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IDF: About 200 Rockets were Launched from Lebanon Towards Israel; Israeli Military Striking "Terror Targets in Lebanon"; Hezbollah Claims "Complete Success" in Strikes on Israel; Trump to Campaign Key States of Wisconsin and Michigan; Israel Conducts Preemptive Strikes Against Hezbollah. Aired 2-3a ET

Aired August 25, 2024 - 02:00   ET

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

[02:00:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

IVAN WATSON, CNN HOST: Hello and welcome to CNN Newsroom. I'm Ivan Watson broadcasting live in Hong Kong. We begin with breaking news from the Middle East. That's where Hezbollah militants say their retaliatory strikes on Israel in recent hours have been, quote, a complete success.

This is what played out in northern Israel after the group said it fired more than 300 rockets from Lebanon. Israel says the group fired 200 rockets. Still, Hezbollah called that the first phase of its retaliation for the recent killing of its top military commander.

But earlier, Israel said it hit Hezbollah positions just as they were preparing to launch their strikes. Israel also says its operations are continuing, and it accused the group of endangering Lebanese civilians.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DANIEL HAGARI, IDF SPOKESPERSON: From right next to the homes of Lebanese civilians in the South of Lebanon, we can see that Hezbollah is preparing to launch an extensive attack on Israel, while endangering the Lebanese civilians. We warn the civilians located in the areas where Hezbollah is operating to move out of harm's way immediately for their own safety. Israel will not tolerate Hezbollah's attacks on our civilians. We are operating in self-defense from Hezbollah and any other enemy that joins in their attacks against this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATSON: Now, CNN reporters are on the ground across the region covering all sides of this developing story. CNN's Nic Robertson is in Tel Aviv, Israel, and Ben Wedeman joins us live from Beirut, Lebanon. Ben and Nic, good to see you both. I'll go first to you Ben.

The region has been on the edge of its seats, so to speak, waiting for an advertised response from Hezbollah to the Israeli assassination of its commander at the end of last month, and now it appears to have at least begun. Can you describe what Hezbollah has claimed responsibility for? And what you see unfolding perhaps in the days ahead?

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hezbollah has come out Ivan with a statement saying that this was its first phase of its response to the killing on the 30th of July of senior military Hezbollah, Commander, Fuad Shukr. They said that they've launched more than 320 rockets or missiles on Israeli targets, 11 targets in particular, all of them military targets.

And they said in this statement that their targeting of those military positions along the border was to open the way for attack drones to reach their targets deep within Israel, and they say that those drones did pass and struck their targets. Now we don't -- even though Hezbollah claims that they were successfully struck those Israeli targets, we have yet to see any sort of confirmation on that.

We do know that there has been an intense series of Israeli strikes on Lebanese towns and villages in the south of the country. According to the official national news agency, it has been the most intense period of Israeli strikes since the beginning of the war, they say one person has been killed in a strike on a vehicle in the south. Now, as far as the second phase of Hezbollah's response, it's hard to say when or what that will be. Now what we've seen in the past is --

WATSON: OK. I believe we have lost our signal to Ben Wedeman in Beirut. So, I will turn now to Nic Robertson, live in Tel Aviv. The Israeli military Nic says it carried out preemptive attacks into Southern Lebanon as it was seeing Hezbollah militants preparing their own salvo of rocket launches. Have you gotten any indication of whether that succeeded in stopping this barrage of rockets coming across the border?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes, certainly the Israeli air force, the Israeli military, been on a hair trigger for any preparations by Hezbollah in Lebanon for a strike, a larger scale strike, on Israel. And that's what they saw happening. Now, as to the claims that Hezbollah has made about the success of its strikes that it claims were against 11 different military bases inside of Israel.

[02:05:00]

At the moment, the IDF is saying that they're not releasing information yet, while they do an assessment of the situation. We do know that the security cabinet that was meeting here is now concluded. We have also now heard from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, laying out, from his perspective, the rationale of what happened overnight.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This morning, we detected Hezbollah's preparation to attack Israel, together with a Minister of Defense and the Chief of Staff, we instructed the IDF to act proactively to remove the threat. The IDF has since been acting vigorously to thwart the threats. It destroyed thousands of rockets aimed at the north of the country. It also thwarted many other threats, and operates with great strength,

both in defense and attack. I ask you, citizens of Israel, to comply to the directives of the home front command. We are determined to do everything to protect our country, return the residents of the north safely to their homes, and continue to uphold a simple rule, whoever hurts us, we hurt them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTSON: So those instructions from the home front command, the new instructions are that they're between Tel Aviv and the northern border. No one should gather in a group of larger than 30 people. That people should restrict their travel and essentially be aware of where their shelters are.

Certainly, that applies very clearly along the northern part of Israel, closer to the border with Lebanon and in Haifa, that port city close to the border, the shelters there, the air raid shelters, have been opened up for people to take cover should they need to.

So, this was always going to be one of the indicators from the Israeli government about how seriously they took the situation and the potential for an escalatory threat by Hezbollah. In the recent weeks, they have been telling people, no, the instruction hasn't changed. The instruction hasn't changed. Well now, the instruction has changed.

But it does feel as if, at the moment, we are in a phase where the IDF is assessing what damages they may or may not have had to the targets that Hezbollah claims, and also trying to assess what impact they have caused with their preemptory strikes and whether or not there are other packages of strikes at weapons dumps.

That the sort of thing that we've seen the Israeli air force do over the past few days inside of Lebanon to see if there are more sites that they would want to strike inside of Lebanon. We are still hearing the occasional fighter jet in the skies above us, and while Ben Gurion Airport is no longer on a shutdown here in Tel Aviv, we haven't yet seen civilian aircraft flying into the city.

It doesn't mean that it won't be happening, but it is all indicative of this sort of raised awareness threat level and an advisory level, I think, is perhaps the best way to put it for the civilians and citizens of Israel at the moment.

WATSON: Thanks, Nic, you are in Tel Aviv. I'm going to turn now to Ben Wedeman in Beirut. Both of you are in cities that have largely been spared the damage and the casualties of a conflict that has been raging across the border between Lebanon and Israel for more than 10 months. Ben, you have been down along that border. Can you describe what it looks like? What it feels like, and what the impact is like on the civilian population on both sides of the border?

WEDEMAN: Certainly, in southern Lebanon, what you see is the many predominantly Shia towns and villages along the border have been devastated. Many of the homes have been destroyed. More than 100,000 people have had to flee their homes in that area. And since October, around 150 Lebanese civilians have been killed.

Most recently, day before yesterday, a seven-year-old boy last Saturday, 10 Syrian workers were killed in an Israeli strike. And the economy, of course, is at a complete standstill. That's an area of Lebanon that has many olive groves. They grow tobacco down there and fruit and other things, and many of those agriculture areas have been ravaged by fires caused by Israeli munitions.

Among them, I think it's been documented by Amnesty International human rights and others, the Israelis have used white phosphorus that has completely devastated the agricultural land in the South of Lebanon.

[02:10:00]

And this is on top of the fact that, of course, the Lebanese economy is in catastrophic state. So just beyond the south, people here have really felt the effects of war. Normally in the summer Beirut and Lebanon is full of members of the wealthy Lebanese diaspora who come back to spend the summer and spend lots of money.

Many -- most of them have now fled the country. So, it's most severely felt in Southern Lebanon, but certainly here in Beirut, they feel it as well. Now, just to add a little line of news we've just received, Hezbollah has put out its third statement of the day, essentially denying Israeli claims that was a preemptive strike, insisting that this was the initiative of Hezbollah.

And that the Israeli claims of taking out all of these targets in South Lebanon, the statement described as an empty statement.

WATSON: All right. Ben, thank you very much for that latest update. Ben Wedeman in Beirut, Nic Robertson in Tel Aviv, and we will be checking back with you on this unfolding situation. Joining me now from London is Jasmine El-Gamal. She is a Former Middle East Advisor at the U.S. Department of Defense.

I want to get your perspective, having been somebody who has worked in the U.S. government, what signals are you hearing from the White House right now as these warring parties' kind of issue threats and shoot at each other? And bring us up to date on what the Biden Administration, the military assets that it has brought to the region, as we're reporting on this escalation in the border conflict between Hezbollah and Israel.

JASMINE EL-GAMAL, FORMER MIDDLE EAST ADVISOR, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE: Good morning, Ivan. It's good to be with you. So obviously this is something that has been expected for many months. I mean, we've been talking over and over again for months now about the fact that an escalation was imminent.

We've been talking about the risks of an escalation, of a miscalculation, the risks of a regional war. And so, in a sense, this was not a surprise. We knew that Israel had assassinated a top military commander of Hezbollah. We knew that Hezbollah was going to retaliate, and today it began that retaliation. And I say the word began, because I think this is the beginning of a series of escalations that we're going to see in the region.

Now, Israeli intelligence had gotten word that Hezbollah was going to retaliate. They were saying that there were up to 6000 rockets that were going to be launched towards Israel, and Israel then preemptively struck, so that only about 300 of those rockets, give or take, actually struck Israel.

Now, a couple of things to note about that the targets that were targeted were military targets. So, we can say that Hezbollah wasn't targeting -- you know civilian targets in Israel, it was not targeting shopping malls or daycare centers or any of these kinds of worst-case scenarios that the Israelis and that the U.S. had anticipated in their -- in their sort of basket of responses that Hezbollah might respond to. They were military targets, and so the preemptive strike prevented that from happening.

Now to your question about the military assets that the U.S. had sent to the region. As we've discussed before on the program, when the U.S. sends military assets to the region Ivan, it is for two reasons. One is to deter a response, or to deter military action from its adversaries. It's to say we -- you know, you don't want to do this, because the second reason is we're going to respond if we need to.

You don't send military assets to the region if you're not prepared to use them. And so even though the overall message and the primary message, the primary sort of objective of these military assets is to prevent an escalation. The secondary objective is to be prepared, in the case of an escalation, to actually respond, and that's what we might see now.

In case there is additional escalation in the region, in case there is a second or third strike by Hezbollah that the military assets of the United States are there to respond if necessary.

WATSON: And you know, Jasmine, I do want to bring us up to date. There's been an update released by the Israeli military. It says about hundreds of its fighter jets struck and destroyed thousands of Hezbollah rocket launcher barrels, which it says were aimed and ready to fire toward northern and central Israel.

[02:15:00]

Hezbollah has yet to comment about that claim. I'd like to ask you, throughout this very complicated and deadly conflict that's been going on in Gaza, across the border with Lebanon and Israel, and then where Iran has gotten involved, and there have been strikes against targets in Syria as well by the Israeli military.

Have we seen the U.S. military intervene directly on Israel's behalf when it comes to the border conflict with Hezbollah thus far? Do you anticipate that it could?

EL-GAMAL: Right. So, we haven't seen them intervene directly yet. So far, the military assets in the region, the aircraft carriers and the missile submarines and all of that stuff, has not been activated. It's there just in case of a major conflict that Israel can't handle by itself.

But you do know that Israel has a very, very sophisticated missile defense system. It has the Iron Dome; it has David Sling. It has all of these, this sort of infrastructure that the U.S. has provided, that the U.S. obviously funds and provides precisely for moments like this, Ivan.

So, so far, we see that the response by Hezbollah is being managed by the Israeli defense system as it should as it's meant to be, and we haven't seen any particular reason or an escalation enough for the U.S. military to get involved.

I wanted to make a point quickly, just because I heard you mention this earlier in the program about the ceasefire negotiations. This obviously means that attack by Hezbollah obviously means that the ceasefire negotiations are not going well, that the parties in the region do not anticipate an agreement coming to bear, which we all of course, were hoping for, that an agreement would be reached on the ceasefire, that the hostages would be released and there would be a ceasefire and a pause in the fighting in Gaza in order to deter such retaliation by Hezbollah and Iran.

The fact that we're now seeing this kind of retaliation, the fact that Hezbollah has determined that it's now the right time to be lobbying rockets at Israel. Tells you, and tells us a lot about what -- where the ceasefire negotiations are -- and the prospect for those coming to fruition.

WATSON: That's a very good point, because negotiators are supposed to be meeting in Cairo today, trying to work towards some kind of a ceasefire in the ongoing conflict in Gaza, which has claimed the lives of more than 40,000 Palestinians thus far. Jasmine El-Gamal, thank you very much for your analysis and for joining us from London.

EL-GAMAL: Thank you Ivan.

WATSON: We will have much more on this conflict in the hours ahead. Please stay with CNN. We'll be coming back after the break.

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[02:20:00]

WATSON: Welcome back to CNN's ongoing breaking coverage of the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel. You are now looking at live pictures of Israel's border with Lebanon. That's just hours after Hezbollah started what it called the first phase of its retaliation for the killing of its top military commander by Israel last month, just outside Beirut.

The militant group fired at least 200 rockets into Israel in recent hours, with Israeli air defenses working to shoot them down. Earlier, Israel said it conducted preemptive strikes on the militants across the border using about hundred fighter jets in the operation. The statement said thousands of Hezbollah's rocket launcher barrels were destroyed. Now, for more analysis on this unfolding situation, I'm joined now by

Retired Australian Army Major General Mick Ryan, live now from Brisbane. Good to see you again Mick. I want to ask you about what is going on right now and the conflict we have seen across the border between Hezbollah and Israel over the last ten and a half months, versus the full-fledged ground war that was fought in 2006 between these two enemies. That's a conflict that I covered firsthand.

How would you compare that last round of intense fighting between these two enemies to what we've seen unfold over the course of the last year?

MAJ. GEN. MICK RYAN, AUSTRALIAN ARMY (RET.): Well, I think we could say that Hezbollah has been more provocative this time than it was in July 2006 when that previous Israeli operation into Southern Lebanon occurred that was based on the ambush of some Israeli troops. Several were killed. But this time, you've seen thousands of Hezbollah rockets go across the border and cause damage and death and destruction in northern Israel.

So, if anything, Hezbollah has been far more provocative and Israel has shown more restraint in going across the border and attacking them.

WATSON: Do you think that this could unfold into any kind of ground operations which did take place in 2006 when the Israeli military invaded Southern Lebanon.

RYAN: Yeah. I mean, that was a fairly significant operation. And whilst the IDF was criticized at the time for over reliance on air power, it really hurt Hezbollah. Indeed, the head of Hezbollah said, or at least intimated afterwards, I wish we hadn't done that.

You know, the IDF has said it's prepared for a ground operation in Southern Lebanon. It's always prepared to do that. It's one of the key training focal points for the IDF. So, if it has to, it would be able to do that, but it would be a very difficult fight for both sides.

WATSON: And -- you know compared to 2006 quite a lot of time has gone on since then. Have you seen a change in Hezbollah's capabilities from nearly 20 years ago to today?

RYAN: Well, I think we've seen a massive expansion in the number of missiles they have. Clearly, they have between one and 200,000 missiles, but they've developed other weapons, a wide range of different kinds of surveillance and strike drones.

[02:25:00]

You've seen these tunneling efforts from Hezbollah, informed and supported by North Korean engineered. So, their capabilities change, but they've also professionalized their ground forces. They're capable of fairly significant conventional and unconventional operations. It will be a real challenge for the IDF, which, to be fair, has learned and improved over that time as well. RYAN: Do you see signs that this would potentially be contained as it

has been to the border areas, or that it could extend further to cities like Tel Aviv in Israel and Beirut in Lebanon.

WATSON: Well, certainly, if Israel experiences success against Hezbollah on the ground, we should expect that Hezbollah will continue to launch medium and even long-range strikes against Israeli cities and key military sites. It won't want to be seen, to be losing a fight against Israel in the fullness of time. It did lose the 2006 invasion, but it didn't seem like time. So, I mean, Hezbollah has far more capability to hurt the IDF and Israel this time around.

WATSON: All right. Mick Ryan, Retired Australian Army Major General, I believe, right from Brisbane. Thank you very much for your analysis, and I'm sure we'll speak again soon. We'll be right back with more breaking news coverage after the break.

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WATSON: Welcome back. Returning, now to our breaking news coverage the back-and-forth exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The militant group is claiming success in what it calls the first phase of strikes against Israel. Hezbollah says it fired more than 300 rockets towards Israel, more than the 200 so far that Israel claims were fired.

Earlier Israel's military launched preemptive strikes against Hezbollah targets, saying it had intelligence that the group was preparing to launch missiles and rockets towards Israel. The Israeli military says about hundreds of its fighter jets destroyed thousands of Hezbollah rocket launcher barrels aimed for northern and central Israel.

CNN has reporters on both sides of this conflict. We're joined now by Ben Wedeman in Beirut and Nic Robertson in Tel Aviv. Nic, I'd like to start with you first. You know the latest round of hostilities comes more than ten months into what has been a border conflict between Hezbollah and Israel.

You've been up to the Northern Israeli border with Lebanon. Can you describe what you've seen up there? And what the conflict looks and feels like from that vantage point?

ROBERTSON: Yeah, about 80 to 100,000 people along the border from border communities evacuated people like chicken farmers who have chicken sheds that produce tens of thousands of eggs a day, very, very close to the border, literally running for safety and shelter when there's incoming rocket fire from Hezbollah, some of the chicken sheds have been hit.

So, anyone that's got a business and has stayed close to the border to try to run that business faces an extremely difficult situation. If you take Kiryat Shimona, where this regular rocket falls, the Israeli government have been sort of developing that area as a high tech Agro Hub, getting high tech investment into that area that's been brought to a complete standstill.

Many of the families that have moved up for sort of a better life with more land in these high-tech companies have left the money stopped coming in. Life to all intents and purposes, and certainly, businesses in that area have ground to pretty much hold. The population there demanding that Israel secure the border area, push Hezbollah back and allow them to go back to their homes, and that pressure is becoming acute right around now.

It was a few months ago that the defense minister promised to get people back home in time for the schools to restart. That's in about a week's time here in Israel, that is clearly not going to happen right now. At the moment, it's incredibly tense.

The advice that are given to the civilians south of that sort of exclusion zone, if you will, in places like Haifa and Acco and other areas further south in the Golan, is that they need to be very not traveling around unnecessarily, not grouping in numbers of more than 30 people.

In fact, that goes from all the way that instruction is all the way from Tel Aviv, right up to northern border, looking down on the beaches here in Tel Aviv, which you can normally expect to see good, strong clusters of people on the beaches there. That's not the case this early in the morning. But along the northern border, it is very clear the instruction that people should stay close to their shelters.

So, there's a huge internal political pressure on the government to make that northern part of the border safe so that people can go back home. But into the moment of today, as you say, the IDF saying that they used about hundred fighter jets to take out thousands of launcher barrels.

That doesn't mean those barrels actually had missiles in them this morning when they were hit, but they were certainly facilities that the IDF was aware of, and they say that was in about 40 different locations or areas.

However, all of that said one of the key things that was set to happen today were peace talks in Cairo. And what we're hearing from Israeli officials at the moment is they still anticipate at this moment. Of course, things can change, but at this moment, they still anticipate sending their delegation to attend those hugely important peace talks in Cairo.

Of course, anything along the border could change that scenario, but I think the sense at the moment is Hezbollah claims phase one. And there's a sense that it -- that at the moment, at least, this is a pause and an assessment, and it's not continuing at that level at the moment.

[02:35:00]

WATSON: Nic, just hundred fighter jets in the air. That sounds like a massive air force Sortie. Thank you very much for that update. I'm going to turn now to Ben Wedeman. The last time we really saw Hezbollah and Israel going at it with the gloves off was in 2006 a savage, month long conflict that left the southern suburbs of Beirut in ruins and much of southern Lebanon as well.

Do you get the sense that Hezbollah is prepared to embark on that kind of a conflict again, as it retaliates, in its words, for the Israeli assassination of Fuad Shukr?

WEDEMAN: No Ivan, I don't get that sense. In fact, Hezbollah, in its latest announcement, said that it has completed with success its military operations for today, calling it phase one. Now the question is, when, what? How is going to be phase two conducted, if at all?

Certainly, there's doesn't seem to be a lot of appetite for a repeat of or something worse, from what we saw in 2006. You know and we're expecting to hear later today from Hassan Nasrallah, the Secretary General of Hezbollah, which will obviously give us a better idea of where this is going?

But he's made it clear all along that Hezbollah's firing at Israeli targets was in support of the people of Gaza, that he also made it very clear time and time again that if the war ends in Gaza, Hezbollah will stop firing at Israel, and we saw that in fact, he did make good on that back in November of last year, when there was an eight day pause in the fighting and it was quiet on the border between Israel and Lebanon.

Now the problem is, I think what is got many people worried here in Lebanon and elsewhere is that in the past, the United States, through its diplomatic efforts, was able to put an end to wars in Gaza, wars in Lebanon. The war in Lebanon in 2006 lasted 34 days and came to an end.

Previous wars in Gaza, the last big one, 2014 was about a month and a half long, but it came to an end. But the United States, for whatever reasons, has failed miserably to stop the fighting, to put pressure on Israel and to put pressure on others, to put pressure on Hamas, to bring the fighting to an end.

And the longer this war goes on, the more dangerous it becomes in terms of spreading from just the border area in Lebanon and Gaza to across the region, keeping in mind, of course, that Hezbollah is a member of the so-called Axis of Resistance led by Iran, which includes the Houthis in Yemen, who have very successfully, despite the best efforts of the United States and its allies, to continuously interfere with navigation through the Red Sea.

You have the various Shia groups in Syria and Iraq, who have slowed down their targeting of American forces in Syria and Iraq. But the threat is still there. So, the longer this war goes on and the longer the U.S. diplomacy fails to bring it to an end, there's always the danger that, despite today, perhaps Hezbollah is saying they're done for now, that something could go terribly wrong, and it could suddenly ignite into the regional war so many have feared for so long Ivan.

WATSON: So long. Ben Wedeman in Beirut. Thank you. Nic Robertson in Tel Aviv, also thank you for your report. I'm going to turn now to Gideon Levy. He's a Columnist for "The Haaretz" newspaper and was an advisor to Former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres. And he joins us now via Skype from Tel Aviv. Good to see you, sir.

GIDEON LEVY, COLUMNIST, HAARETZ: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

WATSON: Gideon, I'd like to ask this exchange of fire across the border is coming as negotiators were supposed to be meeting in Cairo today to talk about a possible ceasefire in the agonizing conflict in Gaza.

[02:40:00]

Do you have any hopes that the negotiating parties can come to some kind of agreement? Could this latest exchange of fire with Hezbollah in Israel endanger those talks?

LEVY: Unfortunately, I have no hope from those talks, and so do most of the player, including Hezbollah. Hezbollah claimed that deal today, that if there will be a ceasefire in Gaza, it will not. It will stop firing Israel. But Hezbollah came to conclusion which anyone who follows the negotiation must come. Those negotiations are hollow.

They lead to nowhere as long as Israel is not ready, and it is not ready to stop the war in Gaza, to put an end to it, not just a ceasefire, but to put an end to it, and to withdraw from the Gaza. As long as this does not happen the fire in Gaza continues, and the risk of a regional war is still here, and here we are this morning.

WATSON: Mr. Levy, why are you, as a former Israeli government official, putting the blame on the Israeli government for being an obstacle to peace in Gaza?

LEVY: First of all, because I got more matured and I learned a lot ever since I was the aide of Shimon Peres. It's decades ago. But in any case, that's not the point. The point is that Israel is not ready to put an end to the war, and it said it quite clearly, Israel is even risking the fate of the hostages in order to continue the war.

According to Prime Minister Netanyahu, whom I respect, the goals were not accomplished yet, and he wants this total victory, which can never be achieved. But as long as he doesn't perceive it as achievable or achieve, the war will continue, and if Israel wants the war to continue, there will not be a ceasefire.

WATSON: You know, you may have just heard from our correspondent in Beirut, Ben Wedeman, who cited historical examples of successive U.S. governments that help to put pressure on the warring parties to bring previous rounds of hostilities to an end. And he was basically arguing that the U.S., the Biden Administration, has failed thus far. What is your assessment of the diplomatic efforts of the Biden Administration, which says it wants a ceasefire?

LEVY: So, first of all, the outcome speaks for itself. There is no ceasefire. In other words, the diplomatic efforts failed, and it was not necessarily not inevitable. Israel continued because there was no pressure on Israel. Comparing to former wars, there is one difference that your reporter Ben did not mention.

In Israel, there is now the most-right wing, nationalistic, militaristic government ever. On the other hand, Biden with all his good intentions, and I have no doubts about his good intentions, I'm sure he wanted to bring a ceasefire, but you don't bring a ceasefire and continue to arm one party. You don't call to stop the war and continue sending, in an unconditioned way, arms one party.

How do you want him to stop if you fill him up with arms and ammunition? So, the United States has to decide, do they really want to bring an end to this war? If the answer is yes, you have to take some measures, not only talking. If you want this war to continue, you are carrying a very, very heavy responsibility.

WATSON: All right. Gideon Levy, thank you very much for your analysis. Very much appreciate it.

LEVY: Thank you.

WATSON: We will have much more on this unfolding story. Please stay with CNN. We'll be back after the break.

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[02:45:00]

WATSON: This is CNN. I'm Ivan Watson in Hong Kong. We will get back to our breaking news coverage from the Middle East in a few moments. But first, some of the other stories that we are following today. U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz hit -- will hit the campaign trail again this week. They'll kick off a bus tour in the battleground state of Georgia, marking their first time campaigning together in the state.

The tour will swing through southern Georgia on Wednesday and conclude with a rally in Savannah on Thursday. President Joe Biden won Georgia by less than 12,000 votes in 2020 and it is a closely watched state again in this election.

Meantime, Former U.S. President Donald Trump will campaign in the Midwest this week in two battleground states that could prove to be decisive in this election. He will deliver remarks on the economy in Michigan on Thursday and host a town hall later in the evening in Wisconsin. His campaign says he will also meet with voters in Wisconsin to listen to their concerns.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL NELSON, NASA ADMINISTRATOR: Space flight is risky, even at its safest and even at its most routine, and a test flight by nature, is neither safe nor routine.

STEVE STICH, NASA'S COMMERCIAL CREW PROGRAM MANAGER: It was just too much risk with the crew, and so we decided to pursue the uncrewed technically. KEN BOWERSOX, NASA'S SPACE OPERATIONS MISSION DIRECTORATE, ASSOC. ADMIN: I'm really proud of the NASA team and the Boeing team for all the work they've been doing the last couple of months. It's really been impressive to see how they've been very agile in testing, gathering data and completing analysis. And then having the tough discussions that go along with processing that data and coming to conclusions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[02:50:00]

WATSON: You're watching NASA officials there announcing that Boeing's Starliner Capsule is not safe enough to bring two astronaut home. Butch Wilmore and Sunny Williams have been stuck on the International Space Station since June because of technical issues with the spaceship. NASA says a capsule from Boeing competitor SpaceX, will bring them home in February at the earliest.

Meanwhile, Boeing's Starliner will fly home empty if the uncrewed trip goes well, NASA could still certify Starliner for human space flight, authorizing it for routine trips to orbit despite not completing its mission as intended.

Now, the Billionaire CEO of Telegram was arrested at an airport near Paris. Pavel Durov is expected to appear in court Sunday. BFM TV reports he was wanted due to a lack of moderators on Telegram to prevent it from being used for money laundering, drug trafficking and sharing pedophilic content. The encrypted messaging app is based in Dubai. It says it is committed to never disclosing any information about its users.

German police say a suspect in the stabbing deaths of three people at a music festival in Solingen in Western Germany has turned himself in and reportedly confessed to the deadly crime. The U.S. -- the suspect, rather, is a 26-year-old Syrian man, and his actions are currently quote, under intensive investigation according to police.

Islamic State claimed responsibility, but offered no evidence to back the claim. Eight other people were wounded. Police have not determined a motive for the attack. Two neighboring towns later cancelled weekend festivals. We're taking a break, a quick break now, and we'll be back with more of our breaking news coverage as Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon exchange strikes. Stay with CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[02:55:00]

WATSON: Welcome back. I want to bring you up to speed with the breaking news story in the Middle East. Hezbollah is claiming success in what it calls the first phase of its retaliation against Israel for the killing of its top military commander. The IDF says the militant group fired at least 200 rockets from Lebanon in recent hours, with Israeli air defenses working to shoot them down. But earlier, Israel said it conducted preemptive strikes on the

militants across the border using about hundred fighter jets in the operation. The statement said they destroyed thousands of Hezbollah's rocket launcher barrels. I'm Ivan Watson. More of our CNN breaking news coverage after a short break.

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