the latest news in the week's top stories girls a minute since the celebrating what they call victory after israel stopped short of invading the strip. of. protests over the president's grab. for a third straight day. rounds of talks with further discussion show jewel for next year. citizens in spain's wealthiest region head to the polls for parliamentary election driven drawing sentiments of separatism.

with a look back at the past seven days top stories and the latest developments this is the weekly. recovering from the israeli bombing campaign that ended this week thanks to an egyptian brokered truce hundred sixty eight palestinians were killed around half of them civilians militant rocket fire also claimed the lives of six israelis despite those numbers hamas claims it came out the winner some israelis now say the government has failed them as. reports. alyssa and rachel are packing for the u.s. a cease fire might have been announced but they're not waiting around to see if it works the women were part of an internship program to see what it's like to live in israel so they came they saw and now they choosing to leave to spend very anxious living on the air like knowing that at any moment besides write off a mask they go into a bomb shelter and like it's being scared by public transportation and staff.

the streets of tel aviv are far cry from the streets of gaza when news of the truce was met with celebrations and fireworks the somewhat muted israeli reaction belies a growing disappointment in the way many here feel the government handled things but i do think that israel finished the operation just so and i think it's finished it very soon i think we had a good momentum for this operation we have a very good start and i think that if we were to continue we could have achieved a. better result from it's i do think that we could have put some more pressure or and the organization of hamas. would probably keep us from further rocket attacks in the future i hope. the government has good reason to finish it now many military experts and commentators believe the

ceasefire was a strategic victory for hamas for two hours after officially came into force rocket fire from gaza continued it seems that the israeli government has given in to some of the demands of hamas and has made an agreement with a terror organization i think a lot of red lines have been crossed and among the disappointed i viewed friedman a lone protester on television campus he's frustrated his army didn't into gaza and was one of the first to call his officer to volunteer it's important for our safety for our. so civilians. and that's what we should do against the i'm prepared today former country any day any time. but tel aviv insists its operation was a success enabling it to destroy a significant portion of the masses infrastructure hundreds of rocket launchers and dozens of smuggling tunnels by belief that the ceasefire in the day was just a means to an end and the end was peace and quiet however it came about is less

important as the results and result hopefully will be peace and quiet a return to normalcy for israelis and also innocent palestinians on the other side of the border but hamas claims tel aviv capitulated to its demands especially by agreeing to ease its blockade on gaza the group also showed its military prowess are sending rockets for the first time from gaza to jerusalem and later to tel aviv capabilities that have made hamas a real hero of the palestinian resistance the conflict also managed to silence the more moderate palestinian government as must motorboats which is why some are pointing out that israel has sent a very dangerous message to the arab world if you want to get something from israel you have to go to war policy r.t. tel aviv. international human rights watch dogs are now investigating the conflict for war crimes militant rockets targeted israeli cities killing several civilians bottle of it's been condemned by some observers for causing massive collateral damage filmmaker harry fear was inside gaza throughout the bombing.

gasser israel's military operation pillar of cloud has officially ended it started with the assassination of a senior hamas commander. buried here. more than one thousand two hundred palestinians were wounded overwhelmingly children and women and over one hundred sixty seven were killed half of them civilians including journalists israel says when it targeted the top and eleventh floor of this. building and it was targeting hamas as operational communications and then six when it struck the al could t.v. office just below here. at exactly one fifty three on sunday the occupying forces started bombing our office the satellite channel located on the eleventh floor in the western side of the building and the three rockets hit us my colleagues and i was wounded and one of the striking things about the eight day war was the number

of journalists that were explicitly targeted by israeli forces three appeared to be deliberately assassinated. on monday israel called major local news agencies ordering them to evacuate their premises it then targeted a computer center belonging to the t.v. channel based in the building in gaza city setting it to blaze killing two and injuring several stars this is what's left of the second floor of the building in central gaza city reporters without borders says that this building is known in gaza as the reporters building the targeting of any journalist or civilian and international law is a war crime and war reporting is explicitly protected under international humanitarian law the next day israel targeted a press car carrying two al aksa t.v. cameramen they burned to death and you don't remember when i got in yesterday near

our home a car with a press logo drove past with two young men inside and all of a sudden we saw a rocket hit the car and those inside were killed we pulled one of them out in pieces but couldn't get to the other one he was literally on fire of course it was the press but what else can you say. and al could of the most popular t.v. stations in palestine israel says they're not legitimate journalistic enterprises and that they're associated with the islamic jihad group and the quote hamas terror organization. only had a camera where is the press the european press with their talk of democracy these crimes are being committed against women and children all of this democracy is a sham. israel targeted media towers including the one in which our sister channels office is how no r.t. journalist was injured the targeted journalists according to israeli spokes persons neither journalists nor civilians at all and therefore. worried the detroit cities

massacres perpetrated by the enemy in gaza will be concealed. israel says the. bombardment campaign was aimed at wiping out a massive infrastructure personnel and capacity garson reporters say that they will never be deterred from reporting their side of the story carry fear for r.t. gaza. the israeli defense forces maintain they bombed only militant targets while admitting they knew journalists were in the firing line. we're talking about two media buildings indeed but on the roofs of these media buildings hamas wisely positioned a whole system of communications and electronics for its own personal or operational work we targeted only these and ten as these communications center and you can see an accurate hit on the roof none of the floors were targeted of course there was

a little bit of. it as a result of the explosive some windows shattered in the one i think that if a journalist chooses to locate himself near hamas facility that's a mistake hamas is star getting civilians we are not looking to target civilians we are targeting terrorists there is a border to reject the roughest border it's opened do you know that every day we allow patients from gaza to get hospitalization in israel despite the rocket fire do you know that we supply to. what other country in the world would act this way. to egypt now in the weekly on the third consecutive day of clashes police in caro have fired tear gas at crowds protesting against the president's decree granting him sweeping new powers his decisions can no longer be challenged by any authority more than twenty egyptian rights groups have to renounce the decision in a position is about to fight what it calls a dictator like power grab until the very end and staging a sit in that car is taught to square president morsi those defended them are you

saying it's intended to protect the revolution the pain is way to power after the ouster of hosni mubarak's regime wants freeman from executive intelligence review magazine says egypt's political future is now being put to the test. i think president morsi is now. on a slippery slope and it shows you how fragile and delicate this whole movement that was launched a couple years ago for democracy sometimes a so-called democracy because. they're not really giving democratic rights to the people and that's. that people are participating in the government and all of the people are actually raising their standard of living i think morsi the president has made some kind of arrangement with the military a few months ago i think he's also has drawn that from the west i think until the actual people of egypt like all these other countries have gone through these

thirty tumultuous times until the people are given real economic development till they given real freedom this is going to continue to be a problem people with their lives people stayed out of demonstrations people do parmalee by police first on the bar now in the morsi it's not going to start until we actually have a real policy for the future of the country. this week european union leaders failed to reach a deal and after days of negotiating the blocks financial future in brussels most e.u. members supported an increase in the budget while some including britain called for cuts claiming that in a time of a stir the nations don't have money to spare reports. we shared the european commission in london but in a week that seeing the brussels budget debate olson italy ending in failure is once again britain's place within europe is back in the spotlight the european leaders all similarly failing to come up with

a deal that would please everyone and eve budget that would take us from twenty forty to twenty twenty that person very much wanted to be seen as leading the way in calling for the cuts indeed in the lead up to the negotiations there was a lot of concern that we'd see burson isolated from the other twenty six countries whose angela merkel who with the mediator these negotiations he stepped up to take person side an unlikely form of support perhaps she was very much adamant that person wouldn't be left to fight this alone an exercise that as we saw happening in two thousand and eleven and so we saw those other dany countries getting behind britain in this now at the end of it the prime minister said the person didn't get a deal but they didn't get an unacceptable deal but of course that leads us back exactly where we started with nothing happening and so those countries are going to be left to continually the negotiations to try and hammer out some form of

a deal that's acceptable to everyone the ultimate the we're going to see this budget battle continuing now into the new. director of the british group believes that desire for unity is what drugs european countries do. if countries had the whites to manage their own economies as they see fit then we wouldn't have this awful austerity that we're seeing we would have had these unsustainable which happened in southern europe and ireland and of course we wouldn't have this enormous bust which is creating a massive unemployment if their countries had their own rights to manage their own affairs and set their own legislation to their own interest rates many german economies as they see fit without having to hand over billions each year to brussels as britain does we'd be generally a lot better off really the opinion we're seeing is reached the limits of its levels of integration there are moves to expand more powers to the e.u.

to have more. control over national member states budgets even to have its own sources of income it's only you taxes that of course he's pushing it too far it's gone far too far in the wrong direction which is centralization and it powers were turned i think the atmosphere in europe would be a lot better off course in terms of the britain's own deficit and the debts that the u.k. has it is a small amount that the european union's asking for but because the european union has already taken so much power people are just loathe to accept a situation where they're going to get any more money. this is the weekly here and r.t. still to come with the wind of separatism people of spain's catalonia go to the polls to choose a new parliament dominated by talk of independents. and says it will send experts to bahrain to see how the state can improve its worsening human rights record for the opposition party pals to continue to protest despite

a government that and more stories point in just a few months. trimmings in this tree even for specialists a voice can produce several sounds it warms but we didn't use the art of throat singing comes naturally picked up like a language. a language of communicating with nature it said that's where throat singing originates from unions believe not only animals but also all surrounding objects like reverse forests and even stones souls and by imitating the sounds they believe assumes to capture the power of nature. was.

to get to one of the five main stars of scrotes engine it imitates the gentle breezes of summer chara whose name means great hunter says he suspects adopt. there are special instruments that accompany the singing guinea says there is even a legend about his instrument a gill it says once there lived a poor shefford who had the best horse that won every competition but jealous people killed it on the horse was revived as an instrument that those that have suffered a fall is because of the spirit of the horse came to his dream and said make an instrument from the tree the sounding board from the leather of my face the strings . and to remember me make an engraving of my head part of the instrument he did so i called the instrument again which means come back and this melody only assuming

is called. party life here in moscow the news continues now syrian rebels looking to overthrow president said have received serious backing this week the european union welcomed the new syrian opposition group the national coalition as a legitimate representative of the country's people or the e.u. ministers stopped short of official diplomatic recognition which must be decided by each member state france and turkey with the first powers to give the new rebel alliance a stamp of approval with britain following suit soon after turkey is now pushing for nato to deploy patriot missiles along its border with syria to defend itself

russia and iran are among the countries strongly opposing the move seeing it as a possible first step towards a no fly zone and for a boots on the ground but if you activists dr yes and a brother thinks if nato grants turkey's request it would plunge the region deeper into chaos. the quien such mess is not really going to be for defensive measure what do they need to defend against at least turkey has an army and they can defend against more time for example this is clearly for a larger scale intervention where they want to secure a no fly zone area we've been hearing the country especially britain and france advocating such intervention recently where they've been talking about limited intervention how about how how. comprehensive and how and all out war style this is going to be i think it is not going it's not going to be

a war style it will be a war of attrition it's not going to threaten the syrian government of a sudden intervention they know very well that this is going to ignite a. response from the syrian side. a lot of chaos and the region. the u.n. human rights commission plans to send a team of experts to bahrain next week amid growing concern the nation is slipping into protest chaos the main opposition party there says it will resume pro-reform demonstrations despite a government ban on all gatherings bahrain's uprising has been going on for almost two years when activists calling for more freedoms access to jobs and education from sunni leaders to eighty people being killed and thousands thrown behind bars during the government crackdown on dissent on wednesday a court sentenced twenty three medics to three months in prison for treating injured protesters and taking part in rallies that comes after a report by leading human rights group amnesty international which concluded

torture and oppression are on the rise. fall and we have found out that actually the situation is much or spend it worse months ago it's really the terry rate in we're talking about at least twenty four people being killed after they were having a panic commission of inquiry issued its report last year a ban on not protest at the end to october and only a week ago there were occasional national to thirty one opposition activists were also talking about continuous harassment of human rights and one of them is now being the president of the fan center for human rights that was ten times the summer to three years and three senate marilee for having exercised its right to freedom of expression and we consider him to be a prisoner of conscience and we are talking about hundreds of hands and hundreds of allegations of torture that that's happening especially it seems that enough two thousand and eleven and international community has not enough pressure on that one . to ensure that. any independent commission of inquiry recommendations are

implemented were it is quite worrying what we are seeing that you are on your. report was issued we have seen that that main work on a day shows that would ensure a country we can to justice for victims have not been implemented. a growing threat to european unity is the talk of separatism actively growing in some areas issues of independence and sovereignty are dominating local elections in catalonia spain's richest region and the main contributor to the country's economy. is in barcelona. well people are voting today in an election which could represent a step towards any final breakup of spain and it is because the cattle and president aftermath has promised to hold a referendum on independence from spain it is convergence and union party actually wins and that is something that is striking a chord with many cattle and the region itself a rich pretty wealthy it has an economy the size of portugal's but it pays far more in taxes to the spanish government that actually receives back in terms of

investment from madrid and that is something that annoys some people here unemployment is at around twenty five percent and also people are having to endure tough austerity measures at the moment but nothing is a done deal because after mass does need to record an absolute majority in order to be able to push through this referendum otherwise he would be forced to form some sort of coalition there is a sticking point to him that the referendum is actually against the spanish constitution and the spanish prime minister. has said he will fight it but some elements of the spanish media are actually saying that after mass could find himself arrested so nothing is clear cut at the moment and even though opinion polls do suggest that the majority of people are in favor of independence there is a strong lobby who are against separatism and their arguments are based on the economy too they say that if catalonia is forced withdraw from spain it would businesses here would lose the spanish market but they could also lose the european

union market because catalonia they fear could be forced to drop out of the e.u. and then reapply for membership which could be a long and lengthy process of the rim many arguments good arguments for and against these are issues that catalans of how to mull over over the last few weeks but today they do have to make their minds up and we should get a result later this evening. well for more on this developing story let's talk to alice and pollutes she's economist at the university of barcelona and also a separate supporter or you're there in barcelona what is the general mood of the voters though the moment does the majority really want independence. the poor show that the majority of catalan population was in attendance let's see what's the result of this election which is not a referendum but a general election to the catalan parliament how to know the turnout has increased by four point five per cent with respect to the last elections you want to call in

the us it doesn't make you're an economist does it really make economic sense for catalonia to go out alone while it makes a lot of sense knickers in a world of globalisation of open markets it is more likely that small countries don't need to belong to a larger domestic market in order to exporting scoots they belong to the. regional bloc and from a fiscal point of view catalonia is very mistreated nicely in the spanish government of each europe it in taxes by catalan citizens and businesses in the last twenty years only fifty cents has been spent in catalonia so it makes a lot of sense and catalonia has a g.d.p. per capita. than that of denmark and the european union is made up of a lot of countries that. are down that have applications nor are there ten million an adult and so it is normal that you have to stick to

a two hour local national government that is close to your preferences and then you belong to the latter unity secular unit but madrid accuses catalonia of running out of money incurring a massive debt do you really think that if it were to join the e.u. that it really could stand on its own and recover so quickly. well this thing is that is a bit tricky because the time government is in in-depth that by twenty two percent of the catalan g.d.p. but it is also true that using the crisis as an excuse the spanish government hasn't paid a lot of debt that he owns to the cotton government so in fact it's like. they are collecting all the taxes the qatari government collects only five per cent of all taxes collected in catalonia then they give us back very. money

and they don't pay your their debts and then with the markets that are close to debts two for interest we need this in general then at the end he was forced to ask for a bailout to the spanish government but this is something that is very tricky putting the first to put the tax issue aside we had an under formal report little earlier that there's a strong lobby against separatism and particularly a business lobby saying this would be a disaster for us we wouldn't be able to do business with spain itself we'd also not be able to do business with the e.u. until we actually join the e.u. if that's likely to happen in the short term this really could undermine confidence not just in catalonia but also spain itself and it's possibly the worst time to do this is not what this week is that these are red campaign that they are doing. directed by the union is not in your nearest star to sing in catalonia and in

massively from madrid now the fact is that the opinion polls that have been done among the business associations in catalonia show that the majority of interest are nursed in favor of independence so it is not true that is and that there is a massive lobbying by businesses against independence it's completely the opposite only a very very. few firms and most of them sort of regularly drops very close to the former to the spanish dollar that could be against because they could lose with independents but generally small and medium firms in catalonia independence is a way to have. government at the schools to their interests that does the infrastructures that down need it but there is a big problem is that there is a big problem with going ahead with independents and that's a legal one madrid has repeatedly warned that a referendum on independence is against spain's constitution so really any chance

of breaking away is totally unrealistic and. well why. aren't are under the spanish law they have to authorize the referendum but what happens if they don't authorize it and there's a long approved by that democratic parliament that we really like tonight. that does a lot to consult to last the opinion tool to ask. the people of catalonia what they want well and there are threats from the rest even the madrid government talking about arresting the catalonian authorities if they did try to go ahead with this could this not get pretty nasty in some ways that we could see some violence developing even a member of the military forces in spain talk about civil war is that really you know do you think do you really think that a country that is a member of the you is going to send the troops to prevent people from voting do

you really think that's possible within the european union member of the european union that has been almost rescued. and that owes money i don't think that democratic governments in europe could tell such a thing to happen within the european union so for meets not unlikely. ever and what i think is that they are using these just as a threat to menace and to to make people in catalonia change their minds but it's not that realistic thing to happen and it's really interesting here for thank you very much indeed for joining us on the political economist and separate a supporter of live there in barcelona. thank you very much for calling as. well still to come here on our tea while southern europe drowns in debt the new headquarters of the european central bank is swept into existence on a wave of.