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Middle East Crisis; Security Council Meeting; Clinton on Crash
Aired July 18, 2014 - 09:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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COSTELLO: Now to the escalating crisis in the Middle East. Israeli tanks on the ground in a bid to destroy tunnels from Gaza into Israeli territory. Tunnels Israel says Hamas is using to launch attacks. In a tweet, Israel's defense force is announcing, "we have hit Hamas hard and we will continue to hit Hamas hard." The military saying, quote, "14 terrorists and one Israeli soldier have been killed."
And this morning, the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, says the military is prepared to significantly expand its operations. A Hamas spokesman condemning these latest actions saying Israel will pay a heavy price. The Gaza health ministry says at least 260 people have been killed and more than 2,000 injured since Israel began its aerial campaign last week.
Joining me now from Jerusalem is the Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev.
Good morning.
MARK REGEV, ISRAELI GOVT. SPOKESMAN: Good morning.
COSTELLO: Thank you so much for being here. I appreciate it.
REGEV: A pleasure.
COSTELLO: Your prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, says the Israeli military offensive could grow. Some 18,000 reservists have been called up as part of a mission that includes air and naval support. So what does an expansion look like?
REGEV: Well, we're prepared to expand if need be. I mean ultimately to commit ground forces to combat operations inside Gaza is not an easy decision. It's only been taken after we've looked at all the different options because there is also a price in not acting, in not moving to protect our people against the terrorist tunnels.
Ultimately we didn't want to be here. I mean there was a cease-fire proposal on the table on Monday. A proposal put forward by the Egyptians, adopted and supported by the United Nations and the Arab League. We accepted that and held our fire. Hamas rejected it and kept shooting rockets. They rejected that proposal on Tuesday. They rejected it again on Wednesday. And so when the diplomatic was - the diplomatic door was closed shut by Hamas, we had no option but to act military against those missiles and those tunnels. COSTELLO: What made you decide that an air offensive was not enough?
REGEV: Well, the trouble with the tunnels is they're deep underground and they give the terrorists in Gaza the ability to penetrate inside Israeli territory, to pop out of the ground at a place where we wouldn't expect and to cause murder and mayhem. Mass casualty attacks. We had an example yesterday, which we succeeded in thwarting, where 13 Hamas terrorists crossed in Israel with machine guns, with explosives, with bazookas. And had we not intercepted them, there could have been mass death. So it's important that we deal with these tunnels on the ground and that has to be on the Gaza side of the frontier.
COSTELLO: Is there hope that with a ground offensive there won't be as many civilian casualties?
REGEV: Well, there's a plus and a minus. First of all, there's a danger we've committed our boys to combat and obviously we do that not lightly. We understand that we could be facing Israeli casualties and we're ready for that.
We know that Hamas is a formidable opponent. They have built up over the last few years a formidable military machine and you've seen they can shoot rockets deep into the heart of Israel into Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, they target, and we are going in with in no way underestimating the strength of our rival.
But we believe with ground forces and special forces and other units on the ground there in Gaza that we can deal with the threat, get rid of those tunnels and also take on those missiles that they keep shooting at our people. You know, they've fired 1,500 rockets from Gaza on our cities. It can't go on. It has to stop, and we'll make it stop.
COSTELLO: When will you know you've won?
REGEV: You know, victory for us is actually peace and quiet. Victory for us is the Israeli civilian population not having to live in fear of an incoming terrorist rocket from Gaza. Victory for us is just having a normal life and when this is over, I think the Hamas military machine will be significantly depleted and the Hamas leadership will understand that it cannot shoot rockets at Israeli civilians with impunity.
COSTELLO: Thank you so much, Mark Regev, an Israeli government spokesman. I really appreciate you being with me this morning. Thank you.
The U.N. Security Council is expected to hold an emergency meeting today on the Mideast crisis, as a spokesman for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees urges restraint. Some 22,000 people are being sheltered by that agency in Gaza City in northern Gaza. One resident, who has decided to stay put with his family rather than flee, tells CNN they are, in his words, sitting ducks.
I want to bring in Yousef Munayyer, executive director for the Palestine Center. Welcome, Yousef.
YOUSEF MUNAYYER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, PALESTINE CENTER: Thanks. Good to be with you again.
COSTELLO: It's nice to have you here. You heard what Mark Regev said. He said that Israel is only looking for peace and quiet. Why -- it sounds so simple.
MUNAYYER: It sounds so simple but, of course, it's nothing like that at all. The reality is that, in previous instances, there have been cease-fire agreements. During those cease-fire agreements, Israelis had peace and quiet. They continued to live in security and relative prosperity compared to Palestinians in most of the rest of the region. But Palestinians in the Gaza Strip do not get to live in peace and quiet during those periods. And that's the fundamental reason why this recurs.
You know, the Israelis continue to carry out these operations. They - you know, even as the spokesperson you had on a moment ago described it, they refer to this callously as mowing the lawn. It's an idiom that they use to refer to periodically setting back the capacity of militants in the Gaza Strip. But the reality is, unless the underlying causes are addressed, those tunnels are going to be dug again. Those rockets are going to be built again. Unless you address the grievances of the people there and the siege and the occupation, this is just something that's going to go on and on again. So knowing that --
COSTELLO: But doesn't a cease-fire have to come first? I mean Hamas rejected an earlier cease-fire saying it didn't meet broader demands, as you were saying. So what needs to happen? But I'll go back to my original question, doesn't a cease-fire need to happen first before serious talk can take place?
MUNAYYER: Well, yes and no. As you mentioned, there was a cease-fire attempt earlier this week and the week before that the Palestinian side, the militants in Gaza, offered truce terms as well. Those were rejected which the Israelis. The idea here is that there should be a cease-fire, but the cease-fire should actually end all forms of violence on both sides. But just because projectiles are --
COSTELLO: But it was (INAUDIBLE) Hamas who violated the cease-fire. It wasn't Israel.
MUNAYYER: That's just empirically untrue. If you look throughout the instances of cease-fires in the past, it has routinely been the Israelis --
COSTELLO: I'm talking about this latest one.
MUNAYYER: No, this latest incidence was provoked by a massive campaign of collective punishment by the Israelis in the West Bank targeting Palestinians there en masse in response to what should have been instead a criminal investigation into the disappearance of three Israeli teenagers. So that's where this escalation started, and I think that, you know, you owe it to your -- COSTELLO: But let me interrupt and ask you, what do you see -- how
does - how does this end? How do you see this ending?
MUNAYYER: It's very simple. There should be a cease-fire that ends violence on all sides that includes an end to the heinous collective punishment of the civilian population in Gaza. Look, fishermen off the coast of Gaza should not be shot by the Israeli navy just while they're seeking to get their daily catch. Farmers and farm land in Gaza should not be shot by Israeli troops inside of Gaza just when they're trying to go about their daily lives. These are the things that happen on a regular basis, almost on a daily basis, even when there is a cease-fire and no projectiles being fired. So, you know, we can't talk about a cease-fire when there's still a system of violence targeting the civilian population during the so-called cease-fire period. There has to be a genuine end to all forms of violence including the siege and occupation.
COSTELLO: All right, Yousef Munayyer, executive director for the Palestine Center, thank you so much for joining me this morning. I appreciate it.
MUNAYYER: Thank you.
COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, the very latest on the crash of Malaysian Airline Flight 17 as U.S. intelligence now points the finger at who is likely to blame for that missile attack. We'll talk about that next.
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COSTELLO: President Bill Clinton knew one of the passengers on board Flight 17. He was an AIDS researcher and one of several on board the flight on their way to an international AIDS conference in Sydney. Clinton spoke with CNN's Anna Coren just a short time ago. She's with President Clinton in Vietnam to discuss his foundation work. She joins us now so we can hear what he said.
Good morning, Anna.
ANNA COREN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol.
Yes, as you say, President Clinton is here in Vietnam as part of the Clinton Foundation, his charity. We spoke to him at an AIDS orphanage on the outskirts of Hanoi and he said he was deeply saddened, devastated by what has happened in Ukraine. He knew some of the people on board MH17, and this is what he had to say to us.
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BILL CLINTON, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: It's awful. I mean the -- those people are -- they're really, in a way, martyrs to the cause that we're going to Australia to talk about. And I think all I can say about it now is what President Obama, what our government's said, we need to wait to make any definitive statements until we know exactly what happened. But it was a - it was sickening, and I hope they will know and I hope they will know soon. (END VIDEO CLIP)
COREN: Carol, there were 108 people on board MH17 who were en route to Australia to attend the 20th International AIDS Conference, which will actually be held in Melbourne starting on Sunday. President Clinton is due to give a speech on Wednesday. And by all accounts, this conference will go ahead in dedication really and recognition of the amazing work that these researchers, health workers and activists have been doing. Let's now listen to what President Clinton had to say about their incredible body of work and the loss to the world.
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CLINTON: They were doing so much good. The -- you know, this gathering, we do this on a regular base, have these international AIDS conferences. And I try to go to all of them because I'm always so inspired by what other people are doing, and what we can learn from them. And so since I left office, it's been kind of a regular part of my life. Thinking about those people being knocked out of the sky, it's pretty tough.
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COREN: So as you hear, Carol, from President Clinton, deeply saddened by what has taken place and really shocked that he'll be attending this AIDS conference in Melbourne, which will be attended by thousands of people and many of the faces, and the famous faces, these, you know, world's leading researchers in HIV/AIDS will not be there.
Carol.
COSTELLO: Oh, Anna Coren reporting live from Vietnam this morning.
Commercial airliners are no longer flying in the air space, rather, where Flight 17 was shot down. Ukraine has closed it indefinitely. So let's talk about that and more with Mary Schiavo, CNN aviation analyst and former NTSB inspector general, and Peter Goelz, CNN aviation analyst and former NTSB managing director.
Welcome to both of you.
MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Thank you. Thank you.
PETER GOELZ, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Good morning.
COSTELLO: Mary, I want to start with you. Officials have identified nearly everyone on board that plane except for four people. Initially there was some thought that Americans might be on board that plane. Why don't we know faster the names of the passengers on board that flight?
SCHIAVO: Well, for the public's knowledge it depends upon notifying the family but for persons on the plane we are to know, there are agreements with ICAO and certainly it's U.S. law that every passenger on the -- on board a plane has to be on the manifest and the manifest controls as to who is on, so they did know, they're supposed to know, but they may have been waiting to notify the families.
COSTELLO: Gotcha.
Peter, now I want to focus on the investigation itself. I know the NTSB and the FBI are on their way to Kiev, Ukraine, this morning. They're going to serve in an advisory role. What does that mean exactly?
GOELZ: Well, let's look at a broader issue. It is absolutely unacceptable to the world that either the Ukrainians or the Russians take the lead on this investigation. Both of them have dirty hands in this terrible incident. An independent investigative team ought to be appointed by the U.N., we should ask the Ukrainians and the Russians and the separatists to do two things. Transparency and protection of the investigative team.
My own feeling is that the Dutch Safety Board ought to take the lead. They lost an enormous number of passengers. They are a skilled and honest broker. They ought to take the lead in this investigations. The Ukrainians and the Russians ought to step back because their hands are dirty.
COSTELLO: OK, so let me ask you a tough question, Mary Schiavo. Should the United States become involved because it doesn't exactly have a great relationship with Russia, and that maybe might lead to some people not thinking the investigation as so transparent?
SCHIAVO: Well, that's true, although as Peter said, between the hostilities between the Ukraine and Russia, I mean the U.S. isn't involved on the front lines of that, and I think the U.S. has to be involved because it is a Boeing jetliner.
GOELZ: Right.
SCHIAVO: And it's the principle to always have the manufacturer or assembler of the aircraft involved and that is part and parcel with the NTSB. Boeing would be a party regardless under Annex 13 of the ICAO rules. So I think Boeing has to be in there because given past -- for example looking at KAL 00, the Russian shootdown of the Korean Airlines plane, they disputed that for years and only eight years after the fall of the old Soviet Union did they even release the black box information. So yes to NTSB and absolutely for Boeing.
COSTELLO: OK, so Peter, let's talk about the recording devices, because apparently, and this is a rumor, I don't know if it's true or not, but the rebels have turned over some of the recording devices to Russia. They've also walked all over the crash site, right? Some parts of the planes have been looted by people. This is going to be a difficult investigation, right?
GOELZ: It's going to be extraordinarily difficult, and the data recorder and the voice recorder are essential, as is the wreckage, to see exactly what kind of impact signatures were left by this missile. There will even be missile components that will be mixed in with the wreckage. The security of the site is absolutely essential, and if the data recorder and the voice recorder have been turned over to the Russians, the Russians should not tamper with them. They should not open them. They should turn it over to the international authorities immediately.
Their hands will be dirty, and the countries that fly in and out of Russia, I believe Peter King has got the right point. If the Russians don't cooperate, if they stall on this, we ought to deny landing rights to Russian aircraft and the Ukrainians could face the same if they do not fully cooperate.
COSTELLO: All right, Peter Goelz, Mary Schiavo, many thanks.
And I just got word that the American president, President Obama, will make some remarks at 11:30 Eastern Time, that's about an hour and a half from now, and we suspect he will be speaking about this tragedy in Ukraine.
I'll be right back.
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COSTELLO: All right. CNN has just learned that President Obama will make remarks on the Ukrainian situation, this Malaysian plane that was shut down over eastern Ukraine. The president will address that situation 11:30 Eastern Time. About an hour and a half from now, of course, when the president begins speaking, CNN will tape that for you live.
The focus is now on Russia, of course, and Vladimir Putin after that Malaysian plane was downed. Mr. Putin immediately said he was sorry to President Obama who -- to President Obama on the phone. Putin has not denied Russian backed rebels shot it down but he does put the blame squarely on Ukraine.
He says, quote, "There is no doubt that the country on whose territory that this terrible tragedy happened bears responsibility. This tragedy would not have happened if there was peace, if military operations had not resume in the southeast of Ukraine."
So let's talk about that. Former CNN Moscow bureau chief Jill Dougherty joins us. As well as Chris Dickey, foreign editor of the "Daily Beast." He joins us from Paris.
Welcome to both of you.
JILL DOUGHERTY, FORMER CNN MOSCOW BUSINESS CHIEF: Hey, Carol.
CHRIS DICKEY, FOREIGN EDITOR, THE DAILY BEAST: Pleasure.
COSTELLO: Hi. Jill, you've covered Russia for such a long time. How can Putin put the blame on Ukraine and put none of the blame on Russia and pro-Russian rebels?
DOUGHERTY: Well, in his logic, what he would say is the Ukrainian government is carrying out this terrorist operation in that region, and therefore if they would stop that terrorist operation things would return to normal, it would be peaceful, and you wouldn't have incidents like this. But what he is ignoring, of course, is that the Ukrainian government legally has a right to carry out and maintain peace on its territory, and it believes at that it is facing a rebellion by separatists, therefore, they have to go in.
Now whether they are going in, let's say, militarily in a very hard way is another point, but the Ukrainian government thinks that it has a right to carry this out. That said, maybe it would be good to have a ceasefire right now, get some peace and get those investigators in there.
COSTELLO: OK. So Chris, if it can be proved -- well, actually, we know the weapon that was used was Russian made, right? We know they were pro-Russian rebels who shot down this plane. If it's proved, though, that Russia helped train these rebels, does that then force Putin to change his tune?
DICKEY: If you are asking me that question, I would say it will gradually force him to change his tune. He's going to be very reluctant. The initial propaganda coming out after this plane was shut down was -- in Moscow was trying to suggest that in fact the Ukrainians shot it down. That the rebels didn't have that kind of missiles. That there was some kind of Ukrainian airplane that shot down the Malaysian airliner.
All kinds of false information was put out. Gradually, Putin is having to dial back on that because he knows, among other things, that the Americans have been watching Ukraine very closely from the skies, from satellites, and they have a very clear idea of what happened by now. And he knows that, so he's got to apologize, but still try and put the blame on somebody else.
He will keep doing that, he will keep saying somebody else is responsible. But nobody really doubts that Russia is behind the rebels of eastern Ukraine. That it supports them. It opens its borders to them. It lets heavy arms float trough theme, through those borders, including like the rockets that shot down the plane.
COSTELLO: And supposedly, Jill, these rebels turned over some of the recording devices from that plane to Vladimir Putin. If that's true, then shouldn't Mr. Putin, you know, wanting full transparency and a full investigation release those tapes?
DOUGHERTY: Well, number one, you have to prove that they did that. There's a lot of murkiness right now, but yes, I mean, obviously, the best idea would be to turn those over to an international team that would investigate and so that everybody on all sides with any interest in this would be out of the game.
I was just checking some Russian wires and again coming from Russian wires, but they say that the local authorities, the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, say they have a team. They are looking for bodies. They have recovered about 70 percent and interestingly they say in essence we, the rebels in Donetsk, can carry out the investigation because they have a laboratory. So you are already seeing complications. Don't forget that the rebels in that area do not recognize the
Ukrainian government, so internationally the Ukrainian government actually, according to international law, should carry out the investigation, but you already have the complication of the rebels not recognizing the Ukrainian government.
COSTELLO: OK, so, Chris, President Obama is due to speak at 11:30 Eastern Time, about an hour and a half from now, and perhaps he will impose more sanctions on the Russians because of this incident. Congressman Peter King, though, had another idea. He said if Russia is to blame in part for this, bears some responsibility, then we shouldn't allow Russian planes to land in our airports in the United States. Does he have a good idea?
DICKEY: Well, I know it would be complicate the lives of lots of people who would be innocent, who would be hurt by that. But I think that there is going to be a push for much tougher sanctions and the real key here is whether the Europeans can be gotten on board. This is such an atrocious event, this is such a tragedy, that it may tilt the balance in Europe where in fact there has been a lot of fence straddling.
For instance, here in France, you have a multibillion contract to sell warships to Russia that has gone ahead despite all of the -- all that's going on with the seizure of Crimea and all the unrest in Ukraine caused by Russia. And the French know it's caused by Russia. They really don't doubt that. They just want the money. So in fact, you've got a situation where after a tragedy like this it's very hard for European politicians to keep equivocating about how to react to this Russian, if you will, soft aggression in Ukraine.
COSTELLO: Jill DOUGHERTY, Chris Dickey, thanks for your insight. I appreciate it.
The next hour of CNN NEWSROOM starts now.
