War in Gaza: Deadliest West Bank raids since conflict began | LiveNOW from FOX

Westfall. We do want to cover the latest on the Israel Hamas War. National Security analyst Been retired, Marine intelligence officer. Hal Kemper is standing by how as always it's good to see you. I want to get straight into this. This is from the Israeli government. They say the IDF located a number of bodies during combat in the Gaza Strip at this time. The troops are still operating in the area. and are carrying out a process to extract and identify the bodies that will last several hours. We asked to refrain from spreading rumors obviously how there's a lot of chatter about what exactly this means. What are you taking from this? Awesome. Uh, what this is is is it's an inference to they found the bodies of Israeli hostages, Uh, that's the only reason you just don't see them. actually. put out stuff like this. This is not a, a normal thing that they would put out. unless they had come across the bodies of of hostages and so that's how it's being interpreted. in in Israel is that this is the preface to another announcement where they actually, have identified. Uh, the remains uh, the other issue, too is uh, because they were unable to immediately identify them. it does kind of imply. that there's going to have to be a certain forensic. uh, science scientific process of verifying who they actually are. Which means they they may not have uh passed away recently. they may have passed away much earlier. This goes into a a huge debate within Israel. Uh, as you as you may recall, uh, Netanyahu and his, uh, defense minister you all Galant. We're in a pitched fighting Uh well not Pitch fighting pitch yelling. uh at least reportedly pitch yelling in a meeting. uh, about the uh, terms of the larger cease fire. And uh, Netanyahu is in transits on a key issue, which is uh, pulling troops out of the Philadelphia. quarter, that, that area right along the border. So, there is already uh, within the Israeli. political Realm, there is already a lot going on. A lot of turbulence and then this comes out which feeds into the narrative if you will that, uh every day delayed is going to be uh less hostages. uh that come back and reportedly. uh I think the uh, the chief of the Israeli Armed Forces actually. is, I believe is reported to have said, that, uh, uh, you know, this this could end up this unless, unless they can come to some compromise on the Philadelphia. corridor. Uh, they can lose. 30 lives. and find the 30 hostages that would be released under the current negotiation terms. There are still. some 100 people missing that were taken captive on October 7th. we have no idea. Uh, we have no confirmation as to if these are, in fact the bodies of hostages and if they are, we don't know how many there are. How does that change? the balance? of negotiation in this war if if there are Are far, fewer hostages in Hamas. Captivity. Well, there's about 106. Hostages that have been. unaccounted for, or are still being held. It's just not clear, how many of them are still alive? and when they were negotiating, the current negotiation uh, terms and and negotiation and Cairo. they were talking about. uh first 6 weeks get 30 hostages. released. and it wasn't clear. if if Hamas could get 30 live, hostages, they actually had to go back and say no, it has to be 30 live hostages. released and there were some back and forth on that as to where they could actually meet those terms. Now, it could have been the criteria that they had applied to which hostages they were going to have released, but it also indicates that there's probably a number of those of the 106 that aren't with us anymore. Uh that did not survive captivity for for whatever reason. And uh, it's it's a tragic situation. but it but it plays heavily on, on the minds. Not, you know, obviously the the hostage families this has been uh, you know, the sum of all fears, if you will. Uh, it's been a horrific ordeal for them. uh, and all the friends of those who are held, uh, but, but beyond that, uh, it's Weighing on the psyche of the Israeli public, which is that, that they have to do something. they have to get these hostages home and you saw when they did a, a successful, uh, hostage rate, uh, recently, uh, it really buoyed the spirits of the Israeli public, uh of course it, you know, immediately comes back down to earth that you know they only got, you know, a few but Rwanda or whatever, you know they got 1. released. uh the most recent 1 but but it really does buoy the hopes that they'll get others out of their butt. they're, they're at this very Difficult. inflection point, if you will. not not so much the negotiations themselves. as within the cabinet and and not so much within the whole cabinet. within the war cabinet which is a a separate thing. Uh, although Netanyahu can always take anything to a vote with the regular cabinet. the regular cabinet of course, are his political supporters. So whatever he takes there tends to get approved, regardless, But within the war cabinet, there does appear to be some very strong feelings. that they, they need to shift their position. Brock Ravid of axios saying that President Biden told reporters that the IDF is still working on Identifying the bodies that were found in Gaza. It's time for this war it's time this war ended Biden said, Biden added. He is still optimistic about the Gaza hostage and ceasefire talks and said we think we can close the deal. and uh it continues. I want to ask you. How what what may sound like an obvious question but but I would love the answer in your words. Um, how do we know that this is not? some situation where we're talking about the bodies of high ranking Hamas officials or perhaps? some other type of situation that we're not talking about? how do we know that it's likely Israeli hostages and not something else like that? I think it's the the terminology that's used, Uh, they wouldn't frankly, if they took out. high ranking Hamas. members, uh, they don't put they don't talk about their bodies. they put out an announcement saying, we think we took out high ranking Hamas members and and by the way, it's not a somber tone. It's a uh, it's a, it's a tone of, you know. Mission success that they did that. And and I haven't seen anything where they talk about uh, the bodies. Uh, there's nothing like this that comes out when they talk about the bodies of Hamas members. uh, and total usually, when you see something like this, we're talking about bodies. It's because those on the ground, you know, suspect Believe whatever that these are probably bodies of uh of Israeli hostages. They even use a different, uh, terminology when 1 of their own is lost in in combat, you know, for example. 1 of soldiers is killed. uh, they don't normally put it, they don't put out it this way. They don't talk about bodies. They talk about they lost, uh, a lost life, if you will, uh, killed an action or something like that. it's just not the term. bodies. Implies that they've uncovered something and the fact that they're reporting it Would indicate that. it's something that they want to prepare everybody to learn about. which will probably be that? Uh, more likely than not that these are the bodies of hostages that have been recovered. well, the way to hear more from the Israeli government about the situation. I want to move on to another. big deal. in Gaza. We talk so much about the possibility. of a ceasefire in this war and now, how we're actually going to see a very small version of 1 daily 8 Hour fighting positive have been agreed to in order for the United Nations to vaccinate. hundreds of thousands of children in the Gaza Strip against polio um, this follows confirmation last week. That a baby was paralyzed by type 2 polio virus the first such case in the territory in 25 years. I imagination. How that a vaccination campaign. in Gaza vaccination very complicated. what do we know about? how they're going to get this done? This, this is really, uh, an amazing accomplishment, you know, of course. the big thing was, you know, polio was once the scourge certainly the scourge of the 20th century, and and vaccinations, work, I mean vaccinations, you know, when I was a kid. got vaccinated. I I think a couple times for polio everybody got vaccinated. It was uh and and for because of that polio was very rare but it is a very dangerous disease, you know, it can maim for life, it can potentially kill. And so when they saw this pop up and and Gaza and looking at the horrendous conditions, you know, for sanitation and everything. of water everything else there. they said, Hey look. We got to get on this right now and it was fascinating to watch both Hamas and Israel. come to uh, what I would say was, you know, fairly compared to the other uh, agreement or negotiating processes fairly fast. They came up with this, uh, agreement. to allow the uh, uh, polio vaccinations approximately 640000 children. Uh, they're going to do this 333 thing They divided the country into 3, different areas. each of those areas. will get 3 consecutive days from 06 to 3:00 in the afternoon. where they will go in and do these Mass vaccinations. And I think the hope is I don't think they Believe, they're going to get everybody. but if they can get a huge percentage of the of that youth young population. that will uh slow down. stem. It'll certainly stop an epidemic or pandemic if you will a polio, but it would, it would stop the transmissibility throughout the population such they feel they can, they can do this And, and it's going to be 3 days of this happening And as of uh, an hour ago, my understanding is that they, they actually started early uh, both sides agreed and they allowed them to go in and they're doing vaccinations as we speak. So I thought that was pretty good news. you know, The, the hope everyone has is, if this works well, maybe some of this will roll into the larger ceasefire and negoti. and uh they'll say hey this is working. Let's try. you know, at least the first 6 weeks or something of the larger negotiation 1 1, could only hope that this uh carries over but uh right now everybody's just says, hey, look, they're 2 different things. Don't confuse them and, uh, don't get up, don't build false hope for the big ceasefire negotiation. just because they're able to come to terms on this 1. Is this the first thing that we've seen them agree on. since November since they returned, a number of hostages and returned for Palestinian prisoners last year. Certainly, the first thing like this, I mean that you actually have these long pauses, its systemic, it's going over a series of days, you know, 9 days. that's actually a pretty impressive accomplishment. and and here's the thing I see on that, that's a ceasefire to allow the polio vaccinations I I also have a feeling, you know, there's there's a variety of international Aid groups, the United Nations and others that are operating in the area. I, I, I can't believe that they wouldn't take full advantage of this. These, these ceasefires these in these areas. to do the most. They can to try and get Aid to everybody else as well. So I think this 9 days may have not just the polio part but there may be other parts of this that allow for Aid to get in there. uh with the population. uh in a more efficient manner, at least for the next week. and a half baby. uh allow more to get in there. 1 hopes. that's that's that would make sense. So, this was certainly some good news and we it's not very often we hear of good news. coming out of Gaza. Hell, I want to leave it. uh on Gaza with you there for now, I want to take a break. I want to talk about,