There's a war going on right now.
U.S.
Defense Secretary
Lloyd Austin is reinforcing U.S.
support for Israel
after today's attack by Hamas in Gaza
that has left.
That has killed at least 70 Israelis
so far
and wounded some 985 other Israelis
who are being hospitalized.
Secretary Austin met with top U.S.
military officials
just a little while ago,
including the commander of the U.S.
military's Central Command.
Let's get more on
what's going on right now.
Retired Colonel Cedric
Leighton is joining us.
He's a retired U.S.
Air Force colonel.
He's a CNN military analyst
and CNN global affairs analyst Kimberly
Dozier is with us as well.
Colonel Leighton,
what do you think the U.S.
is doing right now to help Israel?
Because from the president on down,
there have been very strong statements
of support
for Israel in this war with Hamas.
Well, in
concrete terms, Wolf,
I will speculate a little bit here.
But the basic things that we end up doing
are logistical support.
If the Israelis needed.
Sometimes they'll be intelligence sharing
that will take place
and anything that the Israelis
will need in terms of
even diplomatic efforts
that might be ongoing,
say, with the Egyptians,
some of the Gulf states.
So a lot of these issues will take
ready to happen
to perhaps
help with the logistics aspects of this.
And there will be moving things
in perhaps to areas near Israel
in case
the Israelis need
to have their stockpiles replenished.
Kimberly.
An Israeli IDF military spokesperson
told me a little while ago
that fighting is ongoing right
now, still
ongoing in more than
20 different locations.
Special forces have been mobilized
as Israeli civilians are being held
hostage as well.
That's what he says.
Just how complicated is this response
from the Israeli military?
Complicated.
And it could
potentially stretch out for days,
if not weeks.
Once you have a hostage situation
where militants are barricaded
with Israeli citizens, civilians,
not just
some of the troops
that have reportedly been taken,
it becomes very difficult
for the Israeli Defense Forces.
They've got to move slowly and precisely.
They're already facing a massive blowback
of anger from the Israeli people
for missing this
and for not responding
quickly enough
to the attacks in the south.
That's what I was hearing from
some former Israeli and U.S.
officials, that it's not just
bad, that they've bad leveling, you know,
almost horrific,
that they
missed signs
of this potential complex attack,
but that when it started happening,
they didn't respond
fast enough to catch the militants faster
and to keep them from infiltrating
some of these communities.
I think that's why you've seen
the Israeli prime minister
call up more reservists
because they're going to have to
do something pretty dramatic
to respond to this
and to find all the conspiracies
and how this was plotted and carried out.
And that likely means
a ground incursion into Gaza.
That means bringing
a lot of active duty
forces to that theater to attack their.
Which means they'll need
reservist troops to backfill them
and keep the rest of the country secure.
They certainly will.
Colonel Leighton,
Israel formally is saying
that the IDF,
the Israel Defense Forces,
is preparing for a ground incursion
into Gaza and that, quote,
all options are on the table.
So give us a sense what that looks like.
To the most likely scenario,
Wolf,
just like Kimberly
mentioned, is the ground
incursion into Gaza.
That's going to be a really, really
tough thing for the Israelis to do.
They have done it before,
but this is urban warfare
and Gaza is the most crowded place
they think now on the face of the earth
in terms of density of population
per square mile.
And given that fact,
there are a lot of different things
that they'll have to consider.
They want to go after
the military targets,
in essence, be Hamas targets.
But there are going to be situations
where there will probably be
collateral damage,
in other words, civilian casualties.
And that's going to make it
really tough on the Israelis,
not only from a military standpoint,
but also from it
from a public relations standpoint.
The other thing
of course, that they're going to do
is they're going to use airpower
to go after these areas.
There's already been some of that
that we've seen around Gaza.
But I think the bombing attacks
are going to be more intense
and they're also going to try to cut off
any more Hamas fighters
from coming into Israel itself.
So that,
I think, is what things will look like,
at least for the next 24 or so hours.
And, Kimberly,
what is Israel watching right now
when it comes
first to the West Bank
and then up north,
the border with Lebanon?
Well, they're watching
for basically all their other opponents
for two things.
Any attacks from Iranian allies
in the so-called ring of fire,
which is how Israel describes
the enemies that ring it.
Hezbollah
in southern Lebanon
and the militants in Syria,
both of whom have stockpiled
rocket missiles.
The Hezbollah
missiles are said to be more than 100,000
and that can reach most of Israel.
Also, they'll be watching
the Israeli
Defense Forces
will be watching for this attack to spark
some sort of popular revolt
inside the West Bank.
In the last two
uprisings, the last two intifadas,
the one in the late eighties,
and then the one in the nineties.
The first one got sparked
from a car accident.
Two truckloads of Palestinian workers
were hit, many killed.
And that sparked off
the popular protests
that then militants took advantage of.
In this case, they're likely
they're trying to do it
the other way around.
They're staging a big splashy attack
and calling on others to pick up weapons
and attack Israelis wherever they are.
The second intifada started after
Ariel Sharon, the Israeli leader,
then visited the Al-Aqsa mosque
on what Jews call
the Temple Mount,
a sacred area to Jews and Muslims
in the old city.
The Hamas military leader did say that
this latest attack was partly because
of recent incursions
by Israeli ultranationalists
into the mosque part of this sacred area,
which has made major headlines
across the Arab world, though
it hasn't been covered much in the West.
So from their perspective,
they have cause
and they're hoping other Palestinians,
ordinary people,
will pick up that cause and attack.
Kimberly
Dozier and Colonel Cedric Leighton, guys,
thank you very, very much.