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CNN's Continuing Coverage on the ongoing War in Israel. Aired 3-4a ET
Aired November 01, 2023 - 03:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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UNKNOWN (voice-over): This is CNN Breaking News.
BIANCA NOBILO, CNN ANCHOR: Hello and a warm welcome to our viewers joining us in the United States and all around the world. I'm Bianca Nobilo in London with our continued coverage of Israel's war on Hamas.
Some 80 Egyptian ambulances entered Gaza's Rafah border crossing this morning to receive injured Palestinian patients. An Egyptian border official told CNN that at the border crossing, if the patients cross into Egypt, they will be the first Palestinians allowed out of Gaza since the war began more than three weeks ago.
CNN's Scott McLean is covering this live from London. Scott, what more are you hearing about these ambulances?
SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, so the fact that there are 80 or so ambulances at the border is about the same number of Palestinians that we had been told yesterday by the medical director of the Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza that would be leaving Gaza for Egypt. He said that there were 81 badly injured Palestinians who would be able to or would be transported to the Rafah border crossing with the understanding or with the plan that they would be able to cross through the Rafah border crossing and then get medical attention in Sheikh Zayed city, which is basically the first major community that you reach outside of Gaza and inside of Egypt on the Sinai Peninsula there.
This is obviously significant for the reason that you mentioned, Bianca. This would be the very first time that any Gazans at all would be let out of the territory since the war began.
Two Israeli citizens were allowed out through the Rafah Gate, two hostages were allowed out through the Rafah Gate earlier on in this war. But in terms of Palestinians, they have all been trapped under the Israeli bombardment for several weeks now.
We also know that hospitals by and large, despite many of them being told by the Israelis to evacuate south, have been refused to evacuate. They say that their patients are simply too sick, too frail. There's no way to safely transport people out. And we know that many people are also taking shelter inside of those
hospitals. With these 81 patients, what we've been told is that they require surgical interventions that simply are not available in Gaza. And so the idea is that they can get that medical attention in Egypt.
The big question, of course, is will this be a sign of things to come? Will more injured Palestinians, and there are a lot of them, be allowed into Egypt to seek medical treatment? The Egyptians have been extremely reluctant to take on any Palestinian refugees on Egyptian territory. They don't want the burden of refugees. They don't want the conflict to spread onto their borders either. And of course, obviously, if Gaza were emptied out, it would make things a lot easier for the Israelis, obviously, to move in and take that territory, Bianca.
NOBILO: Scott, while this news about ambulances for injured Palestinians comes as a great belief, there are, of course, attacks continuing on civilians in Gaza constantly. The Israeli bombardment has been relentless. And, of course, we've had the bombardment of the Jabalia refugee camp, one of the largest and most densely populated in Gaza. What do we know about the casualties and about the weapon used?
MCLEAN: Yeah, so we don't have a precise casualty figure, but it may well turn out that the number is extremely high in this case. As you said, the Jabalia refugee camp is extremely densely populated. It is the largest in Gaza. And yesterday you had the strikes carried out, which left absolutely massive craters in the ground.
Eyewitness accounts from the ground said that there were children carrying other children. There were bodies hanging in the rubble. Everything obviously you can see in the pictures there covered in that gray dust.
Pictures from the local hospital showed bodies wrapped in white shrouds lined up outside the hospitals. Inside things are chaotic, things are extremely crowded.
One nurse with MSF, Doctors Without Borders, said that there were children coming in with very deep wounds and severe burns as well. And some people were even being treated on the floor because there simply was not enough room for them.
So what is the justification for this strike? Well, Israel says that it killed a Hamas commander responsible for helping to plan the October 7th attack, terrorist attack on Israel.
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It also says that there were other Hamas terrorists that were killed in this strike. But you had an IDF spokesperson asked by my colleague, Paula Newton, earlier today about the justification for this, given the level of civilian casualties that we're seeing and why they couldn't be more precise with their targeting.
And the answer was essentially that, look, Hamas is hiding in tunnels under the ground, and so they had to use a very heavy weapon, a very heavy bomb, to make sure that it could get deep enough into the ground to kill this Hamas commander and others who would have been hiding in these tunnels underground. Hamas denied that the commander was even there at the time and obviously is denouncing this.
There's also plenty of condemnation from around the world about the heavy-handed tactics that Israel's used throughout this war and specifically this attack. It stands in stark contrast to what we've heard from the Americans where the White House yesterday was saying that, look, Israel is not trying to kill civilians, it is trying to minimize civilian casualties, but we've seen from across the region denunciations from the Saudis, from the Iranians, the Emiratis, the Egyptians.
The Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan was perhaps one of the most forceful in his condemnation. And you even had, you know, from far outside the region, the leaders of Colombia and Chile both recalling their ambassadors to Israel in the wake of this strike, saying that in direct response to this strike, the Colombian leader said that it did not want its ambassador in Israel amidst a massacre of the Palestinian people. Bianca?
NOBILO: Scott, as you outline, the global condemnations against Israel continue to come in and popular sentiment we see this expressed in many protests also seems to be turning against Israel in their retaliation to the attacks of October the 7th with questions of proportionality and if they are indeed trying to avoid civilian casualties.
So in order to justify this, and justify seems like a misnomer with any civilian deaths, let alone thousands, the IDF are now saying that they've hit more than 11,000 terrorist targets since the start of this war, which would be an average of more than 440 a day. So what more can you tell us about that and what the IDF are saying?
MCLEAN: Yeah, so this is a new statement from the IDF. As you said, they said 11,000 targets have been hit since the outset of the war, which just goes to show you how the volume of the strikes that we are seeing, it is absolutely relentless.
We know that the Israelis have said, look, most of the action is going to be in the northern part of Gaza, which is why they have told people to evacuate south. But the other reality is that even central Gaza, even southern Gaza, they are far from safe places either because we continue to see strikes carried out in central Gaza, in southern Gaza, even not far from the Rafah border crossing. You have seen Israeli strikes as well.
There are also now troops on the ground, Israeli tanks on the ground, and it seems that nowhere at this point is really safe. And it was really telling in Paula Newton's interview earlier with this IDF spokesperson just the cost benefit analysis that Israel is doing here when it comes to civilian casualties.
The IDF says that look, they have called off strikes in the past because they figured that the civilian death toll would be too high. But the implication is that it believes that the civilian death toll was justified or worth it in the case of this Jabalia strike despite the very high numbers of civilians who were killed, though we don't have the final number. Israel obviously believes that killing the Hamas commander and the others was worth it. Bianca?
NOBILO: Scott McLean, thank you so much for bringing us all of those updates.
With the fighting only growing more intense and very little aid trickling in, world leaders are ramping up their calls for a humanitarian pause, the latest coming from the British Prime Minister. Rishi Sunak spoke to the Israeli Prime Minister on Tuesday, emphasizing the need to minimize civilian casualties and ensure life- saving supplies reach those who need them.
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fully believes it's Hamas, not Israel, preventing people in Gaza from leaving the enclave. and he has said that there will be no ceasefire with Hamas. Here's a reminder of what he said just two days ago, quote, "Calls for a ceasefire or calls for Israel to surrender to Hamas, to surrender to terrorists, surrender to barbarism, that will not happen. This is a time for war."
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For more now, I'm joined by Mouin Rabbani, a non-resident fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies, and he's also the co-editor of the "Jadaliyya" EZine. It's so great to have you on the program, so thank you very much for staying up for us. We appreciate it.
MOUIN RABBANI, CO-EDITOR, JADALIYYA: Thank you.
NOBILO: So Benjamin Netanyahu is coming under increasing criticism and it appears that the fractures within the war cabinet and also within the Israeli population that trust in him is declining further. What is your assessment?
RABBANI: Well, of course, Netanyahu was involved in an almost year- long major political crisis for the events that we're discussing now. And in addition, I think, the attacks on Israel on October 7th have dealt a body blow not only to Israeli public confidence in their military leadership, but also in the political leadership. And what we're seeing now is, in effect, two campaigns.
First, the Israeli campaign against the Gaza Strip, and second, what I call Operation Cover Your Ass, where all of a sudden we have political and military leaders coming out of the woodwork claiming, you know, that they warned against precisely the scenarios we've seen earlier this month.
You had the well-known incident a few days ago where Netanyahu tried to shift blame to the military and intelligence leadership, which caused outrage, even though technically he was right because Israel didn't have any intelligence about what happened but nevertheless it was seen as trying to shift blame away from himself in the middle of a crisis. NOBILO: So this sense that he is essentially preparing the ground for
an inquiry and trying to shore up evidence and support for himself, presumably that is not going down well in the public at large, and how strong are the feelings too that perhaps the intelligence services or the government may have been distracted by the other controversial plans that the Netanyahu government was trying to push through reforming the judiciary. I mean, how credible do you think some of these sentiments are in terms of explaining why this intelligence failure may have occurred? How much blame does rest with Netanyahu?
RABBANI: Well, blame obviously rests with Netanyahu in the sense that he was the senior official in charge of the government and the security establishment on October 7th. Having said that, there's not much to distinguish Netanyahu's policies towards either the Gaza Strip or the Palestinians more generally from those of his predecessors.
I do think, you know, that those who were critical of Netanyahu will see the political crisis of the past year within Israel as having made the situation that much worse. But having said that, we also need to remember that Netanyahu is the longest-serving prime minister in Israel's short history.
And the reason he has that distinction is because he was repeatedly voted into office. So I think it's also important to recognize that he does have a significant reservoir of popular support among the Israeli public.
NOBILO: And Mouin, and yesterday I spoke with the former head of Shin Bet, Ami Ayalon. And we had an interesting discussion about potential pathways or hypothetical ones out of this. And he said he felt that it would need to be a two-state solution or a peace plan imposed internationally, perhaps from the U.S. and other partners, upon Netanyahu's government.
And then he would have to get behind it. But then he said that it was so unlikely that Netanyahu would ever do that. I mean, when you look at the prognosis for what is ahead and for de-escalating and finding some kind of peace. Do you feel that Netanyahu could ever be the man to do that?
RABBANI: Well, I think first of all we have to recognize that this has turned into a meaningless slogan. We've been hearing it for 30 years from the Americans, from the Europeans, and usually it serves as a fig leaf for inertia and doing nothing otherwise we would have gotten there decades ago.
With respect to Netanyahu, I think we also need to recognize not only the political constraints he's placed upon himself by having, in effect, become an enthusiastic annexationist, but also he cannot afford to jettison his current coalition partners, because those are the ones he needs for his legislative initiatives that are ultimately designed to keep him out of prison.
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NOBILO: Mouin Rabbani, we really appreciate your time this morning. Such important points and to understand that political context, which of course is driving a lot of these decisions pertaining to such a significant and momentous time and war. Thank you very much for being with us.
RABBANI: Thank you.
NOBILO: Coming up, I'll be speaking with a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and distinguished advocate for children about what can be done to protect Israeli and Palestinian children who are caught up in this conflict, when we return.
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NOBILO: Israel's blood supply has become a critical resource during this war, and it's taking extraordinary measures to protect it. CNN's Wolf Blitzer visited Israel's unique shielded underground blood bank that processes and tests the entire country's supply. And he got a look at its extensive security measures.
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WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR, THE SITUATION ROOM WITH WOLF BLITZER (voice- over): On the surface it looks like an ordinary office building, but it's what lies beneath that makes this facility one of a kind.
PROF. ELIAT SHINAR, DIRECTOR, MDA NATIONAL BLOOD BANK SERVICES DIVISION: You can't really live without blood and there's no artificial blood.
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BLITZER (voice-over): Just outside of Tel Aviv, nearly 50 feet below ground, lies what is believed to be the world's only shielded underground blood bank.
SHINAR: All the blood comes here and we process it.
BLITZER (voice-over): Israel's entire blood supply is processed and tested here at the Marcus National Blood Services Center operated by Israel's Magin Davidah Dome.
SHINAR: The whole idea of this place is because we built it in a shelter. So we are now actually in a shelter, anti-conventional.
BLITZER (on-camera): Deep below the ground?
SHINAR: Yes.
BLITZER (on-camera): Because this presumably would be a major target for Israel's enemies.
SHINAR: Absolutely. And we were very concerned about the people who work and the blood of course, the blood inventory. So in the case of siren or rockets attack. We are all protected. It's a shelter.
BLITZER (voice-over): The organization actually moved into the building on October 9th, just days after the Hamas terror attacks. It is now more vital than ever in a country at war.
SHINAR: We distribute the blood to all the hospitals and to the army. When we evacuate a patient, either the civilian or the military ambulances or helicopters, they get blood on the way to the hospital already, provided by us.
BLITZER (voice-over): There are three levels underground. Each level more secure than the next and all designed to operate even if there is a direct attack. On the first level, they sort, label and test the blood.
SHINAR: So we are now in the testing laboratory, which we call the Mega Lab. The idea that we put all the tubes in here and everything is automated. It's like hands off.
BLITZER (on-camera): So this is the state-of-the-art technology.
SHINAR: Absolutely, absolutely. Then the results are transmitted to the main computer system to both the file of the unit and the file of the donor. So here you can see they're waiting for their turn and once they can go on, they'll go in.
BLITZER (voice-over): The center handles more than blood. They also handle plasma. Plasma is used to increase volume when someone has lost a lot of blood. It is stored frozen.
(on-camera): It's cold.
SHINAR: So cold, minus 30 degrees.
BLITZER (on-camera): So cold.
(voice-over): Running all of this requires electricity, which is why the lowest level is key to the operation.
(on-camera): So where are we going now?
SHINAR: Now we are going to the minus 3, the most protected place in the house.
BLITZER (on-camera): The lowest level. So we'll be deep underground.
SHINAR: Which will be the deepest.
BLITZER (on-camera): So if the enemy of Israel were launching rockets or bombs. and hit on the top, people in this building would be safe.
SHINAR: Absolutely.
BLITZER (on-camera): The whole building is like a bomb shelter.
SHINAR: The blood would be safe. Everything that we do would be safe.
BLITZER (on-camera): The blood would not be destroyed.
(voice-over): The power for the whole operation is protected by enormous blast doors that are some of the largest in Israel.
MOSHE NOYOVICH, PROJECT DIRECTOR, MARCUS NATIONAL BLOOD SERVICES CENTER: In emergency, when we get an alert from the IDF, we close the blast doors.
BLITZER (voice-over): Professor Shinar says this facility is so deep underground. It can withstand a chemical attack, poison gas, or biological attack, protecting life-saving blood and plasma for a country at war.
(on-camera): We're very deep below the ground, so it's very secure. God forbid, if a bomb hit--
SHINAR: Absolutely.
BLITZER (on-camera): -- this would be fine.
SHINAR: And you can watch a window. We talked about windows, okay?
BLITZER (on-camera): Yeah.
SHINAR: The outer window is a shelter window, which we close.
BLITZER (on-camera): So it's secure.
SHINAR: Yeah, in this time we can open it so daylight can come in.
BLITZER (on-camera): This is not peacetime now.
SHINAR: Absolutely.
BLITZER (on-camera): No.
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NOBILO: CNN's Wolf Blitzer reporting there from Israel. We'll be right back after this short break.
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NOBILO: You're looking at live pictures of the Rafah border crossing, where some 80 ambulances are waiting to receive seriously wounded Palestinian patients, according to an Egyptian border official. When they cross into Egypt, they will be the first Palestinians allowed out of Gaza since the war began more than three weeks ago. They're expected to receive medical care in Egypt.
Aid workers in Gaza say the stories coming from the Jabalia refugee camp are horrific. The Israel Defense Forces targeted the heavily populated camp with airstrikes Tuesday saying they killed a top Hamas commander. But the strike killed an unknown number of civilians and laid waste to parts of the camp. We caution you that the next images are graphic, taken inside a Gaza
hospital. Doctors Without Borders says that young children came to the hospital with deep wounds and severe burns. One man just 100 meters from the camp says he saw children carrying other injured children, bodies hanging in the rubble and hysterical dazed civilians.
Disturbing accounts keep pouring in from the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza. One eyewitness told CNN that he saw, quote, "children carrying other children," as we were just saying, and that other children were running and that they were injured. And he also said that he saw distressed mothers who didn't know whether to cry for losing their children or run and look for them.
My next guest, Kailash Satyarthi, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with Malala Yusufi in 2014 for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people. And he is now campaigning for compassion and action for the child victims of the Israel-Hamas war. And he joins me now from southern India. Lovely to speak to you, sir. Thank you for making the time.
KAILASH SATYARTHI, 2014 NOBEL PEACE PRIZE LAUREATE: Thank you. My pleasure.
NOBILO: The impact on children is so obvious and painful in this war, apart from the loss of life, the grief, the potential squandered and injury. How else does a conflict like this impact the children left behind?
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SATYARTHI: It's impacting children who are in Palestine, but it is impacting hundreds of millions of children in the world, psychologically, mentally, because the images which are appearing on the media is so shocking. So--
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NOBILO: I think we may have lost our communication there with Kailash Satyarthi. We will do our best to get him back to continue that important discussion. So we're going to take a quick break.
Coming up after that, Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen so that they've launched an attack on Israel. How they're getting involved in Israel's war with Hamas?
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NOBILO: Welcome back. Also back with me is Kailash Satyarthi, the Nobel Peace Prize winner from 2014, joining me from southern India. Thanks so much for your patience. Live T.V. can be a bit of an unpredictable beast. Let's go right back to that first question which I ask you about the broader impact of what we're seeing unfold in Israel and in Gaza on children.
SATYARTHI: Well, the children who are suffering every day, every minute, they are worst affected. As all of us know that lots of children have lost their livelihood, their lives and so on, their parents and everything in the future.
But the effect is long lasting, not only for these two countries' children and coming generations but those who are watching. The images of what is happening now would also be affecting mentally and psychologically hundreds of millions of young people in the world and that is irreparable loss.
NOBILO: Nobel Peace Prize winners can form these very powerful pressure groups and recently you have spearheaded a joint statement appealing for peace for the sake of children. What do you hope to achieve? Who do you want to hear your message? And what mindset shift do you think is required from political leaders to protect children better?
SATYARTHI: Well, first of all, we are saying again and again that Palestinian children are our children, Israeli children are our children. If one single child is killed, maimed, kidnapped, we cannot call ourselves civilized. The wars are affecting children like that, that we have to question our progress and civilizations.
Secondly, I would say that we, as a group of 103 Nobel laureates, have demanded that no child should be starved of food, water, medicine and shelter. These things must be provided for every single child in the countries if they need and wherever they are needing, apart from their safety.
Thirdly, we have to ensure that other vulnerable people should also be given safe passes, and there should not be any barrier in sending humanitarian aid to them immediately, because the news is very, very horrifying. They should not starve of food and water and other things. So this is another thing.
But we, as Nobel laureates, saw that the world is getting divided every day and that is going to have long lasting impact in the entire society. It's a complex issue combined with policy, diplomacy, politics, religions, faith and so on history. But what we believe that the issues of children is the only unifying factor. If we are able to ignite compassion for children, for our children, because both countries' children are our children then we are able to move forward in terms of demanding and building peace. So, it is just the beginning. We wanted to start with the issues of children and wanted to make sure that we should end the situation as much as possible.
And we kept ourselves quite neutral because we know that the active neutrality and impartiality has its own power of paving the way for dialogue and eventually for peace. And that's why we have come with very strong notion that no child should be killed, remanded and kidnapped. And we repeat again and again that they are all our children.
[03:39:59] And therefore we called everyone, every citizen of the world that please light three candles: one for the children of Israel, one for the children of Palestine, and one for the children of peace, compassion and hope. Because globalizing compassion and dealing with these situation in a compassionate manner is the only solution.
NOBILO: Lastly and briefly to you if I may we know that children are being disproportionately affected in the bombardment of Gaza. What is happening to the idea of childhood in this situation? And for as long as humanity has been organized, there's always been war. Do you think that the regard and protection of children in war is going through a particularly vulnerable period right now?
SATYARTHI: This is absolutely vulnerable period for children and for their childhood because they have already lost their childhood who are living in Gaza or the children who have been affected due to Hamas attack. So those children in Israel, those children in Gaza, they are losing their childhood.
That kind of innocence, that kind of sensitivity which can make this world a better place is being lost due to these wars and these situations. And everybody should speak, not just to show the faces of those children, but speak out for our children because Israeli children are our children and Palestine children are our children.
NOBILO: Kailash Satyarthi, thank you so much for joining us and for the work you do. Obviously, children are literally our only hope for the future in an increasingly divided world and it would just take heroic efforts to grow up in those circumstances and not carry some of that you know pain and anger with you so we really appreciate the work that you do. Thank you.
SATYARTHI: Pleasure, thank you so much.
NOBILO: And we'll be right back with you after this short break.
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NOBILO: Israel's military says it has thwarted what it called aerial threats around the Red Sea using its Arrow Defense System for the first time to intercept a surface-to-surface missile. The Iran-backed Houthi militant group in Yemen says it launched the attack, and the world is watching now to see how Iran may exert itself through proxies against its sworn enemy, Israel. Fred Pleitgen reports.
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FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Iranian-backed Houthi fighters in Yemen with a show of force. While only hitting U.S. and Israeli flags in this exercise, the Houthis say they've also launched a massive, long-distance attack on Israel using ballistic and cruise missiles as well as drones. The Yemeni armed forces affirm that this operation is the third in
support of our oppressed brothers in Palestine, the spokesman says.
Israel confirms the attack, saying its defense forces managed to thwart it using modern air defense system.
But both the U.S. and Israel have long accused Iran of providing the Houthis with long-range weapons. We got a rare chance to film some of Iran's drone and missile arsenal at a military fair in Tehran in 2019.
As the Israel-Hamas war continues, the Iranians are now also flexing their own military muscle. A recent large-scale exercise aiming to show Tehran's defense capabilities, but one of the commanding generals also making clear the Islamic Republic's goal is to destroy Israel.
Regarding the message to the Zionist regime, he says, in fact, we announced the destruction of this regime, and God willing, we will witness it soon.
Iran's military is not nearly as modern as the U.S.'s or Israel's. Many of its weapons are U.S.-made from before the Islamic Revolution in 1979, like these Vietnam War-era Cobra attack helicopters.
But Iran influences or controls scores of militias around the entire Middle East, which Tehran says it can mobilize to not only attack Israel, but U.S. assets throughout the region.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, Iran's president threatening escalation. The events we're seeing in Gaza are all red lines that are being breached by the Zionist entity, he says. The killing of women and children, the killing of more than 3,000 children is not something that any human being can reasonably or by conscience accept.
Israel maintains it does not target civilians in its campaign against Hamas in Gaza. And the U.S. has sent two carrier strike groups and additional surface-to-air missile batteries to the region, the Biden administration warning Iran to back off.
JOHN KIRBY, U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL COORDINATOR FOR STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS: We will take our national security interests very seriously. We will protect and defend our troops, and we'll do it at a time and a manner of our choosing.
PLEITGEN (voice-over): Fred Pleitgen, CNN, Berlin.
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NOBILO: Joining me now from Jerusalem is Nimrod Goren, Senior Fellow for Israeli Affairs at the Middle East Institute. Very good to speak to you this morning. Let's pick up on that reporting by my colleague, Fred Pleitgen. So Yemen's Houthis have now waded into this conflict, confirming the expanded scope that everyone has been so worried about. What fresh dangers does that present and how are they best navigated?
[03:49:57] NIMROD GOREN, SR. FELLOW FOR ISRAELI AFFAIRS, MIDDLE EAST INSTITUTE: From the onset of the Hamas terror attack on October 7th, I think it was a priority both for Israel and for the U.S. and other Western allies to prevent the spillover of this war to other fronts. Since then we have seen tensions also on the Israel-Lebanon border by Hezbollah now coming from Yemen.
I think the response now is a defensive response, so Israel with the support of the U.S., but also in the Gulf with the support of the Saudis, you know, in interception a missile that went through their territory, reportedly. It's defense mode.
There's no interest to increase the France and whenever those France do increase, I think those indicate to many in the region that this war is actually something between two axes to which many Arab countries are actually on the side of Israel in the U.S. will also be very concerned of what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. So it's kind of a pro-Palestinian approach but an anti-Hamas anti-Iranian access approach combined.
NOBILO: We've heard Iran speak about red lines being violated ramping up the rhetoric further. What do you expect to see from Iran next? The intensification of more attacks through its proxies or something else?
GOREN: You know, we've already seen the airstrikes by Israel. We've seen the ground of the operation begins. We have crossed several thresholds that, according to speculation, may have been important ones to see what Iran and how Iran reacts.
And the reactions until now are limited. I think that is partly perhaps because of the strong messaging coming from President Biden and the U.S. military, the deployment of forces. The hope is that will continue. So there will not be intensification. We are probably in line for a prolonged battle in Gaza.
It will have ramification in terms of regional relationship. But people are trying to already begin looking for the regional reconfiguration after the war, in which some international mechanism should be established, in which regional countries will have an important role to play. And we already see them having a role.
We see Qatar doing mediation for these Israeli hostages related together with the Americans. We see the Egyptians now taking care of people that are injured within the Gaza Strip. So, regional countries want to find a way to play a constructive role rather than to be dragged into a war that they do not want to be part of.
NOBILO: That of course is very promising and might exert a powerful amount of leverage. Talk to us more about how those other countries might be involved and perhaps if you could elaborate on Saudi Arabia in particular. Obviously, we've heard from the Saudis in response to the Jabalia attack, condemning it in the strongest terms possible, but still relations with the U.S. are attempting to be built further between Saudi Arabia and Washington. So what role could they play?
GOREN: I think the messaging coming from the Saudis and their interaction with the Americans is an important one, because, yes, there is condemnation of what Israel is doing in Gaza, and that is not surprising.
But there's also a very clear messaging about the Saudi interest in looking for ways to advance Israeli-Palestinian peace and a two-state solution after this war is over.
And there's also indication about the willingness to continue the process that began earlier of finding a new type of relationship between Israel and the Saudis with American involvement. We are also hearing from the UAE about their commitment to the Abraham Accords. So I think those indications mean that the regional architecture that was set in recent years that totally changed the dynamics between Israel and the Arab world currently is resilient to what is happening on the ground.
Countries that are more pressured to act may be Egypt, that is concerned about the refugee flow to Sinai, and Jordan, that is very much concerned with what happens at the West Bank and whether it will spill over somehow to domestic unrest in its territory. So I think Egypt and Jordan are the countries that will be maybe pushed to react more quickly than the gulf states that have an interest at play and have a more forward-looking approach also to their role in reshaping the Palestinian leadership in the day after Hamas and maybe toppled in Gaza.
NOBILO: Is there a point though in terms of Israel's retaliation for the Hamas attacks on October 7th? In terms of proportionality, there's obviously been a huge amount of criticism, thousands of Palestinians have been killed, disproportionate impact on women and children. Is there a risk that, you know, if Israel violates theoretical red lines of these Arab nations and some of the Gulf states that architecture that you're talking about will simply break down because it's not sustainable?
GOREN: There is a risk of a relation deteriorating. I'm not sure whether they will break down. The fact that we don't see any change in the official level of diplomatic representation in Israel, as well these last weeks, indicates something. But definitely, the more discontinued, the more Palestinian lives are being lost, the more reactions will be in the Arab world. But will they be represented through public protests and condemnation, or will they be translated into diplomatic actions?
And currently we do not see the crossing of the threshold into the diplomatic hold. Of course, relationships are slowing down, cooperation between Israel and the Arab world is not advancing these days.
[03:55:00]
Whatever was there before may continue to a certain extent, but there's no breakthroughs expected. We are expected to see an Arab summit convened later in November to try and bring some Arab message from different countries together. But I think the main key is to see whether there are countries that are downgrading ties. We saw some South American countries doing tonight in their ties with Israel, we heard Erdogan from Turkey, heavily criticizing Israel and canceling some visit, but again, not touching the level of representation.
We need to see whether this continues. We hope once it does settle, Israel will still have effective diplomatic ties with the region, which will enable them to level in what had happened to sample with towards future peacemaking.
NOBILO: Nimrod Goren, thank you very much for your calm and lucid analysis. We appreciate it.
GOREN: Thank you very much.
NOBILO: And thank you for joining us. I'm Bianca Nobilo and I'll be back in a few moments with more news after this short break.
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