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Crisis in Israel; Still Safe to Fly?

Aired July 25, 2014 - 15:00   ET

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

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: As far as other developments today, the violence there, the violence that has been going on and on for 18 days in Gaza is spreading to the West Bank.

Palestinian West Bank leaders calling today a day a rage and a show of support for Palestinian this is Gaza. Meantime, Israeli police have boosted their presence in Jerusalem. "The Jerusalem Post" newspaper reports the officers have been told to expect violence.

And now, the FAA is closely monitoring the security situation at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport and may reimpose a ban on U.S. flights if circumstances warrant, if.

As I said, this is day 18 in this conflict. More than 825 Palestinians have been killed, 36 Israeli deaths, 33 of them soldiers.

So, let me bring back into this conversation Wolf Blitzer, who has been covering this tirelessly from Jerusalem for us today. Fareed Zakaria, host of "FAREED ZAKARIA GPS," joins me, rejoins me as well.

But first a voice we have yet to hear from, Elise Labott. She's our global affairs correspondent.

And, Elise Labott, let me just begin with you since we now know the cease-fire, at least in its current state, is not happening, what now?

ELISE LABOTT, CNN FOREIGN AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brooke, I think you have to separate the idea of a permanent longer cease-fire from the seven-day truce that Secretary Kerry is trying to get.

And you note that he said he wants to do this during the eve, the end of the holy month of Ramadan, try and get some humanitarian supplies into Gaza and really just a have a humanitarian pause in the fighting. From Cairo, I'm told he will be going to Paris, where he will be meeting with the foreign ministers of Qatar and also of Turkey.

These are two players that have a lot of influence with Hamas. And they're still hoping that they can get this seven-day humanitarian truce, a halt in the fighting, and then, Brooke, that second phase that we have been talking about, which is getting more -- fuller negotiations on some of the underlying issues of this conflict, the political, the security, the economic. There are demands on both sides, particularly on the Hamas side.

They want an opening of the border with Gaza. And that plays into the security concerns of Israel and how they want the Palestinian Authority to control Gaza. There's a lot of very complex web of things that need to happen in order for a larger cease-fire to take hold. But what they're hoping is they can just get both sides to stand down for a few days, get some medical supplies in.

There are a lot of dead people in the rubble of Gaza, Brooke, that they need to bring out. They have dead bodies. They have victims that they need to bring out. And that's what Secretary Kerry wants to do right now. Have a pause in the fighting and then officials tell me, diplomatic sources saying they hope that could be an opening for those fuller negotiations, Brooke.

BALDWIN: OK, Elise Labott on the phone.

Wolf Blitzer, let me just pick up on her last point, Secretary Kerry hoping both sides will stand down, that there is a pause in the violence and a pause in the fighting. He didn't get the humanitarian weeklong cease-fire he wanted. How likely are both sides to say, OK, for a couple of days we will stop?

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: I think that's unlikely at this point, because the Israeli cabinet, if you listen to some of the Cabinet ministers, and I have been hearing what they have been saying the past several days, they don't want just a pause that will allow Hamas in effect to regroup, catch its breath and then start launching rockets and missiles into Israel some more.

The Israelis went into this thinking that Hamas had about 10,000 of these rockets and missiles. They think that over the past couple weeks or so, Hamas has used or the Israelis have destroyed maybe 6,000 of them. But they think that Hamas still has about 4,000 left. They think they have done a pretty good job of destroying Hamas' underground tunnels from Gaza into Israel, but they don't think they have finished that deal. That's a major issue for the Israelis.

They want to get that done, and they think they can get it done relatively quickly. I don't know if they can. But that's what they say. That's why they're rejecting the latest cease-fire in part. But they also don't like the additional benefits that Hamas might be getting that Qatar for example put into the original Egyptian deal for a cease-fire which Israel originally accepted, Hamas did not.

The Israelis are saying they will not reward Hamas for doing what it's been doing. So they're going to continue their military assault, if you will. I'm not very encouraged that there will be a cease-fire any time soon. The Israelis say they are open for some modifications in the John Kerry proposal. Let's see what they can do, but this is going to be a tough, tough negotiation.

BALDWIN: I am leaning toward agreeing with you that a pause in the fighting won't at all happen.

Fareed, I'm just wondering how long will it take, just given the history, most recently 2012, how long will it take for some kind of pause, some kind of cease-fire to actually happen?

FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN WORLD AFFAIRS ANALYST: I think Wolf is right that this will largely be governed on Israel's clock in all probability.

Remember, this is a pretty asymmetrical situation. The Israelis have massive, massive power, capacity, technological ability. They're the dominant power on the ground. They're going to try to figure out when they get to the point where they feel they have gotten probably 90 percent of what they waned to get, maybe 9,000 rockets, most of the tunnels.

It's tough to tell, but I would guess we're talking about a week or 10 days. And at point, I think you would find that they are much more willing to talk. They really want to do the job they see as destroying Hamas as an offensive military force. The problem, as I say again, is it's not entirely clear that this will do much in the long run, because this is all low-tech stuff. Hamas can rebuild it over time.

The key issue is have you destroyed Hamas politically? Hamas was on the ropes a few months ago. People were talking about how Hamas was wildly unpopular in Gaza. People had got fed with the corruption, of the authoritarianism. Hamas sort of threw in the towel when it formed a unity government with the Palestinian Authority, implicitly accepting the idea that they would have to negotiate with Israel.

But that was not regarded as enough. The American administration initially welcomed that and then Prime Minister Netanyahu was very, very tough and essentially destroyed that potential opening that existed. So, in this context, more military force against Hamas, will it destroy them or will it make them stronger because they will be seen as the victim of an Israeli assault?

All I can say it feels like the mood is tending toward greater extremism in the Palestinian community. And the great danger is not just in Gaza. It's in the West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority could be outflanked by more extreme forces.

And then you end up with a situation where you have a much more radicalized Palestinian population that certainly can't do very much, but that is unwilling to even, you know, accept what the Palestinian Authority and Mahmoud Abbas were even. There is an unintended consequences to what could be seen a very legitimate military mission that the Israelis have.

And just it's a very fluid, volatile situation, and who knows where it will go.

BALDWIN: Fareed Zakaria, thank you very much. We will look for you Sunday morning, also with more of your interview with Hillary Clinton, and, Wolf Blitzer, thank you very much. We will see you at 5:00 Eastern special, special two-hour edition live from Jerusalem for "THE SITUATION ROOM."

Let me bring in political analyst Josh Rogin. I want to stay on this and I want to just get a little deeper into it. He's joining me from Aspen in Colorado, where he's attending this national security conference. Josh, just listening to Fareed, because I think he made a lot of smart

points and so did Wolf Blitzer as well, but to hear him say maybe this negotiating takes a week, maybe 10 days, maybe Israel gets 90 percent of what they're looking for, in the end, do you think that help or hurts Hamas in terms of increased radicalization in that part of country?

JOSH ROGIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: There's no doubt that the longer the conflict continues and the longer the Israeli ground mission in Gaza continues, the more the consequences and the after-effects will mount.

What my reporting and my sources are telling me backs up what Wolf and Fareed have been reporting, which is that the sticking point here, really the reason that the Israelis ultimately rejected the Kerry cease-fire proposal was because they want to finish their operation to disable the tunnels. They believe they have already taken a political hit and they have already paid the price.

It doesn't make sense for them to stop now before the job is done. Also, my sources are telling me today that Kerry proposed as part of the negotiations that there would be some way to have the cease-fire now and continue to let the Israel work on the tunnels while the cease-fire was going on.

BALDWIN: Oh, wow.

ROGIN: It's not clear how exactly that would work. But the Israelis rejected that. But that was Kerry's idea, that was his fix. That's what's been going on.

What was made clear by today's vote in the Israeli cabinet was that that plan is now rejected. Kerry's furious diplomacy over the last two days, which has been ad hoc in nature and scrambled, but also very, very expansive, has now failed, so they will have to regroup and they will have to come at it and start all over again.

BALDWIN: It's the tunnel, to your point and so many others. The tunnels, bombing the tunnels, the tunnels that not only supply, yes, humanitarian relief to some in Gaza, but specifically weaponry, right, for Hamas from...

ROGIN: Also, it's important to note here that one of Kerry's ideas, the reason he was spending so much time in Cairo was he was trying to get the Egyptians to open up their border crossing with supervision. They also rejected that. And that will continue to be a sticking point.

BALDWIN: OK. Josh Rogin, thank you so much for your reporting and your sourcing there for us.

Coming up next, CNN takes you to the crash site of Flight 17 where pieces of that wreckage, that 77, they are still sitting in treetops. Bodies are still being discovered in this massive field of sunflowers.

Plus, we told you about reports of looting there at the site. We're now getting word that credit cards and passports are somehow suspiciously reappearing in the wreckage. What's going on there? That's next.

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BALDWIN: You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

Today, pro-Russian rebels accused of shooting down Malaysia Air Flight 17 could be getting a special delivery, as in missile launchers from Russia. Today at the crash site, more top rebel leaders showed up in uniforms, marked cars.

But who are these rebels we keep hearing so much about? Let me read this for you. This is something I read this morning.

"Behind the high-profile Russian agents who lead the separatists are scores of men, mostly locals, who believe truly, madly, willing to die believe that they are doing the right thing. These are not the mustachioed villains you see on television. These are factory workers and mechanics who now man checkpoints and lead military operations. The world they live in is filled with fascist threats from faraway lands. It's a world constructed largely on the basis of baseless Russian propaganda, easy to scoff at, but for these men, it is real."

Joining me now, the man who wrote that, Noah Sneider.

Noah, what jumped out at me in that was factory workers, mechanics. Not exactly the pro-Russian rebel villains that Americans may have envisioned.

NOAH SNEIDER, JOURNALIST: Yes, thanks for having me, Brooke.

I think there's a bit of a disconnect in the perception of who these rebels are and the reality on the ground here. There are certainly leaders of this movement who maybe fit the profile of the Russian agent or the "terrorist."

But the majority of these forces are, in fact, local men who at the beginning of this conflict, probably stretching back to the Ukrainian revolution beginning last fall and stretching into this spring, felt themselves under sort of official cultural assault.

That morphed very quickly into this sort of fever dream world of fascist threats, as I wrote, sort of fed by Russian propaganda. But most of the men, I would say, just in terms of sheer numbers who make up the ranks here are local folks who have been radicalized and who decided that this is an existential threat.

Part of the way it happens is that the violence feeds on itself. So men who I met back in April and May who had only just signed up for this movement, who had joined these sorts of local militia forces, had never seen combat, had never seen what war actually consisted of, have now watched many of their friends, neighbors, their relatives, et cetera, die in battle.

And so every time that happens, people become more and more radicalized and the space in the middle, the space for compromise, the space to see the world differently evaporates.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: What would happen to these seemingly regular men who become increasingly radicalized, what would happen to them if they questioned this Russian propaganda?

SNEIDER: Well, I don't know if there's really a way for them to question it. I mean, part of the problem is that there's enough of it that -- there's enough kernels of truth that underlie the propaganda that it's not an easily deconstructed world.

For example, one of the things that folks talk about as a major issue and have been talking about as a major issue since the beginning is language rights, the right to the Russian language. Now, everyone in Eastern Ukraine primarily speaks Russian or the vast majority of people do. But it is true that official documents, any sort of -- anything that passes through the central government is going to be processed in Ukrainian.

And it is true that the new government in Kiev following the revolution, one of the first acts of parliament was to pass a bill that would ultimately veto, that would have stripped Russian of its official language status in the eastern part of the country. That never went through, but it rose to -- the specter of the threat rose as a result of it. So for these men, the propaganda, what looks to us like propaganda is simply truth.

BALDWIN: Noah Sneider, excellent reporting over there on the phone with me from Donetsk, Ukraine.

Coming up next, a little boy goes shopping at Sears with his mother and disappeared and never, ever came home. That was 33 years ago this Sunday, and since then, this little boy's father has made it his life's mission to catch the "bastards" who takes children. John Walsh joins me live to reflect on the day that stunned a nation and a father's hunt.

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN WALSH, FATHER OF ADAM WALSH: I have decided to offer $5,000 reward for information, any information about Adam's whereabouts in confidence. If the people want to call the Hollywood Police Department and offer information, we will follow it up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: That was John Walsh 33 years ago pleading for help after his 6-year-old boy, Adam, disappeared from a Sears department store in Florida. Two weeks after vanishing, Adam was found dead. His death is what drives his father, John, to help catch criminals on behalf of others. In fact, Walsh has helped law enforcement arrest more than 1,200 of them and he vows to catch even more in his new CNN original series called "THE HUNT." And so John Walsh joins me now.

This Sunday marks 33 years since Adam's death. I don't have to remind you of that, but telling all of our viewers. I'm sure it shook so many people. It shook my parents in 1981. Can you just take me back, take me back to the Sears department store and tell me what happened?

WALSH: Unbearable day. I mean, this is the 33rd anniversary and Reve, my wife, and Adam went to the Sears store. And she said to Adam -- video games were brand-new. There were two sets of boys playing video games, two black boys from Florida and two Spanish boys that were visiting.

Adam said, could I watch this game. Reve went and -- two aisles away to pay for a lamp. And she came back. Adam was gone. We didn't know for 27 years that an argument had broken out amongst the boys, and a 17-year-old part-time security guard ordered the boys, she said, white boys out this door, black boys out this door.

And Ottis Toole, a serial killer who tried to kidnap a child the day before, was roaming in the toy department the day before, a serial predator, and it took us 27 years to reopen Adam's case and find out what happened that day. Ottis Toole had died eight days before. We got to reopen the case.

A wonderful brand-new chief at the Hollywood P.D. named Chad Wagner said, look, this is an unsolved murder, but I want to open this case up. I want fresh eyes on this case. And we had been asking for that for 27 years. So, a retired cop, Joe Matthews, and a retired prosecutor, Kelly Hancock, solved Adam's case in a month.

So that put an end to that long search for justice for Adam. And we never knew what happened that day. Reve came back, and nobody helped her. She looked and searched and nobody knew what happened to Adam. But it took us 27 years to get -- to close that chapter of our lives.

BALDWIN: You bring up that chapter. Let's go back. It was 2008. We pulled the clip. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WALSH: For 27 years, we have been asking, who could take a 6-year-old boy and murder him and decapitate him? Who? We needed to know. We needed to know. And, today, we know. The not knowing has been a torture. But that journey is over.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: I imagine you remember that day like yesterday.

WALSH: It was a great day, especially for our three children. Reve and I have been married for 42 years and we have had three beautiful children that are grown now.

It was a very important day for them to see Reve and I get some justice and to end that chapter. So, but I think it gave hope to victims all over the country that police could say that they made mistakes and apologize and reopen cases and catch guys after years. And I have learned that on "America's Most Wanted."

No matter how long they're out there, you can still do everything you can to close that chapter of your life and get justice for the left behind. That's what we're going to do on a guy that I have been looking for, for over 20 years. We're going to do that Sunday night on "THE HUNT."

And Brad Bishop is on the FBI's 10 most wanted, alleged to have murdered his entire family and three of them children. And, Brooke, I have talked to -- you know how much I hate people that hurt children. Particularly, I just can't fathom how anybody could murder their own children. I'm hoping that Sunday night we make the world a much smaller place for Brad Bishop.

BALDWIN: I hate them along with you, John Walsh. Let's just remind everyone where and how they can watch the show. It's called "THE HUNT" and it's this Sunday 9:00 p.m. Eastern only here on CNN.

John Walsh, thank you so much for taking the time with me today. I appreciate it.

WALSH: Thank you, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Just ahead, a terrifying prospect. These missile launchers could be delivered to pro-Russian rebels any minute now. We will take you live to the Pentagon for the latest in this U.S. intelligence.

Plus, one passenger plane blown out of sky, another disintegrated in wild weather and one simply vanishing into thin air. If you are a nervous flier, you may have just sworn off air travel. But how safe are we up there? And we will lay it all out for you. How safe do you feel? We went to the airport and we talked to you to find out. Stay with me. You're watching CNN.

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