Israeli Ambassador to the United States on ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict

(CBS, KYMA/KECY) - The Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Michael Herzog, spoke with Face the Nation moderator Margaret Brennan about Israeli military's strategy in northern Gaza.

"You have tens of thousands of arm terrorists, tens of thousands of rockets. We estimate over 500 kilometers of tunnels with rockets, other leadership command and control structure. This is what we are up against, and we have to uproot it because if we do not, they will strike again and again...This is a very complicated military operation in a densely populated area. And we are trying to move the population away from [the] war zone...We are moving very slowly, very deliberately, but...our operation, we believe, is effective and will continue."

Michael Herzog, Israeli Ambassador to the United States.

Brennan and Herzong touched on the status of hostage negotiations, with Herzon saying:

"We are making every effort to get hostages released. And when people talk about [a] pause in the fighting, we are all for a pause that would allow for the release of hostages. Unfortunately, [we don't think] that Hamas is serious about releasing them. They're playing full-time. They're trying to stop our pressure, and ream and regroup themselves. When we see that they are serious about it, then we are all in. Nobody has to urge us. Most of the kidnapped are Israelis and our government is responsible to the families...I think the more pressure we put on them, the more chances they are that they may agree to release hostages.

During the interview, Brennan and Herzon talked about the death toll and casuality numbers in Gaza resulting in the ongoing conflicts between Israel and Hamas.

"In every war, there are unintended consequences and there's collateral damage. That's tragic. Every human life is tragic, Palestinian or Israeli. Doesn't matter. We act according to international law. We make every distinction that we can make between civilians and terrorist. We called the population to move to the south to keep them out of harms way. Before we did air strikes, we call specific families [and] buildings, [and] asked them to leave and Hamas is deliberately keeping them. And in part of our clashes in Gaza, they sent like a hundred civilians to face our forces. That's the way they operate. This is tragic. This is tragic, but we cannot allow Hamas immunity just because they hide behind civilians. We want to separate between the two and strike the terrorist."