Reporter And State Dept Spox Go Head To Head: 'Is There Actually A Red Line?'

4 months ago

During a press briefing on Tuesday, State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller answered reporter questions on the continued fight in Gaza.

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Transcript

00:00 First, I want to give a shout out to my student visitor friend from Gaza, sitting in the back,

00:07 and came with me today to attend the briefing.

00:10 Welcome.

00:11 So, yeah.

00:13 I wanted to follow up on Leon and Humayun's questions on the red line.

00:18 Is there actually a red line?

00:19 I mean, do you have like a yardstick by which you measure a red line that Israel may cross

00:26 or may not cross?

00:27 So the- What is that?

00:28 The National Security Advisor to the President spoke to this last week from the White House

00:34 podium and made clear that there is no mathematical formula that you can apply, but it's something

00:39 that we will be watching very closely and discussing with our Israeli counterparts.

00:41 So in theory, Israel can strike anywhere, basically, and say, "They're Hamas oppoters."

00:47 So I'm not going to deal with your theories.

00:50 I'm going to deal with reality, and what we have said is how we will assess their compliance

00:54 with this question.

00:55 But that is a plausible hypothesis.

00:56 No, it's not.

00:57 It's not a plausible hypothesis.

00:58 I'm not going to deal with- I think you know I don't deal with hypotheses.

00:59 I try to deal with facts from this podium.

01:02 So I just wanted to ask you, the statement that was issued by this administration over

01:07 Rafah, when you say Israel has a right to pursue Hamas or to go after Hamas, isn't that

01:15 implicitly a green light for them to do whatever they want under that pretext?

01:20 No.

01:21 And, Saeed, I think that ignores everything that we have said a number of times.

01:25 It absolutely is not.

01:26 It is encouraging them to take out terrorists who launched a brutal attack on the state

01:31 of Israel and carried out the cold-blooded murder of civilians, and at the same time,

01:36 we expect them to do so in full compliance with international humanitarian law, minimizing

01:40 the harm to civilians.

01:41 And I know I've pointed this out to you before, Saeed.

01:45 Hamas could make this a lot easier by stopping hiding behind civilians.

01:49 Right.

01:50 Okay.

01:51 I mean, two weeks ago, I remember asking you from here, and I in fact mentioned the

01:58 name of those who were killed.

02:00 Four of them were children and so on.

02:03 Whether they are going to be safer in Mawassi and in Tel Sultan, where they were asked to

02:09 leave, at the time seemed like part of a larger plan to move people into a safer zone.

02:16 But obviously, it's not.

02:18 We saw killing 45 people in Raqqa.

02:22 We saw killing another 21.

02:24 Nobody knows how many and so on just yesterday.

02:26 So there seems to be no end.

02:29 You guys have any kind of perception on how this thing is going to end and when this horror

02:35 show stops?

02:36 So, Saeed, as often, there was a lot of premises before you got to the question.

02:40 I will say with respect to the premises, we've been very clear.

02:44 Of course, Israel should not carry out strikes in the designated safer areas where they have

02:48 told people to move.

02:49 They say that's not what happened here.

02:51 They're going to conduct a full investigation.

02:53 We're going to wait the outcome of that investigation before passing judgment.

02:56 I think it's fully appropriate to do.

02:58 We want to have all the facts at our disposal.

03:00 When it comes to how this ends, I think we have also been pretty clear that in addition

03:05 to a military plan, Israel needs to have a political plan for the day after and for presenting

03:13 an alternative to Hamas.

03:15 We have not yet seen such a plan.

03:16 We've been working with our partners in the region to come up with one that we will present

03:20 to the State of Israel because we think that is just as important as the military campaign

03:23 they're conducting.

03:24 Lastly, on the aid, if you guys are unable to influence Israel on allowing aid in, what

03:30 makes you think that you don't want to be influential with their military operations

03:35 in Gaza?

03:36 So I – so again, I'm going to reject the premise.

03:39 We have intervened and seen our interventions been successful throughout the course of this

03:43 campaign.

03:44 It was because of U.S. intervention that Rafa was opened in the first place.

03:48 It was because of our intervention that Kerem Shalom was opened and that Erez Crossing was

03:52 opened and that Zikum Crossing was opened and that Ashdod was opened and that trucks

03:59 are now coming from Jordan, coming through Israel and making it directly into northern

04:02 Gaza.

04:03 And it was because of the intervention of the United States just on Friday that trucks

04:08 – UN trucks were allowed to move again through Egypt into Israel, into Kerem Shalom, and

04:13 then ultimately on to the people who need them.

04:15 So I fully reject that premise and I don't think it's supported by the facts of the

04:18 history.

Reporter And State Dept Spox Go Head To Head: 'Is There Actually A Red Line?'

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