Burnal, great to see you. Is it your view that at this point, Israel, should it be bringing in a third party, third party observers to verify some of the claims that are being made in Gaza and at the hospital in particular?

Yeah, good to be with you. I think the answer is yes in this particular case because everything that the Israelis have said when it comes to all of the claims that they've made, there's a lot of intelligence to back up what their claims are. However, once the proof comes out, they have difficulty convincing people on the outside, whether it's people in the Arab world, people here in the United States, people in Europe. So it becomes essential for them to have a third party to verify the claims. And if they are true, so much the better for the Israelis. If they are not true, then, of course, it indicates that there is a moment where they have to reassess their intelligence that they have on Hamas and then go from there. But it would definitely be in their interest to have a third party look at this.

Credibility is also at stake, particularly for Israel, when we're seeing reports now, we're seeing videotape documenting that civilians at the encouragement of a humanitarian pause are being told they may have 30 minutes in which to evacuate, only to now see on videotape people injured and killed. How is this setting back the Israeli strategy of going after Hamas and at the same time claiming to have these humanitarian pauses to try to reduce the civilian, casually to account only for civilians to be killed during these humanitarian pauses?

Yeah, it's absolutely unacceptable to have civilians killed during what are supposed to be humanitarian pauses. The civilians need to bebe handled very carefully. The rules of war are pretty explicit in that regard. It's also clear that Hamas has violated a lot of the rules of war as well. But the key thing for the Israelis is that they have to behave in a way that is far more considerate, far more in concert with the rules of war. And that is something where when it comes to things like humanitarian clauses, they need to be held and they also need to give the spilling population their safe areas in which they can go. The Israeli effort that has been announced over the last 24 hours to attack other areas of Gaza is going to be a problem if the Israelis go into areas where refugees are, and that's going to not only look bad, but it really puts a lot of people at risk. And that's something that the Israelis really do need to avoid at this point.

Doesn't that seem inevitable at this point? As the IDF is now saying it's moving south and that is the very area where they had asked people in the Northern Gaza to evacuate too. So how does Israel go after its mission, defeat Hamas and not take out more civilians?

Yeah, it is a real problem for them because those two goals, the military objective that the Israelis have of, in essence, destroying Hamas's military capability along with its political capability, that does conflict, especially if the tactical and other movements are in other parts of the territory, such as the southern part, and that does conflict with the goal of protecting the civilians. And it does also indicate that the Israelis have a very limited area in which they can operate. But, of course, the civilians in Gaza have no place to go without the safety valve of being allowed to, let's say, move into Egypt. The Egyptians are not allowing that. If they don't have that, then there is truly no place for the civilian population to go. And the Israelis have to be very cognizant of that and modify their operations to reflect that. The key thing here is that this should not be a full blown military force on force invasion. What it should be is a counterinsurgency operation. And that is something that the Israelis really need to, in essence, change their tactics and move in that direction in order to safeguard as many people as they possibly can.

All right. Colonel Cedric Leighton, thank you so much and have a great holiday week.