Israel responds to historic Hamas attack

This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: ‘Israel responds to historic Hamas attack’

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Marc Filippino
Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Monday, October 9th, and this is your FT News Briefing.

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Israel is gearing up for a long conflict with Hamas, and Germany’s conservative parties celebrated big wins in regional elections on Sunday. Plus, just how worried should workers be about the green transition?

Sarah O’Connor
Clearly, the green transition is generating a lot of jobs. But you have to remember that jobs are also being lost because the old sort of fossil fuel industries are having to be mothballed.

Marc Filippino
I’m Marc Filipino, and here’s the news you need to start your day.

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[BENJAMIN NETANYAHU SPEAKING IN HEBREW]

Marc Filippino
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said over the weekend that his country now faces a long and difficult war with Hamas.

[BENJAMIN NETANYAHU SPEAKING IN HEBREW]

Marc Filippino
In an unprecedented assault from the Gaza Strip hit multiple sites across Israel over the weekend. Israel has since responded, and now more than 1,000 people are dead. Here to talk to us about the unrest is the FT’s Middle East editor Andrew England. Hi, Andrew.

Andrew England
Hi, Marc. How are you going?

Marc Filippino
I’m good, thanks. Andrew, walk us through what happened.

Andrew England
At dawn on Saturday morning around about 6-6:30am, Hamas, the Islamist-Palestinian militant movement that controls Gaza, The Gaza Strip, launched a brazen multipronged attack across the border of Gaza into southern Israel (attack noise). It began with rocket fire into Israel, and then Hamas militants on paragliders, on motorbikes, on foot, went over the border and attacked Israeli military checkpoints and Israeli civilian homes in southern Israel in what is arguably the largest, deadliest attack inside Israel since the state’s founding in 1948. Israel has responded by launching air strikes against the Gaza Strip. This is densely populated and home to 2mn people. So we’re dealing with something that we haven’t seen before on this scale.

Marc Filippino
Now, did this come out of nowhere? I mean, what’s the backdrop here?

Andrew England
I think, well clearly, Israel was caught off guard. I mean, Israeli security analysts are already talking of a massive intelligence failure by Israel, which prides itself on the strength and effectiveness of its security apparatus. Now, in Israel over the past year and a half, we’ve seen escalating violence in the West Bank, the occupied Palestinian territory. And in Israel, you have the most hardline government, far-right government in its history after Benjamin Netanyahu won elections last year and formed a coalition with religious Zionist parties. But no one saw this coming. It really is Israel’s worst nightmare.

Marc Filippino
So how is Israel looking to respond then?

Andrew England
Still early to say. I think the consensus among Israeli analysts is Israel will have to respond particularly robustly. They will want to crush Hamas after such a graphic and brutal attack on Israeli soil. So people are talking about the possibility of a land invasion into Gaza. The last time Israel did that was in 2014. Then the question is, if that happens, how deep and how far does it go? It creates huge destruction in the Gaza Strip, which, as I said, is home to 2mn people living in poverty, so the destruction and civilian casualties is always extremely high. So we’re looking at more violence. We’re looking at more conflict. I guess what everybody is waiting to see now is how long it lasts and on what scale.

Marc Filippino
Yeah, the scale is important here. I mean, what are the wider concerns for the region here, Andrew?

Andrew England
Well, the great fear is that this creates a broader conflict to Israel’s north from the border with Lebanon. You have Hizbollah, the powerful Lebanese militant group backed by Iran, it’s far larger and far more sophisticated than Hamas. It fought a month-long war with Israel in 2006. If, and there’s a big if, it’s still an if, if Hizbollah does get involved, Israel would retaliate against Lebanon. And, of course, if you start to have a broader regional conflict, then you start to bring in regional actors. And then, you know, all bets are off. Where does it go? How serious it could become?

Marc Filippino
That’s Andrew England, the FT’s Middle East editor. Thanks, Andrew.

Andrew England
Thank you very much, Marc.

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Marc Filippino
Some voters in Germany are unsatisfied with Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government. Germany held regional elections yesterday. Exit polls show that the main conservative opposition parties won both Bavaria and Hesse. What’s more is the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party gained a strong showing. Sections of the AfD have been designated extremist by German intelligence. The overall outcome from the election underscores how unpopular Scholz’s coalition government is. It’s made up of his Social Democrats, Greens and liberal Free Democrats. And voters are unsatisfied with how these parties are handling issues like migration, inflation and high energy costs.

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US president Joe Biden is pushing a green transition, and his big selling point is that going green will bring manufacturing jobs back home to America.

Joe Biden news clip
I’ve long said when I think climate not a joke, I think jobs. I think jobs (applause).

Marc Filippino
Biden and other politicians claim that green technologies will create the employment of the future. But is the road to net zero really paved with jobs? FT columnist Sarah O’Connor has been looking into this question, and she joins me now. Hey, Sarah.

Sarah O’Connor
Hey, how you doing?

Marc Filippino
I’m doing all right. So, Sara, how are economists and public officials talking about the green transition as it relates to jobs?

Sarah O’Connor
Yeah, So the narrative from politicians is very much that the green transition will also create jobs and specifically, you know, jobs in places that need jobs. So there’s a story being told by Joe Biden, but also by others, including politicians here in the UK, that green jobs could go to the places that got kind of hollowed out by deindustrialisation since the 1980s. And so, you know, you can kind of kill two birds with one stone. That’s the story that’s being told. You can green the economy, and you can also repair some of the damage that was done over the last 30 years to left behind places.

Marc Filippino
Yeah, but is that actually the case?

Sarah O’Connor
I think the reality is more complicated and more difficult. So clearly, the green transition is generating a lot of jobs. I mean, you’re certainly seeing that in the US, where Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act is, you know, incentivising lots of new factories to open up. So it’s definitely true that jobs are being created. But you have to remember that jobs are also being lost because the old sort of fossil fuel industries are, you know, having to be mothballed. And those jobs were often really good jobs, you know, jobs that were unionised, that had very good rates of pay. And it’s not clear yet that it will be so easy to help those workers make this transition.

Marc Filippino
Yeah, I mean, just look at what’s going on with the United Auto Workers strike going on in the US. It’s a clear example of how a traditional, non-green industry and the workers in it are concerned about the green transition.

Sarah O’Connor
Yeah, because electric vehicles, you know, they require fewer workers to make them. They don’t have as many parts. And not just that, you know, if you think about what happens after a vehicle has been made and sold, in the so-called after-market, they require less maintenance. You know, the estimates are like roughly 50 per cent less maintenance. So that’s going to have big implications for all of the car mechanics out there who currently rely on repairing vehicles. The same is true in lots of these industries that actually as they transition to something that’s greener, often that technology is less labour intensive, which fundamentally means like fewer workers overall. So I think that’s a big challenge that we’re only really starting to see the kind of on the ground effects of.

Marc Filippino
This transition to cleaner energy sources, I mean, it does need to happen, right? So how should policymakers approach it?

Sarah O’Connor
The best way to do it is to basically do it with the workers or representatives of the workers around the table. So you can think about ways of decarbonising industries that don’t have such bad effects on jobs or that make sure that there is retraining that’s going in before the plant closes or the industry closes, you know, being proactive about it. There are interesting things going on in Germany where one of the big unions for steelworkers has decided to bargain for a four-day week for its steelworkers. So, you know, they’re tying that into the green transition. They’re saying, look, we understand that our steel plants shift to green steel. There will be less requirement for labour. That doesn’t necessarily mean there could be less jobs, fewer jobs. You know, it could just mean that everyone works a bit less. And actually, that might be a transition that is beneficial for everyone. So I think there are ways of doing it. But the key thing is probably to make sure that workers have a voice in that conversation.

Marc Filippino
Sarah O’Connor is the FT’s employment columnist. Thanks, Sarah.

Sarah O’Connor
Thank you.

Marc Filippino
Before we go, you know that the FT News Briefing is free. Maybe that’s why you like it. But what if access to FT.com was cheaper, like 50 per cent cheaper? Go to FT.com/briefingsale to get half off a standard digital subscription? Again, that’s FT.com/briefingsale. We’ll have a link to that in the show notes. This has been your daily news briefing. Make sure you check back tomorrow for the latest business news.