:00:00. > :00:26.Hello and welcome to Dateline London.
:00:27. > :00:29.The United States and peace, or rather the obvious lack of it,
:00:30. > :00:32.The balance between security and snooping.
:00:33. > :00:38.Does Britain's National Health Service have an answer?
:00:39. > :00:42.My guests are Nabila Ramdani, who is a French`Algerian journalist.
:00:43. > :00:53.The killings of three Israeli teenagers
:00:54. > :00:58.Rockets fired into Israel, bombing attacks on Gaza.
:00:59. > :01:01.Then after a few days, the United States announced it would
:01:02. > :01:05.Is Washington asleep when it comes to the world's most
:01:06. > :01:18.You may say, we do not look to Russia, the EU, Tony Blair, these
:01:19. > :01:24.people still look to Washington for guidance, but they have been
:01:25. > :01:30.incredibly slow? What can they do? In the end, you ask the question, I
:01:31. > :01:40.could ask the question back. What is it really that Washington can do? It
:01:41. > :01:43.is sadly cleared after 45 years, Washington can bring a tremendous
:01:44. > :01:53.amount of pressure to bear when both sides are interested in talking. You
:01:54. > :02:01.can get a deal. Then one of the parties get shot. You can invite
:02:02. > :02:08.Arafat to talks. And then the other person is voted out of office. How
:02:09. > :02:14.far can Washington go? John Kerry said, my goal is to create new
:02:15. > :02:18.talks. He failed completely. What is the failure head, or is it because
:02:19. > :02:22.both sides are in a place with political leadership, and in a very
:02:23. > :02:27.perverse sense to those of us outside, can they get something out
:02:28. > :02:35.of this? It is clear that Netanyahu gets something out of this. The
:02:36. > :02:42.Foreign Minister broke up, not the coal issue, but the voting bloc that
:02:43. > :02:46.they had. Before this advance began, Hamas had joined forces with another
:02:47. > :02:51.organisation. This was going to change the whole picture, but not
:02:52. > :03:01.really. Hamas felt like it had made it says isolated. `` like it had
:03:02. > :03:07.made itself isolated. I do not think that any outside force can get in
:03:08. > :03:11.here and do anything. It is down to the peoples involved. They need to
:03:12. > :03:17.say, our political leadership is leading us down a corridor from
:03:18. > :03:21.which the only exit is in a coffin. From the outside, perhaps one would
:03:22. > :03:26.say that both sides are looking for some kind of victory, where victory
:03:27. > :03:30.is clearly impossible. The Palestinians are not going to go
:03:31. > :03:35.away, and Israel is not going to go away, so they have got to deal with
:03:36. > :03:37.each other. To answer your preliminary question, I would
:03:38. > :03:44.contend that Washington is not asleep, but pretending to be.
:03:45. > :03:49.Relaxed indifference has been America's default position on this
:03:50. > :03:52.conflict. Washington may be concerned about the murder of
:03:53. > :03:57.Palestinians but it is far more concerned about the maintenance of
:03:58. > :04:01.the Israeli security state. A great deal of American firepower and money
:04:02. > :04:08.makes sure it is as strong as possible. President Obama knows that
:04:09. > :04:13.Israel's rockets, pancreas, warheads, and Di Resta said, will
:04:14. > :04:19.keep Israel well ahead of Palestinian rockets. It will
:04:20. > :04:24.continue the killing. We have heard the news, more than 100 Palestinians
:04:25. > :04:29.have been killed, the vast majority of them innocent civilians, women
:04:30. > :04:35.and children. There is a humanitarian crisis going on.
:04:36. > :04:40.Israeli MPs are now calling for electricity, water supplies, medical
:04:41. > :04:46.supplies to be cut out. In the face of such a grim, grim reality, we are
:04:47. > :04:49.hearing the Prime Minister of the Prime Minister after Israel saying
:04:50. > :04:53.that he will not stop, he will not be stopped by international
:04:54. > :05:00.pressure. He is threatening a ground offensive. This is a sinister
:05:01. > :05:03.display of smug invincibility. If the Hamas people stop firing
:05:04. > :05:12.rockets, would that not be a game changer? It is easy to portray Hamas
:05:13. > :05:16.as a terrorist organisation. Nobody would condone firing rockets into
:05:17. > :05:20.Israel might under any circumstances, but the threat of
:05:21. > :05:27.Israeli life is met with the actual loss of considerable civilian lives
:05:28. > :05:32.in Gaza. Nobody should underestimate the savagery which underpins this
:05:33. > :05:37.round of violence. The sequence of events was the three Israeli
:05:38. > :05:42.teenagers were abducted. Palestinians would dispute that. The
:05:43. > :05:44.sequence of events can even go back to me when three Palestinian
:05:45. > :05:53.teenagers were shot dead at a checkpoint. We do not even know who
:05:54. > :05:57.murdered the Israeli teenagers. Hamas in fair that this was an
:05:58. > :06:08.help. Let him finish. When the help. Let him finish. When the
:06:09. > :06:12.Palestinian teenager, in revenge, was abducted and murdered in a
:06:13. > :06:20.terrible way, there was this global lab Lawrence. Rather than taking
:06:21. > :06:26.that moment, the Hamas leadership, it started to lobbying the rockets.
:06:27. > :06:29.Is that a fair point? That is a fair point. But those behind the
:06:30. > :06:39.killings, the gruesome murders of three Israeli youths, they are still
:06:40. > :06:42.unknown. The only democracy in the Middle East should bring the
:06:43. > :06:47.criminals, deal with them through the rule of law and due process, and
:06:48. > :06:54.not have Netanyahu called for blood and revenge at the very funeral of
:06:55. > :06:59.those teenagers. Alex? I am not Israeli, Jewish Palestinian. As an
:07:00. > :07:05.outsider to the conflict, I do not think that there is an equivalence.
:07:06. > :07:12.Israel shields at civilians with military tools. Precisely. Where are
:07:13. > :07:18.the shelters in Gaza. Forgive me, I was not finished. In contrast with
:07:19. > :07:26.Hamas, the shield terror tools with civilians. They push civilians to
:07:27. > :07:31.the front, they put them on top of billions `` buildings. Gazza is one
:07:32. > :07:36.of the most densely populated places on earth. There is nowhere else to
:07:37. > :07:46.go. Not when you're talking about getting outside of Gaza. Israel has
:07:47. > :07:50.developed tools that displayed by sight, sound and noise that there
:07:51. > :07:53.are about to strike a building. Hamas push people into those areas
:07:54. > :07:58.to ensure there are civilian casualties. Apologies for cutting
:07:59. > :08:07.your head. I wanted to agree with you. Israel is a democracy. Hamas is
:08:08. > :08:16.a terrorist organisation. That is a fact. Also, you said, is Washington
:08:17. > :08:21.asleep? What about the Arab silence? It is deafening. We are
:08:22. > :08:26.talking about the West. There is not much we can do. Yesterday, President
:08:27. > :08:31.Hollande was on the form with Netanyahu. That is all they can do,
:08:32. > :08:38.beyond the phone to him and say, please, a lot of people are being
:08:39. > :08:42.killed. Let's go back to Michael's point. It does serve a lot of
:08:43. > :08:47.interest to see this conflict continue, does it not? It serves
:08:48. > :08:54.some people within Israel and some people within the Palestinian camp
:08:55. > :08:57.as well? This current crisis is about not tit`for`tat between Hamas
:08:58. > :09:03.and Israel. It is about the wider picture. It is about a free and
:09:04. > :09:08.independent state for the Palestinians, the brutality of
:09:09. > :09:16.military occupation, 47 years, it is about pathway policies, exemplified
:09:17. > :09:19.by the wall separating communities. It is about illegal land grabbing
:09:20. > :09:24.and illegal settlements built on stolen land. It is about the
:09:25. > :09:34.day`to`day humiliation and oppression. It is about the of Gaza.
:09:35. > :09:40.Israel effectively controls the key to what David Cameron called an
:09:41. > :09:48.open`air prison. Do you agree with quite a lot of that? Listen, in
:09:49. > :09:52.Israel, I get e`mails about this from friends. The peace camp is
:09:53. > :10:02.still there. It is in the Gasparotto. It is also about the
:10:03. > :10:05.failure of several generations of Palestinian politicians to deal with
:10:06. > :10:10.what is real and what is possible within the conflict. Palestinian
:10:11. > :10:19.politicians have given 78% to Israel. It is about time that Israel
:10:20. > :10:27.was criminalised and treated like an international pariah for its
:10:28. > :10:33.continuous Madars. `` Madars. Possibly the stupidest thing the UN
:10:34. > :10:38.has ever done was to see to the PLO, you are the sole legitimate voice of
:10:39. > :10:44.the Palestinian people. It condemned the Palestinian people to politics
:10:45. > :10:49.built on 1`party state. There was no possibility of dissident voices. All
:10:50. > :10:56.of the money that was coming from international organisations went to
:10:57. > :11:01.the PLO. It does not work that way. That is why there has not been, I am
:11:02. > :11:11.sorry to carry on, but it gets to me. There has to have been a better
:11:12. > :11:13.way, besides violence, as you have so accurately portrayed
:11:14. > :11:24.international condemnation. It means nothing. Of course it does. We are
:11:25. > :11:28.celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights act in America. It
:11:29. > :11:32.would have served the Palestinian people better to take a non`violent
:11:33. > :11:40.path and accept the pain that comes with it than continue to fight. You
:11:41. > :11:43.can have the final word. In the face of claiming casualties, we are
:11:44. > :11:48.hearing someone talking about Palestinian violence. This is what
:11:49. > :11:50.this is all about, the PR spin on this.
:11:51. > :11:53.The British parliament this week decided to rush through new
:11:54. > :11:55.legislation to protect the security of the United Kingdom, or
:11:56. > :12:01.Do we feel safer in our beds knowing that telephone and internet records
:12:02. > :12:03.will not be destroyed and that they could, possibly,
:12:04. > :12:14.There are number of parts to this, but one is the case to push things
:12:15. > :12:19.through, which a number of MPs, who may agree to the legislation, there
:12:20. > :12:24.are very worried about this. I agree with this point. Knee jerk
:12:25. > :12:26.legislation is generally bad. Knee jerk legislation in the face of a
:12:27. > :12:31.court decision which tells you you're doing something wrong, which
:12:32. > :12:35.tries to plaster over the accusation you're doing something wrong, that
:12:36. > :12:40.is very bad. We are becoming a surveillance society. That was the
:12:41. > :12:45.response of the Law Society to the current proposals. They are
:12:46. > :12:48.concerned about the point you make. Legislation concerning individual
:12:49. > :12:54.freedom and privacy ought to be subject to proper scrutiny. We are
:12:55. > :13:00.told this is urgency legislation. Any right`thinking person might
:13:01. > :13:04.answer, weird as the emergency? You need to put the legislation about
:13:05. > :13:09.later the day, tell Cabinet about it at ATM on Thursday and put the whole
:13:10. > :13:14.bill through on Tuesday. There is nothing that warrants running
:13:15. > :13:18.through a bill like that. In the absence of compelling arguments for
:13:19. > :13:21.it, one fears that it is the accumulation of greater powers for
:13:22. > :13:25.the state quickly. The other thing that people worry about is that we
:13:26. > :13:31.have to trust the intelligence services up to a point. That is what
:13:32. > :13:35.we are told. When people are running things through for emergency
:13:36. > :13:42.reasons, people wonder where the emergency is. Average citizens like
:13:43. > :13:46.us, we are between O'Rourke and a hard place. Where is the emergency?
:13:47. > :13:54.Perhaps it is a secret and we do not have access. Are we living in the UK
:13:55. > :13:58.in a blanket surveillance society? I am not sure we are. If you look at
:13:59. > :14:02.the justice system, which is very different in Britain and France,
:14:03. > :14:06.especially as far as terrorism legislation is concerned. In
:14:07. > :14:10.France, the investigated judges have access to material that they do not
:14:11. > :14:16.even disclosed to the suspect and their lawyers. There is much more
:14:17. > :14:23.transparency in this country. Once you are accused and in the criminal
:14:24. > :14:26.justice system, but before. You have access to the evidence. You still
:14:27. > :14:35.cannot get access to tapping evidence in this country. Now, the
:14:36. > :14:40.EU court, the Court of Justice, the decision or not, they have said that
:14:41. > :14:46.the retention of data should be proportional. They were not
:14:47. > :14:53.discussing the actual tool. It is an incredible tool to be having. All of
:14:54. > :14:58.your phone calls, jury e`mail data. Your web browsing history. Even
:14:59. > :15:09.Labour, after 9/11, Labour did not push this through. Now we have a
:15:10. > :15:12.government with two parts, both elected on a mandate of promising
:15:13. > :15:27.individual freedoms. They are giving us this. Can I play devils advocate,
:15:28. > :15:28.we know that those who oversee the intelligence services have been very
:15:29. > :15:30.we know that those who oversee the intelligence services have been good
:15:31. > :15:35.at this because they have the power is adequate to the job, but
:15:36. > :15:36.destroying records, if you are not up to something, there is nothing to
:15:37. > :15:41.worry about, that is the argument? up to something, there is nothing to
:15:42. > :15:45.worry about, that is We used to talk about the big society but now we are
:15:46. > :15:48.talking about the surveillance is IT, and I think the British
:15:49. > :15:52.intelligence can have information about us already, and the emergency
:15:53. > :16:03.laws are a way of making something vaguely legitimate. `` surveillance
:16:04. > :16:06.society. It is far more sophisticated now, companies like
:16:07. > :16:12.Facebook and Twitter have all sorts of information about you already,
:16:13. > :16:16.and the government and David Cameron is contending, why not them, as
:16:17. > :16:19.well? He's using terrorism to say that this is aimed at protecting
:16:20. > :16:27.people from terrorist attacks, and in principle, any principle which
:16:28. > :16:33.will help to keep the citizens safe is to be welcomed, but this kind of
:16:34. > :16:39.law, as far as politicians are concerned, and the Prime Minister in
:16:40. > :16:45.particular, this trend is `` transgresses Civil Liberties, and it
:16:46. > :16:50.can stigmatise communities. I completely agree, this is also an
:16:51. > :16:55.lawful, given what we have learned from the European court of justice,
:16:56. > :16:59.and if you strip out the individual threats and accusations behind these
:17:00. > :17:05.bills, and look at the principle of what is happening, create fear and
:17:06. > :17:09.give hope, I have got the answer, that is what he is saying, but he is
:17:10. > :17:20.and I will deal with it. This is and I will deal with it. This is
:17:21. > :17:22.perhaps coming from America? Someone has said the United States have
:17:23. > :17:29.proven that you can have laws like this... There was a story, for every
:17:30. > :17:32.million bits of information they collect, there is one which is
:17:33. > :17:37.related to a possible terror suspect. The accuracy is what we
:17:38. > :17:42.don't know, and that is open to question. We have not had a major
:17:43. > :17:46.terrorist outrage in the last two years and a few have been stopped,
:17:47. > :17:53.and I did a documentary about terrorism in this country and I said
:17:54. > :17:56.good old`fashioned police work, I was convinced by that, and very good
:17:57. > :18:00.community, that is the most community, that is the most
:18:01. > :18:11.effective way to stop this kind of event from happening. Dozens of
:18:12. > :18:16.young men are going to Syria. Why do they need data on everyone? The
:18:17. > :18:25.problem is, last week there was a big story, Facebook had been
:18:26. > :18:31.manipulating for research, its uses and motions, by filtering out bad
:18:32. > :18:40.posts and just putting on the happy ones on people 's news feed. There
:18:41. > :18:45.is no justification for this. It is like you are bringing in special
:18:46. > :18:56.powers to cope with a domestic crimewave against people, like
:18:57. > :19:02.burglars, and arrest people who vaguely look like a burglar. I
:19:03. > :19:07.agree, this is the deprivation of rights, that is basically what this
:19:08. > :19:10.is. Benjamin Franklin would have something to say about this, and I
:19:11. > :19:15.would also agree with you about old`fashioned police work. It will
:19:16. > :19:19.get harder with this kind of thing, there will be fewer resources to do
:19:20. > :19:22.actual police work, if they are spending it all on surveillance. If
:19:23. > :19:36.you are trying to find the needle in the haystack, why grow the haystack?
:19:37. > :19:37.Why a tumour late in `` white accumulate `` why accumulate
:19:38. > :19:50.information like this? have the legislation which goes with
:19:51. > :19:56.it, should we go back to before the Internet? The government is not
:19:57. > :19:59.transparent, and I think the Americans are better about what they
:20:00. > :20:04.are doing with their surveillance, we are transparent about what they
:20:05. > :20:05.collect, but we have no transparency about what they do with the
:20:06. > :20:09.information. So many British people are now
:20:10. > :20:12.officially fat that we have seen a huge upsurge in cases
:20:13. > :20:19.of Type 2 diabetes and The disease eats up 10% of
:20:20. > :20:24.the National Health Service budget. The most logical thing to do is to
:20:25. > :20:32.and sugary foods? The most logical thing to do is to
:20:33. > :20:35.make sure that healthy food is cheap, that people are ready Katie
:20:36. > :20:42.about eating healthy food, and that people exercise `` that people are
:20:43. > :20:48.educated about eating healthy food. I firmly believe that the key thing
:20:49. > :20:54.is education. To take one example, in France, legislation about obesity
:20:55. > :21:01.comes from the government, they interfere with that kind of subject,
:21:02. > :21:06.guiding people how they should eat healthily, to the point that you
:21:07. > :21:11.have it in the curriculum in France, and a lot of effort is made in
:21:12. > :21:17.relation to junk food, even fast food, McDonald's, it is different in
:21:18. > :21:21.France, it is healthier there than anywhere else in the world. There
:21:22. > :21:26.are also efforts in vending machines, selling apples and water
:21:27. > :21:31.rather than fizzy drinks. There is not the culture of buy one get one
:21:32. > :21:40.free type of thing. And you do not get a free chocolate bar. So that
:21:41. > :21:48.retains a sense of choice. It takes generations and generations, to get
:21:49. > :21:54.that culture going, but with the NHS, what is the plan, to invest
:21:55. > :22:05.massively in gastric bands for everyone, in order to make cuts on
:22:06. > :22:14.diabetes treatment? The idea is that it would save money. Why not tax
:22:15. > :22:19.fatty food and sweets? The argument is made, if you are an alcoholic,
:22:20. > :22:24.you are treated on the NHS, if you are a drug addict you are treated on
:22:25. > :22:33.the NHS. And if you are clinically obese, you could be treated on the
:22:34. > :22:40.NHS, and sometimes you need to have a gastric band. That argument does
:22:41. > :22:47.not work, people affected by this kind of problem, it is people with a
:22:48. > :22:52.body mass index of 35 or over, and the numbers are around 850,000
:22:53. > :22:55.people in this country and we cannot put that extra burden onto the NHS
:22:56. > :23:04.and have it work. It will not happen. We still have a problem. We
:23:05. > :23:08.might have a problem, but in any free and educated society, the
:23:09. > :23:13.number of fat adults is going to correlate with the number of adults
:23:14. > :23:16.who have chosen to be fat. We know that we should eat well and
:23:17. > :23:22.exercise, but we don't, bad food tastes good and that is why we are
:23:23. > :23:31.lazy. That is why I have a spare tyre. We tax alcohol. That is of the
:23:32. > :23:34.point, rather than taking responsibility for our own choices,
:23:35. > :23:40.you are saying, don't worry, it is not your fault, the state will deal
:23:41. > :23:48.with it instead. We will infantilise people, turning adults into
:23:49. > :23:52.children. More over, in this situation, what you are doing, you
:23:53. > :23:57.are making individuals compulsorily pay, the taxpayer, for the
:23:58. > :24:03.consequences of what an individual has voluntarily done. To make
:24:04. > :24:07.himself that. If only it was that simple. This is more than just a
:24:08. > :24:14.question of people eating too much and learning to stop. The food
:24:15. > :24:19.chain, what we consume, it is so corrupted, what gets to the
:24:20. > :24:25.supermarket shelves is so full of stuff which will make people fat.
:24:26. > :24:30.People know that fatty food is unhealthy for them. Just look at the
:24:31. > :24:37.explosion of obesity in India and China. These populations have moved
:24:38. > :24:41.to the cities, incredible growth in the middle`class, people go to the
:24:42. > :24:56.supermarket, and what they get is processed food, and do people have a
:24:57. > :25:00.good choice? Of course they do. I have the best greengrocer in London
:25:01. > :25:10.and I ate lots of fresh vegetables, I have been in a poorer part of
:25:11. > :25:13.London, and I have been astonished by how expensive fresh fruit is, if
:25:14. > :25:18.you are living on the poverty line, if you are working manual labour,
:25:19. > :25:26.the ready meal is the one which is going to be that you are going for.
:25:27. > :25:33.If you tax that food, it will become even more expensive. Food is not
:25:34. > :25:37.like tobacco and alcohol, it is a necessity for life, and the food
:25:38. > :25:46.chain, what gets to the supermarket is now thoroughly corrupted, and so
:25:47. > :25:48.it is built into our societies. The lunch bell is ringing, we have got
:25:49. > :25:49.to end it. That's it for Dateline London
:25:50. > :25:51.for this week. We are back next week
:25:52. > :25:57.at the same time. And you can of course comment
:25:58. > :26:32.on the programme of a clock, swinging back and forth,
:26:33. > :26:36.it means different conditions for every day, and the wettest of the
:26:37. > :26:41.weather will be further west. Tomorrow, the pendulum swings the
:26:42. > :26:44.other way. The brightest of the weather, further west. Damp skies to