Original subtitles

Hello and welcome to Global Eye from the BBC World Service.

Over the next half an hour, we'll be bringing you

powerful stories and insight from across the world.

I'm Emir Nader, an international correspondent,

and this week I'm joining you from Jerusalem.

Israelis and Palestinians

are reeling from more than two years of war.

It's touched every home.

A peace plan for Gaza, brokered by President Trump,

came into effect in October.

All of Israel's surviving hostages have been released,

and thousands of Palestinians have been freed from Israeli detention.

But now, as some families attempt to look forward,

moving beyond the devastation,

for many others here in the Holy Land,

the conflict shows no signs of easing.

Israel itself stands at the brink of an uncertain new chapter,

but one that promises to have huge reverberations

not only here, but around the region and the world.

Later, we'll bring you a BBC Eye film from Bethlehem,

a few miles from here, in the occupied West Bank,

where many expectant Palestinian mothers face unsafe travel,

limited medical access, and constant fear

while bringing new life amidst the ongoing conflict.

And we'll bring you the story of the Brazilian school

beset by violence, crime and truancy

in a high-risk community that defied the odds,

undergoing an incredible transformation.

I've spent most of my journalistic career covering the Middle East.

It's a region rich in history and culture,

yet also defined by deep fault lines and recurring crises.

And few conflicts have dominated global headlines

as much as the recent Israel-Gaza war.

This conflict's origins

can be traced back more than a century,

but the current war started in October 2023,

when Hamas gunmen attacked southern Israel,

killing more than 1,100 people and taking 251 others hostage.

More than 71,000 Palestinians

have been killed by Israel's campaign,

according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry,

around half of them women and children.

Israel's last public estimate

is that it has killed around 20,000 fighters.

Most of Gaza's buildings

have either been damaged or destroyed,

while Israel has at times either restricted

or blocked the flow of aid reaching Palestinians,

pushing Gaza into starvation.

I've been reporting from this side of

the Gaza border since the first days of the war.

I've seen the fear and division at its most extreme.

Israel has blocked foreign media from freely entering Gaza.

Instead, local Palestinian journalists,

medical staff and international aid workers

have told us about the reality on the ground.

It's a war that's had momentous global reverberations,

defining us and changing us in far-reaching ways.

It's challenged the principles of everything from

the ethics of weapon sales

to the future of the Eurovision Song Contest.

Israel sits on the eastern shore of

the Mediterranean Sea, with a population of ten million,

the majority Jewish, living alongside Muslim,

Christian and Druze communities.

Freeing Israeli hostages from Gaza was at first

a unifying cause for the country,

called out each day from this square in Tel Aviv.

Yet very quickly it became a fissure,

a sharp divide in Israeli society,

as backers of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's

military campaign clashed with those calling for a hostage deal

to be negotiated with Hamas much earlier.

Critics of Netanyahu and Israel have accused him of responsibility

for security failures on October the 7th,

and for enabling Hamas' build-up over many years -

claims he's disputed.

His backers have said that his determination

to pursue total victory has seen the weakening of Israel's opponents

in the region, as war escalated across the Middle East.

In some quarters,

the war has turned Israel into a pariah state.

A number of international bodies,

including a United Nations Commission of Inquiry,

have accused it of committing genocide in Gaza,

accusations the government has vehemently denied,

saying it has only acted in self-defence.

Trauma has gripped parts of Israeli society,

including some of the tens of thousands of

soldiers who have fought in the conflict.

Across the country,

people have dealt with the

trauma of suffering hostages,

of loved ones being sent to fight,

of life put on hold, and families separated.

The current situation is difficult. It was a very prolonged,

traumatic experience. I don't think, if you go out into

the streets of Israel now

and you ask people is the war over or not,

a lot of people would say no. In certain populations,

we've seen much higher levels of PTSD.

But you then also have to remember - different populations,

different conditions, different traumatic events,

and people with also different pre-existing traumas.

Throughout its history, Israel has promoted itself

as a safe place for Jewish people around the world.

The Hamas attack shattered that sense of security

and prompted a sharp reaction in Israeli society.

It's been common to hear pundits on TV chat shows

calling for the collective punishment

of Palestinians or their mass expulsion from Gaza.

Throughout the war, I've been surprised by how little TV channels

here in Israel show the reality on the ground.

Scenes of starvation that have shocked

the world have been rarely shown here and, when they have,

they've often been dismissed as fake news.

Some moderate voices, voices arguing for coexistence

and the collective healing between Israelis and Palestinians,

have told me they feel marginalised.

The International Criminal Court

has issued an arrest warrant for Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Yet here in Israel,

polls suggest he continues to have a solid base of support.

I spoke to the pollster and political consultant Mitchell Barak,

who has worked for Israeli politicians on both

the left and the right, including Benjamin Netanyahu.

Prime Minister Netanyahu really thrives on a chaos.

Some of that chaos he creates himself - within his party,

within his government - and some of it is external.

I would not write that political obituary for Netanyahu.

He is nowhere near finished.

We have an election coming up, probably not later than October

of this year, and I can't say Netanyahu will win -

in fact, I don't think he'll win - but he certainly won't lose.

And not losing means...he'll stay Prime Minister, somehow.

Since the October Gaza ceasefire came into effect,

over 400 Palestinians, including children,

have been killed by the Israeli military,

according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry.

Israel, which now controls over half of Gaza,

has said that it has opened fire in response to

what it has called ceasefire violations.

It has accused Hamas of killing three of its soldiers

during that same period.

Looking forward, huge unresolved questions remain.

What does the future of Gaza look like?

Will Hamas agree to disarm, a key stipulation of the plan?

With Israel's leaders vowing they'll never allow Palestinians

to have their own sovereign state,

the future of diplomacy looks fraught.

I've been here in Bethlehem, in the occupied West Bank,

numerous times while the war in Gaza was at its height

just a few miles from here,

and I've seen the reality of how daily life here

is impacted by Israel's ever-growing military occupation.

Here at the Aida Youth Centre,

this football pitch is the latest example

of the reality of life under occupation.

Seen as a lifeline to young people,

in December, the Israeli authorities

said they would demolish it, as it was built without permissions,

a claim local Palestinians dispute.

And as our next film from the BBC Eye team reveals,

occupation leaves a mark

on the most significant milestones of a person's life.

SIRENS WAIL

SCREAMING

BABY CRIES

Matil developed a complication

that a lot of extreme premature babies develop.

It's unfortunately a very bad scenario.

But things could turn around with her.

BELLS RING

CROWD SINGS

MONITORS BEEP

SINGING

BABY CRIES

CAMERA SHUTTER

SHE CHUCKLES

Elsewhere on the World Service this week -

BBC Persian has now received dozens

of rare eyewitness accounts from inside Iran,

despite the ongoing near-total internet blackout

throughout the country,

as recent protests have been violently crushed

by government forces over the past week.

The full story is on the BBC News website.

And after a year-long investigation,

the BBC Afghan team published

a report exposing the internal differences

at the very top of the Taliban government in Afghanistan,

through audio obtained by our reporters

and exclusive access to Taliban insiders.

You can also find that story on the BBC News website.

Now we're taking you to one of Brazil's toughest neighbourhoods,

Cubatao, on the outskirts of Sao Paulo.

For years, one local public school, Parque dos Sonhos -

the Park of Dreams -

was known by a far darker nickname.

Beset by crime and violence,

half of its students requested to be transferred.

But something extraordinary has happened. In the last year,

it's won an international award and been recognised

as one of the best in the world.

So how did an institution in one of the most troubled communities

in Brazil defy the odds and rewrite its own story?

BBC Brazil's Rute Pina has been finding out.

This public school once faced

constant break-ins, theft and violence,

but today it's being recognised as one of the best in the world.

We are in Cubatao, on the coast of Sao Paulo in south-west Brazil

to understand what the school, Parque dos Sonhos -

that translates to the Park of Dreams - did differently.

It sits between Latin America's largest port, Santos,

and the steep mountains of Serra do Mar.

In the early 2010s,

the city ranked among the most violent in the state

because it was often used for drug routes.

The school teaches children aged six to 14.

Back then, the violence didn't come from the students,

but from outsiders and local gangs

who frequently broke into the building.

Parque dos Sonhos is in a neighbourhood

created to resettle families who have lived in the Serra do Mar,

a mountain range near Sao Paulo,

prone to landslides and high-risk informal settlements.

At first there was almost nothing here,

just a forest, a river and a few houses.

As a result, the school was subject to break-ins and vandalism.

Regis, a history teacher,

was invited to become principal because of his experience

dealing with challenging school environments.

That's when he first heard about Parque dos Sonhos.

Back then, the school had only 116 students.

Even so, Regis set a big goal -

to turn one of the most vulnerable schools

into the best in the region within five years.

The first step was fixing the basics - the walls,

the floors and the furniture. With very little public money,

the school turned to local businesses for help.

The full-time school introduced 23 projects,

including sports, journalism and theatre.

The hallways also tell a story.

Every classroom door features art of famous figures like Mandela,

Malala and the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire.

The Park of Dreams won the world's Best School prize

in November in the Overcoming Adversity category.

And the transformation that brought the award home

also had an impact on student performance.

The school's official score more than doubled.

It rose from 2.2 to 4.6

on a state index that measures school performance.

But for the teachers, the numbers are only part of the story.

Last year, Parque dos Sonhos

served more than 500 elementary school students.

This year, it will also begin offering high school.

A new chapter for school once considered impossible to save.

Thanks for joining me in Jerusalem.

Global Eye will be back next week. Goodbye.