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CNN International: Jabalia Camp Hit by Second IDF Airstrike in Two Days; Hundreds of Foreign National Allowed Out of Gaza; IDF Commander: Israel Forces at the Gates of Gaza City; Journalist's Dispatch from Massive Gaza Refugee Camp. Aired 4-4:30a ET

Aired November 02, 2023 - 04:00   ET

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

[04:00:00]

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 live from London. It's Thursday, November 2nd, 8:00 a.m. here in London, 10 a.m. in Gaza, where Israeli airstrikes again lit up the skies overnight. Israel's military says its forces have now reached the outskirts of Gaza City. The IDF say seventeen of its soldiers have been killed since the ground incursion began.

In northern Gaza, Israeli air strikes struck the Jabalia refugee camp for a second time in two days. Local hospital officials say at least 80 people were killed, most of them women and children. UNICEF says more than 400 children have died each day in Gaza since this war started.

Meanwhile, we're waiting to see if more foreign nationals are able to cross the border into Egypt today. People have been gathering there in hope of getting through. For the first time since the war began, the Rafah border crossing opened Wednesday to several 100 foreign nationals, including aid workers who'd been stuck at the border for days.

CNN's Clare Sebastian is covering all of these angles for us from London. Clare, what are we hearing about what could happen at the Rafah border crossing today?

CLARE SEBASTIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So the expectation is that more foreign passport holders will be allowed through. The U.S. certainly said that it expects to see more in the coming days. We're hearing this morning from the Egyptian Foreign Ministry saying that it's working to evacuate about 7,000 foreign passport holders from around 60 countries from Gaza. So it seems that the efforts are still ongoing.

We did understand when this deal was brokered that it did cover anyone holding a foreign passport that wanted to get out of Gaza. But I think what we saw on Wednesday, which is of course the first day, the first time that anyone bar less than a handful of hostages, had actually exited the Gaza Strip since this conflict began. Is that it's cumbersome. It's slow, it's difficult. Egypt wants to vet everyone that's coming in, because, of course, concerns about sort of a broader influx of Palestinian refugees and because of the demand that was part of the negotiations from Hamas that the injured Palestinians that were evacuated and those ambulances that you saw on Wednesday should include some of its fighters. That demand was of course rejected.

But tensions are extremely high. It's very fluid as well. We hadn't expected to see any Americans leave on Wednesday, but a couple of them did. So things are very up in the air. We're monitoring closely what's happening at that border, but of course at the moment we're seeing crowds gathering, people gathering there, but no movement as of yet.

NOBILO: We are also reporting a further strike on the Jabalia refugee camp, the biggest in Gaza -- so densely populated. What has the international reaction been?

SEBASTIAN: It's significant. This is sparked, I mean, there was already international alarm about what was going on in Gaza, which is complicated things for Israel, certainly in the wake of those Hamas attacks in southern Israel. Now, we've seen another surge in the wake of these two strikes on the Jabalia refugee camp. We've seen Jordan recalling its ambassador to Israel, along with Chile and Colombia. Bolivia has cut off diplomatic ties. We even have the UN Humanitarian Office saying that they believe that these attacks could be -- they're concerned that they could be disproportionate, that this could amount, they say, to war crimes. Which is obviously a very serious allegation.

And I think it's not just about the high death toll. If we look at the fallout within Gaza. We don't know exactly how many were killed, certainly in that first strike. But that this is very seriously impacting the health system as well. We're hearing overnight that the Gaza Indonesian hospital, which is the one that's closest to the Jabalia refugee camp, they're saying that their main generator stopped working. That hasn't shut down the whole hospital, but it's taken out of action several key systems, ventilation systems in the operating rooms, the refrigerators in the morgue. The so you can see that mass casualty events like this can have a serious impact on that already immensely strained health system.

NOBILO: Clare Sebastian, thank you.

The full scope of the devastation at the Jabalia refugee camp remains unclear after those two Israeli air strikes. It comes as the Israeli military report advances in its ground operation. CNN's Jeremy Diamond reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN (voice-over): This is all that remains. For the second day in a row, Israeli jets striking the densely populated Jabalia refugee camp flattening apartment buildings. Hundreds were wounded and at least 80 people were killed, according to the director of the nearby Indonesian Hospital.

The IDF said it struck a Hamas command and control complex in Jabalia, killing Hamas militants. But civilians also clearly among the casualties, including children, rushed out of the rubble.

Tonight, the United Nations Human Rights Office, raising serious concerns that these are disproportionate attacks that could amount to war crimes.

Israel blaming Hamas for using civilians as human shields as it continues its offensive.

[04:05:00]

A top Israeli commander now says his forces are closing in on Gaza City. Hamas's stronghold in the Gaza Strip.

BRIG. GEN. ITZIK COHEN, ISRAELI DEFENSE FORCES (through translator): We are deep in the strip at the gates of Gaza City. In the last five days we have dismantled a lot of the abilities of Hamas. We have attached strategic positions, all the explosive abilities, its underground facilities and other systems.

DIAMOND (voice-over): Five days after Israel launched its ground offensive in Gaza, Israeli forces are advancing towards Gaza City from three different directions. In the north, Israeli armor and infantry have been spotted advancing from both ends of the strip. Israeli tanks also appear to be closing in from the south. CNN geolocated this tank at the strategic Netzarim junction on the main road into Gaza City. Israel is also moving some of its artillery closer to Gaza.

DIAMOND: Until recently, this field was filled with Israeli artillery positions. You can see these mounds where howitzer guns or other types of artillery would dig in. And now, as Israeli forces move closer into Gaza, those artillery positions are also moving closer to support the troops on the ground. Now all that remains are these. Boxes of munitions, artillery fuses used by the forces that were here.

DIAMOND (voice-over): The question now is how deep Israeli forces will move into Gaza.

MIRI EISIN, INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR, TERRORISM REICHMAN UNIVERSITY: The only way to get to what Hamas has built over a decade inside the Gaza Strip, the only way is through a ground operation.

DIAMOND (voice-over): Jeremy Diamond, CNN, Ashkelon, Israel.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NOBILO: With us from Canberra, Australia is Malcolm Davis, a senior analyst with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Great to have you with us, Sir. Thanks for joining us tonight.

MALCOLM DAVIS, MILITARY ANALYST: It's my pleasure.

NOBILO: Clearly, Hamas shocked the world with the sophistication of its attack on October the 7th, and perhaps display that its capabilities were far greater than what the Israeli intelligence services or the world had necessarily imagined. What else have we learned about their capabilities and arsenal in the last three weeks?

DAVIS: Look, I think that that initial attack was shocking in its method of execution in a sense of, you know, the introduction of forces from the air using those paragliders and the fact that it managed to catch the Israelis by surprise. But when you look at Hamas's actual military capabilities, they're pretty much as we anticipated in the sense that there's about 20 to 40,000 troops there. They are largely equipped with small arms. In other words, you know, sort of rifles, machine guns, assault weapons, that sort of thing as well as rocket propelled grenades.

They also have obviously large numbers of battlefield missiles and rockets that they can fire at Israel. And I think probably the most concerning thing for the Israeli Defense Forces going into Gaza would be things like IEDs and mines and the ability of Hamas to use the dense urban environment defensively with snipers and rocket propelled grenades and anti-tank guided weapons to catch the Israelis in narrow streets.

So I don't think that we've underestimated Hamas dramatically in terms of what they can do, but it's the environment, the operational environment and the tactical situation that the Israelis are finding themselves in that I think is quite challenging.

NOBILO: What is it about the organizational structure or communications that we understand that enabled them to evade detection of this plan by Israeli authorities? Because going forward, obviously intelligence will be key, as the Israelis continue their ground and curse.

DAVIS: Well, you've got this vast tunnel network where Hamas can essentially use everything from hardwired communications. In other words, they're not transmitting on radio, on free to air radio. They're transmitting -- they're making connections using cables, which are virtually impossible to detect and interrupt and eaves drop on. Or even as something as low tech as runners. You know, Gaza is not a large area, so you could have groups of individuals that can run messages between fighting forces and commanders.

So the actual command and control of Hamas is incredibly low tech. It's not sophisticated using advanced communications technology. It's using low tech systems, which makes it more difficult, ironically, for the Israelis to basically detect and attack.

[04:10:04]

NOBILO: This tunnel complex, understood to be roughly 500 kilometers or thereabouts, reinforced concrete, like you say, a communication system within electricity, we understand as well. I mean, how much more difficult does that make it for the Israelis, particularly because hostages might be stored down there too? So in terms of methods of attacking the tunnels like flooding or blowing them up, it makes it far more difficult.

DAVIS: Exactly. So you know, the Israelis can't go in and essentially flood the tunnels, you know, with some sort of substance to flush the Hamas forces out because they could then put -- place hostages at risk. They can obviously collapse tunnels where they know for sure there are no hostages. And they've done that with air strikes and artillery strikes. But in some cases, the Israeli Defense Forces will have to actually go

into the tunnels, and that's certainly more likely to happen the deeper they get into Gaza itself -- into Gaza City in particular. They may actually have to go into those tunnels and fight from tunnel to tunnel to force the Hamas terrorists out or to kill them. And I think that will be really challenging because the nature of the tunnels -- and we've seen them on TV -- as such that they would be ideal for booby traps and IEDs and mines and so forth. So you know, it's a dangerous environment for the IDF as well.

NOBILO: Malcolm, just lastly and briefly to you, in your view was taking hostages, part of Hamas's calculus, to try and make attacking the tunnels and that key sort of communication and nerve center for Hamas far more difficult. Would that have been one of the main reasons that they wanted to take those people to make it that much harder for Israelis?

DAVIS: Absolutely. I mean by taking those hostages and a significant number of them and then spreading them over a large area rather than concentrating them in one area where they can be rescued in a style similar to the Entebbe raid in by the Israelis in the 70s. By spreading them across that tunnel network, it makes it much more difficult for the Israelis to use force decisively. If the hostages weren't there, if they had been rescued, or if they simply hadn't been taken, I think the Israelis would be moving far more rapidly and much more ruthlessly. But they have to think about the hostages. They can't ignore that fact.

NOBILO: Exactly. And obviously, it's Hamas's home turf, and they can also retreat into the tunnels, stockpile in the tunnels, emerge from behind Israeli Forces, presumably. Malcolm Davis, thank you so much for joining us. Really good to speak to you.

DAVIS: My pleasure.

NOBILO: Iran issued new threats against Israel and the U.S. on Wednesday. The country's defense minister says the U.S. will, quote, certainly suffer a blow if the fighting continues -- according to the Iranian State news agency. He also warned European countries to, quote, be careful not to incur the wrath of the Muslim world. Iran's Foreign Minister was in Turkey on Wednesday and warned that if the war continues, resistance groups will make a decision on another, quote, surprise action.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HOSSEIN AMIR-ABDOLLAHIAN, IRANIAN FOREIGN MINISTER (through translator): Based on the information received from the resistance, it must be said that if the genocide and war crimes against civilians are not stopped immediately and we are very close to the point in the Middle East region where a decisive and significant decision will be made.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NOBILO: Coming up, an American doctor is able to leave Gaza through the Rafah crossing after a 26-day ordeal. We hear from her husband just ahead.

And an exclusive dispatch from CNN journalist Ibrahim Dahman in Gaza. An inside look at one refugee camp crammed with 20,000 people living off canned food and without suitable drinking water, when we return.

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(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NOBILO: We're keeping a close eye on the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza at this hour. Crowds have been gathering on the Gaza side for hours in hopes of getting through to Egypt. Especially after Wednesday, when Egyptian officials told CNN at least 361 foreign nationals entered the country through the border crossing.

A group of 22 staff members with the Medecins Sans Frontieres or Doctors Without Borders also crossed from Gaza into Egypt on Wednesday.

Sources familiar with the negotiations for the deal allowing foreign nationals to leave Gaza tell CNN that it came together after weeks of intensive diplomatic efforts. It's believed to be a critical first step in getting thousands of foreigners out of Gaza. CNN's MJ Lee has more now from the White House.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MJ LEE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: President Biden personally confirming that the first group of American citizens had left Gaza and are now in Egypt. He said that the process of getting Americans and other foreign nationals and wounded Palestinians out of Gaza and into Egypt would take place in stages over the course of multiple days.

The State Department has previously said that there are some 400 American citizens in Gaza that are wanting to leave. That is in addition to some 5,000 foreign nationals that are also believed to be in Gaza. The President saying at an event in Minnesota that the administration has been working nonstop to reach this arrangement. This is what he said.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We're in a situation where safe passage for wounded Palestinians and foreign nationals takes to Gaza has started. American citizens are able to exit today as part of the first group of probably over 1,000. We'll see more of this process going on in the coming days. We're working nonstop to get Americans out of Gaza as soon and as safely as possible.

LEE: And to give you a sense of some of those diplomatic conversations that have been taking place over the course of weeks.

[04:20:00]

What CNN is told is that Hamas had been pushing for wounded Palestinians to be able to leave Gaza, but that notably one thing that they had demanded was for some of their own fighters to be a part of that mix and that that was a demand that was denied. We are also told that Egyptian authorities had expressed a lot of concern about the idea of Palestinians coming into their country and settling down there permanently and that that's something that U.S. officials had been discussing with their Egyptian counterparts for days. And that Egyptian authorities also wanted to make sure that they were able to vet and look into every single person that was crossing over into their country.

The president also saying in Minnesota that he believed that Israel continued to have a right to defend itself, but that it needed to do so in a way that adheres to international laws. The president saying, quote, every innocent life is a tragedy. This is of course noteworthy given the air strikes that have struck a refugee camp in northern Gaza. This has complicated the Biden White House's political standing and how it has been talking about the ongoing conflict. Of course, we know that Biden White House officials are very concerned about the continuing growing civilian death toll in the region, even as they continue to say that Israel has a right to defend itself.

MJ Lee, CNN, the White House.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NOBILO: An American pediatrician was among those able to leave Gaza through the Rafah crossing into Egypt after 26 days. Doctor Barbara Zind was on a relief mission to treat children when she became stranded after the war broke out. And CNN's Erin Burnett spoke to her husband about her ordeal.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PAUL PRESTON, HUSBAND OF AMERICAN THAT LEFT GAZA THROUGH THE RAFAH CROSSING: Well, she was put on a list. My sister-in-law, who's Palestinian, read on the Rafah Facebook page that my wife and Ramona were 15th and 16th on the NGO list to be evacuated.

So they got up early and then went to the border. They said it was -- indirectly, again, they said it was fairly orderly. People were calling up people's names and they would come up. There were some fighting. I'm not sure what they're fighting about. She said that she saw, quote, "Only two fistfights."

But then, you know, when she got to the Palestinian border crossing, she was there for like five hours -- four or five hours in passport control, and that's when I was starting to get discouraged, because she texted me then, and I was like, what's going to happen now? But I think was -- what was going on, just conjecture, is they were, you know, removing the injured and moving the ambulances through.

So once -- you know, you start to, you know, go through the system, then she was -- took a shuttle to the Egyptian part of the border. And then she got into a car arranged by PCRF. I think it was like six people in the car but they did arrange a police escort for her to get across the Sinai.

ERIN BURNETT, CNN ANCHOR: You know, the last time we spoke, you know, she had to flee that same crossing because of the fights over food. I know at one point, you know, she had gotten close, sort of -- you know, in the hopes. And then you had described these -- these people literally -- people were literally fighting outside a UN compound for food -- for food.

You know, what are the conditions as you understand it now? I mean, I know you're describing it as she was leaving only two fist fights. But what were the conditions as she was leaving -- that she was living under and others around her living under?

PRESTON: Well, she is, like before, very fortunate. She was living in a clinic that was attached to a school, and was now sleeping inside, which was different than what was going on before. They actually had a stove that had gas so they could have some hot food, you know, before they use the campfire, you know, when they were in the compound.

She mentioned how it was outside, and I think she was, you know, saying that it's all, you know, it's just -- was so bad she kind of got used to it. I mean, it was just bad like all the time. The one good thing about where she was is the bombing was not as close. And so, that made her feel more secure.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NOBILO: As Israel continues its bombardment of Gaza, there are countless civilians, aid workers and journalists caught in the crosshairs and unable to evacuate to safety. Including our CNN colleague Ibrahim Dahman, along with his wife and their two young sons. Ibrahim brings us this report from a UN refugee camp in Khan Younis where he says there are more than 20,000 people crammed together, hungry, afraid and sleeping on the ground.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

[04:25:00]

IBRAHIM DAHMAN, CNN JOURNALIST (translated text): We were at UNRWA shelter camp, west of Khan Younis. The shelter has more than 20,000 people, who were displaced from northern Gaza. Everyone here has physical and mental exhaustion.

Food arrives irregularly and water is not suitable for drinking. The food is very bad. Every two to three days, they deliver canned food. The place is very crowded. We talked to several families living in tents, many of them sleep on the floor. And if it rains, they will have nowhere to go and will get wet.

There are more than 20,000 people here, it's a very large place.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NOBILO: Still to come, Israeli forensic scientists revealed the true horrors of the Hamas attacks on Israel as they were to identify victims with just pieces of their remains.

And also ahead. CNN visits several American College campuses where the response to the Israel Hamas war is triggering serious divisions among students and faculty.

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