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CNN This Morning

Blinken Says, U.S. Working to Get Assistance into Gaza; IDF Says, 199 People Held Hostage in Gaza; Happening Now, U.S. Evacuating Americans from Israel by Sea. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired October 16, 2023 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:00]

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR: Andrew McCabe and Michal Cotler-Wunsh, thank you very much.

And CNN This Morning continues right now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Along Israel's border with Gaza, more than 300,000 soldiers, tanks, heavy equipment, artillery, await orders.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: One of the big issues for the IDF to distinguish between Hamas and civilians.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We may have experienced war before, but what's happening right now is unprecedented.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Israel has the right to defend itself, but he said that they should not occupy Gaza.

JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT: I think it would be a big mistake.

ANTONY BLINKEN, SECRETARY OF STATE: The way that Israel does this matters.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are going to destroy Hamas. They opened this war. We are going to win it.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: The work to rescue hostages, including Americans, is becoming more complicated.

JAKE SULLIVAN, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: The president has no higher priority than getting Americans back safe.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Those are innocent civilians. They have rights.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What we saw was the closest thing to the Holocaust that we've seen in 80 years.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't have another home. I don't have another land. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're on the edge of the abyss here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That slogan of never again, it wasn't a suggestion. It's something that we intend to act on.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: Well, good morning, everyone. I'm Phil Mattingly with Poppy Harlow in New York. Erin Burnett is live for us in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Right now, Secretary of State Antony Blinken is also in Israel meeting again with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The dire humanitarian crisis is escalating in Gaza, and an Israeli ground offensive appears to be imminent.

Blinken said this morning the U.S. is, quote, actively working to ensure that humanitarian assistance, like water, food, and medicine, can get into Gaza.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Secretary of State Blinken also said yesterday a safe passageway into Egypt via the Rafah crossing in the south would be open as half a million people have fled Northern Gaza to Southern Gaza.

But overnight, those negotiations appear to have stalled. The Israeli prime minister's office just saying, quote, at the moment there is neither a ceasefire nor humanitarian assistance in the Gaza Strip in return for the exit of foreigners.

MATTINGLY: And brand new this morning, Israel says now 199 people are being held hostage, up from about 155 just yesterday.

We are covering this from across the world. Let's begin with CNN Anchor Erin Burnett live and Tel Aviv, Israel.

Erin, last hour, you heard explosions. This has been such a dynamic situation every single day. What's happening on the ground right now?

ERIN BURNETT, CNN ANCHOR: Yes. All right, what's happening there, and we did hear explosions, as you said, just about an hour ago. We've heard them through the night. And, as I said, Israeli helicopters, Israeli Air Force, so you've heard all of that, this is the tempo that we've been experiencing.

I will say sort of that the heavy landing of explosions in Gaza that had become that that rumbling background that you sort of feel in your body even, here we have not heard so much of that this morning but we do know the Israeli Air Force struck about 250 targets in Gaza yesterday, as everyone waits.

I should say, you mentioned that Rafah border crossing, that crucial crossing between Gaza and Egypt that remains closed, the Egyptian foreign minister just moments ago saying there is no progress in any efforts to open up that border, which is so crucial for anybody getting out, but most importantly for humanitarian aid getting in, which would be at the very least what is so desperately needed there.

But that is the very latest that we're hearing on the ground here. As, of course, you're in this moment of pause and waiting again, an incredibly quiet and anxious country waiting for the go. As right now you mentioned, the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu here have officially begun their meetings where I am in Tel Aviv, Phil and Poppy.

HARLOW: You know, Erin, we heard over the weekend Israel warning about talking about the next phase of the war. You were with us all last week really on the border there with Gaza, and you saw troops massing and that has increased since. What is your sense on the ground of how imminent this next phase on the ground likely will be?

BURNETT: Well, of course, we've observed that and our teams along that border continue to see the readiness, and it is ready.

And as we've said, more than 300,000, 350,000, 360,000 troops amassed there. There is only so long you can wait.

The real question had been when Antony Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state came back again today, right? Nobody knew that was going to happen until yesterday. He was here at the end of last week meeting with the prime minister. So, the question was, well, why was he returning? Was that perhaps to influence Prime Minister Netanyahu on what he would do in Gaza or when he would go to try to slow it down?

Majority leader Chuck Schumer was here yesterday with a bipartisan senatorial delegation, which included Senator Romney. And he said, no, he didn't think that was the reason, that the reason was to keep negotiations on track, which at least if you look at in terms of the border crossing itself, this crucial, very specific thing, there's been negotiations on, there has been no progress as of yet, no progress as of yet.

And that, of course, is separate from what we now know to be 199 confirmed hostages being held in Gaza. We don't know the state of their injuries alive, dead, where they're held, anything, but that obviously is the other crucial piece of this.

And all of this coming in the context of what is a mass evacuation of people from Israel itself, Gaza obviously with 2 million people and 1 million supposedly moving to the south of Gaza, nowhere to go from there. But here in Israel, Americans being given a means of egress to get out of a country that doesn't have many borders that you can get out of, and an airport where international airlines are not at all or very rarely even serving it.

CNN's Sara Sidner is in Haifa, Israel, speaking to American families boarding a ship. Sara, because that's the way that the U.S. is doing this, essentially a military cruise ship, but something that a lot of Americans don't see when you hear about the power of the U.S. military. We don't often see what you're looking at, but that is an incredible ship, and that is being used for evacuation.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, it's called Rhapsody of the Seas, and it is a cruise ship, by all accounts. You look at how massive it is. It can carry about 2,000-plus passengers.

What is interesting today is we know that there were 20,000 Americans that contacted the State Department, contacted their embassy, who were here in Israel. Not all of them wanted to leave, but they were trying to get information as to whether they could leave or any information from the State Department to make sure that they can stay safe, whether in this country or in order to get out. Very, very hard to get out, very few flights are going. So, this was one of the ways the State Department decided to try and get Americans out of Israel who wanted to leave.

What we found interesting today is the numbers look very small compared to the number of people that can get on this ship. And, by the way, this is not free for Americans. Americans will have to pay the government back. They will get a bill of some sort. We are told by the passengers that that is what they were told. But for now, they're able to get on this boat.

What we are mostly seeing is families with children and often families with several children who just feel that this is the best thing for their families and especially for the kids who have been quite frightened by this war.

Listen to one family's journey as they made it here to get on this boat, by the way, that will take ten hours to get to Cyprus.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've been helping out with the war effort in every way that I can for the last week. I've been driving soldiers to the front. I've been, you know, volunteering, bringing medical equipment to the front in my small car. And I'm not leaving so much as getting out of the way. And I don't want to have another family that needs to be rescued should something go wrong. But we'll be back as soon as the school year starts and we'll be here to help out, do what we need to do and rebuild.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: So there are a lot of families, as you heard there, are a bit conflicted about whether they stay or whether they go. That's happening between family members. We talked to another family whose 14-year-old daughter said, I do not agree with my parents. We should stay here. We should not leave Israel. We should be here to help out in any way possible.

So, it is an interesting conundrum for families who are trying to figure out whether to stay or go. A lot of people, obviously, they're U.S. citizens, but they live here in Israel. And those families seem to have the most conflict about what it is they should do. But for safety and especially for the children, they are really looking at that as the reason that they need to leave Israel for now. Erin?

BURNETT: Yes. I know, Sara, when you think about it, 100,000 dual Israeli-American citizens, many of them truly live here. You know, I was talking to a family. They were going to be getting on one of the El Al flights to the United States, where they have family, but extremely conflicted.

But, again, as you point out, young children, and we do know that Americans who are able to get from Tel Aviv to, you know-- there are some charter flights being operated to Athens. And in Athens, you know, US commercial carriers, Delta, United are picking up a lot of capacity to get those Americans home.

Sara, you know, where you are, what is the feeling? I mean, it is such a small country, right? The distances between where you are, I are, any borders, I mean, it's all incredibly small relative to the American sense of consciousness. But when you talk about where you're standing, you've got Lebanon to the north. You've got what's going on to Gaza and the south. What is the anxiety and the sense of how imminent action is where you are?

SIDNER: Yes. You've got Syria and Lebanon to the north, there on the Golan Heights, and, of course, you have Gaza to the south. Look, this is a place that gets sirens. And the sirens aren't because of what's coming over from Gaza. The sirens will start going off because the rockets that may be coming over from Lebanon. You know, Hezbollah is in Lebanon, is an enemy of Israel in every sense of the world, also is funded by Iran, and they have a lot of munitions.

We have seen some fighting, according to the Israeli military there in that border area.

[07:10:04]

We are a little bit beyond the border. We are not right up on the border, but certainly Haifa is a target.

You know, look, Israel is a target. They can shoot missiles from Lebanon and hit Tel Aviv. When that happened, actually, about 14 or 15 years ago when they discovered that they had that kind of range coming from Lebanon, there are hospitals that have built bunkers to deal with that because they realized that Tel Aviv, which was generally a place that didn't see much rocket fire, they realized just how dangerous it might be, how vulnerable they may be, even in Tel Aviv, from all the way to the north of the country.

This is really a remarkable moment in the history of Israel. You know, there's a long, long battle that had conflict that has been going on between the Palestinians and the Israelis. And this is probably the biggest one that we have seen so far in our lifetimes, to watch this play out brings a lot of fear. It brings a lot of anxiety, obviously in Israel, but very much so in Gaza, where people are really trapped.

And I think the juxtaposition, Erin, between what is happening in Gaza, where people can't get out or almost impossible to get out, very difficult to get out and what is happening here, I mean, look, we're in the Haifa port. You know, it's open. People can come here as long as they signed up for it, get on a boat and get out of here. It's just a very different feeling. Erin?

BURNETT: Yes, it absolutely is. And interesting, Phil and Poppy, though, as Sara says, the palpable sense of fear. I think, you know, when we have all reported from Ukraine, you get a siren, right? Obviously, those missiles are coming from very far away, so you have time. There's less anxiety when a siren goes off. There's also the possibility that that missile or plane could be dropping that in a very wide swath of space. That is not the case here, right? When you have sirens go off here, it's because they know it's a very tiny space where that rocket could land.

So, the other night up here, you know, we did have, we've had plenty of explosions here, but the sirens went off. The former Israeli prime minister was with me. You know, his security detail had found a place, you know, where he would go and sort of run down two flights of stairs. Because when you get the siren, it means the risk is real. People here take it seriously. They do run for cover. There isn't the sense of, well, it happens so often and it's not a real risk, so we're just going to continue with our daily lives. That does not happen here.

And that is a very different feeling than we experience in Ukraine, and it's because of the proximity of the missiles and also because of the specificity of the Iron Dome's ability to say what space is actually at risk from being hit by that incoming rocket.

MATTINGLY: Yes, it's such a good point. I want to turn now to CNN Military Analyst, retired Lieutenant General Mark Hertling. To that point, you know, the proximity here, the density particularly as it appears Israel is about to launch one of the more significant urban warfare campaigns that we've seen in a long period of time. Intelligence has to be critical in this moment right. How good is the IDF's intelligence?

LT. GEN. MARK HERTLING (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, they're gaining, Phil. That's the only thing you can say. They lost attention, they lost focus, that's pretty obvious, on Gaza over the last couple of years They've seen it as a political movement. They haven't paid as much attention to it.

So, whenever you take your eye off the ball even slightly, and I'm saying it may have been just slightly You lose some intelligence factor when you have things like hostages and the potential to strike targets or even a ground invasion or a ground incursion, you have to have intelligence to drive your operation to tell you where to go, what to target, what to see. And that's the problem that they have right now. They're trying to gain more intelligence back from what they've missed over the last couple months.

HARLOW: A really significant development overnight for people just joining us. Israel now says 199 hostages. That's way up from where I was 24 hours ago. Big concern is the tunnel operation and where those hostages may be held.

Can you compare the sophistication and the breadth of Hamas' tunnels now to almost a decade ago, 2014?

HERTLING: Yes. Well, this is a very simplistic diagram to show the kinds of exit routes they have from buildings to underground tunnel locations. So, it shows, you know, to high-rise apartments one smaller apartment going down a group of stairs. This doesn't really paint the picture, Poppy.

These stairs, these shafts go down probably hundreds of feet and they are all over Gaza, mostly in the populated area. Inside the tunnels, which, you know, this shows one tunnel with a bunch of guys coming through it with rifles, that's not an indicator of the complexity of these tunnels. There are hundreds of miles of tunnels underneath Gaza. They are mainly in the three-- the major populated areas in the north, center and the south.

So, what you're seeing here is the ability for Hamas to move around to establish strong point defenses and to hide hostages.

[07:15:09]

Now we know there're 199. They can put them through that entire 25x2 mile area that's Gaza itself.

The other thing that's important is, you know, the U.S. military has trained on cave complexes, which are similar to tunnels. When you go in as an assaulting force into a tunnel, you are at a huge disadvantage because the defenders, in this case, Hamas, know where they want to be, set up positions, can fire on you. We've had training events where five or six people can hold off hundreds of attackers inside of a tunnel or inside of a cave complex.

MATTINGLY: I'm going to show you just, we have some of the videos of kind of the tunnel complexes, what they look like in terms of the entrances over time. And I think one of the big questions right now, as you look at these, is there have been updates. They never stopped necessarily building. And so gathering the most recent intelligence is so critical here.

You know, if you're a military officer planning the logistics of this operation, what are you seeing here?

HERTLING: I'm saying to myself, first of all, oh, crap, this is hard. The second thing I'm seeing is you can't put many soldiers in here to attack. And when you do, they are stuck in there. There's only one way in and one way out. And then once you get in there, you're curving around, you're going different routes, it breaks off, and you can't resupply them.

So, you have to be carrying your ammunition and all your equipment on your back when you go into here. And that makes it even tougher because these things are tight. Imagine yourself going through this with a pack on with a lot of stuff.

But then there's just the requirement for light, for night vision devices, for the ability to know where the enemy is. And, again, when you're targeting or when you're gaining intelligence above ground, you can have different intelligence drones or overhead platforms saying, here's where the enemy is. You can't do that underground. It's very difficult to do. So, it all just lends more complexity to the battlefield.

HARLOW: Not even though this time about just striking them and destroying them and killing terrorists inside of them, it's about assuming that there are hostages being held by the terrorists in them.

HERTLING: Yes.

HARLOW: That is a completely different scenario than 2014 or before.

HERTLING: Right. And not only do you have hostages but the fact that Hamas can move them around because these tunnels are so complex, you add stuff.

HARLOW: Thank you, General. I appreciate it very much.

MATTINGLY: Well, we're going to hear from Secretary of State Antony Blinken shortly as the Biden administration works to prevent a wider international crisis. We're going to bring you those remarks live.

HARLOW: We will also be speaking with a survivor of the Hamas attack on the Nova Music Festival who spoke with Secretary Blinken about it and finding her friends taking hostage. That message ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:20:00]

BURNETT: President Biden sounding off on the war between Israel and Hamas in a sweeping interview with 60 Minutes. The president touched on bringing the American hostages home and whether U.S. troops could be sent into combat, also talked about the crucially needed humanitarian corridor in Gaza and his message to the Lebanese militant group, Hezbollah.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT: We're saying we're going to do everything in our power to find those who are still alive and set them free, everything in our power. And I'm not going to go into the detail of that, but we're working like hell on.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can you foresee U.S. troops in combat in this new Middle East war?

BIDEN: I don't think that's necessary. Israel has one of the finest fighting forces in the country. I guarantee we're going to provide them everything they need.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You would like to see a humanitarian corridor that allows some of the 2 million Gazans out of the area.

BIDEN: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You would like to see humanitarian supplies brought into Gaza?

BIDEN: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So, you do not agree with the Israeli total siege of the Gaza Strip?

BIDEN: I'm confident that Israel is going to act under the major -- the rules of war.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Would you support Israeli occupation of Gaza at this point?

BIDEN: I think it would be a big mistake.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you believe that Hamas must be eliminated entirely?

BIDEN: Yes, I do. But there needs to be a Palestinian authority. There needs to be a path to a Palestinian state.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I wonder what is your message to Hezbollah and its backer, Iran.

BIDEN: Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Don't come across the border, don't escalate this war?

BIDEN: That's right.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BURNETT: CNN's Christiane Amanpour is live in London with more. And, Christiane, obviously they try to do with words, everything they can to avoid a larger war. But, nonetheless, Biden is saying that while Kamas must be eliminated, reoccupying Gaza would be a mistake.

How do you read between the lines here of what he's saying, and most important, what Israel and its enemies are hearing?

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: There aren't any lines to read between. The fact is that we do not know, and nor do the Israelis and nor do the Americans know, what the final endgame is. What do you do when and if you destroy and decapitate and decimate Hamas politically and militarily, if it's possible? What is the final endgame?

So, that is an issue, the wider war that the United States is trying to head off, given that Secretary of State Antony Blinken is doing a real shuttle diplomacy across all those major Middle Eastern capitals, that is also a real problem. What happens? He said don't when asked about Hamas, rather Hezbollah and Iran.

Iran's foreign minister meeting with Hamas in Qatar, having been also to meet with Hezbollah, has basically now said that Iran will not stand idly by if the airstrikes against Palestinians continue. What does that mean? The United States has already -- Israel, rather, has already bombed air strips in Syria, both in Damascus and in Aleppo, and there are constant skirmishes across the border.

[07:25:09]

Interestingly, Israel has not said that it sees a smoking gun from Iran. Clearly, nobody wants to get into that kind of war. And then, Erin, on the humanitarian side, this is also hugely complex, because yes, it is closed to all intents and purposes.

But I've been speaking to Arab leaders and officials who are very concerned about a, quote, exodus. Where are all these Palestinians being pushed from northern Gaza, which is what Israel says it wants to capture, because they do not want to see Palestinians pushed permanently out of Gaza, and then potentially never being allowed to come back.

They also don't want to see that as a precedent. What happens if certain Israelis, the right-wingers who want to -- have always thought, for instance, Jordan is a Palestinian homeland? They don't want to see that kind of process happening in the West Bank.

So, this is hugely complicated right now and not as simple. Well, it's clearly not simple, but just the idea of humanitarian corridors is also very, very complex.

BURNETT: Right, and strident criticism, vocal criticism of the civilian situation in Gaza from the king of Jordan, as well as from the leader of Egypt, making it very clear how they feel there.

But, Christiane, Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, just came back here. So, he's actually, as you and I are talking, meeting with the Israeli prime minister. No one had expected him to come back, right? He was here at the end of last week, then he decided last night, or it was announced last night, he would return.

The question was what was he returning for. Is he returning to try to get Netanyahu to pause or to consider or to pull back, or is he simply coming to assist in negotiations over border crossings?

We will have a press conference from them in a few moments, but what do you really think is happening behind those closed doors, Christiane?

AMANPOUR: Well, I think all of the above, frankly. The United States is trying to keep it from spilling over. It has to support Israel's right to self-defense, but it wants to make sure, if it's at all possible, to keep it within certain parameters.

Also, you know, the United States is implicated. It is involved because 29 at least of its citizens have been killed and there are apparently potentially Israeli-American hostages. So, the U.S. is absolutely involved.

But some people are cautioning. You know, the U.S. was asked, would they put boots on the ground, right, in that 60 Minutes? And Biden said, I don't think it's necessary. The U.S. is sending strike forces to the sea around Gaza and around Israel. What for? Is that to cover? Is that for covering fire? What is it for?

And just go back all the way to 1983 when the U.S. sent warships outside Lebanon and in support of Israel was involved in that war. And it had a terrible, terrible backlash against the United States, massive killings at the U.S. military barracks in Beirut and on and on and on. It was the beginning of really serious anti-American backlash in that part of the world. So, that has to be considered as well.

BURNETT: And also the hostages, Christiane. I mean, last night, you know, you point out in the 60 Minutes interview, President Biden saying no need for U.S. troops on the ground. Of course, John Kirby had left it on the table that when it comes to U.S. hostages, we're not going to take anything off the table as to whether you would need any kind of U.S. military power involved in that in Gaza.

Now, not taking it off the table isn't the same thing as saying you're going to do it. But, nonetheless, there is still that uncertainty, right? You have Americans being held hostage. And that is a whole new thing here.

AMANPOUR: What it is, and as I say, those hostage situations mostly started back there in Lebanon after a certain -- you know, after what I just told you about.

The thing is, the hostages, according to Israeli experts and former hostage negotiators and IDF people, they will not be able to be released or found without a ground incursion. It's only on the ground that you can get to those hostages. You already had a discussion about the parameters and the dangers of that.

And the question now is -- truly, the question is, if it's true that some of those hostages have already been killed in airstrikes, and we haven't had confirmation, but that's what Hamas has said, is Israel's first priority to save the hostages or is -- and I'm talking about in a ground incursion, or is it to decimate Hamas around Gaza City and in the north of Gaza? And that is a question that we don't know the answer to yet.

BURNETT: All right. Well, Christiane, Amanpour, thank you very much.

And, Poppy, I should say, the context here, unless this has changed overnight in strikes, is that the IDF says they've taken out about ten senior Hamas commanders. They say there are many more that they need, but that, already, without even going as far as a ground incursion, with the airstrikes that we've seen so far, at least ten senior commanders have been killed.

[07:30:08]