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CNN Live At Daybreak

International Wrap: Eye on the World

Aired October 06, 2003 - 05:35   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: We are learning more about the 19 Israelis killed in that suicide bombing in northern Israel this weekend.
Our senior international editor David Clinch is here now with that.

What are we learning?

DAVID CLINCH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL EDITOR: Heidi, good morning.

Well, you know, first of all, people have been asking me tonight what is going to happen next...

COLLINS: Right.

CLINCH: ... in this Israel-Syria dynamic. And let me tell you why it's so very, very difficult to predict what's going to happen next. You are dealing with a story where a 20-something-year-old Palestinian woman, a week away from qualifying to be a lawyer, straps explosives around herself, walks into a restaurant and kills 19 people. Amongst those 19 people, most of them from just two families, are a number of children, including a young boy who is four, would have been four, it was going to be his fourth birthday on Sunday, blown to pieces on Saturday by this Palestinian woman. You see him there on the right. His baby sister also killed.

It's a -- it's a very emotional thing, but again, the point really is how do you cover a story, how do you apply reason to a story? How do you predict what's going to happen next when a country, Israel, is faced with the question of what to do in response to an act like that?

Well what they did was attack, amongst other things, attacked a camp inside Syria. Should they have done that? Should they have not done that? Was it really a terror camp? Was it not a terror camp? In some ways, we may never know, for a start, but in some ways it's gone beyond that.

One Israeli paper today calling it a cycle of reprisal and counter reprisal. Nobody really can remember the original act in this, you know who did what first. Obviously, Israel says it has a rationale for what it does. The Palestinian militant groups, I don't know what their rationale is, they say they have one. It's got to the point now, though, where I think it's very clear that neither side has the ability, for one reason or another, to move back from the abyss, basically. Neither side has the ability, either politically, militarily, however you want to put it, to apply, once again, a framework of reason here.

And another example of what I'm talking about, in Syria today, Israel attacks a camp in Syria yesterday. The front pages of the Syrian newspapers today are all about that attack, but also all about the war 30 years ago, the Yom Kippur War, and we got some pictures. I don't know if we have them. Just yesterday on Sunday, Syrian children paraded, as they would have been whether this attack had happened or not, pass the wreck of an Israeli plane shot down in that war 30 years ago, being shown by their teachers what happened 30 years ago.

Now that's a history lesson, but it also shows that this cycle is more than just what happened this week and last week, it's what happened 30 years ago, 60 years ago and beyond. And the big question is who can come in, which side there in the region, or more particularly, the United States,...

COLLINS: Right.

CLINCH: ... who can come in and reapply some kind of reason, some kind of framework that will bring back at least...

COLLINS: Yes, and that's what we were talking about before the show is traditionally it has been the United States who comes in and -- quote -- you know "fixes" these sorts of things.

CLINCH: Right. Or...

COLLINS: And now what?

CLINCH: Absolutely, if not fixes, at least creates a framework within which the sides can fix these things. I don't know. It's very difficult to know. The United States envoy to that region sort of packed up the road map for peace a few weeks ago and came back to Washington for consultations. It's very difficult to know what the U.S. can and will do in this -- in this circumstance.

COLLINS: I know...

CLINCH: Empty gestures aren't going to get anybody anywhere. So it's going to be very interesting to see if the Bush administration feels like it has a role to play here.

COLLINS: And of course questions, too, for the United Nations. Is that the United Nations' role or the United States' role?

CLINCH: Well I think the United Nations would like to play a role, but I think it would be traditionally, again, the United States coming in creating a framework for peace and then perhaps the U.N. playing a later role. Very unlikely the U.N. can step in in the place of the U.S. The U.S. is really the only player that has a meaningful role here. But again, what is that role in this circumstance where it's reprisal and reprisal and reprisal?

COLLINS: Yes, right. CLINCH: So, and we'll talk again though at 6:00 a.m. there may be a window though because these reports of the White House taking direct control of the operations in Iraq...

COLLINS: Yes.

CLINCH: ... and Afghanistan, it will be interesting to see whether they try to apply the same model for the Israel-Palestinian conflict as well. We'll talk a little bit more about that at 6:00 a.m.

COLLINS: Very good, we look forward to that. David Clinch, thanks so much.

CLINCH: OK.

COLLINS: We'll check in again in a little while.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com






Aired October 6, 2003 - 05:35   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: We are learning more about the 19 Israelis killed in that suicide bombing in northern Israel this weekend.
Our senior international editor David Clinch is here now with that.

What are we learning?

DAVID CLINCH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL EDITOR: Heidi, good morning.

Well, you know, first of all, people have been asking me tonight what is going to happen next...

COLLINS: Right.

CLINCH: ... in this Israel-Syria dynamic. And let me tell you why it's so very, very difficult to predict what's going to happen next. You are dealing with a story where a 20-something-year-old Palestinian woman, a week away from qualifying to be a lawyer, straps explosives around herself, walks into a restaurant and kills 19 people. Amongst those 19 people, most of them from just two families, are a number of children, including a young boy who is four, would have been four, it was going to be his fourth birthday on Sunday, blown to pieces on Saturday by this Palestinian woman. You see him there on the right. His baby sister also killed.

It's a -- it's a very emotional thing, but again, the point really is how do you cover a story, how do you apply reason to a story? How do you predict what's going to happen next when a country, Israel, is faced with the question of what to do in response to an act like that?

Well what they did was attack, amongst other things, attacked a camp inside Syria. Should they have done that? Should they have not done that? Was it really a terror camp? Was it not a terror camp? In some ways, we may never know, for a start, but in some ways it's gone beyond that.

One Israeli paper today calling it a cycle of reprisal and counter reprisal. Nobody really can remember the original act in this, you know who did what first. Obviously, Israel says it has a rationale for what it does. The Palestinian militant groups, I don't know what their rationale is, they say they have one. It's got to the point now, though, where I think it's very clear that neither side has the ability, for one reason or another, to move back from the abyss, basically. Neither side has the ability, either politically, militarily, however you want to put it, to apply, once again, a framework of reason here.

And another example of what I'm talking about, in Syria today, Israel attacks a camp in Syria yesterday. The front pages of the Syrian newspapers today are all about that attack, but also all about the war 30 years ago, the Yom Kippur War, and we got some pictures. I don't know if we have them. Just yesterday on Sunday, Syrian children paraded, as they would have been whether this attack had happened or not, pass the wreck of an Israeli plane shot down in that war 30 years ago, being shown by their teachers what happened 30 years ago.

Now that's a history lesson, but it also shows that this cycle is more than just what happened this week and last week, it's what happened 30 years ago, 60 years ago and beyond. And the big question is who can come in, which side there in the region, or more particularly, the United States,...

COLLINS: Right.

CLINCH: ... who can come in and reapply some kind of reason, some kind of framework that will bring back at least...

COLLINS: Yes, and that's what we were talking about before the show is traditionally it has been the United States who comes in and -- quote -- you know "fixes" these sorts of things.

CLINCH: Right. Or...

COLLINS: And now what?

CLINCH: Absolutely, if not fixes, at least creates a framework within which the sides can fix these things. I don't know. It's very difficult to know. The United States envoy to that region sort of packed up the road map for peace a few weeks ago and came back to Washington for consultations. It's very difficult to know what the U.S. can and will do in this -- in this circumstance.

COLLINS: I know...

CLINCH: Empty gestures aren't going to get anybody anywhere. So it's going to be very interesting to see if the Bush administration feels like it has a role to play here.

COLLINS: And of course questions, too, for the United Nations. Is that the United Nations' role or the United States' role?

CLINCH: Well I think the United Nations would like to play a role, but I think it would be traditionally, again, the United States coming in creating a framework for peace and then perhaps the U.N. playing a later role. Very unlikely the U.N. can step in in the place of the U.S. The U.S. is really the only player that has a meaningful role here. But again, what is that role in this circumstance where it's reprisal and reprisal and reprisal?

COLLINS: Yes, right. CLINCH: So, and we'll talk again though at 6:00 a.m. there may be a window though because these reports of the White House taking direct control of the operations in Iraq...

COLLINS: Yes.

CLINCH: ... and Afghanistan, it will be interesting to see whether they try to apply the same model for the Israel-Palestinian conflict as well. We'll talk a little bit more about that at 6:00 a.m.

COLLINS: Very good, we look forward to that. David Clinch, thanks so much.

CLINCH: OK.

COLLINS: We'll check in again in a little while.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com