Main content

Israel, Gaza and the ceasefire

The challenges facing Gaza and Israel as the ceasefire comes into effect; confronting past crimes in Syria; the Milei method in Argentina; tourism and public memory at Auschwitz.

Pascale Harter introduces reflections and analysis from Israel and Gaza, Syria, Argentina, and the site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camps in Poland

After a faltering start, the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came into effect last Sunday. Fergal Keane has been reporting on the conflict from the outset and was on Israel's border with Gaza last weekend – here he reflects on the human cost of the war and what the future might hold.

The Assad regime in Syria detained and tortured hundreds of thousands of people; the total number of those who died in its prisons and detention centres still has to be reckoned. Lina Sinjab has her own memories of being arrested and threatened - and her own questions about crime and punishment.

Argentina's President, Javier Milei, once campaigned using a chainsaw as a prop to show how keen he was to slash red tape and cut the state down to size. A year on, how much has his government done for the economy? Charlotte Pritchard visits a family-run chewing-gum factory in Buenos Aires.

By the final days of World War II, more than 1.1 million people, most of them Jews, had been killed by the Nazis in the labour and extermination camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. These days the complex sees more than 2 million visitors a year. Amie Liebowitz, whose own great-grandmother was murdered there, had always been uneasy about the idea of tourism in sites like this. But as the world marks 80 years since the camp's liberation by Soviet troops in 1945, she considers it might still have a place in preserving public memory of the Holocaust.

Producer: Polly Hope
Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith
Production Co-ordinator: Katie Morrison

Image: Palestinians walk among debris of destroyed buildings as they return to their houses after the announcement of ceasefire (Photo by Ramzi Mahmud/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Available now

23 minutes

On radio

Today 20:06GMT

Broadcasts

  • Saturday 17:06GMT
  • Yesterday 04:06GMT
  • Yesterday 09:06GMT
  • Today 00:06GMT
  • Today 20:06GMT
  • Today 21:06GMT