Jeremy Bowen: 'Thank you, but it's too late': Why some Palestinians aren't convinced by Starmer's promise

11 minutes ago Share Save Jeremy Bowen International editor Share Save

BBC

One of the major reasons why Britain's prime minister Sir Keir Starmer - following France and then in turn followed by Canada - has a plan to recognise a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly in September is to turn the two-state solution into a real diplomatic plan again, instead of the empty slogan it has become since the Oslo peace process collapsed into bloodshed 25 years ago. A day driving around the West Bank is a salutary reminder of how facts created by Israel to stop that happening have been concreted into the rocky hills and valleys the Palestinians want for a state. The success of the huge national project that Israel started days after it captured the territory in the 1967 Middle East war can be seen in Jewish settlements that now are home to more than 700,000 Israelis. Getting them there is a project that has taken almost 60 years, billions of dollars, and drawn condemnation from friends as well as enemies. It is a violation of international law for an occupier to settle its citizens on the land it has taken. Last year, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory that said the entire occupation was illegal. But the government of Benjamin Netanyahu is hungry for more settlements.

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At the end of May, the defence minister Israel Katz and the finance minister Bezalel Smotrich announced that 22 new settlements would be built in the West Bank. Katz said the massive expansion, the biggest in decades, was making a "strategic move that prevents the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger Israel and serves as a buffer against our enemies" . "This is a Zionist, security, and national response - and a clear decision on the future of the country," he added. Next to Katz was the ultra-nationalist leader Bezalel Smotrich, who lives in a settlement in the West Bank and believes that the land was given to the Jews by God. He is finance minister but also is effectively the governor of the West Bank with sweeping powers over planning. Smotrich called the settlement expansion a "once-in-a-generation decision" and declared: "Next step sovereignty!" Everyone in Israel, and the Palestinians in the territories, know that when Smotrich and his allies say "sovereignty" they mean annexation. Smotrich wants all the land for Jews and has openly discussed finding ways of removing Palestinians.

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'We were very, very scared'

On hilltop after hilltop in the West Bank are settlements at different stages of their development, from well-established small towns with mature gardens and schools, to outposts with handful of caravans and a militant population of young settlers who often mix religion with extreme Jewish nationalism, firearms and sometimes deadly aggression towards their Palestinian neighbours. Statistics collected by the UN and peace campaigners show that violent settlers have increased attacks on their Palestinian neighbours since the 7 October attacks. I went to see how that has affected Taybeh, an entirely Christian village of around 1,500 people. It is a quiet place that seems to have many more houses than residents. After nearly six hard decades of Israeli occupation, more Taybeh people have been forced to emigrate than now live in the village. Two nights before the visit, settlers entered the village when most people were in bed. They burned Kamal Tayea's car and tried unsuccessfully to get into his new house, part of a pleasant development overlooking acres of olive groves. They daubed the walls with graffiti in Hebrew sprayed with red paint. Kamal, a middle-aged man reassessing whether his decision to move his family to the edge of the village was wise, is installing a network of security cameras. "We were very, very scared," Kamal said. "I have children and an old mum. Our lives were threatened, and it was terrifying." I asked him whether Britain's plan to recognise Palestine would make his life any easier. "I don't think so. It's a big step to have a superpower like Britain support us, but on the ground, it does not change much. Israel is not compliant with any international resolutions or laws. "It does not listen to any other country in the whole world."

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'Our roots are here. We can't move'

During the next night, Jewish settlers raided neighbouring Palestinian communities, burning cars and spraying graffiti. It is more than just vandalism. The settlers want the Palestinians out and, in some places in the occupied territories, have succeeded, forcing Palestinians in remote villages out of their farms and stealing their livestock. The Greek Orthodox priest, 74-year-old David Khoury was born in Taybeh. In his church he told me that settlers who have threatened him and other residents are often armed. "Yes, they have guns… they'll use them if we argue with them. They want us out, they want us to leave." The old priest was defiant. "We are here, since Jesus Christ, 2,000 years. Our roots are here. We can't move. We will not move, even if we die here, we will not move from here… Palestine is inside our blood, how we can live without our blood?"

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'If you really seek two states, recognise [both]'

It was not many miles to Ramallah, the de facto Palestinian capital of the West Bank, but I wasn't able to get there in person. Israel's checkpoints can make driving back to Jerusalem slow and difficult, so I reached Husam Zomlot via Zoom. He is the head of the Palestinian delegation to the United Kingdom, effectively their ambassador in London. He is back home for the summer and was delighted by Britain's plan to recognise Palestine. "It is a sign that the UK and with it, the rest of the international community are really serious about the two-state solution. We are no longer in the business of the lip service that has lost us three decades. Actually, if you really seek two states, recognise the two states." "We see the recognition as the starting gun to a sprint towards implementing and establishing the state of Palestine and fulfilling the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people." Zomlot was jubilant. It was, he said, a first step, and Britain's decision would make a real difference. History is one of the powerful drivers of this conflict. Britain, he added, was atoning at last for the wrongs it had done Palestinians when it was the imperial power here between 1917 and 1948.

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He was referring to the promises made in a short, typewritten letter, dated 2 November 1917, signed by the foreign secretary Arthur Balfour and addressed to Lord Rothschild, a leader of Britain's Jewish community. It was, the letter said, "a declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations". Britain would "view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people". It was followed by another promise: "Nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine." He meant the majority, Palestinian Arabs, though he didn't name them, a point that, 108 years later, still rankles Zomlot At the UN in New York this week, Britain's foreign secretary David Lammy said the UK could be proud to have helped lay Israel's foundations after 1917. But breaking the promise to Palestinians in the Balfour Declaration had, he said, caused "a historical injustice which continues to unfold". At the Knesset, Israel's parliament, Simcha Rothman, an ultra-nationalist MP from the National Religious party also had Britain's imperial past in the Middle East on his mind. The British and French had tried to fix borders before, he said, when they took the Middle East from the dying Ottoman Empire during the First World War. Britain couldn't play the imperial power anymore. Just like Benjamin Netanyahu and Bezalel Smotrich, his party leader, Rothman said the plan to recognise Palestine rewarded Hamas terrorism. He rejected Starmer's offer to postpone recognition if Israel, among other conditions, agreed to a full ceasefire in Gaza and a revival of the two-state solution. "He is threatening the state of Israel with punishment and thinks that's the way to bring peace to the Middle East. He is not in a position to punish us, and it definitely will not bring peace." "And it's against justice, history, religion, culture... he's giving a huge reward for Yahya Sinwar [the Hamas leader who led the 7 October attacks and was killed by Israeli forces in Gaza last year]. "Wherever he is in hell today, he sees what Keir Starmer says - and says, 'good partner'." Back in Taybeh, I had asked a group of leading local citizens who were drinking coffee with the mayor in his office what they thought of the UK's recognition plan. One of them, a local businessman, said: "Thank you Britain. But it's too late."

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North Korea sent me abroad to be a secret IT worker. My wages funded the regime

8 minutes ago Share Save Beth Godwin and Julie Yoonnyung Lee BBC Trending & BBC News Share Save

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Jin-su says over the years he used hundreds of fake IDs to apply for remote IT work with Western companies. It was part of a vast undercover scheme to raise funds for North Korea. Juggling multiple jobs across the US and Europe would make him at least $5,000 (£3,750) a month, he told the BBC in a rare interview. Some colleagues, he said, would earn much more. Before he defected, Jin-su - whose name has been changed to protect his identity - was one of thousands believed to have been sent abroad to China and Russia, or countries in Africa and elsewhere, to take part in the shadowy operation run by secretive North Korea. North Korean IT workers are closely monitored and few have spoken to the media, but Jin-su has provided extensive testimony to the BBC, giving a revealing insight into what daily life is like for those working the scam, and how they operate. His first-hand account confirms much of what has been estimated in UN and cyber security reports. He said 85% of what he earned was sent back to fund the regime. Cash-strapped North Korea has been under international sanctions for years. "We know it's like robbery, but we just accept it as our fate," Jin-su said, "it's still much better than when we were in North Korea." Secret IT workers generate $250m-$600m annually for North Korea, according to a UN Security Council report published in March 2024. The scheme boomed in the pandemic, when remote working became commonplace, and has been on the rise ever since, authorities and cyber defenders warn. Most workers are after a steady paycheck to send back to the regime, but in some cases, they have stolen data or hacked their employers and demanded ransom. Last year, a US court indicted 14 North Koreans who allegedly earned $88m by working in disguise and extorting US firms over a six-year period. Four more North Koreans who allegedly used fraudulent identities to secure remote IT work for a cryptocurrency firm in the US were indicted last month.

Getting the jobs

Jin-su was an IT worker for the regime in China for several years before defecting. He and his colleagues would mostly work in teams of 10, he told the BBC. Access to the internet is limited in North Korea, but abroad, these IT workers can operate more easily. They need to disguise their nationality not just because they can get paid more by impersonating Westerners, but due to the extensive international sanctions North Korea is under, primarily in response to its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes. This scheme is separate from North Korea's hacking operations which also raise money for the regime. Earlier this year the Lazarus Group - an infamous hacking group understood to be working for North Korea, though they've never admitted to it - is thought to have stolen $1.5bn (£1.1bn) from cryptocurrency firm Bybit.

The BBC spoke to Jin-su on a video call from London. For his safety we are protecting his identity.

Jin-su spent most of his time trying to secure fraudulent identities which he could use to apply for jobs. He would first pose as Chinese, and contact people in Hungary, Turkey and other countries to ask them to use their identity in exchange for a percentage of his earnings, he told the BBC. "If you put an 'Asian face' on that profile, you'll never get a job." He would then use those borrowed identities to approach people in Western Europe for their identities, which he'd use to apply for jobs in the US and Europe. Jin-su often found success targeting UK citizens. "With a little bit of chat, people in the UK passed on their identities so easily," he said.

IT workers who speak better English sometimes handle the applications process. But jobs on freelancer sites also don't necessarily require face-to-face interviews, and often day-to-day interactions take place on platforms like Slack, making it easier to pretend to be someone you are not. Jin-su told the BBC he mostly targeted the US market, "because the salaries are higher in American companies". He claimed so many IT workers were finding jobs, often companies would unwittingly hire more than one North Korean. "It happens a lot," he said. It's understood that IT workers collect their earnings through networks of facilitators based in the West and China. Last week a US woman was sentenced to more than eight years in prison for crimes connected to assisting North Korean IT workers find jobs and sending them money. The BBC cannot independently verify the specifics of Jin-su's testimony, but through PSCORE, an organisation which advocates for North Korean human rights, we've read testimony from another IT worker who defected that supports Jin-su's claims. The BBC also spoke to a different defector, Hyun-Seung Lee, who met North Koreans working in IT while he was travelling as a businessman for the regime in China. He confirmed they'd had similar experiences.

A growing problem

The BBC spoke to multiple hiring managers in the cyber security and software development sector who say they've spotted dozens of candidates they suspect are North Korean IT workers during their hiring processes. Rob Henley, co-founder of Ally Security in the US, was recently hiring for a series of remote vacancies at his firm, and believes he interviewed up to 30 North Korean IT workers in the process. "Initially it was like a game to some extent, like trying to figure out who was real and who was fake, but it got pretty annoying pretty quickly," he said. Eventually, he resorted to asking candidates on video calls to show him it was daytime where they were. "We were only hiring candidates from the US for these positions. It should have been at least light outside. But I never saw daylight." Back in March, Dawid Moczadło, co-founder of Vidoc Security Lab based in Poland, shared a video of a remote job interview he conducted where the candidate appeared to be using artificial intelligence software to disguise their face. He said that after speaking to experts, he believed the candidate could be a North Korean IT worker.

Get Real Security - a digital forensics company - told us it's highly likely the candidate (left) is using some kind of faceswapping or AI filter

We contacted the North Korean embassy in London to put the allegations in this story to them. They did not respond.

A rare escape route

Twelve years house arrest for Colombian ex-leader Álvaro Uribe

7 minutes ago Share Save Victoria Bourne BBC News Share Save

RAUL ARBOLEDA/AFP via Getty Images Álvaro Uribe pictured outside court at the end of his trial in February

Colombian former President Álvaro Uribe has been sentenced to 12 years of house arrest for witness tampering and a fraud charge. The 73-year-old is the first former president in the country's history to be convicted of a crime. He has also been barred from public office and fined $578,000 (£435,000). Uribe, who maintains his innocence, told a judge in Bogotá he would appeal against his conviction. He said the case was meant to "destroy a voice for the democratic opposition". He was president from 2002-2010 and remains popular in Colombia, despite being accused of working with right-wing paramilitaries to destroy leftist rebel groups. A claim he denies.

Antonio Cascio/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images A small group of Uribe supporters gathered outside the court in Bogotá

They escaped Ukraine's frontlines. The sound of drones followed them

21 minutes ago Share Save Joel Gunter Reporting from Kyiv Share Save

BBC Pavlo experienced drone warfare. "You are being hunted," he said.

In a cramped apartment in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, Pavlo, a 30-year-old drone operator who had recently returned from the front, unzipped a black case about the size of a pizza box. Inside, there was a four-rotor drone he intended to fly around the room. He pressed buttons on the control unit and pushed the antenna to different positions. Nothing happened. "Sorry, not today," he said, with a smile. The unit looked fine, but something was broken. At the front, Pavlo, who asked to be identified only by his first name, was a pilot of first-person view (FPV) drones. These small, highly manoeuvrable drones have front-facing cameras that allow them to be flown remotely. Over the past year or so, bomb-laden FPVs have become ubiquitous on the frontlines in Ukraine, replacing the heavy weapons that characterised the war's first phase. The FPVs chase armoured vehicles, hunt infantry units through treelines and stalk individual soldiers to their deaths. "You cannot hide from the FPV, and to run is useless," Pavlo said. "You try to be as calm as possible, and you pray." Even when an FPV is too high to see clearly, or hidden behind foliage, soldiers can hear its distinctive, high-pitched whine. "Bzzzzzzzzzz," Pavlo said. "You are being hunted."

Getty Images Small FPV drones with munitions attached, in the hands of Ukrainian soldiers

After more than a year at the front, Pavlo has returned home to the Kyiv apartment he shares with his wife. But the sound of the drones has followed him. Everyday mechanical tools like lawnmowers, motorcycles and air conditioners remind him of the FPVs that hunted him and his unit mates. And nature is not an escape. Pavlo can no longer hear the sound of bees and flies buzzing near him without a creeping panic. "I don't like to go into nature anymore and hear this sound, because it reminds me so hard of the drones," he said. Trauma associated with sound is not new – generations of soldiers have been affected by sudden noises after returning to civilian life. But as the war in Ukraine has evolved into a conflict driven by drone technology, the trauma has evolved with it. "Over the past year, the majority of patients – if they are not physically wounded – have mental health injuries as a result of being under drone activity," said Dr Serhii Andriichenko, chief psychiatrist at Kyiv's military hospital. "We call this droneophobia." The first trial of its kind: A Russian solder takes the stand

Kill Russian soldiers, win points: Ukraine's new drone scheme

Families of the missing fear peace will not bring them home Many thousands of men are now returning from the front like Pavlo, with acute stress disorders associated with the sounds of drones, Dr Andriichenko said. The droneophobia can be triggered by an array of ordinary urban sounds – small motorcycles and scooters, lawnmowers, air conditioners – anything mechanical that whirrs. "If it's a moped or a lawnmower, my first thought is that it might be a drone," said another returned frontline soldier, Savur, who lost his arm in an FPV drone attack. At the front line the drones were a "permanent sound", said Savur, who in accordance with military protocol asked to be identified by his callsign. "The sound of a shell lasts just a few seconds, but the sound of the drone is there most of the time," he said. "You can lay in your position, in your foxhole, and listen to it for hours. I remember that sound all of the time." Or sometimes the problem was the opposite – silence. "Silence is always the start," Dr Andriichenko, the psychiatrist, said. "When the soldiers go on rotation to combat positions, they start listening carefully to make sure there are no drones. There is constant tension, constant fear. They are always looking up."

Serhii Andriichenko, chief psychiatrist at Kyiv's military hospital. "We call this droneophobia," he said.

In many cases, that constant sense of tension has not been dispelled by the return to civilian life. Soldiers have been observed suddenly switching off lights at home, moving away from windows and hiding under furniture. Later, if a soldier is seen for treatment, Dr Andriichenko describes how he often has no memory of any trigger sound, but his wife or family member will reveal that an extractor fan or air conditioner had just been turned on. Soldiers from the earlier phases of the war - which was characterised more by brutal, direct combat - came home fearful of being in forests, where much of the fighting had taken place. But drone warfare has reversed the phenomenon. Now soldiers "feel safest in forests, under dense tree canopies", the psychiatrist said. "And in their free time, they try to avoid wooded areas." The rise in drone use has had another terrorising effect for combat troops - it has extended the danger zone far back from the front line. Soldiers operating up to 40km (25 miles) away, or pulling back after a heavy rotation, can no longer let their guard down. Nazar Bokhii, a commander of a small drone unit, was about 5km from the contact line in a dugout one day when his unit scored a direct hit on a Russian mortar position 22km away. Buoyed by the success, Bokhii bounded out of the dugout, forgetting the usual protocol of stopping first to listen for a telltale buzz. Metres away, a Russian FPV was loitering in the air. As it sped towards him, Bokhii only had time to raise his arms. When it detonated, it took both his hands and his left eye and badly burned his face.

Nazar Bokhii lost both his hands and one eye in a Russian FPV drone attack

Bokhii's own PTSD was limited, he said, to an occasional fear response to motorcycles and lawnmowers. But he knew about the effect of the sound, he said, because his unit had used it to inflict terror on others. "We were the side that caused fear with sound, not the side that suffered from it," Bokhii said. They had realised at some point that the sound could be used to force Russian soldiers into exposed areas. "You buzz around them and it becomes a test of the enemy's psychological resilience," Bokhii said. "The sound of the drone itself is a serious psychological attack." According to Bokhii, buzz above a soldier for long enough and he will leave a strong shelter and simply run into open terrain. "Our psychology works in such a way that we need to do something to calm ourselves," Bokhii said. "So you hover nearby and psychologically suppress him… and he starts running and becomes easier to hit." And the psychological terror of the FPV is no longer just a problem on the front line. It has reached beyond even the areas behind the front lines. Russia has begun using FPVs to drop munitions on civilians in Ukrainian cities nearby. Among the worst hit is Kherson, a southern city occupied for a time by Russian forces and still comfortably within drone range. According to Human Rights Watch, Russian forces have deliberately targeted civilians in the city with FPV drones and killed or maimed them - a war crime. According to the regional military administration, at least 84 civilians have been killed in the Kherson region as a result of Russian drone attacks so far this year. Residents say the tiny FPVs are a daily terror. "There is no such thing as a safe place anymore," said Dmytro Olifirenko, a 23-year-old border guard who lives in Kherson city. "You always have to be alert, focused, and because of that, the body is constantly under stress," he said.

Stanislav Ostrous/BBC Dmytro Olifirenko is among the many civilians wounded in drone attacks in Kherson.

Tesla found partly to blame for fatal Autopilot crash

1 hour ago Share Save Lily Jamali • @lilyjamali North America Technology correspondent in San Francisco Share Save

Reuters

A jury in Florida has found Tesla partly liable for a 2019 crash in which a Model S sedan using self-driving software killed a pedestrian and severely injured another. Plaintiffs had argued the assistance software, called Autopilot, should have alerted the driver and activated the brakes before the crash. Tesla had maintained the driver, George McGee, was at fault and called the verdict "wrong" in a statement to the BBC, while vowing to appeal. The result means the company will have to pay as much as $243m (£189m) in punitive and compensatory damages. The verdict marks a setback for Tesla and CEO Elon Musk, who has touted self-driving technology as critical to the company's future.

Shares of Tesla dipped following the news and were nearly 2% lower when US markets closed. Following the verdict, plaintiffs attorneys said Mr Musk had misrepresented the capabilities of the company's Autopilot driver assistance software. "Tesla designed Autopilot only for controlled-access highways yet deliberately chose not to restrict drivers from using it elsewhere, alongside Elon Musk telling the world Autopilot drove better than humans," said attorney Brett Schreiber in a statement to the BBC. Mr Schreiber said Tesla and Mr Musk had long propped up the company's valuation with "self-driving hype at the expense of human lives." "Tesla's lies turned our roads into test tracks for their fundamentally flawed technology," he added. The company was sued by the family of Naibel Benavides Leon, 22, who was killed when she was struck by the Model S at a T-intersection in the Florida Keys in 2019. Her boyfriend Dillon Angulo suffered life-long injuries and was also involved in the suit. The court heard the driver, Mr McGee, lost sight of the road when he dropped his phone as he was approaching the intersection, causing his car to continue through it and crash into an SUV parked on the other side. The two victims were standing nearby. Neither Mr McGee, nor the Autopilot software, hit the brakes in time to prevent the crash.

Charles Rabin/Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images Dillon Angulo outside court with the family of Naibel Benavides Leon