12 hours after Hamas incursion: Fighting continues in 22 areas, hostage situation confirmed
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Transcript
00:00 Can you give us, Iris, an update on what is now 12 hours since the attack this Saturday
00:06 morning?
00:07 We have reports through the day of Israelis being held hostage both in Israel and in Gaza.
00:15 That's a major aspect of this crisis.
00:19 It's a huge, I would say it's the heart of this issue and it was also the aim of this
00:23 operation.
00:24 Now, if you look back at the past 12 hours, you see that all the airstrikes were actually
00:28 cover, kept Israelis inside their houses, kept the military, made it more dangerous
00:35 for the military to go south.
00:37 So they were really cover for this infiltration by Palestinian militant groups who took control,
00:42 there's no other word for it, took control of a number of Israeli villages and are still
00:48 there.
00:49 The Israeli military is reporting that there are still gunfights in 22 sites, that in one
00:55 kibbutz, Kibbutz Be'eri in the south of the country, there are still people being held
01:01 inside a public building there, a dining room there, large numbers of people being held
01:07 there, even though there are Israeli military on the ground now in that kibbutz.
01:13 And we have heard for the first time in the past couple of hours a confirmation from Israel's
01:17 military spokesman that there are Israeli hostages, he said, prisoners of war and hostages,
01:24 which implies both soldiers and civilians being held inside the Gaza Strip.
01:30 And Hamas says, this is not confirmed, but Hamas says it has more than 50 soldiers, 50
01:37 Israelis taken captive.
01:40 Now Iris, Israel has top-notch intelligence, it's not been able to foresee these events.
01:50 How is that possible?
01:52 That's what people are asking here.
01:55 There's been a failure of intelligence, there's no doubt about that.
01:58 There's also been some kind of battle shock, you'd have to say, because there wasn't a
02:02 particularly quick response.
02:04 So they were in shock, they didn't respond quickly or not quickly enough.
02:09 And then what we saw after that was that they didn't secure the border fence.
02:14 And that's how these people who came in in the morning were able to take Israelis hostage
02:20 back into the Gaza Strip.
02:21 They put them on the vehicles they'd come in on and took them back out.
02:26 And what about the state of play with Israeli politics?
02:29 I was talking with a guest earlier about this.
02:33 This is an ultra-nationalist far-right coalition government and there have been lots of protests
02:38 against it concerning justice reform.
02:40 How is this going to play out?
02:44 Just this evening, within the last hour, we've heard from Israel's opposition leader, a very
02:50 strong opponent of Benjamin Netanyahu, who said this is the time for a unity government.
02:57 Get rid of the extremists, was more or less what he was saying.
03:00 Put aside all these legal judicial questions and we'll have a unity government to fight
03:08 this war.
03:09 Because you want competent people, you want people who know what they're doing.
03:13 And I guess the test of Benjamin Netanyahu now is whether he takes up that offer and
03:19 doesn't run a hard right government and considers, I suppose you could put it, the state of Israel
03:25 versus his own position, that ongoing legal battle that he's facing, whether he can put
03:31 back to one side and say right now, to fight a war you need unity, I need a unity government.
03:40 And where are we going with this now, Iris?
03:42 Are we going to see a land invasion?
03:44 How do you feel, what's your role as the correspondent in Jerusalem of many years standing?
03:50 What is your perception?
03:53 I was listening to an Israeli analyst who was for many years reporting in the Gaza Strip
04:00 and in the West Bank.
04:01 And he said that this is Hamas's 9/11.
04:04 They've exceeded beyond their expectations.
04:07 They didn't think they would get this far or do this well in their own terms.
04:11 And what that means is that perhaps there will be, like the old rules are broken, are
04:16 over now.
04:17 There's not going to be an Israeli airstrike in response and that'll be that.
04:25 We could well see a ground invasion.
04:26 And I have heard a report tonight that Israel's defense minister was speaking to Lloyd Austin,
04:32 to the US Secretary of Defense, and said to him, this particular invasion now could be
04:38 broader.
04:39 I think everybody is thinking about a possible ground invasion.
04:44 And I think Hamas must be thinking about that too, because there is a feeling that this
04:49 is different.
04:50 For the first time since 1973, for the first time in 50 years, Israel has used the words
04:56 we are at war.
04:58 And Israel's prime minister said, this is not just some operation.
05:03 This is a war.
05:05 And a war usually implies a ground offensive.
05:08 Thank you to Iris Makler speaking to us from Jerusalem.