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By Lucy Williamson

BBC News, Jenin

Since the war in Gaza began, Israel’s military operations in the occupied West Bank have become more frequent, and more forceful.

The northern city of Jenin – the epicentre of these raids before the Hamas attacks – is now a weekly battleground.

The Palestinian teenagers I met who were running from the army there on Tuesday had the sceptical dismissive attitudes of much older men – mocking the Palestinian president and his appeals to the world for protection against Israel’s occupation.

Behind them, Israel’s armoured bulldozers and military jeeps moved around the entrance to Jenin refugee camp, explosions and gunfire from across the city echoing along the deserted, shuttered streets.

The walls of this city are covered with the pictures of young men killed by Israeli forces – some of them members of armed groups like Hamas, proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the UK and others. The posters and the faces are refreshed, year after year.

Six men were killed in the operation here on Tuesday; four of them in a drone strike, witnesses said.

Israel says its operations in the West Bank are targeting members of armed groups, often those with Israeli blood on their hands.

But the director of Jenin’s hospital, Wissam Bakr, said a chronically ill 13-year-old child also died after being blocked from reaching medical care.

“The persistence of the incursions into Jenin, and the killing of young people – this will make the people more and more angry, because every day we lose one of our friends,” he said.

“This will not bring peace for Israel – this will bring more and more resistance.”

On 7 October, Hamas gunmen from Gaza attacked southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking 240 others hostage. More than 18,400 people are said to have been killed in Gaza during the war that followed.

Here in the West Bank, 271 Palestinians, including 69 children, have been killed since the attacks – more than half the total number for the year. Almost all of them have been killed by Israeli forces, according to the United Nations.

Since the Hamas attacks, support for armed resistance has risen in many parts of the West Bank – in places like Nablus and Jenin.

“I see it in the voices of people, in the music they play in their cars, from Facebook or social media posts, from my debates with my students,” said Raed Debiy, a political scientist and youth leader for the West Bank’s ruling party, Fatah, which dominates the Palestinian Authority (PA).

He told me the attacks were “a turning point” for Palestinians, just as they were a shocking turning point for Israelis.

“The people, especially the new generation, are backing Hamas now, more than at any other moment,” he told me. “In the previous 30 years, there were no models, no idols for the new generation; now they see there is something different, a different story is being created.”

Even his 11-year-old nephew, he said, had little respect for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, but idolises Hamas military spokesman Abu Obeida – “because he protects us”.

“Palestinian youth had priorities and wish lists about owning a house, or getting a degree,” explained West Bank political scientist Amjad Bushkar.

“But after 7 October, I think these priorities have totally changed. There are rising voices for full liberation of the homeland through resistance – whether that resistance is peaceful or armed.”

Dr Bushkar told me that he had spent a total of nine years in Israeli jails, and had been a member of Hamas’s student wing in the past. Seven members of his family had been arrested since the 7 October attacks, he added.

Hamas members in the West Bank have regularly been targeted by Palestinian security forces – not just Israeli ones – since the group took control of Gaza by force in 2007, a year after it won parliamentary elections.

But now, Dr Bushkar said, something had changed.

“Both Fatah and Hamas are well aware that they are complementary to each other, and I think we’ll see real integration between the two movements.”

“The Palestinian Authority realised that targeting Hamas would not eradicate it because it’s an ideological movement rooted within the Palestinian people; and Hamas is fully aware that it cannot establish an independent [Palestinian] state without the help of Fatah.”

Some senior figures in the Palestinian administration – though not President Abbas – are now openly talking about the benefits of a united political front.

Earlier this month, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said in an interview with Bloomberg that the Palestinian Authority’s preferred outcome of the war in Gaza would be for Hamas to join a unity government led by the PA.

Qossay Hamed, an expert in Hamas at Al-Quds Open University in Ramallah, says the crisis in Gaza could end up strengthening the movement’s political wing, at the expense of its military one.

“In any revolutionary movement, there should be a political harvest to [military] actions,” he said.

“There are so many trends within Hamas. And there are internal clashes. I think there will be more room for the political trend within Hamas, especially after this war, when the whole world will not be tolerant towards them.”

Israel says its goal in Gaza is to destroy Hamas, and has ruled out a role for either it or Fatah in Gaza’s future government.

“I will not allow the entry into Gaza of those who teach terrorism, support terrorism and finance terrorism,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday.

“Gaza will be neither Hamas-stan nor Fatah-stan.”

Some Palestinians privately say the price paid by Gaza for the Hamas attacks is too high.

But others say the group’s brutal tactics worked in forcing Israel to release Palestinian prisoners – and contrast its impact sharply with that of the Palestinian Authority, set up 30 years ago after the Oslo Accords to work with Israel on a future Palestinian State.

An opinion poll carried out between 22 November and 2 December by a respected Palestinian think-tank, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR), found that support for Hamas had more than tripled in the West Bank compared to three months ago.

Supporters of Hamas were still in a minority, but 70% of the respondents said armed struggle was the best means of ending the Israeli occupation.

By contrast, support for President Abbas had dropped sharply following the Hamas attacks, the survey found, with more than 90% of Palestinians in the West Bank calling for his resignation.

Since the Hamas attacks, said Amjad Bushkar, http://clasicccop.com/ “the world and the international community have put the Palestinian cause on its list of priorities.”

Widely seen as corrupt and ineffective, the PA has also been unable to pay its civil servants or police since the Hamas attacks, because the war in Gaza caused a rift over the tax revenues transferred by Israel each month.

While Hamas flags and slogans multiplied here in the wake of each busload of Palestinian prisoners released by Israel in exchange for Israeli hostages held in Gaza, the PA’s president and security forces were conspicuously absent.

Israel may be determined to deny Hamas power in Gaza, but here in the West Bank its influence is already spreading.

By Tom Gerken & Chris Vallance

Technology reporters

Tesla is recalling more than two million cars after the US regulator found its driver assistance system, Autopilot, was partly defective.

It follows a two-year investigation into crashes which occurred when the tech was in use.

The recall applies to almost every Tesla sold in the US since the Autopilot feature was launched in 2015.

Tesla, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, said it would send a software update “over the air” to fix the issue.

The update happens automatically and does not require a visit to a dealership or garage, but is still referred to by the US regulator as a recall.

The BBC has approached the UK Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency to ask how Tesla drivers in the UK will be affected.

Autopilot is meant to help with steering, acceleration and braking – but, despite the name, the car still requires driver input.

Tesla’s software is supposed to make sure that drivers are paying attention and that the feature is only in use in appropriate conditions, such as driving on highways.

But the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said a two-year investigation of 956 Tesla crashes found that “the prominence and scope of the feature’s controls may not be sufficient to prevent driver misuse”.

“Automated technology holds great promise for improving safety but only when it is deployed responsibly”, the NHTSA wrote, adding it would continue to monitor the software once it was updated.

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.

According to the recall notice, the company did not concur with the agency’s analysis but agreed to add new features to resolve the concerns, including additional checks on turning on the self-driving features.

The recall comes a week after a former Tesla employee told the BBC he believed the technology was not safe.

Lukasz Krupski, speaking after winning the Blueprint Prize which recognises whistleblowers, told the BBC: “I don’t think the hardware is ready and the software is ready”.

“It affects all of us because we are essentially experiments in public roads”, he claimed.

Reacting to the news of the recall Mr Krupski told the BBC it was “a step in the right direction” but pointed out it was not just a problem in the US.

“The hardware is the same in all the Teslas in the US, China etc.”, he said

Safety metrics

On Tuesday, Tesla defended the safety of Autopilot in a post on X (formerly Twitter) in response to a Washington Post article.

“Safety metrics are emphatically stronger when Autopilot is engaged than when not engaged” it wrote, pointing to statistics that suggested there were fewer crashes when the system was used.

Jack Stilgoe, associate professor at University College London, who researches autonomous vehicles, said Tesla should have spent more time developing the system in the first place.

“The conventional way of ensuring safety is to check that a car is safe when it leaves the factory”, he told the BBC.

But despite this being the second recall this year affecting Tesla vehicles, Susannah Streeter of investment company Hargreaves Lansdown, said her assessment was that it should not check the carmaker’s momentum too greatly:

“This recall of 2 million cars on its own is not likely to seriously quash enthusiasm. The share price has dropped back slightly, but it doesn’t look like it’ll be hit by a bad bout of skidding.

“After all, recalls in the car industry are far from unusual and the group also has the financial ability to invest in fixes”, she added.

Tesla has heavily promoted the technology in its cars and says remaining at the cutting edge of self-driving is key to its future growth.

Goldman Sachs analysts estimated this month that Tesla’s most advanced Autopilot offering, full self driving, could end up generating more than $50bn a year in revenue by 2030, up from $1bn-$3bn presently.

In the US, the full-self driving package costs $12,000, or a $199 monthly subscription fee.

“Autonomy is really where it’s at,” Mr Musk told investors this summer.

Additional alerts

Critics have said Tesla has misled customers about its software’s capabilities, contributing to risks.

The carmaker is facing other government investigations, as well as a number of lawsuits in the US in relation to crashes involving the software.

But a jury in one of the first cases to go to trial found that Tesla’s autopilot technology was not to blame.

The new controls that Tesla has agreed to do should help limit drivers from using Autopilot unsafely, said Professor Missy Cummings, director of the Autonomy and Robotics Center at George Mason University.

But she added that there was “an opportunity missed” for regulators to require Tesla to make Autopilot features unavailable in places where it is not supposed to be used.

The recall centres on a part of Autopilot called Autosteer.

Autosteer helps keep a car in the correct http://masurip.org/ lane in conjunction with “traffic-aware cruise control” which matches the speed of the car to that of the surrounding traffic.

The driver is expected to have their hands on wheel and be ready to take over from the assistive system when required.

When Autosteer is on, systems in the car monitor that the driver is paying attention. If it detects the driver isn’t there are warning alerts. There are also alerts if the driver tries to use Autosteer in inappropriate circumstances.

According to the NHTSA recall report, the “over the air update” will include additional alerts and monitoring “to encourage the driver to adhere to their continuous driving responsibility whenever Autosteer is engaged.”

By Bernd Debusmann Jr on Capitol Hill & Sam Cabral

BBC News, Washington

The Republican-led US House of Representatives is moving forward with a vote to formalise an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

Members will vote later on Wednesday on the resolution, which Republicans say will give them greater powers to gather evidence and enforce legal demands.

Three Republican-led House committees allege bribery and corruption during Mr Biden’s tenure as vice-president.

He denies wrongdoing and the committees are yet to produce any evidence.

In an animated debate over the impeachment resolution on Wednesday, Democrats expressed irritation over what they have dismissed as “an extreme political stunt”.

Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin said the probe, which began in September, “isn’t a whodunit, it’s a what is it”.

“It’s like an Agatha Christie novel, where the mystery is – what’s the crime?” he added.

Republican Tom Cole, who kicked off the debate. said Republicans had been left with no choice but to bring the vote.

He said it was a “sad day for myself, the institution and the American people” and accused the White House of “stonewalling” the impeachment inquiry.

• What we know about the Biden impeachment inquiry
• Follow live updates: US House debates formalising Biden impeachment probe

Ex-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy launched the inquiry in September claiming Republicans had unearthed a “culture of corruption” surrounding Mr Biden.

Republicans have held one hearing related to the inquiry, http://sayurkana.com/ during which two expert witnesses called by Republicans said there was not yet enough evidence to impeach the Democratic president.

The oversight committee claims the Biden family and its business associates received more than $24m (£19m) from foreign sources in China, Kazakhstan, Romania, Russia and Ukraine between 2014 and 2019.

The White House has described the probe as a “baseless stunt” and an abuse of power by House Republicans.

By Rayhan Demytrie in Tbilisi and Paul Brown and Joshua Cheetham in London

BBC News

In early November, 50 Georgian opposition MPs addressed Nato and EU member states calling for a unified stance against Russia’s plan to establish a permanent naval base in the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia.

The Kremlin’s plans have raised fears that the base could drag EU-hopeful Georgia into Russia’s war in Ukraine and harm Tbilisi’s own plans for a port on the Black Sea.

“We unanimously and firmly condemn Russia’s occupation, militarisation and other actions aimed at annexation of the occupied regions of Georgia, a new expression of which is the opening of a permanent Russian naval base in Ochamchire port,” read the MPs’ statement.

Weeks earlier Abkhazia’s de facto leader, Aslan Bzhania, had confirmed an agreement had been signed with the Kremlin on a permanent naval base in the Black Sea port of Ochamchire.

Abkhazia is internationally recognised as part of Georgia, but it has been under the control of Russian and separatist forces since the 1990s.

Georgia’s foreign ministry has condemned Russia’s plan as “a gross violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia”, although authorities in Tbilisi have played down the significance of the permanent naval base, describing it as not an imminent threat.

“Even if they start constructing the base in Ochamchire, it will take them at least three years,” Nikoloz Samkharadze, the head of Georgia’s Foreign Relations Committee told the BBC. “We are concentrated on imminent threats, and not on threats that might come in the future.”

He says the government is more focused on Georgian citizens being killed or kidnapped by Russian forces near the line of occupation that separates Georgia from its breakaway territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

“We do not observe any moves to start construction in Ochamchire.”

BBC Newsnight and BBC Verify have analysed satellite imagery that indicates new dredging and construction work at the port, since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

According to Abkhazia’s de facto administration, that dredging work meant Ochamchire could now host larger cargo ships with a displacement volume of up to 13,000 tonnes.

Ukraine’s intelligence agency claims the work is to enable military vessels from Russia’s Black Sea Fleet to use Ochamchire as a safe harbour.

If Russia were to use Ochamchire to attack Ukraine or if Ukraine chose to target Russian naval boats there, then Georgia would become party to the war, says Natia Seskuria of the Royal United Services Institute.

“If Putin needs Georgia to be involved or in some ways be dragged in this war, he will do it if it’s in his interests and he has all the capabilities to put pressure on Georgia, unfortunately,” she said.

Not only does that play into Georgian fears of being sucked into the war, but there are concerns that Tbilisi’s own plans for a mega-infrastructure project on the Black Sea coast could be impeded.

A deep sea port in Anaklia is the nearest Georgian town to Russian-controlled Abkhazia.

The Anaklia project is seen as vital for boosting commerce along the so-called Middle Corridor, the fastest route to deliver cargo between Asia and Europe.

The route avoids using Russia as a land conduit, and the World Bank has estimated that it could halve travel times and triple trade volumes by 2030.

The Kremlin has long opposed it as a US project and Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, has claimed that US navy submarines would be able to dock there.

But while Georgia has a broadly pro-EU population, its government has a complex relationship with Moscow.

In 2020 the Georgian government cancelled a contract to build the deep-sea port, which had been awarded to a consortium backed by Western banks and investors.

Mamuka Khazaradze, who led the original Anaklia Development Consortium, says the government in Tbilisi derailed the port’s development to appease Moscow.

“The biggest problem we have with this government [is] they are serving Russian interests, because Anaklia is not in the Russian interest to be built,” he said. And he said that the proof of it was the Russian base being built only 30km (18 miles) up the Black Sea coast.

His consortium has taken the Georgian government to international arbitration.

“We dredged five million cubic metres of sand, 11 metres deep. We put in 3,500km of pipes,” said Mr Khazaradze who heads the opposition party Lelo.

The Georgian government has insisted the deep-sea port plan will be revived, and the winning bid will be announced shortly.

Nikoloz Samkharadze, who chairs the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs, said accusations that his government was pro-Russian were “absurd”.

“How on Earth can a pro-Russian government sign an association agreement with the European Union, get a visa-free regime with the European Union, and candidate status for the European Union?” Mr Samkharadze said.

But he said Tbilisi was obliged to tread carefully with its northern neighbour.

“We have had three wars with Russia in the past 30 years. http://jusnarte.com/ We do not have the Nato security umbrella. We do not have the EU’s economic solidarity.”

He suggested Russia was using Ochamchire to threaten Georgia over its ambitions to join the EU.

A final decision on Georgia’s bid for EU candidate status is expected from European leaders at their December summit this week.

“Russians… always use the best timing in order to undermine first Georgia’s stability, and second Georgia’s quest for European integration,” he said.

“They try to show to our European and American partners that they are masters in the South Caucasus, so they can do whatever they want.”

By Steven McIntosh

Entertainment reporter

Actor Andre Braugher, who has died at the age of 61, was responsible for some of the funniest moments across Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s eight seasons.

The US sitcom thrived thanks in large part to the police chief at the centre of it – Captain Raymond Holt provided the show’s beating heart.

Braugher portrayed all the different facets of Holt’s personality with great skill, resulting in one of the most fully-formed and well-rounded characters on television.

While the actor brought heart and humour, it was arguably his tough exterior and deadpan delivery which most endeared him to the show’s legions of loyal fans.

“For me, Captain Holt was the best aspect of that show, bar none,” says Amon Warmann, contributing editor and columnist at Empire magazine. “Yes, he could be goofy, like a lot of the characters, but more than anyone else on the show, he brought the gravitas.

“So when it came time for a moment to hit as seriously as it needed to, and there were many moments in Brooklyn Nine-Nine where that was the case, you could always count on Andre Braugher to deliver that and make it connect with audiences.”

• Watch: Andre Braugher in his own words
• Tributes: Brooklyn Nine-Nine stars remember their Captain

Braugher’s ability to keep a totally straight face as he was delivering some of the snappiest lines of dialogue was widely praised – but the rare occasions where Captain Holt sprang into life will be some of the best remembered.

One breakout moment came in season four when Holt spends all day making a balloon arch for another character’s wedding. After being derided by some of his colleagues who say it isn’t a good idea, Holt feels deflated and begins popping the balloons.

But when Rosa, the character getting married, accidentally comes across the arch in his office, she declares it “magnificent”. As a look of relief and delight spreads across Holt’s face, he yells: “VIN-DI-CA-TION!”

After Braugher’s death was announced, this was the scene many viewers shared on social media to remember him.

Captain Holt’s often inexpressive face concealed a character of depth and warmth who viewers came to adore.

“Holt was a man without expression but never without feeling”, wrote Entertainment Weekly’s Lester Fabiasteven Brathwaite.

“And he was a wonderfully complicated character, a man full of contradictions.”

He added: “Braugher’s deliciously deadpan delivery as Holt often provided some of the funniest moments throughout the show’s eight seasons, particularly when juxtaposed with the more cartoonish exploits of his cadre of kooky cops.”

Braugher delivered his lines with precise pronunciation at all times and impeccable grammar. Rather than the term “whodunnit”, he insisted such a mystery should be referred to as a “who has done this?”.

In another episode, his team were able to tell he had been kidnapped because he used a contraction when speaking on the phone.

His dry tone was often precisely what made a line funny. His use of the word “bitch” in the Halloween heist episode was only in the literal sense – referring to a female dog.

Surrounded by a terrific ensemble cast which riffed off each other brilliantly, the straight-faced Holt regularly found ways to indirectly show his friends and colleagues he cared.

In the show’s second season, when Terry is considering leaving the precinct, Captain Holt forces him to stay up all night digitising files – hardly the kind of thing that would change an employee’s outlook on their job.

But in fact, Holt’s motivation for forcing him to do that was so Terry would, in the process, be forced to look back on memories from the job with his colleagues, making him feel nostalgic and ultimately prompting him to stay.

Although he might not always http://kueceng.com/ make his feelings and emotions explicit on the surface, Braugher baked comedy, intellect and heart into the delivery of his lines.

“Andre Braugher had a way of speaking like he loved every weird little clause of a sentence,” said Vulture’s Kathryn Van Arendonk after the actor’s death was announced.

“Like somehow his voice and his gravity could hold onto more separate thoughts and rhythms and linguistic turns than most people could ever hold at once. It was such a pleasure to hear him.”

But categorising him solely as a comedy actor arguably does him a disservice. He could, Warmann notes, also bring seriousness and authority – notably in moments such as in the final season where Captain Holt is suspending Jake.

“The way that conversation comes across, it’s so interesting,” Warmann says, “because Brooklyn Nine-Nine at its heart is a comedy show, but because of performers like Andre Braugher, who had a Shakespearean background, any time there’s a big speech that needs to be made with gravitas, it could go from comedy and cut right through that and be like ‘Oh, this is a moment’.

“It connected, and that’s because you’ve got a performer like Andre Braugher.”

In the scene, Holt delivers a rousing speech as he explains why Jake Peralta must be suspended for five months for witness intimidation.

“Do you know what happens when you refuse to punish cops for their mistakes? When police are treated as a separate class of citizen above the law?” he asks.

“It breeds a lack of trust in the community, and that lack of trust means people won’t help us with our investigations, or testify, or even call us when they’re in danger. It makes them more scared of us than of criminals or gangsters. It makes people see us as the enemy, which leads to more confrontation, more distrust.”

The fact that Holt’s race and sexuality were always present without ever being his whole personality was what many viewers most loved about him.

Being an older, black, gay police officer would have been enough in itself to make Captain Holt a groundbreaking character in the television landscape.

But the fact that he didn’t play up to the stereotypes of any of those characteristics made him stand out.

There are several pitfalls when it comes to playing a gay character on TV or film. Play up to stereotypes, and you’ll be written off as a caricature. But play down those personality traits and you could be criticised for squandering an opportunity for representation.

But in Braugher’s hands, Captain Holt, the minorities he represented, and of course Brooklyn Nine Nine’s viewers, were all in safe hands. The actor knew better than anyone how to strike what was a very delicate balance.

“As long as there’s no hot pants and singing YMCA then everything’s OK,” Braugher said in a 2018 interview.

“My teenage son said, ‘you’re playing a gay police captain?’ I said ‘No, I’m playing a police captain who’s gay’. So we have to sit down and understand what that distinction is.

“Typically, when you see gay characters on shows, they’re goofballs or caricatures. But this is one more facet of Holt as opposed to being Holt’s defining characteristic, so that’s what’s important to me.”

It’s worth noting, however, that Holt would occasionally lean into gay stereotypes, partly in jest or to make a point.

One episode sees him trying to convince Terry to ride a motorcycle, but Terry doesn’t want to risk it because motorcycles are “death machines”. He suggests Holt does so instead.

“Are you saying my life maters less because I don’t conform to society’s heteronormative, child-centric ideals,” asks the self-aware police captain.

“Are you really playing the gay card right now?” Terry responds. “Yas, queen,” says Captain Holt. Rare moments such this showed Holt could have humour and sass where necessary.

Few would dispute that the character was innovative and influential in equal measure. “Andre himself was a big factor in that,” says Warmann, “playing Captain Holt as a person first, with real ambitions, real desires, a real sort of want to make change for the better, and that’s the sort of thing that comes across long before they start talking about the gayness or blackness in any explicit manner.

“And they do ultimately do that in various episodes, because that’s absolutely a part of who Captain Holt is, but it doesn’t define him the way that it might do with how that’s been characterised in other shows and other media.”

He concludes: “That’s partly why Captain Holt doesn’t just resonate with the black man, or the gay man, but resonates with everybody on some level, because he’s a person first. He’s played that way and he’s written that way, so groundbreaking is the appropriate word.

“I wish more media would study that and take its cue from that, because then I think we’d get better art.”

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