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Israeli Military Declares 4-Hour Ceasefire; Interview with Lt. Col. Peter Lerner; Should Israel End Airstrikes?; Health Officials Scramble to Contain Ebola

Aired July 30, 2014 - 10:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank so much for joining me. We begin this hour with the crisis in the Middle East, the Israeli military declaring a four-hour humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza but with one very big stipulation. The ceasefire does not apply to areas where Israeli soldiers are already operating. So far no official response from Hamas.

Now this humanitarian pause coming as violence raging over night bleeds into the day. Just a few hours ago, a second U.N. school in Gaza was attacked. In just the latest -- it's just the latest in a string of attacks on Gaza that have devastated the -- region, rather. In recent days, we've seen at least 75 attacks taking out U.N. schools, mosques, media outlets, as well as Hamas command centers and weapons storage sites.

Now the situation in Gaza has become increasingly desperately. You're looking at Gaza City from two days ago. Buildings were lit up under the night sky but last night it was nearly pitch black. Gaza City plunged into darkness after its only power plant was taken out in an Israeli airstrike. And it may be another year before that plant can be rebuilt.

CNN correspondent John Vause joins us live now from Gaza City with more.

Hi, John.

JOHN VAUSE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, hi, Carol. We're about halfway through that four-hour humanitarian window as announced by the Israelis. Hamas, though, says that they won't abide by this ceasefire. They say it's all just done for the media and in fact in the last hour or so we have seen Hamas rockets fired from here towards Israel and air raid sirens have been heard over the Israeli city of Ashkelon just to the north of Gaza.

Until the Israelis decided to put a pause on their military operations, this had been yet another deadly day here in Gaza. In fact 76 Palestinians had been killed on this day alone. That's accordingly to health official here. And Gaza's already shattered infrastructure is being hit hard.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

VAUSE (voice-over): Three weeks on and Gaza has taken a pounding. Crossing the border from Israel and the destruction is everywhere. The buildings still standing seem deserted.

(On camera): Well, the area around here seems to be completely abandoned. The only vehicles on the road, it seems, are ambulances. They've been pre-positioned in case there's an Israeli airstrike nearby. And they need to get to the injured. But right now amid all of this destruction there doesn't seem to be any signs of life.

(Voice-over): So dangerous here, firefighters can't get close enough to put out a blaze at Gaza's only power station. It was hit by a shell from an Israeli tank. Tank fire which has shown no sign of letting up.

Palestinians say it could take a year to repair the power plant but without electricity many water pumps in Gaza City are no longer working. Sewage systems, too, had been damaged, raw effluent is flowing into the sea.

Despite the Israeli offensive, Salah Jarour still opens his small shop every day but now he sits there in the dark.

"This is not fair. We have children. Hospitals need power," he tells me. "The Israelis are not human."

Everywhere it seems there are long lines, especially for bread. And tempers are beginning to fray. After waiting here for hours, someone tried to cut in line.

This man told me, "We want the situation to end because of our families and children."

Along with Hamas rockets and tunnels, Israel is also targeting Hamas leaders.

(On camera): This is all that's left of the home of Ismail Haniya. He, the most senior Hamas political leader in Gaza. It was once a four-story building. Now it's just been reduced to rubble. No one was home at the time of the airstrike but the message from Israel is clear.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VAUSE: Now as for the power plant here in Gaza, Carol, Palestinians say that they can't even get close to try to repair it because the ongoing fighting in that part of Gaza. We were up there and you can still hear the Israeli tanks are firing. This was a few hours ago and they continue to shell the area around the power plant.

COSTELLO: So hundreds of thousands of people have no electricity, there's raw sewage going into the sea. Why doesn't -- why doesn't Hamas -- abide by the ceasefire for the sake of its own people?

VAUSE: Yes. Well, look, this is a situation, these sides are now both dug in. And for Hamas, they are determined that they will fight this war on their own terms. They say they will not stop fighting when the Israelis ask them to stop fighting. In fact we can still hear now what sounds like artillery coming so maybe this brief humanitarian window could in fact be coming to a close. We've yet to confirm that but it certainly sounds like incoming fire as opposed to outgoing. We'll try and work on that.

But as far as Hamas is concerned, they say they will continue to fight this war on their own terms. They will not stop fighting when the Israelis want them to stop firing which is why they continue to fire the missiles -- rockets, rather. Also they may say that this isn't a ceasefire because the Israelis continue to operate in parts of the Gaza Strip and while those Israelis are continuing to be there, then they will continue to attack them.

The problem we have now in Gaza, Carol, is that people here now have lost so much that they now need a reason to show for that.

COSTELLO: John Vause, reporting live from Gaza, this morning, thank you.

Just across the Gaza border, in southern Israel, support is high for the military's offensive against Hamas. Jewish Israel's -- Jewish Israelis, rather, overwhelmingly reject the idea of a ceasefire. According to a poll published in the "Jerusalem Post," 87 percent say it is not yet time to end the conflict with Gaza.

CNN's Sara Sidner has more for you.

SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Carol, we know from talking to people ourselves throughout the day almost everyone we've spoken to, the Israeli Jews, telling us that this operation should keep going until all of the rockets are stopped, until Hamas is crushed.

I want to give you some idea of what we've been seeing here on the border. That is Gaza just over our shoulder. There is already been a mortar that's come over just after the ceasefire was called, about 15 minutes after and what we normally would have to do in that case is to crouch down behind this huge blast wall here, get down and try to stay out of the path of the mortars coming there.

You can also see there is a place for people to try and get under. That is a shelter there for anyone, for example, who is on the road and feels the need to get out of harm's way.

Now bringing you back over to where you can see Gaza and into Gaza, we're at a vantage point now where we've been seeing plumes of smoke coming up. We've also been hearing artillery and this is all after the ceasefire was called. So certainly the war is still ongoing. We have in the last, for example, 20 minutes, have not heard anything. It has been quiet but remember the ceasefire in effect for a few hours. We'll have to wait and see if it holds -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Sara Sidner, reporting for us.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, President Obama talking tough on Russia, saying a new round of sanctions means the U.S. means business. Just one question. Will the sanctions really work?

We'll talk about that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: In the conflict between Israel and Hamas, the fight isn't just being waged on the battlefield but in the court of public perception. Take a look at this slickly produced video about Israeli airstrikes at Gaza made by the Israeli Defense Forces.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Even buildings that appear civilian in nature are often used as rocket manufacturing facilities, weapon storage sites and terror command centers. Terrorists intentionally occupy civilian buildings knowing that the IDF does not want to harm the local population.

When these buildings are used for terror activities, they become legitimate targets under international law. Although Israel makes every effort to minimize harm to civilians when striking these targets.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Israel says it does try to minimize casualties but just this morning the U.N. says at least 19 people were killed when shells launched by the Israeli military rained down on a school functioning as a refugee camp. The IDF says in an early investigation that it was returning fire on rockets launched from that area.

To talk about this and more we're joined by Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner, spokesman for the IDF.

Good morning, sir.

LT. COL. PETER LERNER, ISRAELI MILITARY SPOKESMAN: Good morning.

COSTELLO: The state goal of this conflict was to take out these terror tunnels. But a shell from an Israeli tank, according to our John Vause, took out Gaza's only power plant. Is that true?

LERNER: We haven't concluded that that is actually carried out by the IDF. I personally looked in yesterday throughout the course of the day with our air force, with our navy and our ground forces on the ground, and we were unable to determine that it was actually an IDF round that struck that power plant. The IDF did not target the power plant in any way. So if there was a stray munition that struck the power plant, it was a mistake.

But over the last three days, we've had numerous attempts by Hamas to pin various different attacks that they've originated from within Gaza on Israel. So it could be also an internal issue which -- of a mortar that landed there, that was launched and fired by Hamas. So this is the type of challenge that we face. And indeed it is complex.

COSTELLO: Is there still an investigation under way as to how this power plant was destroyed?

LERNER: Yes, we are looking into it.

COSTELLO: And the reason I ask you this is because Hamas says that the real goal here is to just to wipe out Gaza, to destroy its infrastructure. Has the mission changed?

LERNER: No. Absolutely not. And I'm stating what a terrorist -- globally labeled terrorist points out as a goal and, you know, going after their statements, I prefer not to go there. The IDF hasn't changed its mission. The mission is ongoing. It's to deal with these rockets and the tunnels which are threatening three quarters of the country, five million Israelis living under that direct threat.

This is the reality we are facing and that is our stated and that is the goal we are carrying out on the ground. Indeed, the organization, Hamas, this bad terrorist organization that has carried out these attacks and, you know, we are currently in a four-hour hiatus to enable humanitarian supply, to enable the medical mission to go on, on the ground.

Even as we speak now, I'm receiving more reports of more rockets being launched from Gaza. Every time we've stopped to facilitate the humanitarian needs of the Palestinian people, this terrorist organization has regrouped and continued and increased their attacks against us.

COSTELLO: Well, it's -- the other side told John Vause that these ceasefires are just a PR move by Israel because so many civilians are being killed. So they say they are not going to abide by these ceasefires any longer because they don't mean anything.

LERNER: They have not abided by any of the ceasefires that have been on the table since the last -- within the last three weeks, so when they are -- you know, the Egyptians suggest something, they say why don't we de-escalate, when the United Nations say let's have a ceasefire, when the Red Cross say let's hold a humanitarian hiatus for humanitarian needs, every time we've reached that junction, every time they have escalated, aggravated the situation, and carried out more attacks against us.

When they had their own unilateral declared ceasefire, they used that day to regroup and attack Israel and they actually killed 10 Israeli soldiers on the day that they declared that they were carrying out ceasefire. Nine of them were actually in Israel, not even within the Gaza Strip. So it just goes to show the type of organization we're talking about.

I think the main problem and perhaps to go back to the -- to how you open the interview, when we are framing this organization, this terrorist organization as that, we are -- this is not just a handful of men. We've met battalions of terrorists, 400, 500 terrorists that are using the civilian environment as a fortified position as an area where they will operate under ground, beneath the -- beneath the grounds, in tunnels, utilize tunnels to launch rockets. We've shared extensive footage that we've taken from the ground

showing this. They utilize the buildings. I was speaking to commanders over the weekend and they are describing to me a reality where they would walk down the street and there would be seven consecutive houses each one of them bobby trapped. Across the street they would find a house that has no plaster on the walls but has flat screen TVs so that they can look, locate the IDF operations and then detonate those houses. This is the type of challenge that we are facing indeed and it's a huge challenge.

COSTELLO: Now that this electrical plant has been taken out, you know, a lot of people -- most people don't have electricity now. Sewage just pouring into the sea. They don't have clean water to drink. Many of the civilians here.

So when will the fighting stop? What's the end game? When will Israel decide it's enough?

LERNER: Well, our mission is to sever those tunnels which are infiltrating into Israel and stop the rocket fire as much as possible. We are -- we feel that we are succeeding on both plans. The mission will go on as long as the government decides that we need to keep pressing this organization.

You know, at the end of the day, Hamas, this organization, this globally labeled organization of terror needs to realize that it is not in their best interests to carry out attacks. You know, they have poured millions and millions of dollars into the ground in Gaza to build up this infrastructure of tunnels that have one purpose, terrorism against Israel. They have to realize that that investment was a bad investment. That the IDF is now making that investment null and void.

They have to realize that to -- if you attack Israel, it has consequences. It has consequences for the organization. It has consequences for those who are perpetrating the attacks. It has -- consequences for those directing and organizing and leading the attack.

This is the type of challenge we are facing today.

COSTELLO: Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner, thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate it.

LERNER: Have a good day.

COSTELLO: You too.

Coming up at 10:30 Eastern Time, we'll take a closer look at what Hamas-run media is telling people in the Gaza Strip. And we'll talk to Senators Lindsey Graham and Chuck Schumer about the propaganda campaign being used by Hamas.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: New anger in Russia aimed at President Obama, a leading Russian lawmaker tweeted, "U.S. President Barack Obama will make history not as a peacekeeper. Everyone forgot about his Noble Prize but as the statesman who started a new Cold War."

Well, that might be related to a slew of new sanctions. The coordinated effort comes in the wake of Russian's attempts annex of Crimea. Along with the recent downing of Malaysia Flight 17. The EU sanctions target so called cronies of Putin along with three entities. But here at home an expanded list includes three more state-owned banks, another weapons company and technology for deep water arctic and shale oil production.

The president says these new sanctions will have a greater impact, thanks to the link with Europe.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And today is a reminder that the United States means what it says. And we will rally the international community in standing up for the rights and freedom of people around the world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: So are these new sanctions a reminder the United States means what it says?

Here to talk about this, Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, and Kimberly Dozier, CNN global affairs analyst.

Welcome to you both.

KIMBERLY DOZIER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Thank you.

LARRY SABATO, DIRECTOR, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA CENTER FOR POLITICS: Thanks, Carol.

COSTELLO: Thanks for being here.

I thought it was interesting President Obama felt the need to say that. You know, "This is an example that America means what it said." Why do we need a reminder of that, Larry?

SABATO: Well, because the president knows that sanctions take a long time to work and that it's very different than military action. He also knows an overwhelming majority of Americans, and for that matter Europeans, are strongly opposed to taking military action because of the circumstances that have unfolded in the Ukraine.

Look, anybody who calls this a new Cold War didn't live through the first Cold War. Remember the doomsday clock, Carol?

COSTELLO: Yes.

SABATO: You know? The '50s and the '60s, it was always five, six, seven minutes to midnight, in other words, the eve of nuclear destruction. This is tiddlywinks by comparison.

COSTELLO: Is it? Do you think so, Kimberly? Is it tiddlywinks by comparison?

DOZIER: Well, it's on a much smaller scale because Russia doesn't have the economic wherewithal to challenge the U.S. like it did under the Soviet times. It can't send weapons on a major scale to other countries on the billion-dollar scale but what it's trying to do in the Ukrainian situation is show its influence there by arming those militants.

What could however begin to hurt Russia is that they are having trouble recruiting. They have had Russian reservists on the ground that they have activated that are carrying on this fight against the Ukrainian forces but the Ukrainian forces are beginning to have a bite. They are beginning to take back some territory, so what the administration's sanctions do together with the European Union's is hopefully convince Russia that this is going to cause too much pain, that the popularity that Vladimir Putin is enjoying at home will begin to turn as his people start feeling the bite of those sanctions.

COSTELLO: Well, that's interesting because, you know, Larry, there are plenty of lawmakers here in the United States that think that President Obama appears weak in Putin's eyes. Do they have a point?

SABATO: I don't know if weak is the right word. I think Putin is very shrewd and he knows what we suggested. That Americans are not willing and the Europeans are not willing to take this many steps further. They'll keep it to economic sanctions, military action is out of the question. Putin might actually consider military action in his calculations, but he knows it's not there.

COSTELLO: And Kimberly, while we're waiting for these sanctions to work, to see if these sanctions work, these crash site investigators still can't get to the crash site. In fact, there were rumors this morning that terrorists had planted landmines around the crash site. It's insane.

DOZIER: Well, the Ukrainian military says what it's trying to do is cut off the supply lines of the separatists to convince them to leave that area, but it's not working at this point.

This is going to take several more days, if not a few weeks, to secure the area enough for those investigators to do their jobs. That, however, could continue to strengthen popular opinion in the European capitals which helps the White House keep together some sort of coalition to keep pressure on Russia. So in this case, as long as Russia encourages those separatists to stay there, it's essentially shooting itself in the foot.

COSTELLO: Kimberly Dozier, Larry Sabato, thanks so much. I appreciate it.

DOZIER: Thank you.

SABATO: Thank you, Carol. COSTELLO: Global -- you're welcome.

Global concerns are growing over the potential spread of the Ebola virus. British Prime Minister David Cameron says Ebola is a serious threat to his country.

Britain is holding an emergency high-level meeting today to discuss precautions. Now there have been no confirmed cases of Ebola in Britain or the United States but that could change in the future due to the large number of international flights.

CNN's Pamela Brown is here to tell us more.

Good morning, Pamela.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning to you, Carol. That's right, CNN is learning that the CDC has sent a team over to Nigeria to track down anyone who has come into contact with the Ebola patient who died there just a few days ago and we've learned Liberia recently stepped up -- started screening outbound passengers for the Ebola virus, giving travelers a questionnaire, asking about their health and looking for indications of illness.

And the CDC tells us the International Response Community is discussing whether additional border controls should be implemented to help prevent further spread of this deadly Ebola outbreak.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): Right now U.S. health officials are seeking anyone who may have had contact with this U.S. citizen, Patrick Sawyer. He recently flew on a regional airliner from Liberia to the Nigerian city of Lagos and became violently ill with Ebola.

PAUL GARWOOD, WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION: He apparently arrived in Lagos, I understand, by plane. He left -- he departed on the plane initially with no symptoms. He reported being symptomatic on arrival. So I understand he was vomiting, and he then turned himself basically over -- he made it known that he wasn't feeling well.

BROWN: When Sawyer landed in Lagos last week, he was quarantined and died five days later. His wife says he was supposed to soon fly home in Minnesota.

DECONTEE SAWYER, EBOLA VICTIM'S WIDOW: With Patrick's death, it's hit our front door because he was well-known in the community. Like everyone knew him so everyone feels like they've lost like their best friend or their brother.

BROWN: Sawyer's wife tells me and CNN, "He came this close to our girls. We all could have been infected." That's what government official are trying to prevent.

DR. MARTY CETRON, CDC, DIRECTOR OF GLOBAL MIGRATION AND QUARANTINE: Certainly serious diseases are only a plane ride away. BROWN: The airline that reportedly flew Sawyer has suspended service

to airports in Liberia and Sierra Leone. More than 50 people who came in contact with him have been identified, some tested already for Ebola. Authorities did not say how many passengers who flew with Sawyer had been contacted.

With more than 100 Ebola deaths, Liberia closed some of its borders and set up screening checkpoints at airports. Here in the U.S. the Centers for Disease Control warned health care workers to watch out for any patients who may have recently traveled to West Africa and could have contracted the virus.

The CDC has also sent guidance to American air carriers on how to identify and deal with passengers displaying Ebola symptoms and how to disinfect aircraft after an infected passenger leaves the plane.

CETRON: Airline carriers, crew members, airports can be a very important partners in that front line.

BROWN: Since March, the disease has spread across several nation's borders with more than 1,000 cases being reported in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. More than 600 of those infected have died.