Israel pushes deeper into Gaza

This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: ‘Israel pushes deeper into Gaza’

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Marc Filippino
Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Tuesday, October 31st, and this is your FT News Briefing. Israel is pushing deeper into Gaza. And it seems like the US auto workers’ strike is coming to an end. Plus, the head of Alphabet testified before the US Department of Justice yesterday. We’ll take a look at how the antitrust case is going. I’m Marc Filippino, and here’s the news you need to start your day.

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The Israeli military said it deployed more troops, armour and artillery into Gaza yesterday and that it killed dozens of Hamas militants while fighting in the territory. This is part of its expanded ground presence in Gaza that Israel has been signalling for weeks. The FT’s defence and security correspondent John Paul Rathbone is here to explain the latest phase of the war. Hi, JP. 

John Paul Rathbone
Hi, Marc. 

Marc Filippino
I think it would help people understand this conflict better if they knew more about the two armies. How would you describe Hamas and Israel’s armies? 

John Paul Rathbone
So Hamas can count on around 30-40,000 fighters. They have a large arsenal of rockets and anti-tank weapons. It’s essentially a guerrilla warfare. Against them, you’ve got the Israeli army, the most powerful military force in the Middle East. It has 170,000 troops. Some of them are conscripts and it’s just called up 360,000 reserves. So it’s an incredibly asymmetric fight. 

Marc Filippino
So Israel has a lot more people fighting for them. Given that, JP, how does Hamas plan to fight? 

John Paul Rathbone
So Hamas’s approach is to equalise it to the best of its ability by playing to its own strengths and Israel’s weaknesses, and basically does that one in two ways. The first way is to inflict harm on Israel by firing rockets into Israeli territory. And then in Gaza itself, it goes on the defensive and tries to force Israeli forces down to street, gritty street-level fighting where Israel’s technological superiority doesn’t count for as much. It also has this extraordinary network of underground tunnels, about 400km of tunnels, so they could shelter from Israeli air strikes there. They’re also quite well provisioned. And the assumption is that they can hold out for quite a long time. You know, the only thing worse than urban fighting is to fight in a city which is half rubble, because then every hole in the wall, every blown-out window becomes a possible sniper point. So urban fighting is an extremely difficult theatre of war. And that is where Israeli forces are going into now. And that’s what Hamas forces are busy defending. 

Marc Filippino
JP, sometimes it feels like we don’t have a full picture of what’s happening on the ground in Gaza. Why is that the case? I mean, what makes it so difficult to know what’s happening? 

John Paul Rathbone
So it’s useful to compare it, say, to the Russia-Ukraine conflict where there are regular briefings by western allied militaries about what’s going on the battlefield. There’s often very good videos and images and commentary uploaded from both sides on to social media, especially Telegram channels. In Gaza, by contrast, over the weekend, there was no electric power, for example, and a communications blackout. So there isn’t that same source of local information that leaves you pretty much beholden to what the Israel Defense Forces are saying and snippets here and there about Hamas. As always, in war, everyone is lying. Everyone is putting their best foot forward, and propaganda plays a huge role by both sides and twisting the facts. The whole thing is extremely messy. 

Marc Filippino
John Paul Rathbone is the FT’s defence and security correspondent. Thanks, JP. 

John Paul Rathbone
Thanks. 

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Marc Filippino
One of the biggest labour strikes in the history of the US automotive industry is nearing its end. The United Auto Workers union and General Motors reached a tentative deal on Monday. It would end a six-week strike that also hit American car companies Ford and Stellantis. GM’s deal is similar to the tentative agreement that the UAW struck with Ford last week, and it is a big win for workers. Sources say it includes a 25 per cent hourly pay raise over four years. Meanwhile, Stellantis reached a deal over the weekend. The labour stoppage has put a real dent in these companies. Ford, for example, said when it reported earnings last week that the strike had cut $1.3bn from its operating earnings.

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Alphabet’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, testified yesterday in one of the biggest antitrust cases in decades. The US Department of Justice is accusing the company of boxing out competition when it comes to its Google search engine. The FT’s Stefania Palma has been covering the case. Hey, Stefania. 

Stefania Palma
Hi, Marc. 

Marc Filippino
So lay it out for us again. What exactly is the DOJ accusing Google of? 

Stefania Palma
Basically, the DOJ has accused Google of maintaining a monopoly illegally when it comes to the internet search market. And essentially, they’re saying that they’re doing so primarily via agreements that they have put together with tech groups, smartphone makers, even mobile telecoms companies that basically ensure that the Google search engine is the default on smartphones and browsers. 

Marc Filippino
How did CEO Sundar Pichai respond when he testified yesterday? 

Stefania Palma
So he definitely acknowledged that these agreements in some scenarios are and can be very valuable for Google. And if also, he said, done correctly, they can make a difference. But he also really sought to stress that this can also benefit users. It can even benefit the counterparties that these contracts are crafted with and that basically there are, there was no wrongdoing on the company’s part. 

Marc Filippino
So what should we be looking out for as the likely outcome, Stefania? 

Stefania Palma
There are a lot of questions around this case. We still have not reached the point where the DOJ has to formally set out the kinds of remedies that it wants to seek, and it’s not necessarily clear which party has the upper hand as of now. But it’s a remarkable time for antitrust in the US. Generally speaking, we’re just seeing, even beyond big tech, just a string of extremely high-profile cases, some of them including monopoly accusations in a way that has rarely happened in the last few decades when the antitrust policy approach in the US was far more laissez-faire. So it’s really a potential major tipping point for how we think about competition and market concentration in the big tech sphere. 

Marc Filippino
Stefania Palma is the FT’s US legal and enforcement correspondent. Thanks, Stefania. 

Stefania Palma
Thank you. 

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Marc Filippino
Before we go, Elon Musk is probably having some buyer’s remorse right now. OK. We don’t know that for sure. But given that his company, X, formerly known as Twitter, has lost billions of dollars in value, he’s probably not thrilled. Sources told the FT that an employee stock plan sent out on Monday gives the company an equity valuation of $19bn. That is a lot less than the $44bn Musk bought it at. X has struggled to bring in revenue after a lot of marketers pulled their ad dollars last year. They were worried about Musk’s plan to relax content moderation on the platform, which has turned out to be a valid concern. Misinformation has become a huge problem on the site.

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You can read more on all of these stories at FT.com for free when you click the links in our show notes. This has been your daily FT News Briefing. Make sure you check back tomorrow for the latest business news. 

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