Return to Transcripts main page

CNN News Central

Interview With Former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren; Hamas Approves Gaza Cease-Fire and Hostage Agreement. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired January 15, 2025 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:00]

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I think Israelis are certainly very happy to see Donald Trump coming into office. He's seen as much more pro-Israel than President Biden has been.

Biden kind of took a lose-lose approach, where he kept giving Israel the weapons that it wanted to continue this war. And, obviously, there were a lot of Israeli -- critics of Israel who were not happy with that, both here in the United States and all around the world. But he was also seen by a lot of people as not giving carte blanche to Israel to basically do whatever it is -- whatever they wanted.

So it would be very interesting to see the leash that the president -- President Trump gives to Israel in terms of what it does, not only in Gaza and the West Bank, questions over settlements there. But there's also a much bigger overarching question about Iran right now as well, Dana.

DANA BASH, CNN HOST: Yes, the West Bank is a whole 'nother kettle of fish, as they say.

Thank you guys so much. Don't go anywhere.

I want to go back to M.J. Lee at the White House, who helped start off our coverage of this extraordinary hour that we have been in over the incredible news about this deal between Israel and Hamas with the help of the United States, both the incoming administration and the outcoming administration, not to mention the Arab countries like Qatar in the region.

M.J., what are you hearing at this point from your sources in that building behind you?

M.J. LEE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, for starters, Dana, at this moment in time, we are, of course, waiting to hear directly from President Biden.

And given the gravity of this news, given what an important priority this was for the president over the last year-plus to get another cease-fire in place in Gaza and get the hostages out, it's impossible to imagine that he wouldn't take the opportunity to, in some fashion, really address the American people to share the good news and also just take a political victory lap that, in the end, in literally the final days of his presidency, under his watch, he was able to finally get this agreement in place.

He has been pushing for this deal for more than a year-plus, and obviously unsuccessfully until this point. And at various moments, speaking to U.S. officials who have been involved with this process, you would ask the question to them, why is it that this deal is so elusive, is so difficult to come together? Why can't this happen?

And their answer was very often just simply that the political will wasn't there, whether it was on the Israeli side that the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was not interested, often because of the domestic politics at play for him back at home, or just that Hamas was not in a place to even come to the negotiating table.

And I think once we really have time to digest how this deal has come together and get more information from all of the parties involved in the final stages of this agreement coming together, I think it will be quite clear that the upcoming swearing-in of Donald Trump, Donald Trump's return to Washington as a second-term president, we will learn that that made really all the difference in the end.

We know from all of his public statements how important it was to him to see this war come to an end, or at least come to a pause, not even after he was sworn into office, but before he had taken office. He basically was sending a message to the current president, Joe Biden, that he wanted him to get this job done.

Dana, I will toss it back to you. Again, we are just waiting to see what official word we get from President Biden, of course, a moment that he has been waiting for a very long time, the announcement of a Gaza cease-fire.

BASH: Yes, no question about it. We have already heard from his successor, very excited about what is going on. Thank you so much, M.J. Lee.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BASH: And now, at the top of the hour, we're going to reset with this very important, momentous news out of the Middle East. And that is a temporary cease-fire deal in exchange for the release of 33 hostages being held inside Gaza since October 7, 2023.

We have all the angles covered, beginning in Israel with CNN's Jeremy Diamond.

Jeremy, what are you hearing right now about when we're going to hear officially from the players here?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Dana, we expect that, later this evening, we will likely get more official statements from the various governments involved about this cease-fire deal.

[13:05:07]

The prime minister's office just said that they believe that there are a few issues that they are wrapping up, but that they expect those to be wrapped up by tonight.

But make no mistake, Dana, this is an enormous moment, so many months in the making, following so much pain that has transpired in the Gaza Strip and also among the families of the hostages, 15 months of war in Gaza, 15 months of captivity for those hostages, 94 of whom who were taken on October 7, who remain in captivity in the Gaza Strip; 33 three of those are expected to be released as part of this six-week cease-fire that could take effect as early as this weekend.

What we are now awaiting beyond the official announcements from the mediators of this cease-fire, with all of the details of what this agreement actually looks like, is the Israeli government to approve this through its process. And that involves a vote by the Israeli Security Cabinet, as well as a vote by Israel's full Cabinet.

We expect that that will likely take place tomorrow. The Israeli Supreme Court will then hear petitions against the release of those Palestinian prisoners who are expected to be released in exchange for those Israeli hostages. That is likely more pro forma than anything else, given that the Israeli prime minister has tremendous leeway to release those prisoners for national security reasons.

And that takes us then to this weekend, which is when we expect that this agreement will most likely take effect, when we will see the first Israeli hostages come out of Gaza in many, many months. The question then is, in what condition will those hostages emerge from Gaza and how many of them will be alive?

We understand that the majority of these 33 hostages are believed to be alive by the Israeli government, but the expectation, I'm told, is also that there will be some of the bodies of deceased hostages included in that list of 33. And so the roller coaster of emotions for the families of these hostages, certainly, Dana, is not over yet.

I spoke with the family of Kfir, Ariel, Shiri, and Yarden Bibas, the two youngest Israeli hostages, Kfir and Ariel, who were taken from the Kibbutz Be'eri on October 7, when they were just babies. Hamas has said that they are dead. The Israeli government has yet to confirm that. And so this will be a moment of perhaps devastating truth for their family, but they are still maintaining some hope, I'm told, that perhaps they will still emerge alive.

But, certainly, many families will be getting news perhaps as early as this weekend, as early as next week about the fate of their loved ones. And then, of course, we have to also talk about the conditions in the Gaza Strip, which are set to really improve quite dramatically if indeed this cease-fire agreement goes into effect.

For 15 months now, the people of Gaza have experienced constant, unrelenting bombardment that has revealed that there is no safe place inside of the Gaza Strip. They are experiencing dire humanitarian conditions. This agreement will allow for the entry of as many as 600 trucks of aid per day into Gaza to relieve those humanitarian conditions.

And, finally, they will be able to sleep soundly without the constant buzzing of those drones, without the constant fear of bombs being dropped on the Gaza Strip as well. So, tonight, we are watching as there are celebrations that are unfolding both in the Gaza Strip, as well as here in Tel Aviv at Hostages Square, where people have been embracing each other.

It's important to remember how many times, Dana, we came so very close to this moment, only for those negotiations to ultimately collapse. It seems that finally, Dana, there was the political will on both sides, with enormous pressure being brought to bear by the Biden administration, as well as the incoming Trump administration, for this deal to actually get done.

BASH: Yes, it is so true. Timing is everything in life and certainly when it comes to something as delicate and difficult as what we are seeing unfold right now.

Thank you so much, Jeremy.

I now want to go to CNN political and global affairs analyst Barak Ravid.

Barak, we were talking in the last hour about -- just picking up on what Jeremy was just saying, about how many times we heard from sources on all sides of this that they were close, and then it fell apart. The X-factor here is that Donald Trump is about to be president, and the very public pressure that he was putting on Hamas and on Israel to get this done.

We see the president-elect take credit for a lot of things a lot of times. In this particular instance, it's credit that I am sure we're going to hear people inside the Biden administration agree that he and his aides deserve.

[13:10:10]

BARAK RAVID, CNN POLITICAL AND GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Yes, definitely.

And I think it will work the other way around too, meaning, when you when you ask Trump's advisers, they tell you that they came in and helped to get this deal in the -- in its last stage after this framework that was presented by President Biden.

So I think what is interesting is that both sides, the Biden administration and the incoming Trump administration, worked together on this, and they actually are willing and ready to give credit to the other side, which, as you know, in U.S. politics, this is not a very -- it's a very unusual phenomena.

But I think that what happened here is that Trump was so important to this deal because Hamas and Israel needed to know that they're not only negotiating with an administration that is about to leave, but they're also negotiating with an administration that has another four years in office, so that anything that's being negotiated, the next administration is committed to it also.

And I think this is why it was so important, because both the Israelis, the Qataris, the Egyptians and also Hamas, they're looking at what's going to happen in the next four years. And I think all of them knew that if there's no deal by January 20, they would start on the wrong foot with Donald Trump.

And I don't think any of them wanted to do that.

BASH: Yes, that's exactly right. I don't know that Hamas will ever be on the right foot with Donald Trump or anybody, but I take your point more about the other regional players who are helping to negotiate this.

Can you just talk for a moment about what is going on inside the Israeli government, and, first and foremost, about them approving this deal, how that's going to go down?

RAVID: So, first, it's going to be approved, OK? It's not a -- there's no question about it. Netanyahu has a majority both in the Security Cabinet and in the government plenary.

But he has two extreme right-wing parties in his coalition that already said that they will oppose the deal. They did not say, however, if they're going to stay in the government or leave if this deal is implemented. And I think this is the most interesting point.

Netanyahu has been trying to convince them to vote against, but stay in the government. If both of them, if both of those parties leave his coalition, his coalition will collapse and Israel could go for elections. And this is the last thing Netanyahu wants.

So I think this will be the main question tomorrow, when the Israeli Cabinet votes, what those two parties led by Jewish supremacist Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister of national security, and radical right-wing Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich -- both of them said that this deal is a disaster. They will most likely vote against it, but also most likely stay in the government.

BASH: Well, that is definitely something we're going to be watching. Thank you so much for that, Barak. Appreciate it.

I want to go now to Alayna Treene, who was in West Palm Beach near Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home.

Alayna, we have been talking about some of the statements we have seen coming onto Donald Trump's social media feed, claiming credit, saying that this is because he was elected. His incoming national security adviser, Mike Waltz, just retweeted or re-TRUTHed one of his statements, saying that this is the Trump effect.

And I'm sure they're saying that. And as I said to Barak, I'm sure that this is something that the Biden administration might not be thrilled about just on the raw politics giving them some credit, but it's pretty clear that they worked together on this phase very, very closely, they being the Biden administration and the Trump team. ALAYNA TREENE, CNN REPORTER: That's right.

It's specifically his special envoy to the Middle East, or at least his named special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, as well as Mike Waltz, who Hegseth as picked to be his national security adviser.

Look, behind the scenes, I will say, many people I have talked to acknowledge that this has been a joint effort, that, of course, Joe Biden's team have been great partners in some of these negotiations, and that also Witkoff and Waltz and others who have been involved from the Trump side have worked very well with them to get to this point.

But I will also say that one thing I had heard consistently for weeks now was that Donald Trump did believe that, if such a deal, such a cease-fire and hostage deal were to come to fruition before he was sworn into office, that he would be able to take credit for it any time after the November election.

[13:15:12]

And part of that is because Donald Trump wants this off his plate. He had said repeatedly to his advisers that he did not want this on his plate when he was sworn in. He wants his team to focus on his domestic agenda, but also some of those officials that he has named to be focused on the Middle East to be more focused on an off-ramp to the war, rather than having this.

Now, again, a lot of people ask me, why wouldn't Donald Trump want or urge these leaders, particularly Netanyahu, to wait so that he could take full credit for such a deal? But, again, this is something he believed and he was told repeatedly by people close to him that any time after the election that they could say that this was in large part thanks to him and to his victory.

And so that's exactly what you are seeing him do now, as well as many of his advisers, really try to portray here. Even though we are going to hear from Biden shortly on this, I know that Donald Trump wants this to be seen as well as something that he played a major role in.

BASH: All right, Alayna, thank you so much.

I want to go now to Michael Oren, who was Israeli ambassador to the U.S., in addition to a member of the Knesset.

Thank you so much for being here.

First, your reaction to what seems to be an agreement for phase one of this deal?

MICHAEL OREN, FORMER ISRAELI AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED STATES: Yes, always good to be with you, Dana.

Joy, but greatly mitigated by sadness, by sorrow. We believe that not all of these hostages will be coming home alive. We have to deal with hostages who have endured unspeakable tortures and maybe life-changing nightmares. And the road to recovery, if there is a recovery, will be very, very long.

And then, of course, the hostages who remain in captivity, we think about them. We think about all the soldiers who have died in order to bring Israel to this point, where we're able to bring pressure to bear on Hamas to release the hostages. All of that is very much tempering whatever joy we're feeling about the release of these hostages.

And then, frankly, Dana, there's fear. We will be releasing a great number of prisoners from our jails, people who have committed acts of terror, who have Jewish blood on their hands. And we know from previous exchanges that such prisoners go to committing acts of terror, such as Yahya Sinwar, the former head of Hamas, who was released in a prisoner exchange of 2011.

And we have to think about the families of all the people who were murdered by those terrorists who have to now confront the reality in which the people who murdered their loved ones are going home to a hero's welcome, but their loved ones remain in the ground.

So it is a very fragmented and very fraught reaction by the Israeli public.

BASH: I want to kind of take up -- take your time and talk big picture for a second, because I was just handed a really interesting piece that it looks like it was just published in The Free Press that you wrote, Ambassador.

And in it, you talk about how difficult it was for Israel in the approach that it took from the beginning after the October 7 attack on its land and on its people, because you say: "From day one, Israel's twin goals in Gaza were fundamentally irreconcilable."

And the argument that you make, and I just got it and I have been able to skim it, so please explain it better than I can, but it looks like the argument that you're making is Israel's whole approach and whole strategy was to put so much pressure on Hamas with the bombardment of Gaza, killing a lot of its leaders, including Yahya Sinwar, who you just talked to, and forcing Hamas to release hostages.

But what ended up happening was that, because the bombardment was so intense, and there was some, a lot of support globally, including in President Biden's own party for -- certainly for the Palestinians, which is totally understandable, but it even went over to Hamas, that Hamas felt emboldened and dug in.

So the entire premise of Israel's strategy was flawed from the beginning. Can you talk about that?

OREN: I wouldn't call it flawed. I'd call it really no choice.

Israel had no choice but to go to war against Hamas. Hamas had waged a war of genocide against Israel, had killed 1,200 Israelis, massacred, raped, mutilated them, the equivalent of about 44,000 Americans in a single morning. Again, it bears repeating it's the single greatest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Israel had to respond militarily against Hamas. [13:20:00]

The questions is whether that operation at the end of the day would guarantee the release of the hostages, because what we found out ultimately was that by increasing pressure on Hamas, military pressure on Hamas, they didn't necessarily release the hostages. They shot the hostages. They executed the hostages.

And we were dealing with a terrorist organization for which -- and terrorists for whom death was a real option. It's difficult for us in the West to understand a negotiating situation where you're dealing with somebody who would prefer death under a number of scenarios, not the least of which was the offer from the Israeli government that all the terrorists could go free. They could get on a boat and go wherever they wanted to if they just relinquished the hostages.

So there was no -- what -- the point of the article was that there actually was no real solution for Israel's quandary, which no country in history, certainly not this country, has ever confronted before. And one of the reasons is that the deep and passionate caring which Israelis have for hostages, for prisoners. It's a principle that is -- comes from Jewish law.

It's in the Torah, it's in the Bible that we must do everything possible to redeem hostages, to the point that, as I mentioned in this article, many Israelis, including many in my own family, Dana, said that they would not send their kids to the army unless the hostages were released. So the hostages were not just a moral issue for the state of Israel. It was a strategic issue for the state of Israel.

Would we have soldiers in the future if the hostages were not released? On the other hand, if Hamas were perceived to win in Gaza, get away with the massacres of October 7, 2023, to emerge from the tunnels and reconquer the Gaza Strip, we wouldn't have an army at all.

And that was the deep and profound dilemma we found that we confronted at us. And the best you could hope for, and I think that's what this deal represents, is a time-limited cease-fire, in which numbers of hostages are released. And we see in the future whether the cease-fire will hold, whether it will lead to subsequent phases, there's supposed to be three phases of this particular deal, and whether all of the hostages at the end of the day, living and dead, can be repatriated.

BASH: Yes, I mean, we're looking at the screen and you see two images that speak to exactly the challenge. And you're right to correct me, thank you. As I said, I read it fast. You're not suggesting that Israel's response was flawed. It was just incredibly complicated.

You see one photo of a hostage and a sign behind it saying, "End the Bloodshed," which is case in point of the difficulty that you talk about. I don't want to put you on the spot here. I'm getting this information as I'm saying it out loud to you. So I just want to get your reaction knowing Prime Minister Netanyahu and, of course, having served in government for so many years there.

The Israeli prime minister's office is now saying that several unresolved points remain in the Gaza cease-fire-hostage deal, but still expects it to be settled tonight. Here's a quote that I have from the prime minister's office -- quote -- "Several unresolved points in the framework remain, and we hope these details will be finalized tonight."

Can you translate that, as best you can, knowing that you're out of government right now?

OREN: Well, one of the factors would probably be who would be controlling the Philadelphi routes. That's the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. That border had been very porous in previous years. Hamas had smuggled vast amounts of weaponry and munitions beneath that border.

And the prime minister's made his personal point to say that Israel must retain control over that Philadelphi route. But there have been speculations that position has been softened somewhat, but the degree to which it would be softened, I think, remains to be clarified.

I think that also, frankly, some of the issues that have to be clarified are internal political issues. Members of Netanyahu's coalition, the far right members of the coalition, the Treasury minister, Bezalel Smotrich, the police minister, Ben-Gvir, who have opposed all hostage release deals in the past and have insisted that Israel continue its war to destroy Hamas, are probably engaging in some type of, what I can say, horse-trading.

What is the prime minister and the government willing to give them in order to get them to agree to this deal? And I think I can think of some of the things they will be asking, most likely, increased support for Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria.

BASH: Before I let you go, Mr. Ambassador, I do want to pick up on something that you mentioned, which is what is going to happen in the next 24 hours and longer inside the current Netanyahu government as this deal does -- assuming that it does get finalized, and he's going to bring it to his government.

[13:25:03]

There doesn't seem to be any question about whether it will be approved, but the question which you kind of alluded to there is at what political cost for Prime Minister Netanyahu, since he has people who are as right-wing as they come and as -- who have very little regard for life of Palestinians who are genuinely caught in the crossfire in Gaza and even in the West Bank.

What is your sense of how this plays out?

OREN: I think there's another huge factor that we have to take into consideration here, Dana.

And that is the relationship between Benjamin Netanyahu personally and generally the state of Israel and with the incoming administration. And with the -- I wrote in that article in The Free Press that President Biden often said don't both to Israel and our enemies in the Middle East. And everyone pretty much did at the end of the day.

And I think that, when President Trump says don't, people are going to think many, many times before they do. And I think that the prime minister especially wants to remain on the good side of this president. The president has just come out and tweeted that this is an epic achievement. He's taken credit for it.

And it would be extremely, how could I say, imprudent for the Israeli government, certainly for Benjamin Netanyahu, to say to the president, well, oops, we made a mistake. We're not going to go through with this. And I think that that is a huge consideration, particularly on the eve of the inauguration.

BASH: Yes.

OREN: And I would expect that the president will make some mention of this in his inaugural address.

BASH: Yes. And I'm sorry. Before I let you go, what I mean isn't necessarily that he -- that Netanyahu will somehow not go through or his government will not go through with this deal.

My question is, do you think that the Netanyahu government will survive after this deal is done, given how fragile it is and given how right-wing -- you have some of those ministers who you talked about who are so far to the right, they don't want to have anything to do with anything regarding diplomacy and Hamas, whether they will -- does I help dissolve the government?

OREN: It's always a possibility. I don't think it's a large responsibility at this point -- possibility at this point

It's not as if the members of the coalition have other coalitions that they could go to. And right now, following the military achievements of the government, particularly in Lebanon, now with the dissolution of Syria, the weakening of Iran, the government's popularity had gone up in recent weeks.

So it's riding relatively high. People are loath to bolt government when it's on the rise. They usually leave when it's on the downslope, right? And so the only one reason why they would leave the government is that they are so ideologically rigid, they would prefer to be out of government entirely, rather than agree to this deal. I still think the chances of that are small.

BASH: Really interesting.

Thank you so much for coming on and giving us all of your insight, your experience, your knowledge. And we do hope that this is the beginning of much-needed good news, even though it is mixed, as you said, bittersweet in so many cases.

Thank you so much, Ambassador. Appreciate it.

On that, I want to go back to CNN's Bianna Golodryga, who is in Hostage Square in Tel Aviv. What's happening there now, Bianna? It looks, again, pretty subdued.

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN SENIOR GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Yes.

And I was thinking back to the point that you made, because I was noticing the same mood here. And somebody put it perfectly to me by saying that you could cut the tension here with a knife. This has just been such a roller coaster process, not just these last few weeks, as we did see these developments moving towards an ultimate deal, but over the past 15 months, 466 days, to be exact.

And now here we are. The fact that you even read that note in the report from the prime minister's office that there appear to be some issues, where there are disagreements between what Israel agreed to and Hamas, nonetheless, they do appear to agree that a deal will be in place in the coming hours.

Even headlines like that make people very, very nervous here, because we have not seen these hostages come home, even though there are reports that a deal is imminent, it's now done, and they should start coming home in the next few days.

As we have reported, the first phase would include the return of 33 hostages. That includes female hostages, children, men over the age of 50, and those who are infirm or in great physical pain, in dire need of medical treatment.

The other issue is not yet clear. How many of these hostages are alive? And so that is yet another hurdle for these families to have to endure now, not only wondering whether or not they will see their family members come home in whatever physical, mental condition.

[13:30:00]