Your people back into their homes, you dont escalate to deescalate. And obviously now, with the iranian retaliation, israelis are in their shelters as they go into the new years holiday weekend. Ben . Yeah. I think, you know, since October 7th, the Biden Administration has had a number of goals, one was to provide support to israel as it aims to go after hamas, but then also one of the principle goals of u. S. Diplomacy since October 7th had been avoiding deescalation into lebanon, precisely because i think there was an understanding that lebanon could be kind of the Trip Wire to this broader regional war that essentially, you know, it is one thing if there is a conflict In Gaza, that alone is destabilizing enough and is obviously brought a tremendous Human Toll and has grinded on for a full year. But the concern has always been that if israel launched a Ground Operation and significantly escalated things in lebanon that could draw iran into a conflict in a direct way as were seeing to
Lets show you live pictures from gaza now. This comes as israeli troops are still going house to house to clear communities after the saturday assault thats according to an Israel Defense forces spokesman. The latest developments come as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says his Security Cabinet has approved plans to destroy the military and governmental capabilities of hamas and islamichhad. Netanyahu has said israel is at war after a surprise and unprecedented raid by Palestinian Militants on israel territory early saturday morning. On israel territory early saturday morning. Israels government says hamas launched more than 2000 rockets into the country, killing more than 250 people and wounding over 1100 others. Officials in the gaza strip say over 230 people have been killed and over 1700 were injured in retaliatory strikes. The Un Security Council plans to meet about the violence in the region tomorrow. The Early Morning assault began with a barrage of rocket fire from gaza just
And the hollywood actor Harrison Ford has been involved in a near miss with an airliner while flying a single engine plane in california. Its five oclock, good afternoon. Lets ta ke lets take you back to the white house, where President Trump and his wife are greeting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife at the white house. It is the first meeting between the two leaders since they both met in 2016, back in september, in new york. It is highly likely that the issue of settlements will be at the very top of the agenda for both men. 0ne white house official has been quoted as suggesting that perhaps a middle east peace deal, a long term deal, does not involve a Two State Solution. Palestinians are very, very worried about that. Certainly, hardliners in the Israeli Cabinet are hoping that will be the case. 0ver are hoping that will be the case. Over the last few months, in fact, they have been continuing to build settle m e nts they have been continuing to build settlements in c
Hackers were targeting the dnc and other democratic operations. By the way, as candidate trump was publicly calling on the russians to publicly hack Hillary Clintons emails. We dont know the contact or motive before the conversations, but the word they happened is a big real development. We should note the kremlin and donald trump this morning are calling it fake news. Cnns jim sciutto has been working sources all day, all night on this story. Jim, bring us up to speed on where we are right now at 9 01 eastern time. I should knnote calling it fe news without the president or the white house responding to the substance of the reporting which weve asked them to do. Lets get to what the reporting is. One, two things caused alarm, raised red flags in u. S. Law enforcement and intelligence. First, the volume and frequency of the communications between trump advisers and the russians. Communications happen during campaigns, typically at a much lower level and much less frequent than what the