Israel-Gaza war: a month on: BBC News Review

The Israel-Gaza war:

One month on. This is News Review from BBC

Learning English. I'm Neil.

And I'm Beth. Watch to the end to learn the vocabulary

you need to talk about this news story.

And subscribe to our channel to help you understand English used in the news.

Now, the story.

It's now a month since the Israel-Gaza war broke out.

Israel began bombing Gaza after Hamas killed 1,400 people

and kidnapped more than 200 others on 7 October.

More than ten thousand Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by air

and artillery strikes carried out by the Israeli military

in response.

You've been looking at the headlines,

Beth. What's the vocabulary that can help people understand this story in English?

We are looking at ceasefire, humanitarian corridor and escalate.

This is News Review

from BBC Learning English.

Let's look at our first headline.

This is from Sky News. Israel-Hamas war:

Benjamin Netanyahu speaks about potential for ceasefire.

We're looking at the word ceasefire, which means a temporary stop or pause

during fighting during a war.

Now, we can understand this word better if we break it into two parts.

We can. So, the first part is cease, which means stop. This is

quite a formal word.

We don't really use it in everyday English.

The second part of ceasefire is fire.

Yeah. So, fire here is a term connected to the military

and it means fight with weapons.

So, according to this headline,

the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has spoken

about stopping fighting, a potential ceasefire, in the Israel-Gaza war.

Now, in the news

we often hear the word ceasefire with the verbs hold and fail.

If a ceasefire is holding, it means

that the agreement to stop fighting is successful.

But if a ceasefire is failing,

it means the fighting is continuing

despite this agreement to stop fighting – this ceasefire.

OK, let's look at that again.

Let's have our next headline.

This is from the International Business Times.

Israel-Hamas conflict:

Israel shuts down reopened humanitarian corridor

for evacuations amid Hamas shelling.

We are looking at this expression, humanitarian corridor.

The first part, humanitarian, contains that word human and so it is

about humans and looking after humans. Corridor is a place, for example

in a building like an office or a school, where you can walk from one place

to another. That's right.

So a humanitarian corridor is a safe area where people can move

from a dangerous place to safety and

this headline is saying that Israel has closed a humanitarian corridor

that was previously open.

Now, this idea,

this concept of the humanitarian corridor is very common in conflict

and war and so you will read it and hear it and see it in news headlines.

And one more thing to note

is that humanitarian corridors are not only used to allow people to move,

but also to let aid and emergency services in and out of areas.

Let's look at that again.

Let's have our next headline.

This is from BBC Newsnight.

How could the conflict escalate?

We are looking at the verb escalate, which means to go up or increase.

You might know that thing in a shopping centre,

the moving stairs that take you from one level to another. That's an escalator.

But this verb escalate

here is used in the context of war.

It is, and escalate means to become

more serious or more intense.

So this headline is asking

about how the conflict might change as more time passes.

Now there's a lot of war and conflict in the world

and so, therefore, you will see this word escalate used often in news reports.

But you will also see the opposite word which is de-escalate.

That's right. De-escalate means the size or level

of violence becomes smaller rather than bigger, and you'll notice that

it has this prefix de- at the beginning. That prefix is often used to mean the  

negative or the opposite of something. Let's look at that again.

We've had ceasefire –

a pause in fighting, humanitarian corridor – a safe space

for movement of people and aid, and escalate –

become more intense and serious.

If you're interested in learning more language about conflict,

we have other programmes that might interest you.

Thank you for joining us and goodbye. Bye.