You can listen to the Front on your smart speaker every morning to hear the latest episode. Just say play the news from the Australian. From the Australian, here's what's on the Front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Friday, September six. Ndis Minister Bill Shorton is quitting politics for a university vice chancellor job paying almost one point one million dollars. Shorten will leave the government in February, leaving Labor to
fight the election without him. Alcohol taxes are now worth nearly eleven billion dollars a year after big rises in excise. That's the new claim from the lobby Group for pubs and manufacturers, who say they're being overtaxed. Negotiations for a ceasefire in Gaza have narrowed to a tiny piece of land. Hamas calls it Selah al Din. Israel calls it the Philadelphia Corridor. Haamas says Israel must leave the corridor. Israeli PM Benjamin Netanya, who says no, because he says that's
how weapons and ammunition get into Gaza. Today we explore Nettanna, whose hardline stance as israelis real. From the News. Six hostages were shot dead by Hamas.
I'm sorry, I apologize that we didn't get them out. We worked so hard to get them. We were clothes, but we didn't.
This is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanna, who apologizing. He's talking after he spoke to the grieving and angry families of six Israeli hostages murdered in Gaza. Some of them accuse Nettanna who sacrificing their children by continuing his.
War, and they changed the torment. Our family is worried about their loved ones to families grieving where they're fallen. Beloved that sentiment, I know because I belonged to that family. But it's a horror.
In an hour long addressed journalist in Tel Aviv earlier this week, Ntnyahu went from the sorrowful grandfather grieving with his people.
On October seventh, we experience the worst savagery metted on the Jewish people since the Holocaust. These savages massacred our people.
To the analyst, they waited for.
Iran to start a general war with visual that didn't happen. So then they waited for Hizballa to start a general war with visual that didn't happen either. So now they resort to the final tactic. They're going to sew discord and create international pressure again using the hostages, even after the murder.
To the war board.
Now the world will seriously demand that we'll make concessions after this massacre. What messages are sent to Hamas, I'll tell you what the message is. Murder, more hostages, you'll get more concessions. That's not only a logical, it's not only a moral. It's not right insane.
He took a pointer and stood in front of a giant map, like a university lecturer or a TV with a man pointing at a map of the Middle East with Israel at its center.
Often you see maps of Israel, you think it's a goodliath. Well, I'd like to give you first and overview of where Israel is. This is the Middle East, and this is the entire Arab world, and this is Israel. It's one of the tiniest countries on the planet. It goes through the river.
This is generally what baby does.
Jonni Vashan is a journalist with The Australian. He's been traveling back and forth to report from the region since the October seven attack by Hamas. Johnny was the first Australian journalist to bought from the ground in Gaza.
With many of his public statements, he knows he's not just speaking to Israelis, but to Western leaders, to Western parliament's, students in Western universities. And he likes to use visuals. He likes to use illustrations to do this. It's just his style. It kind of reminds me of when he spoke to the UN in twenty twelve about Iran's nuclear program.
So he held up a drawing of a spherical cartoon bomb with a red line through it near the top, like near the wick, which was a light, and that red line indicated that Iran was getting close to the bomb, so to speak. And then he did the same thing in twenty eighteen, he held a press conference in front of a half time of Uranian nuclear documents that had been well smuggled out of the country somehow by the Israeli intelligence services. So he's a bit of a performer like that.
When people talk about why there hasn't been a ceasefire yet in Israel, they talk about the Philadelphia Corridor. That's a tiny strip of land at the southern end of Gaza between Gaza and Egypt. In two thousand and five, Israel withdrew from Gaza, including the Philadelphi Corridor, and Neetnya who says that's when things started to go wrong. Weapons, rockets and tunnel drilling equipment went in, funded by Iran.
It became a huge terrorist base because we left that corridor.
Israel took the corridor back in May as its forces swept through southern Gaza. So if it's such an important place, why did this only happen seven months into the conflict.
Well, it took them a while to secure the Philadelphi Corridor. It's a strip of land on the southern border with Egypt, and it's basically what the Israelis call the smuggling lane for all the anti tank missiles and weaponry that Hamas has been buying with its Western aid money and quietly stockpiling for seventeen years in tunnels which were also built
with Western aid money. But getting to that corridor took time because, of course, the international community, namely the Biden administration, put great pressure on the IDF not to go anywhere near southern Gaza to Rafa's, especially for fear of greater
civilian casualties. Natanya, who pretty much knows that if he gives up the Philadelphi Corridor, which seems to be at least a partial condition of any ceasefire, then the smuggling lanes will reopen, Tamas will regroup, and the war itself, and the hundreds of Israeli soldiers killed in this campaign over the last eleven months, well, that will have been all for nothing. It would have been an enormous retreat
and tactically terrible. So he's sticking to those guns for now, but facing immense pressure internally within Israel to make a deal at almost any cost.
Nanya, who is under pressure from two directions. One group in Israel, the grieving and fearful families of hostages dead and living and the furious protesters on city streets. And the other group the world, particularly Western nations, long term allies of Israel, where citizens are increasingly horrified by the
civilian death toll in Gaza. And it's this international pressure which perhaps ironically is driving the Nyahoo to go harder now, he says, when the international community, begging for a ceasefire, says he should withdraw from the Philadelphia Corridor and go back in future necessary. He can't believe that because you.
All know and understand that the international community, including friendly countries, under enormous domestic pressure because of the propaganda that's leveled against is Isral and against that there'll be enormous international pressure not to come back. What is their message and the war and the war?
So Joanni, how do Israelis feel about the international community turning on them?
There's a sense of disbelief. Really, the IDF is waging a war against Islamic jihadism, against Iranian proxies, against basically an ideological virus that doesn't just threaten Israel. So the way is Raeli see it, it's their sons and daughters, nineteen and twenty year olds who'd rather be on holiday in Australia. Frankly, they're fighting against a movement controlled and led by Iran that ultimately threatens the West and the Western way of life. This isn't about Palestinian nationalism and
it never has been. The Hamas leadership doesn't give a damn about its people. This is about advancing a sick idea that Israel is a colonial outpost of the West, and that the West itself is evil.
So people said, yeah, but if you stay, this will kill the deal, and I say, such a deal would kill.
Us, coming up the increasingly impossible goals of Benjamin Netanyahu. Do understand this conflict? Do you have to know? This tiny, dry, rocky patch of land on the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean has been fought over for thousands of years. It's where the three great Abrahamic religions were born, first Judaism with their prophet Abraham, then Christianity with the birth of Jesus Christ their prophet, and Islam in the seventh century
with the rise of their prophet Muhammad. All three faiths call it their holy land, and they've spent hundreds of years warring over its holiest places, Jerusalem, Nazareth, Hebron. The modern state of Israel was founded in nineteen forty eight after World War II, when six million Jews were murdered by Adolf Hitler during the Holocaust and countless others were displaced.
When the conflict finally ended, the United Nations had to give those who survived the genocide somewhere to go, and in nineteen forty eight, the newly formed United Nations split it roughly in half and called one half Israel and the other half Palestine. One day after that split, Arab armies, including from Egypt, invaded Israel, and the Wars of raged
basically ever since. Hundreds of thousands of Palestine Indians living in villages in the newly named Israel were displaced, and many have never left the refugee camps they fled to. Over the years, Palestinian control shranked two territories, the west bank of the Jordan River and a tiny strip on the Mediterranean coast called Gaza. Gaza's control by Hamas, which won elections in two thousand and six and has declined to hold elections since then. It's now effectively a one
party state. Hamas controls everything from the health services to the schools. Israel, a parliamentary democracy, is now governed by a right wing coalition including Netnyahoo. He's a seventy four year old former commando and former architect who's BNPM twice before.
He started off with a great deal of popularity and support in the nineteen nineties, taking the Prime ministership about one year after the assassination of its Akrabin. This was a horrible time for Israel. The First Inti far was over by the time Bibi was elected, but he'd been the opposition leader during this torrid period. It was a time when Palestinian suicide bombers were blowing themselves up on buses or in crowds or at nightclubs. So his platform
at that time was security and safety. He was an elite commando in the Israeli Special Forces, well groomed, fiercely articulate, an American educated at Israeli ambassador to the UN during the nineteen eighties. These days, the narrative it hasn't quite flipped.
He remains popular with his base, but maintaining support in the Israel of twenty twenty four is a difficult task, especially when the country is becoming increasingly divided on religious lines, and especially since October seven, when fractures in the country are so evident, especially on how the war effort is being run. And by that I don't mean the number of civilian casualties in Gaza. I mean the central aims of the war itself being to return the hostages, eliminate Hamas,
and restore Israeli security. Now more than ever these these aims seem to be increasingly at odds with each other.
Journie Bashan is a senior journalist with The Australian. Thanks for joining us on the front. Our team is Kristin Amiot, Jasper leek Leat, Sammaglue, Tiffany Dimac, Joshua Burton and me Claire Harvey. For the best journalism twenty four to seven. Join ours subscribers at Beaustralian dot com dot au