that this one senator is having this kind of an impact on our operational readiness and if you don't think it isn't, i would urge him or anybody else who doubts this, go on down to tampa, florida and talk to the folks in central command about the priorities and what they are trying to do on behalf of our administration's policy in the middle east, especially right now with everything going on. it's having an impact and as karine rightly said, an impact on family members, can't get schools for the kids, can't buy or rent houses, don't know where they are going to be living next. absolutely ridiculous. >> the vice president was over in london and said if israel and ukraine were bifurcated the president would veto it. you over the last couple of days have explained that you would be something offset, especially involving the irs. but i wanted to be clear, if the president was presented with a clean israel funding bill without ukraine, he would veto that as well? >> the president believes the supplemental requests that we submitted contains four really critical national security urgent needs. israel, ukraine, indo-pacific resource, when it comes to manufacturing of submarines, and of course, border security. all four important. and the whole idea of an urgent supplemental, you are submitting what you think are urgent requests and the president wants to see all of them honored, acted on by congress, all of them together. he would not have submitted it that way if didn't believe they were not all important and should be acted on together. >> obviously you want to see them all together, but lawmakers are trying to figure out right now how to kind of negotiate through this, and seems to be sort of an unclear signal from the administration. was the vice president correct, he would veto israel only bill if it didn't have other issues you were concerned about? >> the president would veto an only israel bill. i think that we have made that clear. >> thanks, admiral. the president keeps saying israel needs to follow international law. israel needs to follow international law. that suggests he thinks that israel isn't following international law, doesn't it? >> no. >> why would he be saying that if he felt israel was doing everything to do to prevent civilian casualties. >> we have been saying from the beginning, nancy, we want to see our good friend and partner abide by the shared commitments for the respect for civilian life and the law of war. we have been saying that since dang near the beginning of it. >> i've never heard him say ukraine needs to follow international law. he's making a point with israel. >> these are different conflicts and ukraine was the victim of a massive invasion by a neighboring nation, and their military operations have been, with the exception of the counteroffensive going after russian positions, largely defensive in nature. it's a different situation than what the israeli defense forces are doing inside gaza going after hamas terrorists in a fairly aggressive way. >> question about the evacuees the president said 70 something dual citizens were able to make it out today. how many days do you anticipate it will take to get all of the americans who want to leave out of gaza? >> we don't know. as i said in my opening statement, we hope that that number can increase over coming days and we can get them all out very, very soon. today's progress, i mean yesterday was five, so far as you and i are speaking, it's 74. we are hoping that number could increase throughout the day, hoping. that's a good sign the trajectory is going in the right direction, we want to get them out as soon as possible but could not put a date and tell you that's it. >> is part of the deal none of them will stay in egypt, that they'll all leave and go elsewhere? >> that's up to them. they are free citizens. american citizens and have families to look after. that's why we are getting them collected at the embassy in cairo and the consular staff verified their identifies, got them on busses and now we are going to be working on whatever forward onward movement they may want. some may not want that, but we'll work that out individually with each family. >> john, the israelis are saying referring to jabalia as a refugee camp is a misnomer. >> i'll leave them to speak to their operations. >> bilateral, dominican-haitian border dispute come up. what is the position on that? >> largely over the security situation in haiti and efforts to work with the international community to hold those accountable causing that insecurity and the violence, but also to work on ways throughout the region to provide relief to the haitian people. >> thanks, john. talking about getting americans out of gaza, president biden said i want to thank our partners in the region and particularly qatar. the leader of hamas lives in qatar. why is president biden thanking them for anything? >> oh, geez, peter. take a step back and look at this. qatar -- >> terrorist group that killed americans and kidnapped americans in the last month. >> peter, qatar has been helpful in getting those americans out. i'm sure you would agree with me and everybody at your network would agree getting the hostages out is a good thing. qatar has lines of communication with hamas that almost nobody else has. i'm not saying we support hamas, of course we don't. they are a terrorist organization. and israel has an absolute right to go after them. qatar has lines of communication not everybody else has and it would be irresponsible, in fact i would expect that you and everybody else in here would be going after me if we weren't doing everything we could and having every possible conversation we can have to get americans that are held hostage back home with their families. if we weren't doing that, it would be diplomatic malpractice. let me read something to you, if you don't mind. i think i want to put this in context here. let me tell you what we are dealing with with hamas. this is your notebook, karine. sorry. this fella, hamas a guy named hamad did an interview. said israel has no place on our land. we must remove it, it constitute security, military catastrophe to the arab nation and must be finished. we are not ashamed to say this with full force. must teach israel a lesson and will do this again and again. that's what the israeli people are up against and that's the group that are holding innocent americans as well as 200, you are going to say why are you talking to them. and why are you -- no, i'm not. i'm not. >> if qatar is so helpful. why aren't we asking them to hand over the leader of the terrorist -- >> we are working with qatar to get our people out and aid in. that's a priority right now and helping israel go after hamas. >> as you push the israelis for humanitarian pauses, are they just supposed to sit back and let hamas attack them and attack them and attack them and not fight back? >> we have been crystal clear that israel has a right to defend themselves. i mean, my goodness. >> pause means they can still shoot back. >> my goodness, peter, giving them security assistance almost every day. but do we advocate pauses by both sides here, temporary, localized, to be able to get americans out, to be able to get aid in, you bet we do. that doesn't mean we are calling for a general ceasefire, hang on a second, there is a difference, a big difference here and we understand that as i said earlier, humanitarian pauses have to be negotiated and have to have a credible basis for doing it and temporary localized way. i would also expect we would get a lot of criticism from you and from your network and others if we just had the whole idea of a temporary pause so people could not get out. i mean -- we are doing exactly what you should be doing to try to look after these folks. >> pause does not help hamas. >> a temporary pause, that's localized, that would allow us to get aid in and to get our people out is a good thing for the people of gaza, it's a good thing for the americans held hostage, and it's not going to stop israel from defending itself because the security assistance we are providing continues to flow and temporary pause does not mean a general ceasefire where the war is over, it means a pause, only temporary for a specific purpose. >> the temporary ceasefire that the president said he had convinced prime minister benjamin netanyahu to put in place to get out, can you tell us more, was it localized, for a short period of time, anything about the parameters of that? >> i won't go into the details of that since we are trying to see what we can do to get additional temporary pauses, humanitarian pauses in place. but in order to move hostages from where they were being held to safety, it does require a short pause in the fighting so that you can do it safely. why wouldn't you? i mean, it would be -- it would be completely unsafe and irresponsible if you weren't trying to find some safe passage for hostages you got released while there's an area of combat going on. >> admiral, earlier this week you had said after the first airstrike in jabalia that it's obvious to us that israel is trying to minimize civilian casualties. now that you've had more time to see and assess the situation there, would you still say it's obvious that israel is trying to minimize civilian casualties? >> we see in the scope of their operations that they are making efforts to try to minimize civilian casualties. that does not mean, and i did not say that they aren't still causing some, that their operations are not still causing some, they are. and each one is tragic, each one shouldn't happen and we have been crystal clear about that. >> would you say with jabalia specifically. >> i'm not going to talk about a specific event. >> why not? >> because i'm not going to litigate an operational event that our military is not involved in and almost realtime. i'm not going to do that, m.j., inappropriate from the white house podium. >> minimizing civilian casualties, isn't an airstrike that targets a refugee camp or densely populated civilian area, isn't that sort of the definition of not minimizing civilian casualties? >> that is a question for the israeli defense forces. they should have to answer questions about the decisions on the battle field and how they are doing targeting and their operations. we are not going to throw it in from the sidelines from washington, d.c.. i will tell you again what i've said 100 times already. we are having daily conversations with our israeli counterparts about their thinking, their plans, strategy, about the execution of that strategy, and continuing to urge them to do everything they can to minimize civilian casualties. >> you would not weigh in, even though the president and everyone on down said that the minimizing civilian casualties is incredibly important, that it's something that he is talking to his counterpart about all the time. >> what i said was i'm not going to weigh in from the podium and make public -- provide public analysis in near realtime of operations that u.s. forces aren't involved in. >> given the intensity of the idf bombing across gaza and areas of safe passage are targeted, is there any concern that americans who want to get to rafah can't get to rafah? >> i don't know what the status is of all americans at gaza are at rafah. i don't know. a better question for the state department. i do know, we believe, that the vast, vast majority of american citizens who we know are in gaza are down there. but i can't tell you with certitude there is not family members elsewhere that have not made their way down or can't make their way down. and i can tell you i know the state department is in direct contact with the american families in gaza, and those on the lists for departure, they are notified where to go, when to be there, and as far as i know, again, a better question for the state department, that there isn't -- that we are not aware of american families that are trying to get down there and can't. but again, that's a pretty question for my colleagues. >> and the same question. independent has reviewed a list of 400 americans who have been cleared to leave by egyptians, the israelis, and so forth. there have been prior reports that there were, i believe, between 500 and 700 americans in gaza. so i'm curious about the discrepancy. 400 cleared to leave. if there are several hundred more in gaza, is there a reason that they have not been cleared to leave? have they not asked? are they on some other list? and why then would the u.s. not object to u.s. passport holders not being allowed to exit? >> you are talking about a rolling process here. i think our estimate is somewhere between 101,000 and a 1200, and the pool is somewhere in that number, somewhere there, about 400 families. but this is a rolling process of getting folks out. so we know that there have been 400 that have gotten through that process, and we fully expect that the rest of them will get through that as well. >> john, i have a question on the islamophobia strategy, but two quick ones on gaza. in london, the vice president said every gazan who wants to go back after the war is allowed to. the vice president in london said everyone from gaza who wants to go back after the war will be allowed to do that. does the president agree and how will they ensure that israel will allow it. >> of course, i've said it before. nothing new. if a citizen of gaza finds themselves outside of gaza and they want to go back to their home, yeah, we absolutely support that and will work with partners to make it happen. >> still in gaza, this week israel released intelligence showing hamas taking fuel from the indonesian hospital in gaza. is this something that you can confirm? >> nope. >> islamophobia, some of the muslim leaders i spoke with, said while they appreciate the effort to combat islamophobia, they thought the timing of the announcement was interesting. this is something the administration has been working on for months and some feel it's a political bone thrown at them and does not address their concern, which is u.s. policy to support israel where they are frustrated that their perspectives are not being heard. your message to them. >> this is a very genuine effort on behalf of the president and the vice president and the entire administration to plant a marker about how hate has no business here in the united states, particularly hate that can lead to real threats of violence against the muslim community, the arab community, palestinian community. we take that seriously. this -- the thinking that went into leading up to this strategy is long standing. and predates the events of october 7th. but again, i don't know who, all those folks are necessarily, but we value their opinion, we value their perspective, and even especially if it's a contrary perspective or they feel it's a contrary perspective it's valuable to us. we want to, as we embrace the effort to develop this strategy, we are absolutely going to reach out to folks all across the country from all different perspectives, particularly in the muslim community to get their views, that will be important, inform our work. >> heard raised a lot every time they want to address u.s. support to israel, the white house pivots to islamophobia. is that an accurate assessment? >> i'll let them speak to their opinion of our work. i can tell you that this strategy is borne from a genuine desire to go after the kinds of hate in america to lead to threats of violence against real people, our fellow citizens who are of the muslim faith or arab community and palestinian community, that comes from a genuine instinctual place for the president and for the vice president. i mean, he has said time after time after time that that kind of hate has no place. >> john, i want to go back to what you want about your conversations with the israelis and trying to encourage them to minimize civilian casualties. you said that you are trying to impart some of the lessons the u.s. has learned. can you elaborate, and to what extent would the u.s. be able to help israel in pinpointing its targeting precisely to avoid the casualties of 195 killed at jabalia. how can you help israel minimize casualties? >> look, we have a lot of experience in what's called urban warfare, in iraq, afghanistan, mosul, think about fallujah, places like that. and one of the reasons why we dis dispatched senior officers to israel not long ago to share lessons learned about how you conduct operations against a terrorist network inside an urban environment such that you are minimizing damage to civilian infrastructure and absolutely minimizing loss of life to innocent people. and there are -- there are things you can do on the ground that you can't do from the air, particularly if you have good intelligence, and so i think those were the kind of conversations that we were having with our israeli counterparts, and on your second question, there's no plan or intention for the united states to get involved in the targeting process. these are israeli military operations and the israeli defense force. their leaders, they are making these decisions, executing these operations. what we are doing is making sure that we are giving them the tools, including perspective and advice, but also weapons, to be able to conduct these operations in a most efficient way possible and in a way that again, minimizes civilian harm. >> is the u.s. providing weapons intended to minimize harm but then we see large civilian casualties in places like jabalia. does the u.s. bear some responsibility by providing the weapons? >> we are not making the targeting decisions. the israeli defense force are making the decisions. we are giving them the tools and capabilities they need to defend themselves against what i just read is a pretty dire chilling threat. these guys want to wipe them off the map. they have a right, a responsibility to go after these folks and we are trying to give them the tools and capabilities to do that. but in addition to it is our perspective, our lessons learned, our advice about how to do it in a way that minimizes civilian harm. >> are you going to increase the number of officers providing this advice and then a quick question on chile. >> i know of no other decision to send more officers over there. the ones that went over are now back. they were not still there. but obviously we have terrific communications with our israeli counterparts. >> and on chile, the president of chile will be meeting later with the president. chile has recalled its ambassador from israel. other countries in latin america have recalled their envoys and broken ties with israel. do you see this being a big topic today, and what will the president say to the president of chile about this decision to recall the ambassador. >> i'm not going to get ahead of a conversation that has not happened yet. obviously each country, these are sovereign nations, they have the right to handle their bilateral diplomatic relations in the way they see fit. i'm not going to lecture the people how they handle that. i don't know to your other question, i don't personally know of other nations that have recalled their israeli ambassador, but obviously that's for them to decide. what we decided to do is what i've just told you about our goals and our support for israel. and we can speak to that. >> this might be repeating something, but i want to be fully clear, when the president said last night he convinced prime minister netanyahu to do a ceasefire, he was referring to the two americans that got out, but israel has never acknowledged they paused. can you give us a better understanding of what exactly was paused and if the understanding is for every sort of hostage release there would be a pause? >> i'm not going to go into more detail than what we