, you're seeing here a plan to divide up the whole strip and herd the Palestinian population into three completely sealed off civilian areas.

Now, I should stress this is a leaked plan. This is a purported map. And I should also repeat the point I made earlier, which is this could be an attempt to maximize the pressure on Hamas to agree to end the war on Israeli terms, which essentially would mean Hamas's surrender.

bearing in mind the talks that are going on at the moment in Doha. But whatever way you look at it, this is a pretty extraordinary plan. David, you had a long career as a foreign correspondent out in the field before you were in government and then as you are now.

with us in the newsroom. You covered several, I think, wars in Gaza a long time before this one. I was wondering what you make of the difference in scale between what you'd seen before. I'm very interested in your thoughts as someone who reported wars in Gaza before this one. I was in Gaza for 12 days of the war in 2014.

which at the time seemed like an incredibly intense combat. You had an Israeli ground invasion of the Gaza Strip back then, combined with an air bombardment and also a naval bombardment. Israel had missile or gunboats off the coast, which were striking targets inside the Gaza Strip. And being there at the time and having all this happening all around me,

I thought and others believed it at the time, too, that this was a pretty intense war. But quite frankly, it pales by comparison with what's happened in Gaza since October the 7th, 2023, and the Hamas atrocity and the Hamas invasion of Israel.

Back then, the ground invasion did happen, but the Israelis only sought to carve out a buffer zone along the borders. They made no attempt to do what Netanyahu says today they will do, which is take over the entire Gaza Strip.

Back then, there were plenty of civilian casualties and a lot of suffering, but there was nothing remotely on the scale that's taking place today. David, thank you for that update. Just a reminder for context, the war in Gaza has been going on for roughly a year and seven months since October the 7th, 2023. As of last week, the death toll...

That does not include injured or prisoners. The death toll is thought to be at 55,000 people or more, including more than 53,000 Palestinians and 1,706 Israelis will be continuing to follow the Gaza war very closely, as we have throughout the life of this podcast. After the break, why are European voters suddenly turning against the populist right?

Welcome back. This weekend, voters went to the polls in Romania, Poland and Portugal and they all returned centrist, liberal candidates. If I sound surprised, it's because I am. It's a remarkable moment for a continent where the populist right has seemed to be on the march unstoppably for the past few years. It's an unexpected setback both for Donald Trump's White House, which has been vocally supportive of some of those candidates, and the Kremlin,

which sees allies in parties reluctant to continue support for Ukraine. James Rothwell, the Telegraph's Berlin correspondent, has been following developments. I started by asking him about the results in Romania. Now, this is a rerun of the presidential elections because, as our listeners might recall, back in November...

That election was annulled due to suspicions that the victorious candidate, Kalin Georgescu, who was a pro-Moscow candidate, had only won it with improper support from Russia. There was also allegations of financial

impropriety in his campaign. That obviously caused an absolutely massive stink because the result was annulled, the election had to be rerun, there were accusations from the Trump administration that this was a case of the Romanian elites cracking down on democracy and

and the will of the people. And to cut a very long story short, the election was rerun on Sunday, and it was basically a fight between a sort of pro-Trump right-wing populist candidate, George Simeon, who claimed in an interview with The Telegraph recently that he was part of a wave of the MAGA movement – that's the Make America Great Again movement here in Europe, he said –

And he was up against a centrist, liberal, pro-EU mayor of Bucharest, Nikos Ordan, as you said. And the result is that the liberal pro-EU candidate has come out on top, which to some extent bucks a bit of a trend, or a trend at least that the Trump administration has been claiming exists in Europe, where populists are on the rise.

We know that populists are on the rise, for example, in Germany, where the far-right AFD came second place, the first time that a far-right party has come second place in Germany's post-war history. But the free results that happened on Sunday, not just this Romanian presidential result, but also the presidential election in Poland and the parliamentary elections in Portugal,

They've all led to victories for the centrist pro-EU side of the argument and not the right-wing populist pro-Trump side of the arguments.

And so you could argue that these results are a bit of a bloody nose for this sort of nascent pro-Trumpist kind of campaign that we're seeing in European politics. The one thing that is worth mentioning about George Simeon is that he's viewed by many as the kind of puppet of Georgesco. He's perceived by many as, if you like, Georgesco version two. And that, of course, will strengthen suspicions that this was very much the candidate that was

backed by Moscow in the election. Could you just give us a quick rundown of what's happened in Poland and Portugal as well? So there's been some important elections also in Poland and in Portugal. In Poland, there's been a presidential election much less controversial than Romania because

a round of the election wasn't cancelled. The Polish presidential election was almost a sort of referendum on the future direction of Poland. It was a showdown between a centrist candidate who's backed by Donald Tusk, the prime minister of Poland, that obviously brings all of the normal centrist baggage that you would expect with it, pro-European Union, pro-Ukraine and so on,

And then in the, if you like, in the blue corner, there was this candidate, a historian who was backed by law and justice, which is the more to the right populist and very, very pro-Trump political party in Australia.

Poland, when it was in power a couple of years ago during the first Trump administration, this was a party that had an extraordinarily close relationship with President Donald Trump. I mean, it was a real love-in. And so that was once again a clash between the political center, a candidate that largely represented the sort of liberal pro-EU agenda of Donald Tusk, and on the other side, this more, if you like, Trumpian character.

And then Portugal also had some interesting results. Slightly different set of circumstances in Portugal. We're talking about a parliamentary election. So it's about electing MPs rather than the sort of ceremonial leadership role of the country and therefore much more kind of closely fought along the lines of, for example,

the economy, all the usual bits and pieces you'd expect in a German election. But again, this was a situation where the centrist candidate won and the far-right populist party called Chega

which I believe I'm pronouncing correctly, they managed to have a really impressive result. They got their best result ever, basically 22% of the vote. And the final, final results are still trickling in, but we're looking at a situation where they could be the second largest party in parliament. So the big picture, Roland, across all three of these elections, the big picture, of course, at the granular level, there's lots of nuance and differences.

that the centrists have got a spring in their step and it's a bit of a poke in the eye for the conservative far-right populist Trump type characters. I want to get into the causes of that in a second, but what about the implications? I'm interested in the kind of, well, it's battle lines, right? We're interested in the strategic implications, really. There's been a lot of talk about

which way Europe will go, what the rise of the populist right of people like the AFD in Germany, who are perhaps more sympathetic to Putin's Russia, could mean for Europe, could mean for Ukraine, for NATO, and so on, and of course for the transatlantic relationship. Where does this leave Europe and European security? And what would it have meant if things had gone the other way? When we talk about the populist right,

in Europe. I think what we're mainly talking about in a security context is the kind of isolationist Europe and almost nativist Europe. It's a Europe that says basically wars that happen outside of our borders are not really our problem. We should be focusing much more on the broken situation of our domestic politics and the broken situation of our economies and that we shouldn't concern ourselves excessively with

lots of, for example, expensive military support to Ukraine. You see some streaks of this debate also in the context of Middle Eastern politics, excluding Israel-Palestine, where people tend to pick a side. But for example, this idea of whether Europe should try to be the regional policeman, whether it should be playing a bigger role in things, for example, like the Iranian nuclear debate, the right-wing populists will say, this is not our problem, we should focus on

The centrist side of the argument obviously says the complete opposite, which is that an integral part of security and prosperity at home is playing a constructive role in supporting the security of other countries, whether it's Ukraine or somebody else. And that's why these election results are, I think, really quite interesting.

important. By electing a centrist pro-EU leader, you're not just electing someone who is interested in a kind of EU-led cooperative approach to foreign policy and security. You're not just electing leaders who really buy into this idea of European unity and Europe being a major regional player.

it's also implicitly a rejection of that kind of Trumpian security policy, which as we've seen, for example, with the Ukraine war negotiations comes across as being incredibly transactional, quite sympathetic to Vladimir Putin, and some critics might even say an attempt to basically get rich off the back of conflict if we're going to talk about, for example, the raw minerals deal.

So that, if you like, is the risk of slightly oversimplifying it. Of course, that's the nature of the clash that we're seeing play out in some of these elections, even if the traditional lines of

discontent about the economy or unemployment or whatever might be part of the mix. If we want to talk about the security implications of those elections, I think that's the fault line that this is being fought on. There was a Romanian official on the BBC this morning on the World Service saying that as far as he was concerned, it was Vladimir Putin, it was Russia that lost the election in Romania. What does this

this all mean to the Kremlin? Has the Kremlin taken a bloody nose here? It was Kalin Georgescu who was very much considered the pro-Russian candidate. But I think the Romanian official that was interviewed on the BBC was almost certainly talking about Simeon, you know, who's also part of that right-wing populist anti-EU kind of creed of politics. And I think that's

The Kremlin, and Roland, of course, you know much more about this than I do, but the Kremlin obviously revels in the idea of the European centre not holding. It's delighted by the idea that sort of slow and steady as it goes, cautious centric politics is being kind of split apart by the populist right. I don't know whether the Russians meddled heavily in this election. There's definitely been a lot of suspicion that they tried to.

The case, I think, can reasonably be made that any right-wing populist victory in Europe advances the strategic interests of the Kremlin. I mean, that has been a very widely held view among foreign policy experts for a long time. Why is it a poke in the eye to the Kremlin? Well, you know, the argument goes that

There is this concerted effort underway to try and push pro-Putin political movements into the European Council, which, for example, has a veto on critical EU decision making processes to basically try and put Putin

politicians who are more sympathetic towards Putin into national government leadership positions as well. The long-term strategy there presumably is trying to control the outcome of European policy on, for example, Ukraine, but also perhaps long-term defence strategy

There have been, of course, allegations that Russia has been trying to do this in places like Germany. We could talk about the very suspicious spate of terrorist attacks committed by asylum seekers in the run up to the election, for example.

But it's also happening around the sort of margins of Europe, if you like, places like Romania. I'm purely speculating here. But, you know, if we accept the premise that there is Russian interference happening in a country like Romania, perhaps the Kremlin considers a country like that relatively new to the European Union, has a lot of battles on its hands with, for example, corruption. Perhaps they consider it an easier target than somewhere like

We've been talking for ages about this rise of the right, this sense of populists, whether it's Nigel Farage in Britain or the AFD in Germany or Marine Le Pen in France. People kind of felt this sense and Trump exemplifies it. This revolution, people talk about revolution. We've had people writing up heads talking about the global conservative counter-revolution. Is there a common denominator here? What's behind this revolution?

continent-wide, Philip, for the centrist dads? Well, I think to understand the rise of the centrist dads, if you like, you can go back to the federal elections in Germany, which produced basically the most powerful centrist dad in Europe, which is CDU leader Friedrich Metz.

Back in February, there was this fear that the far-right AFD party was possibly going to win the election. You would struggle to find an analyst or an activist or somebody who might be willing to sort of make that prediction out loud. But there was a lot of anxiety at the time that the polls might get it wrong and that the AFD might come first place. And then they might not

not necessarily form the next government because they'd be frozen out by the centrist parties but it would create this sort of narrative where a populist tidal wave is breaking over Europe to the delight of President Trump and his allies but

But the AFD didn't win in Germany. They came second place. A bit of a disappointing result for them, you might even argue, considering that they were being overtly backed by people in and around the Trump administration. J.D. Vance, the vice president, went to Munich Security Conference in February, middle of the German election campaign, and took the kind of unprecedented step of snubbing the

the then-Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and instead having a meeting with AFD leader Alice Feidel, giving this far-right German party the seal of approval, if you like, of the Trump administration during the election campaign. But it didn't work. The AFD didn't win. And Friedrich Merz, the centric dad, if you like, is very much sitting pretty in the chancellery in Berlin, part of this trifecta, if you like,

along with Donald Tusk in Poland and Emmanuel Macron in France of centrist leadership. Is Donald Trump basically bad news for right-wing populists in Europe? Well, then you get to Greenland, right? Elections in Greenland, which were held under the shadow of Donald Trump basically saying that he wants to take the whole country down.

territory, I should say, over. You then had a very disappointing result for Donald Trump there because the centrist Democrats emerged as the victors. Fast forward to Canada, the conservatives there, very sympathetic to Trump, got absolutely trounced by Mark Carney, the liberal leader. And now we've got these three election results here. And to get to sort of the heart of, I think, the

point that you're raising, Roland. Yes, these recent election results suggest that being backed by Donald Trump isn't necessarily a vote winner in Europe. And the reason he isn't necessarily a vote winner will hinge on all kinds of complex sort of national and local bits and pieces of context. But the big picture here, the overall trend is

seems to be that if you are fighting an election and it's a choice between being a pro-EU centrist in Europe or a right-wing populist Trumpian fellow, the smart money at the moment appears to be on taking the centrist route. Does that mean the populist wave has peaked? I very much...

don't believe that the populist wave has peaked in the European Union. I absolutely don't think that that would be the right conclusion to draw from the election results that we've seen today. If we're going to look at this in the long term, I think it's worth remembering that the AFD, for example, not only did it come second place in the last elections, but it is now first place in some German polls. And the AFD has now got four years ahead of itself in opposition to

where if it wants to it can try to style itself or rebrand itself as a very serious potential party of governments. I have spoken to German politicians who, you know, off the record almost kind of concede the idea that maybe the AFD is actually going to win the elections in 2029. There's a huge amount of anxiety about that and if you had a situation in 2029

where the AFD came in first place, even if the other centrist parties froze them out and did a coalition without them anyway, it sends a sort of message that at the heart of Europe, the economic engine of

of Europe. You've basically got the far-right populists being the most popular party. And so for that reason, a very sort of Germany-specific region alone, I don't think that this is the end of the populist wave. But of course, at the same time, I've got to stress, 2029 is a very long time away, and goodness knows what can happen in the intervening period. James Rothwell, thank you for joining us on Battlelines.

That's all for this week. We will, of course, be following all of these fast-developing stories in the paper and online. And if you want more details of that just-announced defence pact between the EU and Britain, I suggest you check the Telegraph's website later this evening because more details will be emerging. We will be back on Friday. Until then, that was Battlelines. Goodbye.

Battle Lines is an original podcast from The Telegraph, created by David Knowles and hosted by me, Roland Oliphant, and Venetia Rainey. If you appreciated this podcast, please consider following Battle Lines on your preferred podcast app. And if you have a moment, leave a review, as it helps others to find the show. To stay on top of all our news, subscribe to The Telegraph, sign up to our Dispatches newsletter, or listen to our sister podcast, Ukraine The Latest.

You can also get in touch directly by emailing battlelines at telegraph.co.uk or contact us on X. You can find our handles in the show notes. The producer is Peter Shevlin and the executive producer is Louisa Wells.