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♪ christia hello. i'm christian fraser, and this is "the context." >> u.s. fears that if israel goes ahead with a full invasion ofa their= is --full invasion of rafah, there will be carnage. food and fuel are running out. >> tragically, joe has been the greatest friend -- joe biden has been the greatest friend to hamas and has blood there is on planet earth. those sound like extraordinary statements. what are the facts? >> they believe israel has everything it needs in terms of armaments and if they wanted to go into rafah, they can still do that. this is trying to pressure netanyahu to changing or modifying his cision.

christian: president biden warns israel he will not support an offensive and rafah, but maybe the operation is underway. residents have reported constant shelling in the east of the city. in washington, republicans have tabled a resolution condemning president biden's decision to withhold weapons down for israel. in new york, stormy daniels is back in the witness box, questioned by donald trump's defense. we will bring you the latest on that. the bbc speaks to a boeing whistleblower who says that fuselages left at the factory by the largest supplier with serious defects. we will talk to transport secretary pete buttigieg. a very good evening. the israeli tanks are massed on the border with seven gaza, thousands of palestinians on the move from the eastern part of rafah.

it is not the full invasion, not yet, but it is starting to feel like it is imminent. president biden has acknowledged on, that he has paused one shment of arms bound for israel and signaled that more will be held back if this goes ahead. pres. biden: civilians have been killed in gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers. i've made it clear that if they go into rafah -- they haven't gone into rafah yet -- if they going to rafah, i'm not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with rafah, to deal with the cities. we will continue to make sure israel is secure with the iron dome and their ability to respond to attacks out of the middle east recently. christian: it has prompted fury in israel. the far right minister wrote on x, "hamas loves biden," a

comment described as irresponsible by the israeli president. but there is a similar sentiment in washington. the house speaker said that the decision was "a complete u-turn from what i've been told in recent hours. 24 hours ago it was confirmed to me that the policy is very different to what he stated there. so i hope that this was a senior moment." republicans tabled a resolution condemning the decision which they believe sends entirely the wrong signal to israel's enemies. sen. graham: i want to emphasize one thing. this is all about president biden and lloyd austin trying to take over the war from israel. i got one message for israel -- don't let them do it. sen. cruz: tragically, joe biden has been the biggest friend to hamas and hezbollah that there

is on planet earth. those sound like expert mary statements. what are the fact? s the biden administratio is sending right knee -- the the biden administration is sending money right now to gaza. the first shipment came in and, boom, immediacy seized by hamas exactly like we said. they are combining it with blocking weapons to israel. christian: the comments and the furious direction on the right in the united states has given the israeli prime minister the, and the service said. -- confidence to press ahead. prime min. netanyahu: we are on the eve of independence day and in the war against -- war for independence we were a few against many. with the greatness of spirit, bravery, and unity among us, we won.

today we are much stronger. we are stronger, we are deteined, and we are united to defeat our enemy and those who seek our souls. if we have to stand alone, we will stand alone. i have already said that if we have to, we will fight with our nails. we have much more than nails, and with the same greatness of spirit, god's help, we will win together. christian: security correspondent tom gardner -- frank gardner is in jerusalem. frank: they are showing every sign they are willing to intensify the operation on the ground in rafah. what started as a limited operation is starting to fray at the edges, as people report artillery strikes and airstrikes in other parts of this very crowded part of the southern gaza strip. israel is absolutely stung by the u.s. threatening to withhold weapons. they are talking of betrayal, they can't believe it. this hasn't happened since 1982.

when we talk about 2000-pound bombs, you can drop that on a precise house, but you're going to affect everybody in about a 300-meter radius. that is why the u.s. does not want to supply these weapons because he doesn't trust the israeli air force not to hurt civilians in the course of any coming operation in southern gaza. tom: yeah, it's hard to overstate the significance of what president biden said last night in terms of the u.s.- israel relationship. you have to go back for decades to the days of ronald reagan to find the last time the israeli public had the threat of withholding weapons from washington to israel used in this rate to try and affect israeli tactics on the ground. after the interview with cnn from president biden, what we have seen is a very sharp republican backlash here in washington.

in the last hour or so some key republican senators who see themselves as closely allied israel have sharply criticized president biden, saying that this is in their words outrageous. but democrats for the most part stand behind the president. one i spoke to just outside the senate foreign relations committee in the last couple hours saying that she fully backed what president biden was doing because she said the numbers of women and children killed by the israelis in gaza. in the end, what this goes back to his a call that president biden made it to prime minister netanyahu a month ago in which he effectively threatened to withdraw arms supplies if that operation into rafah went ahead. remember the numbers of civilians, many of them living in tents there, and the u.s. has reached a point where it is try to stave off a foreground offensive, and so it has to look -- a full ground offensive, and

so it is delivered on that one in the phone call, to start miting some arms of life that said, those in the administration say they believe israel has everything it needs and if it wanted to go into rafah, it could still do that. this is trying to pressure mr. netanyahu into changing or modifying his decision. christian:, bateman and frank gardner giving us their reaction. back with us tonight, a former hostage negotiator and the director of forward thinking, the n go which works to promote an inclusive peace process in the middle east. you are always welcome on the program. i knowou are in very close contact with people in and around rafah. what are your contacts telling us about what is unfolding? >> first of all, there is a deep fear. no one has a certainty that they will be alive tomorrow, and that is understandable. i think the sense of loss of

humanity -- when i'm constantly getting from people in rafah and elsewhere in gaza is the question, where is humanity at present, the sense that they are being amended, they are being left, they are total -- they are being abandoned, they are being left, they are totally vulnerable. it is difficult to answer that question, christian. christian: obviously, there are very sensitive peace negotiations going on, cease-fire negotiations in i know you are privy to some of the things that are said. the israelis said it is the threat of moving against hamas in rafah that give them a better chance of getting the hostages back. some say joe biden's decision further empowers hamas in that delicate balancing act. what do you say? >> well, first of all, what i gather from cairo, there has been no progress whatsoever. there is a sense of despair coming out of it. i hope i am wrong, but that is the impression i've been given

today. with regard to using military pressure, in my experience, and i've spent several years negotiating in this field, i have always found that the military pressure and actions like this stiffens resistance. it doesn't facilitate it. i think throughout the shalit years, every effort israel made to release gilad shalit and return him to his family through military action resulted in a prolonged process, it did not facilitate or help it, and it put the price up in the end. i feel that lesson has not been learned, or if it has been learned, it 's not been -- it's not been highlighted or given priority, because i think right from the start, prime minister netanyahu's goal was not so much

the return of the hostages as getting heads for what happened on october 7. i think -- i was in israel last week in the knesset engaged with people active in the knesset, and it was very clear to me that his survival as premier will depend on achieving -- getting heads, to put it crudely. christian: well, i wanted to ask you about that, oliver. this tweet from the security minister, who is in the israeli cabinet, certainly tells us how it has been received on the israeli right. let's not forget he is one of the main elements within the war cabinet who is putting pressure on benjamin netanyahu to go into rafah. do you think the prime minister is effectively boxed in here? oliver: i honestly think, christian, that netanyahu himself is more in line with the

ben-givrs that we tend to think. they have given him the opportunity to express more publicly what his own attitude and mindset has been throughout his premiership. there has been numerous occasions when he had the support that he could have negotiated a settlement with the palestinians but chose not to. i don't take -- i don't excuse him so easily, saying he is boxed in and it is pressure from the extreme right that he has to follow. no, i think generally -- i made this point before -- understandably israel is in a traumatized state. right across the party spectrum in the knesset, netanyahu has support for the military option. of course people want to see the hostages released and returned to their families, but they also are determined to see the total demise of hamas.

the message that we tried to put across to them constantly is if you want to see resistance, the demise of resistance generally in palestine, there was one option, and that is end occupation. what is happening in rafah now will only prolong the insecurity of israel in the region. christian: oliver mctiernan, thank you for being with us. oliver: thank you very much, christian. christian: around the world and across the u.k., you are watching bbc news. let's look at stories making headlines. labour's newest mp has apologized for comments she made in support of her ex-husband after he was convicted of sexual assault in 2020. she said in an interview at the time that he was attractive and easy target for dirty politics. on thursday she told the bbc she was committed to tackling violence against women. the bank of england has held

interest rates at 5.25%, a 16- year high, but it has hinted it could be cut in the coming months. the banks governor said he was optimistic things were moving in the right direction. kingharles joked about being allowed out of his cage during a surprise visit an army barracks in hampshire today. he was speaking during a visit to the school of military engineering. it's his latest engagement since returning to public duties after his cancer diagnosis. you are watching bbc news. amid growing concerns over their safety record and after several devastating mechanical failures with the boeing fleet, the ceo of the company is assured customers that their aircraft are billed to the highest industrial standards. but a former employee of the firm's biggest supplier has told

the bbc that sections of the 737 max aircraft that he was checking regularly left his factory with serious defects. spirit aerosystems build the fuselage that shipped to boeing's own plant for finalist emily. speaking publicly for the first time, the former quality inspector told the bbc that summit managers actively tried to discourage him from flagging up floors in the half-finished planes. our reporter feel like asking how many problems he would typically find at the end of the production line. >> anywhere from 50 to 100. reporter: you were regularly finding more than 100 faults on a plane being shipped? >> and that is because i inspect certain areas. in totality come if you total them out, you will be over 100. reporter: you were picking up on these funds and flagging them to be repaired what kind of

response did you get from your managers? >> my managers, the production managers, always made a fuss about why i was finding it, why i was looking at it, and they made a big fuss about everything that i found. it was because of the stage of where the plane was. if i look at a plane that is supposed to be getting shipped in the last person to see it should be finding missing fasteners and parts and things like that. theo why were they not thanking you for picking up on these things? >> because they just wanted to clear it out. they weren't focused on the consequences of shipping bad fuselages. they were focused on meeting the quotas, meeting the schedule, meeting the numbers. if the numbers looked good, the state of the fuselages didn't really matter. that's how i think the culture was driven. theo: throughout all ts you are picking up problems on the fuselages being sent to boeing.

are fuselages getting sent to boeing with floors with a defect? >> there were sending fuselages with many defects, many bad. they knew that, they were aware of it. spirit was wrong for sending defective fuselages, but at the same time boeing was also wrong for accepting them. theo: boeing has been criticized for allegedly having a culture of profits and speed of production over passenger safety. would you say the same mentality applied to spirit, boeing's number one contractor? >> well, spirit was part of boeing at one point, and the culture was not something that is became a new factor. i think when they deviated from boeing, a lot of the leadership was still there and a lot of the culture was still prolonged after they became their own company. it wasn't something that the

culture all of a sudden just became bad. the culture was bad already and over time became worse. christian: what does the biden administration make of all that? in the last hour the transport secretary pete buttigieg has spoken to the bbc, and he gave this response to that interview. sec. buttigieg: the faa is investigating this now because when you hear concerns like that they have to be taken seriously. the coext is we have been in the process of putting boeing under a microscope ever since the january incident with the alaska airlines flight. they need to demonstrate that they are meaning the quality standards and safety standards that the faa has set forward. that's part of why we have taken the extraordinary step of restricting the ability to increase production until they can demonstrate they do that safely. the aviation safety record is an extraordinary thing and you

can't ever take it for granted but maintaining that requires a heightened level of scrutiny and that is what is going on with boeing. >> if they don't meet the safety standards, what happens? there are planes in the skies in the meantime. sec. buttigieg: if the plane is in safe, it can't fly- - isn't safe, it can't fly. that is always going to be true. the faa holds these aircraft to a standard of one billion or better in terms of the probability of going catastrophically wrong. that is why we have the extraordinary safety record that we do. it is clear that extraordinary measures are called for in order to safeguard and defend the record. >> at the same time today there was a boeing 737 that crashed during takeoff in senegal and injured 11 people. officials in truckee say that 190 passengers and crew were evacuated from a boeing 737 that had a tire burst during landing. do you understand -- of course it is a safe mode of transportation, the record has been very strong, but do you

understand why people feel wary at best when they are looking at getting on a boeing? sec. buttigieg: not just a safe mode of transportation, the safest by far that we know. but thmost natural human think in the world is when you step into a metal to that is going to fly hundreds of miles an hour through the sky, you're going have concerns that absolutely everything has been checked to make sure that is a safe experience. that is not something we can ever treat as a destination and say we achieved safety and we are good to go. that is continually refreshed, and anytime a problem or effect of a problem emerges, whether it is in the design, process maintenance, or operation, the faa is going to look at that closely. reporter: and you trust boeing to rectify this? sec. buttigieg: we don't just trust. there is an auditing process, we are roughly 60 days into the 90-a clock that the administrator has put boeing on saying you have to do mr. a comprehensive plan to tackle these issues and they have a responsibility to meet our standards.

we hope and expect that they will and we will hold them christian: u.s. transferred secretary pete buttigieg responding to the exclusive bbc interview. stormy daniels, the adult film star at the center of the criminal case against donald trump, took the stand this morning for a second day of testimony, and as promised, trump's attorneys went after her and cause examination to establish thway that she has gained publicity and the money from going public. but the jury are not being asked in this case to judge whether donald trump had sex with stormy daniels and the truthfulness of her account. this is not a moral judgment on him. what they are being asked to decide is whether he falsify business records to win an election. trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records. here is what he had to say on his way to court. mr. trump: i think you will see some very revealing things today. i want to thank my lawyers.

they have done a very good job. i would rather think them after it is over as opposed to now, because we don't want them to get carried away. christian: back with us on the program, an attorney and former federal prosecutor in the u.s. justice department and his senior staff writer for politico. lovely to see you again. today trump's lawyers tried to get stormy daniels to admit that her stories changed over time and that she did it for ney falls how successful were they? >> look, it sounds like there are quite a bit of fireworks and drama during the cross-examination. ultimately those points don't really matter at all. the only thing the jury has to take away from stormy daniels's testimony is they have to believe she had sex with donald trump on the night she claimed. that is all they have to believe. whether she changed her story over time, in ordinary course that would be potentially a knock on the witness, but the only one episode that matters is that one and whether she changed

her story over time because she was nervous or felt intimidated is beside the point. likewise, her motivation in trying to get the story out, whether it had to do with money or not, again that is a knock on her credibility in one sense, but the only thing the jury has to take away is did she have encounters with trump. the rest of it is beside the point. christian: it's a good point, and i wonder watching some of it today that the cross-examination was about something else. maybe he was about something bigger than the trial. ankush: yeah, look, trump has a very tight control on his legal defense, and he puts his lawyers in awkward positions, sometimes forces them to do things that ordinary lawyers in a typical case wouldn't do. in this typical case -- in this particular case the smart thing for his team to have done would have been to concede that the encounter happened and to defend the case on falsifying the records, because whether or not

this absolutely happened is not central to the case, but it became central when trump continued to deny it, including when his lawyer denied it in the opening statement. prosecutors had to put her on to do with that, but i think in the long sweep of this it will have been a strategic error on trump's part. christian: yeah, clearly the next big witness on the stand is michael cohen. in fact, the whole case hangs on the testimony he will give. do you suspect they will do that on a friday before a weekend and let the jury stew on it? ankush: gosh. you know, prosecutors would love to have that kind of minute control over when people go on. not sure they will. in ordinary course, yeah, you would want to get him on and off before the weekend, potentially. but you don't want him to be left with the impression that this terrible cross happened and that is the end of it. if there is redirect for the

prosecutors to clean up -- i doubt that the prosecutors are trying to micromanage it that much. christian: just a really quick one, they will pause this afternoon once the jury has been out to talk about the defense push for a mistrial on the back of what stormy daniels told the jury. will not go anywhere? ankush: no. the judge already denied it, i expect he will deny it again. trump's supporters in the media are making a big deal about this. we had a large case overturned -- the harvey weinstein case was overturned by new york course and they are sing that as a cautionary tale f the judge was apparently uncomfortable with the amount of detail that stormy daniels went into, and i just find it very hard to believe that he will support a mistrial or reversal on appeal if this ends with a conviction. christian: ankush, good to talk to you, thank you for coming on the program. if you are following the trump trial, you can do it on the bbc news website and app. we will take a short break. on the other

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