Signals Israel has accepted truce outline while Hamas hasn't

Laying out postwar Gaza vision, Blinken raps Israel’s war strategy, shunning of PA

In lengthy address, outgoing US top diplomat assesses Hamas has recruited as many members as it has lost, criticizes Israel’s refusal to include Ramallah in ‘day after’ plan

Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks at the Atlantic Council in Washington, on January 14, 2025. (ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP)
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks at the Atlantic Council in Washington, on January 14, 2025. (ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP)

A week before the end of his term as US secretary of state, Antony Blinken laid out the vision of the outgoing US administration of Joe Biden for postwar Gaza, contending that it must include a substantial role for the Palestinian Authority, a notion vehemently opposed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

In a lengthy address at the Atlantic Council that touched on many aspects of the war and the broader state of the Middle East, Blinken offered extended criticism of Israel’s war strategy, particularly its refusal to devise a plan to replace the Hamas terror group, which, he contended, has recruited as many fighters as it has lost in the 15-month war.

Blinken said the outgoing administration would hand over its proposed roadmap to President-elect Donald Trump’s team to pick up, if a ceasefire deal is reached, as Israel and Hamas appeared to be on the brink of such an agreement.

Blinken said he envisions the Palestinian Authority inviting international partners to help establish and run an interim administration responsible for key civil sectors in Gaza, such as banking, water, energy, health, and civil coordination with Israel.

He said the international community would provide funding, technical support, and oversight to this interim administration in Gaza, without elaborating on who exactly would fund the enterprise.

He said the interim panel would be assembled through consultation with communities in Gaza and should include representatives from the Strip along with representatives from the PA.

The committee would work closely with a senior UN official appointed to oversee the international Gaza reconstruction effort. The temporary committee would be replaced by a reformed PA “as soon as it’s feasible.”

An interim security mission would be made up of troops from US-allied countries, along with vetted Palestinian personnel. It would be in charge of securing humanitarian aid along with border security and smuggling prevention, Blinken said.

He revealed that some US allies have already expressed their willingness to contribute security forces to the interim mission, but that they have conditioned this support on Israel agreeing to allow the West Bank and Gaza to be reunited under a reformed PA, as part of a pathway to a two-state solution — something Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem, September 15, 2010. (Kobi Gideon/Flash90/File)

Blinken said his plan also envisions the US establishing a new initiative to train, equip, and vet a PA-led security force for Gaza, which would gradually take over the interim security mission.

These various frameworks for Gaza’s governance, reconstruction, and security would be enshrined in a UN Security Council resolution.

Blinken’s speech was a subject of controversy within the Biden administration, with some arguing that it would be exploited by Netanyahu for political gain. Others maintained that it could even harm the hostage negotiations. Another US official told The Times of Israel that the decision to unveil the plan in this manner decreases the likelihood that it will be adopted by the incoming Trump administration, which largely wants to avoid continuing initiatives from the outgoing team.

Turning to the current negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage release deal, Blinken said American, Qatari, and Egyptian mediators submitted a final hostage deal proposal to Israel and Hamas on Sunday, hinting that the terror group has not given an answer.

“The ball is now in Hamas’s court. If Hamas accepts, the deal is ready to be concluded and implemented,” he said, indicating that Israel has already accepted — something even Netanyahu’s office has not confirmed.

“I believe we will get a ceasefire,” he added in his speech. “Whether we get there in the remaining days of our administration, or after January 20, the deal will follow closely the terms of the agreement that President Biden put forward last May and that our administration rallied the world behind.”

Anti-Israel heckling

Blinken’s speech was interrupted three times in its first 15 minutes by anti-Israel protesters who accused him of facilitating “genocide.”

“You will forever be known as Bloody Blinken, secretary of genocide,” the first protester shouted before being led out of the event.

An anti-Israel protester is removed from the room as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks at the Atlantic Council in Washington, DC, on January 14, 2025. (ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP)

“You’re a brutal war criminal,” screeched a second protester, five minutes later.

Blinken remained calm, telling one heckler, “I respect your views. Please allow me to share mine,” before resuming his remarks.

Blinken said US officials had debated “vigorously” the Biden administration’s response to the war, a reference to a slew of resignations by officials in his State Department who criticized the policy to continue providing arms and diplomatic cover to Israel.

Others felt Washington held Israel back from inflicting greater damage on Iran and its proxies, he said.

“It is crucial to ask questions like these, which will be studied for years to come,” he said. “I wish I could stand here today and tell you with certainty that we got every decision right. I cannot.”

Recipe for ‘perpetual war’

Blinken criticized Israel’s war strategy, saying Netanyahu’s refusal to advance a viable alternative to Hamas rule in Gaza, such as the PA, led the IDF to repeatedly return to places in the Strip it had previously cleared of Hamas fighters who then managed to return.

“We’ve long made the point to the Israeli government that Hamas cannot be defeated by a military campaign alone, that without a clear alternative, a post-conflict plan, and a credible political horizon for the Palestinians, Hamas, or something just as abhorrent and dangerous, will grow back,” Blinken said.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks at the Atlantic Council in Washington, DC, on January 14, 2025. (ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP)

“That’s exactly what’s happened in northern Gaza since October 7. Each time Israel completes its military operations and pulls back, Hamas militants regroup and reemerge because there’s nothing else to fill the void,” he said.

“Indeed, we assess that Hamas has recruited almost as many new militants as it has lost,” Blinken revealed. “That is a recipe for an enduring insurgency and perpetual war.”

“Israel has pursued its military campaign past the point of destroying Hamas’s military capacity and killing the leaders responsible for October 7, convinced that unrelenting military pressure was required to get Hamas to accept a ceasefire and hostage deal on Israel’s terms,” he said.

He added that Hamas has “cynically weaponized the suffering of Palestinians,” and pointed to a Wall Street Journal report that purported to reveal a message that the late Hamas terror leader Yahya Sinwar sent to mediators, in which he called the death of Palestinian civilians “necessary sacrifices” and argued that the more innocent Palestinians were killed, the more Hamas would benefit.

Blinken panned both the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority for some of their policies over the past several years.

“Israelis must abandon the myth that they can carry out de facto annexation [of the West Bank] without cost and consequence to Israel’s democracy, to its standing and to its security,” Blinken contended.

“Israel is expanding official settlements and nationalizing land at a faster clip than any time in the last decade, while turning a blind eye to unprecedented growth in illegal outposts. Violent attacks by extremist settlers against Palestinian civilians have reached record levels,” he lamented.

Blinken said Israel’s refusal to allow the Palestinian Authority to gain a foothold in Gaza and to accept a time-bound, conditions-based approach for Palestinian statehood has prevented other international actors from accepting Israel’s call to help rebuild Gaza.

He acknowledged that some in Israel argue that heeding those requests would amount to a reward for Hamas. However, Blinken argued that Hamas is opposed to the two-state solution for which the international community has advocated, and which it sought to quash with the October 7 onslaught.

This picture, taken from the Israeli side of the border with the Gaza Strip, shows smoke plumes rising from explosions above destroyed buildings in the northern Gaza Strip on January 13, 2025. (Menahem Kahana/AFP)

“Israel’s government has systematically undermined the capacity and legitimacy of the only viable alternative to Hamas — the Palestinian Authority,” Blinken said, pointing to Israel’s withholding of hundreds of millions of dollars in Palestinian tax revenues that belong to the PA.

“Israelis must decide what relationship they want with the Palestinians. That cannot be the illusion that Palestinians will accept being a non-people without national rights. Seven million Israeli Jews and some 5 million Palestinians are rooted in the same land. Neither is going anywhere,” he said.

As for the PA, Blinken said it “repeatedly failed to undertake long-overdue reforms,” including ones to rein in corruption, decrease bloated bureaucracy, and alter its welfare program to cease payments to security prisoners based on the severity of their attack against Israelis.

He also blasted the PA for refusing to consistently and unequivocally condemn Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught, saying it “only entrenched doubts among Israelis that the two communities can ever live side by side in peace.”

Reflecting on the dangerous ripple effects of the war in Gaza, Blinken noted that “the more people suffer, the less they feel empathy for the suffering of those on the other side.

“Throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds, large majorities believe that October 7 didn’t happen — or if it did, that it was a legitimate attack on Israel’s military,” he said of the terror group’s 2023 onslaught that started the war, in which some 1,200 were killed and 251 taken hostage, amid widespread and widely documented atrocities against civilians, including attacks on hundreds of families in their homes and on a music festival.

“In Israel, there is almost no reporting on the conditions in Gaza and what people there endure every day,” Blinken continued. “This dehumanization is one of the greatest tragedies of the conflict.”

Reuters contributed to this report.

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