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Interview With Former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren; Massive Explosions Rock Gaza. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired October 09, 2023 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:02:03]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Welcome to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

We are monitoring massive explosions inside Gaza today, as Israel claims to have hit at least 130 Hamas targets in three hours. As we watch these live images of Gaza, Israel saying its helicopters have launched attacks inside Lebanon, all of this retaliation three days after Hamas fighters stormed into Israel from Gaza, slaughtering civilians and assaulting military bases.

Again, these photos coming earlier today. You see the explosions. The incursion by Hamas appears to have caught Israel completely off guard. And we should tell you we're going to hear from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in just moments. We will bring you his remarks as they happen.

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN HOST: At this hour, more than 700 Israelis have been reported killed, as well as 560 Palestinians who have died. That's according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

Israel's government has ordered what the defense minister called a complete siege of the Gaza Strip. Hamas claims to have over 100 Israeli hostages, and the group is still firing rockets from Gaza into Israel.

A short time ago, CNN chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward and her team had to take cover during one of those attacks.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: (INAUDIBLE) shelter. OK.

(CROSSTALK)

WARD: Yes. Yes. Get down.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Closer.

WARD: Get down.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get down. Close, close, close. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're fine. You're fine. You're fine. You're fine. You're fine. You're fine. You're fine. You're OK. You're all right. You're all right.

WARD: OK.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's the Iron Dome, OK? That's the Iron Dome. You're fine.

WARD: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's why we want to (OFF-MIKE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

(CROSSTALK)

WARD: Guys. Are you seeing our situation, guys?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

WARD: OK.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can you hear the show?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stay down.

WARD: Stay down.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have to stay here.

WARD: Fuck.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have to stay here.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SANCHEZ: Fortunately, Clarissa and her teammates are safe.

But, clearly, this is an active war zone and the fighting could very easily spin out into a broader regional conflict. That is part of the reason the Pentagon sent a carrier strike group to the Eastern Mediterranean. And, also, there are U.S. forces in the Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway where the U.S. has had frequent run-ins with Iran, which has applauded these attacks.

The Iranian regime historically has backed Hamas. And there are questions about how much Tehran may have been involved in this particular attack.

[13:05:00]

We want to take you straight to CNN's Nic Robertson, who is on the ground there for us.

Nic, what are you seeing? NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: There's literally

an attack under way right now, incoming rocket fire.

We're seeing the interceptor rockets fly through the sky. They're just following, tracing, following. We will watch this rocket here. Watch this interceptor there just intercept in the sky above us here. There was a barrage of rockets coming from Gaza. We're just literally a couple of miles from the border right at a shelter point, concrete shelter point here.

But that barrage came in. You saw the interceptors fly up. Waiting to see if there's an all-clear sign at the moment. But this is what we're seeing here close to that -- close to the border with Gaza. I think the rockets have finished for now, so we will just step out of this bit of cover.

We're OK, that we have just been given an indication that it's all clear.

So, looking across this way, I know it's darkness right now, but looking across this way, you're looking towards Gaza. That's where the rockets have been coming from. The interceptors were trying to take them down before they could fly too far. But if you see a big flash over the horizon behind me, that will be the impact of an airstrike or artillery on Hamas inside Gaza.

We have been seeing literally, in the last few minutes here, hearing multiple impacts, hearing multiple booms of impacts inside Gaza, hearing the fighter jets in the sky. This has been going on all afternoon, but there's quite an intensity right now.

Hearing. Hearing. Is that a warning? There's another warning. We're just going to step back here towards the shelter, because we're hearing that there's another alert warning going off here. It is a very active situation. If we see the interceptor rockets come up, we will point them out to you, so, just at the moment, staying close to the shelter building.

We keep saying this today. It's an active and dynamic situation. And as you were just watching, moments ago, my colleague Clarissa Ward, perhaps about four or five miles at the northern tip of Gaza, not far from where we are now, earlier on in the day coming under a barrage of rockets, a similar situation here again today.

A number of security forces is also here at this point taking shelter in this concrete shelter behind me. This is literally so close to Gaza here that, when the warning goes off, you have literally six, seven seconds maximum to get into shelter, because those rockets really don't have far to fly before they impact here.

The interceptors seem to be working. No indication that there were any successful Hamas rockets landing inside of this particular area right now. I think this is what we're going to see all night, the tempo of this war situation, of the siege, of the buildup of Israeli Defense Forces here.

The tempo is not letting up. We're going to see more of this going through the evening, I think.

MARQUARDT: Yes, Nic, that Iron Dome, as you're seeing it right in front of you, extremely effective, but missiles, of course, do get through.

And you're almost certainly right that this will continue in the coming hours.

You are that close to Gaza. What sense do you have in terms of the buildup of the Israeli military around the Gaza Strip in any sense that a ground incursion into Gaza may be coming soon?

ROBERTSON: I don't think there's a ground incursion soon, but, obviously, the caveat is, we don't know the military planning. We only see a partial picture.

But what we have seen today is -- are the biggest concentrations of Israeli Defense Force firepower arrayed in the fields near Gaza, a few miles away, concentrations of more than 20 tanks in one area we saw. We haven't seen that in recent days. We have seen a lot more troops on the move, a lot more heavy military equipment on the move.

It's very clear that the tempo here, in terms of military readiness, if there was a ground incursion, the tempo is stepping up at the moment. But it still feels to me as if it's still some way off, and we don't even know if the political decision to call for that has actually happened just yet.

So we're just being told that we can step back up here a little bit to let these troops do their job, because their job is to make this place safe. So we moved out there, and they can now point their weapons where we were standing.

That's their job, and ours is standing here reporting. But this is going to be an ongoing situation through the evening.

SANCHEZ: It absolutely is.

And, as you're saying that, Nic, we're looking at live pictures of Gaza, where the skyline has been lighting up all night. You see there in the sort of center of your screen the glow from an explosion that took place just moments ago. And, intermittently, we have been watching it light up for hours now.

[13:10:16]

ROBERTSON: Yes, that's what we're witnessing here. I just saw a flash on the horizon slightly to my south over in this direction in Gaza.

It's fluid. The strikes are going to come where the Israeli military think that they need to put them down. Not hearing fighter jets at the moment, but that doesn't mean anything, because they can come back in seconds.

The tempo of this, it's up, it's down. Every soldier will tell you this, that, when you're so close to the conflict like this, there will be moments of calm that can feel like they stretch out and then concentrations of activity, of adrenaline, of movement, of motion, of readiness, of those rockets coming in, these soldiers taking cover, us taking cover.

Then it drops away. You enter another lull. It'll cycle back up again.

MARQUARDT: Yes, and, as you say, Nic, that tempo almost certainly going to continue into the evening, as we watch that sky above Gaza glow, presumably from the ongoing airstrikes of Israeli jets firing into the Gaza Strip.

Nic Robertson there in Central Israel. We are very lucky to have you. We know that you will stand on top of this. And we will come back to you as things arise.

Now, turmoil in the Middle East, of course, between Israel and the Palestinians is long-simmering, punctuated by clashes, uprisings and wars like the one we are seeing unfold right now.

SANCHEZ: Yes, but, of course, the two sides that have been at this for a long time don't see an end to this violence anytime soon.

And their animosity dates back long before the late 1940s, when Israel first became a state. The current map, though, dates back to 1967, when Israel captured the Gaza Strip from Egypt and began to occupy the region.

We should point out what you're looking at in front of you is an area of about two million Palestinians. Gaza's one of the most densely populated places in the world. And that complicates the picture when it comes to avoiding civilian casualties.

Now, the militant Islamist group that governs the territory is Hamas. They were formed in 1987. Hamas is an acronym that means Islamic resistance movement. It's backed by Iran. It's listed as a terrorist organization by the United States, by the E.U., as well as obviously Israel. Hamas does consider Israel an illegitimate state, and they have long fought Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.

MARQUARDT: And then, back in 2005, when Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip, Hamas eventually took over and, by 2007, was in full control of the territory, as they still are today.

That led to Israel and Egypt, the country to the West, to impose a strict blockade on Gaza, which still exists to this day.

I want to bring in Michael Oren, who is a former Israeli ambassador to the United States.

Mr. Ambassador, thank you so much for joining us at such an important moment.

We're watching these live pictures from Gaza. We have seen both rockets flying into Israel, presumably fired by militants. We have also seen strikes by the Israeli side into Gaza. I want to ask you what we were just talking about with our

correspondent, Nic Robertson. He has been seeing a massing of forces, of equipment, of tanks. Do you have a sense that a ground invasion by Israel into Gaza is imminent?

MICHAEL OREN, FORMER ISRAELI AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED STATES: Well, good to be with you.And thank you for that summary of the history of Hamas.

Just very -- two very important points before I get to your question. One is, for Israelis, and not just for Israelis -- barbarians who shoot 260 young people at a rave concert, who put children in cages, who parade women naked through the streets of Gaza, who go into houses and take out families and shoot them, these are not militants. These are not fighters. These are terrorists. And it's important to state that.

I can also say that I was the deputy to the prime minister, a member of Knesset, and I was in charge of Gaza. I was in charge of that blockade. And it's important to say that the blockade was never a blockade of food, never a blockade of medicine. It was solely a blockade of materials that can be used for armaments or had a dual use, it could be used to make a tunnel and cement, or even a two-by- four, but never food, never, never medicine, never any other essentials for life.

It's important to state this. It was a military blockade, not a civilian blockade.

As for your question, the answer, I think, unfortunately, is yes. This is now the fifth round of our fighting with Hamas. Every single round has ended in basically a return to the status quo ante. The Hamas or Islamic Jihad, these two organizations, these two terrorist organizations in Gaza, fire thousands of rockets at us.

[13:15:00]

We fire back with our air force. There's a cease-fire, and we go back to that status quo ante. I think that is no longer possible. And I think -- though I'm not a spokesman for the Israeli government, I think I do represent Israeli public opinion in saying that Israeli people are unwilling, unwilling to go back to what was.

We can never allow Hamas to attack us in this egregious, barbarous way again. And it will almost inescapably involve ground action, which would be very complicated, certainly because of the density of the population of Gaza, because the fact that Gaza will not only -- the Hamas will not only be using its own population, Palestinian population, as human shields. They will be using our hostages as human shields.

And then it raises the specter of the possibility of a multifront war. As I'm talking to you now, there are reports of fighting on the northern front as well. So it is not an easy decision for Israeli leaders. But I think, right now, and given the state of Israeli public opinion, it's inescapable. MARQUARDT: Ambassador Oren, we're just getting word that the death

toll on the Israeli side has gone up to 900 due to these Hamas attacks. That is a significant increase from the previous figure.

I also want to ask you about these hostages that Hamas is holding. We have just gotten word that Hamas has warned that they will execute civilian hostages if Israel targets people in Gaza without warning.

Do you have any sense of what both Israel and the international community, including America, including the U.S., because we understand there's a good chance that our Americans are among the hostages, what they might be doing to get those hostages out?

OREN: Yes, first of all, as for the casualties, 900, understand that, in American terms, proportionally, we're talking about 13, 14 times the number of casualties and deaths that America experienced on 9/11.

Something equivalent of 35,000, 40,000 Americans would have been killed in Israeli terms. And the hostages, probably over 100 hostages we're talking about, in American terms, thousands of hostages, and probably upwards of 100,000 proportionally casualties for the United States.

So, imagine the immensity of the pain and the cost of this egregious attack by Hamas on our civilians, just unspeakable.

What we can do about the hostages, Israel will be doing its utmost, together with our allies, with the United States and other democratic allies in the world, to try to locate them from technological means. We have special forces who are specially trained to rescue hostages in very difficult situations.

A number of these -- these units have been operating in releasing terrorism -- releasing hostages from the various farms and settlements surrounding Gaza, because Hamas terrorists took a number of hostages in those settlements. And they were successfully released.

We're talking about the hostages who were dragged into the Gaza Strip and tortured and beaten there. Israel will do its utmost to try to locate them and to send the forces necessary to liberate them. All right, ambassador Michael Oren, we do have liberate there.

MARQUARDT: All right, Ambassador Michael Oren, we do have to it there.

And, as we leave you, we continue to see the sky over Gaza lighting up. It certainly -- there certainly is a sense that this is just the very beginning of what could be a long and deadly conflict.

Ambassador Michael Oren, the former Israeli ambassador to the United States, thanks very much.

SANCHEZ: And as we're hearing explosions over Gaza, we should again point out the breaking news that Hamas has warned they will kill Israeli civilians, some of them potentially Americans, hostages that they are holding, if these attacks in Gaza continue without warning, that news coming just moments ago.

We are awaiting word from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He is set to speak at any moment. We will, of course, bring you those remarks live.

And the Pentagon has deployed carrier groups to the region, the U.S. pledging to provide even more military support in the coming days. We're going to get a live report from the Pentagon in just moments.

MARQUARDT: Plus, families desperately searching for their loved ones taken by Hamas.

As we go to break, here is one mother's plea for the safe return of her daughter.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm a mother who's looking for her daughter. Every minute that passes by, the chance to find her alive are reducing. And there's nothing, nothing anyone can do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:23:43]

MARQUARDT: Right now, the United States is ramping up military support to Israel as Israel prepares for what could be a major campaign in the Gaza Strip.

The secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, announced on Sunday that he ordered the most advanced U.S. aircraft carrier and its heavily armed strike group to move closer to Israel's coast in the Mediterranean Sea.

And a U.S. official is telling CNN that squadrons, multiple squadrons of fighter jets will be deployed to the Middle East to deter the conflict from escalating -- Boris, over to you.

SANCHEZ: We want to dig deeper on this now.

We have got retired U.S. Army Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt with us.

General Kimmitt, always a pleasure to have you.

BRIG. GEN. MARK KIMMITT (RET.), FORMER U.S. CENTRAL COMMAND DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR PLANS AND STRATEGY: Sure.

SANCHEZ: There is significant concern that this conflict could become regional. And there are multiple fronts. Walk us through them.

KIMMITT: Sure.

Israel is surrounded by adversaries and extremist groups. If you were to take a look at just around directly on their borders, you have Lebanese Hezbollah in the south of Lebanon. You have extremist groups here just astride the Sinai, the Heights.

You have potential concerns coming from the Hamas and Fatah organizations in the West Bank. Down in Egypt, primarily here in the Sinai, you have old al Qaeda elements as well. Plus, throughout the region, you have other organizations swearing fealty and support. Popular mobilization fronts in Iraq are willing to help.

[13:25:20]

So this could burst out of Gaza and Israel into a much larger conflagration.

SANCHEZ: One of the key components of Israel's defense is the Iron Dome.

KIMMITT: Yes.

SANCHEZ: We have been watching it work essentially since this conflict started, intercepting missiles coming from Gaza in the night.

How critical is it to Israel's defense and how does the United States go about supporting it?

KIMMITT: Yes, well, first of all, the United States has been actively involved in the Iron Dome development ever since its inception, has contributed about $2.5 billion.

It is specifically designed for the short-range rockets being fired out of Gaza. In fact, at one time, the consideration was called the anti-Qassam system because of the Qassam rockets that were being fired. There are only 10 to 15 batteries, four launchers per battery. That means they can only fire about roughly 500 to 750 rockets at once.

And when you have about 2,000 rockets coming in at any time, what we call a swarm attack, that's why you have seen so many casualties and so many rockets getting through.

SANCHEZ: It's essentially an attempt to overload the defense system.

KIMMITT: Absolutely. Absolutely.

SANCHEZ: Let's talk about Hamas' military capability. We have seen them use rockets, a paraglider, which we have video of here, even speedboats.

KIMMITT: Yes.

SANCHEZ: Talk to us about their capabilities.

KIMMITT: This is a fairly unsophisticated organization, short-range rockets, rocket-propelled grenades, something you would expect to see from a second- to third-tier military organization.

But now they're bringing in drones. You're seeing they're cleverly using these paragliders. They're using speed boats to deliver ammunition. So they have been fairly clever with the very, very limited capabilities they have.

SANCHEZ: You're describing their limited capabilities. I think one of the things that caught Israeli intelligence services and generally the West off-guard is the scale of these attacks.

For Hamas, they're unprecedented, but Gaza -- as we take a look at the map one more time, Gaza, it's pretty fortified. There are very large border barriers. There's a militarized border. How are they able, Hamas, to get all these weapons into that area?

KIMMITT: Well, a number of ways.

If you take a look at the Rafah Crossing down here from Egypt, that has always been the area where we're concerned about with the tunnel systems. Now, they're not bringing the large rockets through there. But they're bringing the guidance system for the missile, some explosives, so they're using that.

But they're also getting a tremendous amount of help out of Lebanon through the water, where they actually float containers above and below the water to get this equipment in. Same thing from Syria. And now even more concerning is the notion that Iraq is being used as a land bridge from Iran to bring this over and take it into Gaza through that way as well.

So there is no lack of support that they are getting for some of the high-tech equipment or the high-tech capabilities we're seeing, even though they are limited.

SANCHEZ: Yes, the question of how much influence and physical material supply Iran may have provided in this attack is still open. We know U.S. officials are working to get a determined answer on that.

General Kimmitt, always great to have you. Thanks so much for the time.

KIMMITT: Sure. Thank you.

SANCHEZ: Still plenty more news to come on NEWS CENTRAL, including this, a day of celebration at a music festival turning into a massacre, hundreds killed in what is the deadliest mass casualty event in Israel's history.

We have new details from survivors on what happened and much more on the lives lost.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)