‘Where do we want to be when we die?’
The Israeli ground invasion has reportedly begun, as Israel repeated its order for civilians to head to the south of Gaza. Colonel Era Goren said Israel are planning to ‘increase dramatically the amount of assistance’ coming in from Egypt.
But many people in Gaza cannot move from their locations further north. Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran spoke to Victoria Derbyshire of three generations of her family who have been sheltering in a church since an IDF bomb hit their house. There are frail people who cannot travel down roads which have also been bombed. Moran said the conversation has changed in Gaza, people no longer talk about where to go to be safe, but rather where they want to be if the worst happens.
‘It is difficult to target Hamas without hurting innocent people’
Calls have been growing for a humanitarian pause to Israel’s incursion to allow aid into Gaza and negotiate the release of the hostages, but Israel seems disinclined to listen to its allies. Science Secretary Michelle Donelan repeated that Israel had a right to defend itself, while minimising civilian casualties. When asked if Israel was indeed doing that, Donelan said we needed to be clear that Hamas are ‘the real enemy’, and that they use civilians as human shields. Donelan suggested that the UK would act in the same way if it had been attacked as Israel has been.
Starmer’s response at odds with many in Labour
Meanwhile, the rift in Labour over Keir Starmer’s response to Israel continues to grown, after several prominent Labour politicians publicly disagreed with him and called for a ceasefire in the conflict. Starmer himself has been in line with the government’s standpoint in supporting a humanitarian pause to allow aid into the region. Labour MP Peter Kyle told Trevor Phillips that diversity was a strength of the party, and that many in Labour have links to both sides of the conflict. However, he claimed that Starmer’s response was ‘in lockstep with our international partners’.
Palantir still favourites for massive NHS data deal
The controversial US tech company Palantir are close to securing what would be the biggest IT contract in the history of the NHS. The company’s CEO Alex Karp told Derbyshire that its product was set up so that they wouldn’t be able to sell patients’ data, and that only the UK government could do so. Derbyshire asked Donelan if the government could give assurances that they wouldn’t sell data without consent, and Donelan claimed they are ‘not in the business of damaging people’s privacy’. Donelan said it was important not to ‘scare the British public’, and that using the data could allow us to tackle some of the country’s biggest diseases.
‘We are in an arms race and the world is fracturing’
Finally, as Britain prepares to host a global summit on AI, Rishi Sunak has been talking about the potential benefits, and risks, of the technology. Palantir’s Alex Karp was positive about the technology, saying he believed it could be a friend to the worker, and increase happiness. He was less positive about the state of global relations however, suggesting we were in an arms race, and that if he was in charge, he would not invite ‘adversarial countries’ to the summit.
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