In Ramallah, Blinken tells Abbas US supports ‘tangible steps’ toward Palestinian state
As he tries to rally region behind postwar vision for Gaza, top US diplomat reportedly holds ‘tense’ meeting with PA leader while hundreds outside protest ‘unwelcome’ visit
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah on Wednesday as part of US efforts to rally the region behind postwar plans for Gaza that include governance reforms and concrete moves toward a Palestinian state.
Blinken told Abbas that the White House supports “tangible steps” toward the creation of a Palestinian state, said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller.
The top US diplomat also reiterated Washington’s longstanding position that a Palestinian state must exist alongside Israel, “with both living in peace and security.”
He later said the Palestinian leader was committed to reforming the Palestinian Authority. “What I take away from this meeting is that he is committed to that and is very much prepared to move forward,” Blinken told AFP in Bahrain in response to a question about Abbas’s commitment to reforming the PA.
Blinken noted “increased volatility” in the West Bank, where there has been a wave of terror attacks on Israelis and increased Israeli military operations to crack down on Hamas and other terror groups, as well as a surge in violence against Palestinians by Israeli settlers.
He also “underscored the United States’ position that all Palestinian tax revenues collected by Israel should be consistently conveyed to the Palestinian Authority in accordance with prior agreements,” Miller said.
Meanwhile, Abbas described the Gaza Strip as “an integral part of the Palestinian state,” according to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.
“It is not possible to accept or deal with the plans of the occupation authorities to separate it, or cut off any part of it,” the Palestinian leader told Blinken.
Unnamed sources told Sky News Arabia that the Ramallah meeting was “tense” and marked by “arguments.”
According to the report, Abbas asked Blinken to pressure Israel to release frozen PA funds.
“If you do not have the ability to release funds, how will you have the ability to put pressure on Israel and achieve peace and a Palestinian state?” Abbas demanded.
Blinken repeated demands that Abbas undertake reforms in the PA, the report said.
Israel collects monthly tax revenues on Ramallah’s behalf on imports and exports, and transfers those funds to the PA, but has increasingly held back some of the funds over various issues, chiefly Ramallah’s payment of stipends to terror convicts and the families of slain terrorists. It has recently warned it will not allow the PA to transfer funds earmarked for services and salaries in the Gaza Strip, alleging the money could reach Hamas while Israel is at war with the terror group.
As Blinken and Abbas met, hundreds of Palestinians marched through the streets of Ramallah to protest the visit, holding signs saying “Blinken you are not welcome here,” and one with red triangles under Blinken’s name, like those used in Hamas propaganda videos about attacks on IDF soldiers.
The protest was later dispersed by Palestinian Authority security forces.
At a press conference in Tel Aviv on Tuesday evening, Blinken said that the Palestinian Authority “has a responsibility to reform itself, to improve its governance.”
The US has said it wants to see a “revamped and revitalized” Palestinian Authority eventually take over the Gaza Strip after the war.
Blinken said he secured commitments from multiple countries in the region to assist with rebuilding and governing Gaza after Israel’s war against Hamas, and that wider Israeli-Arab normalization is still possible, but only if there is “a pathway to a Palestinian state.”
However, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hardline government is adamantly opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, and the autocratic, Western-backed Palestinian Authority leadership, whose forces were driven from Gaza when terrorist organization Hamas took over in 2007, lacks legitimacy in the view of many Palestinians.
Israel has vowed to keep fighting in Gaza until it crushes Hamas and returns the scores of hostages still held by the group after its brutal October 7 onslaught that triggered the war. In the shock assault, some 3,000 terrorists invaded Israel to murder nearly 1,200 people, mainly civilians, taking over 240 hostages of all ages while weaponizing sexual violence on a mass scale.
At the same time, Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group has fired missiles and drones nearly daily toward northern Israel, raising fears of a wider conflict — concerns also stoked by attacks by Yemen’s Houthis on Red Sea shipping.
On his fourth visit to the region since the war began three months ago, Blinken has met in recent days with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Turkey. He says they are open to contributing to postwar plans in return for progress on creating a Palestinian state.
Later Wednesday, Blinken was set to met with the leaders of Jordan and Egypt, two US allies who have long served as mediators in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in Jordan’s Red Sea city of Aqaba.
It was announced Wednesday that Blinken will also fly to Bahrain, home base of the US Fifth Fleet, for a previously unannounced visit to hold talks with King Hamad on preventing a regional escalation of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
Israeli officials say the military campaign in Gaza will continue through the rest of the year.
Nearly 85% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million have been driven from their homes by the fighting, and many of its residents face starvation. Israel has long charged that Hamas keeps supplies from an increasingly desperate civilian population, and has said that United Nations has failed to keep up with the amount of aid Israel is inspecting before it enters the enclave.
Blinken said Tuesday that more food, water, medicine and other aid needs to enter the enclave and be distributed effectively, and he called on Israel to “do everything it can to remove any obstacles.”
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
