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CNN International: Israel Expands Ground Operations To All Of Gaza; IDF Orders People To Evacuate More Areas In Southern Gaza; Hamas-Controlled Health Ministry: 15,000+ Killed In Gaza. Aired 8- 8:30a ET

Aired December 04, 2023 - 08:00   ET

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

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JOEY JACKSON, CNN LEGAL ANALYST, & CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: And to the extent that the Supreme Court says that a bankruptcy court has the right for parties who are not in bankruptcy, who maybe the millionaires and billionaires behind these businesses to receive immunity, to your point, Poppy, it sets a standard and a precedent for not only Purdue --

POPPY HARLOW, HOST, "CNN THIS MORNING": Yeah.

JACKSON: -- but for major corporations --

HARLOW: Yeah.

JACKSON: -- into the future, and that is wholly significant.

HARLOW: It was really interesting to that point to see the Catholic Church, right, an amicus brief, and supportive produce physician on all of this, to that point, Joey. Beth, with you, you talk about real justice versus what you call billionaire justice. What do you mean?

BETH MACY, AUTHOR, "DOPESICK", AND AUTHOR, "RAISING LAZARUS": I mean that if this plan goes through, what's going to keep another family of millionaires that want to be billionaires from introducing a faulty product and finding a loophole in the bankruptcy system, which was not intended to give billionaires loopholes? There would be no deterrence going forward.

HARLOW: Beth, thank you for being with us and for your excellent reporting on this in your books. Enjoy your legal analysis, as always. We'll follow it closely. And CNN This Morning continues right now.

BIANCA NOBILO, HOST, "CNN NEWSROOM": Hello, this is CNN Newsroom. I'm Bianca Nobilo in London, in for Max Foster. Just ahead for you, the latest developments from the Middle East as Israel expands its ground operation to the entirety of Gaza, hunting for Hamas targets. Then, Russian media say police have carried out raids on gay venues in Moscow. We'll have a live report.

BECKY ANDERSON, CNN HOST: And I'm Becky Anderson live in Dubai at the COP28, the global climate summit, where a big focus today is how the world unlocks the trillions of dollars in climate cash needed to keep us on track for only 1.5 degrees of warming perspective. From Kenya's President and the head of the World Bank, coming up this hour.

NOBILO: The head of Israel's security agency is vowing to eliminate Hamas all around the world, even if it takes years. This as Israel expands ground operations to all of Gaza, including in the south, where civilians have moved at the request of the IDF. Israel is ramping up airstrikes, hitting some 200 targets in Gaza overnight, and the IDF is warning civilians to evacuate large areas within the enclave. But, with limited access to power and internet, it's unclear how many will get that message. This was the scene at Khan Younis in southern Gaza after renewed Israeli strikes, homes reduced to rubble, smoke still coming out of collapsed buildings. The Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health says more than 15,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 7.

Elliott Gotkine joins me now from London to discuss this. Elliott, it seems like even more of a recipe for chaos and disaster to now expand these ground operations to the south where civilians have been told to evacuate. Where else do they have to go, and how are those messages going to be communicated to them?

ELLIOTT GOTKINE, JOURNALIST: So, Israel is communicating this message in a number of ways. It's dropping flyers which have got QR codes on them that residents can scan to see their neighborhoods kind of divided up into quadrants and get an understanding of which ones are safe and which ones aren't. There are text messages, and there're also phone calls going out to residents as well. But, as you say, it's not always clear that everyone is getting their message. And even when those messages are getting through, it's not always clear that they're being understood.

And of course, when you've already had hundreds of thousands of people from the northern part of the Gaza Strip asked to evacuate to the south to the relative safety of the south, scrunched into a kind of even smaller area, it does seem that there is a greater danger of even higher civilian death count in the south than there was in the north. And indeed, Secretary of State, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warning Israel, saying that the displacement and the massive civilian death toll that we've seen in the north cannot be repeated in the south.

Now, these warnings, Israel spreading these warnings around, would seem to be a nod to that although Israel has been giving warnings in the north as well. But, at the same time, we've heard, for example, from the General -- Chief of the General Staff, Herzl Halevi, saying that Israel will go into the south with as much power. It will be no less powerful, he says, than the operations in the north.

And so, there are concerns, and we've seen some of the impacts there that to, again, I paraphrase the Secretary Blinken, that it's not just the intent to avoid civilian casualties that the U.S. and others want to see. It's the actual avoidance of civilian casualties, and of course, as this ground operation expands, then there is every fear that that will not necessarily be the case.

NOBILO: Elliott Gotkine, thank you.

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CNN has new video of exchanges of fire across the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanon state-run news agency says several villages in southern Lebanon were hit by concentrated artillery shelling by Israeli forces. On the other side of the border in Israel, the Israel Defense Forces say three soldiers were slightly injured by mortar fire Sunday night.

CNN's Ivan Watson has been following these developments from southern Lebanon. Ivan, this most recent skirmish, was it triggered largely by the resumption of Israel's bombardment of Gaza?

IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Sure. The kind of border conflict that has been underway since the initial October 7 Hamas attack into Israel, it subsided on the Lebanese-Israeli border during that seven-day truce. But, when the bombs started falling on Gaza again, that's when the border conflict here resumed. So, even within the last two hours, and in the distance here, the Israeli border, and I can see Israeli antennas and settlements that are about eight kilometers away from here on those hilltops, we were watching periodic incoming Israeli artillery hitting these farm fields in southern Lebanon over the course of several hours. And that's just kind of part of everyday life here in this part of Southern Lebanon ever since the hostilities began and the conflict resumed here.

So, towns like this, the schools have been closed now going on two months. They are partially evacuated, but people who cannot afford to go anywhere else, they're stuck living here with the sound of artillery strikes day in and day out coming from the Israeli side of the border. Hezbollah has claimed responsibility for a number of cross-border attacks over the course of the last couple of days, saying that it's carrying out these attacks in support of Palestinians in Gaza right now. But, we are not seeing at this point, even though it has been deadly. For example, there have been more than 85 Hezbollah fighters killed over the course of the past month and a half, and more than a dozen civilians here in southern Lebanon. But, we haven't seen it erupt into an enormous conflict, the likes of which were seen in this part of southern Lebanon in 2006.

So, both sides have managed to not use their heaviest weapons, though Israel says it did carry out airstrikes yesterday against suspected Hezbollah targets. It is impacting the economy here in southern Lebanon. And you know, one of the strangest things, Bianca, in this town, which is largely Christian, I was watching locals putting up Christmas decorations as I could hear the explosions and see the impacts of Israeli artillery just a few kilometers away. And that just gives you a sense of the strange contradiction of life in here in the middle of this border conflict. Bianca.

NOBILO: Indeed. Ivan Watson for us in southern Lebanon, thank you very much.

Russian police carried out raids on at least three gay nightlife venues in Moscow on Friday and Saturday, and that is according to two online Russian news outlets. It comes after the country's top court last week issued a ruling banning what it called the "international LGBTQ movement, and labeling it an extremist organization.

CNN's Fred Pleitgen joins me now. Fred, our international viewers may have only become aware of this most recent development with the ruling from the Supreme Court last week. So, where has it come from? What's the social, political, religious context that's driving these moves?

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, this is something that's been going on, Bianca, in Russia for years, the crackdown on the LGBTQ movement. In fact, several years ago, the Russians put in place what they called a law against propaganda of gay content for Russia. And then, just earlier last year, they did exactly the same thing, even increasing that ban. And now, the Supreme Court of the country, as you put it, outlawed the LGBTQ community, and also designated all the people who are members of that community. So, anybody who is gay, lesbian, trans or queer in Russia is now labeled as an extremist with all that that entails.

And we saw some of the images just there on our screen with some of those raids that were taking place. It's quite interesting to look into that a little bit, because you mentioned that there were three venues that were raided. It's not clear whether those were gay bars or clubs, or whether it was just gay events that were taking place there. What we heard from those raids, though, is that apparently no one was arrested or detained. However, people were searched. We saw some of that, and also some of their documents were photographed as well.

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And that, of course, is something that causes a lot of fear and anxiety in a lot of those people as they believe that they are being persecuted anyway, and of course also with the context of a crackdown that's been going on for several years where really gay, lesbian, queer and transgender life in Russia has been become more and more difficult certainly in public, but now, of course, in private as well. And all of this comes as Vladimir Putin himself is sort of trying to style himself as the defender as he puts up traditional values, not just Christian values, but in general, traditional values. And he says that things like the LGBTQ movement come from the West, come from the United States and its allies.

And of course, one of the things that we're also seeing is that Vladimir Putin also says that his war in Ukraine is also a defense against the West trying to infringe on, as he puts it, the Russian world and of course also on those values that he claims that he is defending, Bianca.

NOBILO: Very interesting. CNN's Fred Pleitgen, thank you so much.

And coming up for you after a short break, finance pledges are in the spotlight on this day of COP28, and Becky Anderson will be live in Dubai for you where she'll be joined by the head of the World Bank.

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ANDERSON: I'm Becky Anderson live at COP28 in Dubai for you. Well, it's finance day here at the COP climate event, and the question on everyone's lips, how can cash be used to drive the push towards climate equity? Well, it is a very steep hill to climb. There is a yawning gap between the money on offer and the money estimated to be needed to shift the world towards green energy. Developing countries say they already need hundreds of billions of dollars every year to adapt to our warming planet. And on top of that, they say they will need trillions more to make the shift to clean energy.

But, threatening to overshadow finance, science, due to a video that emerged with the president of the summit saying that there is no science. He says the phase out of fossil fuel is what's going to achieve 1.5, the limit of warming call for in the Paris Agreement. Well, Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber says the controversy is one of repeated attempts to undermine the work of this presidency. Have a listen.

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SULTAN AHMED AL JABER, PRESIDENT, COP28: Everything this presidency has been working on, continues to work on, is focused on and centered around the science. And I have been crystal clear on that point, and every opportunity --

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ANDERSON: Well, that's Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, the President of COP.

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The World Bank needs to be a major player in this climate fight, on Friday pledged to commit almost half of its annual financing to climate-related projects by 2025. Well, the bank President Ajay Banga made that announcement, and he joins me now. We're going to talk about that announcement because we are talking about a significant increase here in your climate finance budget, which equates to about $40 billion. The world needs something like $3 trillion a year.

AJAY BANGA, PRESIDENT, WORLD BANK: Yeah.

ANDERSON: So, I want to talk about how the World Bank's numbers are sort of drop in the ocean, but how you can make those numbers work, a little bit later on. I do need to, though, address or want to address the controversy that's been swirling about the science once again, and Dr. Sultan with a pretty robust sort of rebuttal to some headlines that are suggesting that, that at least in principle he said that the science doesn't suggest that the phase out of unabated fossil fuels as soon as possible is necessary to achieve the Paris Agreement goals of 1.5 degrees warming. Do you believe the science?

BANGA: Well, I believe that you have to do something about fossil fuels. I believe that climate change is a real problem that's upon us. And I believe that there are four or five things that need to be tackled, one of which clearly is emissions from energy, which is actually a large part of the crisis. There are three or four others, Becky, and there is work going on on technology and scale on all of these. One of those is agriculture and methane and livestock and that stuff. Another one is heavy construction materials. Yet another one is heavy transportation. And then, of course, there is the issue that some folks say, even if you do all this, you have to have some degree of carbon capture. The problem with carbon capture is that price is very high even now.

So, I think you really have to tackle the climate crisis on multiple fronts. Otherwise, we will lose the battle, and we can't afford to lose the battle.

ANDERSON: Well, I like to just drill down on the World Bank's position on fossil fuel use specifically. Now and in the future, what is the bank's position?

BANGA: Perfect. So, we don't -- we've not been doing coal financing since 2010. We basically don't do any financing of anything to do with fossil fuels unless and it's a very small amount, unless it's a part of a transition plan in a country. So, for example, last year, we put $170 million to work in direct financing for natural gas plant in Central Asia. To put that in context, our total output last year was $122 billion. So, we are talking about 0.2 percent that goes into that. So, we're very clear. That's not where we're going. We're going renewables. We're going methane. We're going in that direction.

ANDERSON: According to campaign group Oil Change International, those numbers need a little bit more explanation. They say, last year, the World Bank provided over a billion dollars of direct support to the oil and gas industry. You've just explained where some 100 odd was targeted.

BANGA: No. I will tell you what the difference is. So, there are two different things. There is what we're doing indirect financing, and what they also include is, if we've financed a company or an institutional bank in another country as part of IFC or somewhere, and those in turn are doing some. They're counting all the way down to that. It's like the issue about scope three versus scope two.

What I'm talking about is where we are directly involved in the financing. That's $170 million. And I'm quite clear that even if you took their number of a billion, just remember in the context of $120 billion, see where we're going. We're talking about putting 45 percent of our financing every year into climate financing. That's $40 billion plus a year. We're talking about doing half of that in adaptation, half in mitigation. And the reason for that is you cannot make it only about energy emissions. You have to help the global south with what needs to be done with resiliency.

ANDERSON: I see --

BANGA: So, that's kind of the logic.

ANDERSON: -- I see where you're at. $600 billion in government subsidies is the number that a recent World Bank report put against the fossil fuel industry. Bigger than that, the report assesses the harmful impact of indirect subsidies which amount to $6 trillion a year. I mean, $6 trillion a year. When the world needs --

BANGA: Yes. ANDERSON: -- $3 trillion a year --

BANGA; Yes. Yes.

ANDERSON: -- where do you stand on these subsidies for the oil and gas industry?

BANGA: So, at UNGA --

ANDERSON: Please explain.

BANGA: -- at UNGA, I was in the opening panel with Mia Mottley, and I got asked this question. And I talked about $1.25 trillion actually is the number. It includes fossil fuel and agriculture and fisheries. And $6 trillion is the estimate of the environmental impact.

ANDERSON: It's huge. Isn't it?

BANGA: Yeah. I am just talking about $1.25 trillion. Let's just forget for a minute --

ANDERSON: That's still big.

BANGA: -- the environmental impact. It's still a lot of money. When you got $1.25 trillion, the question is, therefore the money is there. We're making choices in society of where we're investing our money. And my approach to this is some of those subsidies are probably sensible. If you give somebody a cooking gas cylinder in a poorer country at a cheaper price so they don't cut wood or burn coal, good idea.

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But, is that the only thing we're doing? No. And therefore, look at the EU. They used to give $60 billion a year to incent the use of fertilizer in Europe. With all the consequences of runoff and excessive use, they're still giving the same $60 billion to the farmers, but they've repurposed it to say, use less fertilizer and I'll give you the extra $60 billion. I think how we use our money is the question how we approach this issue. And I'm very focused on that. As one of the sources of capital, to your opening statement, yes, we can put some capital from our balance sheet. All multilateral banks put together, there isn't enough money to meet those trillions.

You're going to need the private sector. You're going to need to look at subsidies. You're going to need to look at voluntary carbon markets. And we made announcements around voluntary carbon markets as well at COP. So, I think this is a war we have to fight on all fronts. We don't win on one front.

ANDERSON: Loss and damage has certainly been a winning principle at the outset of this climate conference, some $600 million now in pledges --

BANGA: Yeah. ANDERSON: -- which is -- let's applaud that. That's a good thing. But, Ajay, this is now a World Bank project to a certain extent. You say you're a trustee. You're not going to be actually allocating the cash. So, I'd like you to explain how that fund is going to work. And frankly, $600 million, when again, we are looking at trillions needed is -- sorry, billions, if not trillions --

BANGA: Yes.

ANDERSON: -- needed.

BANGA: Yes.

ANDERSON: $70.5 million from the states. Let's just drill down on these numbers a bit. These aren't good enough. Are they?

BANGA: As I said, this loss and damage fund is actually just the beginning where it's starting. If you think about it a year ago, this is what people said we should have. I don't think the world has moved so faster than anything in climate, the way they have on this. So, I'm where you are. Let's at least understand we've got something done. The World Bank is not taking either the decision on the funding or the use of the funding. We operate trust funds for many other vehicles where we are just the trustee and the secretariat.

ANDERSON: So, you will allocate.

BANGA: So, the donors and the receivers have to go through a negotiating process now to actually set up how this fund will operate. Typically, you create a governing council and they vote.

ANDERSON: How long is that going to take? When are they going to see the cash?

(CROSSTALK)

BANGA: I said the other day on a different TV interview that I think they shouldn't allow us more than 90 days to get this going for the fund to get the first lot of money coming in, because guess what? Before you even start putting money out to work, you're going to need to start doing all the technical analysis and the due diligence of all these things. The first $700 million odd they raised will go into that.

ANDERSON: I want to come back to where we started. Your predecessor at the World Bank, David Malpass, had to answer questions back in 2022 about whether he was a climate change denier in much the same way as Dr. Al Jaber felt the need today to defend his own record. Why are leaders failing in that message and their messaging around fossil fuels? And do you think that this will continue with COP's final communicate here? Is it damaging to even be talking about this thing in terms of science at this point when we know your kids and my kids have moved beyond that? This is generational stuff.

BANGA: Absolutely. I think the real issue, Becky, is, it's not that you can declare that fossil fuel should be gone tomorrow morning. You're not going to be able to satisfy energy needs. And the reality of life across different parts of the developed world as well is the extensive use of fossil fuels and natural gas to get energy for their homes and their businesses. We saw that happen when the Ukraine war broke out, and Europe had a sudden existential crisis on the availability of fuel for its energy.

So, I think people in the Global South see this and feel, you can't tell me I can't use this while you continue to use it. That creates the mistrust that we don't need. The reality is we cannot afford another decades of emission heavy growth. That happened. We cannot do it anymore. We have to move on. And the only way to move on is to travel up on renewables, is to do all the right things with the technology to make it scalable, make it cheaper, keep driving, not just in fossil fuel and energy, but like I said, methane, like I said, heavy transportation. We really have to do this, Becky, as time is not on our side.

ANDERSON: It's good to have you.

BANGA: Pleasure.

ANDERSON: The last time you and I talked, you were not in this position. So, congratulations as well.

BANGA: Thank you.

ANDERSON: It's good to have you here as the World Bank Chief. Thank you.

BANGA: Thank you very much.

ANDERSON: That's it from me for this hour. I'm Becky Anderson in Dubai. I'll be back in just over 30 minutes with more of CNN's coverage of COP28, including my full interview with Kenya's President William Ruto. Here is a preview of that.

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WILLIAM RUTO, KENYAN PRESIDENT: Today, they are putting money. It means tomorrow their whole story will have changed, because they realize that we are unrelenting. They realize that we're not going to shut up. And they realize that this is not something that they can run away from.

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They are squarely responsible. We must do this together. And it's just a matter of time for all of us to realize that there is no North. There is no South. There is no East. There is no West. We're all in it together, and therefore everybody must bring their resources onto the table. Those who have financial resources like the U.S. should bring them on the table.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON: Well, that's William Ruto, and you will hear that full interview at top of the next hour. Bianca Nobilo will be back with more news this hour after this short break. Stay with us.

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