'This Week' Transcript: House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Peter King and Sen. Carl Levin

WASHINGTON, Nov. 18, 2012— -- (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RADDATZ (voice-over): Good morning. Welcome to "This Week."

Firestorm. One week after his re-election, the president faces the Middle East on the brink.

A deepening sex scandal.

(UNKNOWN): David Petraeus in the hot seat.

(UNKNOWN): The scandal spreads.

(UNKNOWN): This is the "National Enquirer."

RADDATZ: New questions about Benghazi.

MCCAIN: What did the president know? And what did he do about it?

RADDATZ: And fiscal cliffhanger, holding the economy hostage. The politics, the policy, and what it all means for you, with our headliners, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, House Homeland Security Chair Peter King, and Carl Levin of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

And insights and analysis with our powerhouse roundtable, with George Will, Donna Brazile, Jonathan Karl, Newt Gingrich, and Congressman Xavier Becerra.

Plus, America's favorite tasty treat turns into another political football. Is it twilight for the Twinkie?

ANNOUNCER: From ABC News, "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos. Reporting from the Newseum in Washington, Martha Raddatz.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RADDATZ: Good morning. George Stephanopoulos has the weekend off.

We begin with breaking news from the Middle East, where despite talks of a possible cease-fire, the air war between Hamas and Israel is continuing. So let's get right to it. We have Alex Marquardt in Gaza City and Christiane Amanpour in Jerusalem.

And, Alex, let me begin with you. Give us a sense of what's been going on there in Gaza.

MARQUARDT: Good morning, Martha. It's been very consistent pummeling of Gaza by the Israeli air force and a consistent launching of rocks by these various Palestinian militant groups. We are hearing the bombings going off rather incessantly. Just a short while ago, a Palestinian group launched a rocket from just a short distance away.

This goes on throughout the day, into the night. Around 2:00 a.m. this morning, we were woken up by this barrage of artillery fire coming from the Navy ships just offshore, the Israeli ships.

The big question today is whether we're going to see a cease-fire brokered by Egypt and Turkey, obviously, with the pressure of the U.S. and Great Britain, or are we going to see that ground invasion by Israel? Prime Minister Netanyahu said today they are ready to significantly expand their ground operation. We know that Egypt and Turkey are working feverishly to try and strike some sort of deal, but the signal, the sounds that are coming out of Jerusalem is that they aren't finished with this operation yet, but certainly here in Gaza, people are hoping that some sort of cease-fire will come about very soon. RADDATZ: Thanks to Alex.

And now let's bring in ABC's global affairs anchor, Christiane Amanpour, who joins us from Jerusalem. Christiane, what is the situation there militarily? Are there still fears of a ground war?

AMANPOUR: Martha, from the military point of view, they want to just get rid of as much of Hamas' rocket-launching capability as possible. I just talked to a senior military official here, an Israeli official, who said they seemed to be quite pleased with what they've done so far. In about 1,000 sorties, they tell me, they've taken out quite a lot of the rocket-launching capability.