The first days of the Gaza ceasefire have seen Hamas operatives patrolling city streets, guarding aid convoys and clearing rubble.
Like the footage of the hostage releases on Sunday that was carefully cropped to show a dominant Hamas presence in the Gaza Strip, the terror group is working hard to present itself as having defiantly survived 15 months of war with Israel.
But even if the scenes are exaggerated and anecdotal, Hamas is undoubtedly the only force even purporting to rule the Strip after Israeli forces pulled back out of population zones on Sunday.
Therein lies what Barbara Leaf described as her greatest regret from her tenure as the Biden administration’s most senior diplomat responsible for the Middle East.
From the beginning days of the war sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught, US President Joe Biden and his top aides stressed to Israel the importance of planning a replacement for Hamas in Gaza, arguing that failing to do so would allow for an enduring insurgency.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back on the efforts, arguing that it was futile to plan for replacing Hamas before the group was destroyed. The US hoped that Israel would allow the Palestinian Authority to gain a foothold in Gaza, viewing the more moderate foil to Hamas as the most viable alternative and one that would create a pathway to a Palestinian state, with one governing body over both the West Bank and Gaza.

But Netanyahu rejected the proposal, likening the PA to Hamas, as he sought to manage the stances of his far-right coalition partners who would likely have collapsed his government if the premier allowed PA President Mahmoud Abbas to return to Gaza, rather than Israeli settlers who were pulled out in 2005.
The US sought to plan around Netanyahu’s intransigence, but ultimately made little progress, as the support for the post-war management of Gaza offered by Arab allies was conditioned on the PA’s participation in the effort.
In the administration’s final days, secretary of state Antony Blinken sufficed with giving a speech at a Washington think tank in which he laid out his vision for Gaza’s governance, security and reconstruction in the “day after” that he hoped that the parties would adopt.
They have not done so, however, which was at the top of mind for Leaf as she sat down for a farewell interview with The Times of Israel last week.
“The fact that there’s no real plan on the books for how to put Gaza back together again after the conflict… is a huge disappointment for me,” said the former assistant secretary for Near Eastern affairs.

She called Netanyahu’s refusal to allow the PA to play a role in Gaza a “terrible mistake,” lamenting that Israel never provided an alternative, while engaging in “magical thinking that some collection of Arab states would simply come in and do for Gaza what the PA really needs to do.”
The interview was held two days before the announcement of the Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal — an agreement finalized thanks to an unprecedented collaboration between the outgoing and incoming administrations in Washington.
Biden argued it was the framework he unveiled in May and the months of careful support for Israel against Iran and its proxies that created the conditions for the agreement. But US President Donald Trump has maintained that it was his threat of “all hell to pay” in the Middle East if the hostages weren’t released by January 20 that ultimately broke the months-long deadlock. Arab officials familiar with the negotiations echoed that sentiment to The Times of Israel.
During the lengthy interview (transcript below), Leaf largely defended the administration’s approach to the war, which faced criticism from progressives who argued that Biden didn’t leverage enough of his influence over Netanyahu, and conservatives who asserted that the US micro-managed Israel and at times withheld key support.
Leaf maintained that the US did privately lean on Netanyahu but that publicly blaming him for the lack of ceasefire risked harming Israel’s deterrence against the Iran-led Axis of Resistance, which Washington similarly opposes.
Where the Biden administration held fewer qualms in publicly criticizing Netanyahu was on the issue of aid going into Gaza — or the lack thereof.

In October, Blinken and then-defense secretary Lloyd Austin even penned a letter to the premier warning that Israel had 30 days to take a series of specific steps to alleviate the humanitarian crisis or risk the continued supply of certain offensive weapons.
Israel failed to meet most of the demands, but made progress on many of them, leading the Biden administration to maintain its weapon shipments to Israel.
Explaining that decision, Leaf said the goal in the letter had been for Israel to meet the demands laid out, but that the “structural changes” Israel took as a result were “most significant.”
On the issue of civilian casualties in Gaza — which some of her administration colleagues criticized Israel for not doing enough to prevent — Leaf declined to comment altogether.
She was more dismissive of criticism lodged at the other two mediators, Qatar and Egypt, insisting there was no more they could have done to pressure Hamas.
Leaf said the US request in November for Qatar to oust Hamas officials from the country demonstrated that pressure could be placed on the terror group, whose leaders returned weeks later at the behest of the incoming Trump administration. She stated, however, that it was only a card that could be played once and that Washington was warranted in waiting 13 months before doing so.

Where she expressed more regret was on the US relationship with Hamas’s rival, the Palestinian Authority.
The US made good on Biden’s pre-election pledge to restore the relationship with the PA along with aid to the Palestinians, but it was also seen to have deprioritized the Israel-Palestinian conflict, deeming the advancement of another high-stakes peace initiative as counterproductive and instead pursuing a normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia that would include the establishment of a pathway to an eventual Palestinian state.
That effort was derailed by Hamas’s October 7 attack, though discussions with Netanyahu to convince him to okay such a political horizon had not yet even begun.
Leaf acknowledged that the war complicated those talks and has made the Palestinian component more essential for Saudi Arabia.
“It’s not just a price to be paid, and it’s not some little minor transaction. It’s something huge for the lives of those people [the Palestinians],” she said, adding that she didn’t believe it was something that the current hardline Israeli government would be willing to accept.

And while the US did restore ties with the PA, those relations quickly soured as Ramallah disapproved of Washington’s incremental approach, along with its failure to follow through on other pre-election promises to reopen diplomatic missions in Jerusalem and Washington that were shuttered during the previous Trump administration.
“I personally regret that we didn’t find the opportunity at the time to reopen the [US] Consulate [in Jerusalem],” she said.
The move would have required a degree of approval from Israel, but successive governments blocked it.
Leaf argued the administration could have simply gone ahead with reopening the Jerusalem consulate despite Israel’s objections, but attention was often elsewhere as conflicts raged in other parts of the region and globe.
While she appeared to sympathize with Ramallah’s frustration on the matter, the long-time US diplomat was much less convinced by the PA’s case regarding its governing capacities.
Leaf spent significant time urging the PA to advance far-reaching reforms so that it would be better prepared to take responsibility for managing a state if and when that day came.

To assuage international concerns, Abbas appointed a new cabinet last March and rolled out a series of reforms aimed at combatting corruption and limiting bureaucracy.
But not everyone was impressed by the move, as the PA president — currently in the 21st year of a four-year term — tapped close confidant Muhammad Mustafa as prime minister.
While Mustafa has been credited for engaging in a serious reform process, Lead didn’t appear entirely convinced.
“He’s a decent guy. I think he’s solid. He’s serious. Is he undertaking the far-ranging reform that they need? Possibly not,” she said.
With the end of the Biden administration, Leaf retired from public service after over three decades, during which she also served as US ambassador to the UAE, deputy assistant secretary of state for the Arabian Peninsula and deputy assistant secretary of state for Iraq.

She described her final tenure in government as largely being “crisis-aversion” work, but said the “seismic” developments that occurred in Syria and Lebanon during her last days in office left her with much hope.
After years of political deadlock in Lebanon, a new president and prime minister have just been elected, pledging to move the country away from the claws of Iran-backed Hezbollah.
In Syria, where the growing assumption had been that dictator Bashar Assad had managed to weather the international outcry over his crackdown against his own people, the regime has fallen and the rebels are pledging a new future devoid of Iranian influence, though concerns remain over their jihadist origins.
Leaf was part of the first group of US officials who visited Damascus to meet with new Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“That’s a memory I’ll always hold dear,” she recalled.
“I never imagined — these last 10-15 months — that I’d get to Damascus before I left government service, so it was really emotional and a highlight from my [last] four years.”
The following transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity
The Times of Israel: Looking back at these last four years, what would you say you’re most proud of? Was there a moment where you felt you made a difference?
Ambassador Barbara Leaf: That’s a hard one that’s going to take some time to digest. Honestly, it has been such a ferociously intense period this last 15 months since October 7. It was fairly intense before because I felt that from the time I came in January 2021, there was a lot of relationship-building that we had to do — starting with the Palestinians, but not only.
When I look back over the last 15 months, often it was less of a feeling of ‘Oh, we’re making progress here, we’re making progress there,’ than it was ‘Oh, we’ve averted this, and we’ve averted that — the sort of things that could have gone much, much worse. This is not the most satisfying way to finish your work day every day, but sometimes that’s just what the region gives you. The seismic effect of October 7 was such that the ripples just constantly moved outward.
Where I ended up feeling really great at the end was in the changes that have come about in Syria and Lebanon, with the selection of the [new Lebanese] prime minister, the election of the president. Those are two resoundingly significant — some friends of mine have called them earthquakes.
The other earthquake was in Damascus. I would never claim credit individually. None of us can for any one of these events. No government can say ‘We did that ourselves.’ It was very much a team sport. But the changes that have occurred over the last four months, culminating first in Bashar al-Assad’s flight from Damascus and then these extraordinary leadership selections [in Lebanon], that’s really big stuff.
I was glad to be a part of the effort that brought those about or contributed to them occurring. I’m never going to say anybody but the Syrians did the work in terms of bringing Assad down. But there were many factors that brought those about.
Going back to your first question, the nature of this job at this particular time was such that I didn’t look for individual achievements that I could bring about myself. Given the state of the region in the last 15 months, things were very much interconnected in a constant — sometimes highly negative, even disastrous way. Other times, these waves that are lapping in every direction — they brought about really significantly positive things. Those ripples are going to continue to be felt in places like Iraq for the good.

Is there something that you felt that you wish you had done differently or regret —
— Gaza, Gaza, Gaza. I hope and pray every day that this deal is going to be sealed, and we’re going to start seeing our American citizens come home and other hostages go home to their families, but it is only the first part of a multi-act play. The fact that there’s no real plan on the books for how to put Gaza back together again after the conflict is a huge disappointment for me.
What do you attribute that to?
Lots of different reasons. But what I find unfortunate is that it was always held tied to negotiations, which themselves were so arduous and difficult for all the reasons we know.
If there’s one thing that the US has learned through many conflicts — most infamously, through the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq — it’s that you cannot wait until afterward to do that kind of planning — that post-conflict planning. It’s a disaster if you do. It’s a lack of political will and many other factors.
The fact that there’s no real plan on the books for how to put Gaza back together again after the conflict is a huge disappointment for me.
It wasn’t just Netanyahu’s refusal to incorporate the Palestinian Authority into the post-war management of Gaza that scuttled those efforts?
He’s been outspoken about his unwillingness to let the PA perform any function in Gaza. I think that’s a terrible mistake. And if not the PA, then who? Israeli officials themselves have said this to me: ‘It can’t be Hamas, it can’t be the IDF, it can’t be the Israeli government, we don’t want chaos.’ Well, then there aren’t other options. It was always a bit of magical thinking to think that some collection of Arab states would simply come in and do for Gaza what the PA really needs to do.

But did it all fall on Netanyahu’s refusal?
No, not all.
Was there full willingness and partnership from the Arab allies that the US was working with on this?
For many months, there was a high reluctance to engage in the discussions for the obvious [that] there was public pressure on all the governments to focus only on the here and now, which is ending the conflict, and that engaging in discussions about some future day for them was for their publics would seem to not be focusing on the right thing. Over time that changed. But you can’t expect those governments to do the planning. That really has to start with the parties themselves, and the parties, in my mind, are Israel and the Palestinian Authority. If the planning doesn’t occur there, it’s really impossible to offload that onto other people.
The common question you get from reporters at State Department press briefings is, ‘Why can’t the US just squeeze Israel harder or issue a red line to Netanyahu and say this has to happen or else’ —
— We shared our own experiences. Our own experience was in vivid display, in 2003 and 2004 — the human wreckage, the terrible cost in lives and money, destruction, etc. — of what happens when you don’t do that kind of plan. So it was self-evident to us, and I think it was self-evident to some parts of the Israeli military, that that was a necessary thing to begin doing. But that’s not something that we can compel another country to do, just as nobody could compel us to do it in Iraq. We had to learn the hard way that we had to do it. We had the responsibility. Otherwise, we were losing soldiers, civilians were dying, etc. And it wasn’t the responsibility of the Arab countries to do it [in the case of Gaza].

In some of the more honest conversations I’ve had with administration officials, I’ve heard an acknowledgment that part of the US ceasefire proposal would allow for a scenario where Hamas remains in Gaza in some form. US officials would say that the idea is for an alternative governing force to also be established, but that this force would have to compete with Hamas and have to out-govern and out-secure Gaza so that Palestinians can see that a better alternative to Hamas exists.
You out-govern and out-secure Gaza by allowing the Palestinians to do that. The Palestinian Authority, Palestinian technocrats who would join in that effort, whether from Gaza itself or from the West Bank. That’s not really rocket science. You have to have an alternative. That is the nature of every conflict or setting where you have an insurgency — which is what Hamas would naturally morph into. If it can’t rule, it will morph back into an insurgency. You do have to out-govern. You do have to out-secure. There isn’t an alternative to the Palestinian Authority. And the Palestinian Authority is the only self-government that the Palestinians have ever had, created by Oslo.
But what Netanyahu would say is, ‘You’re asking us to accept a scenario, or you’re telling people to come into a scenario in Gaza where there’s still going to be a Hamas presence there. The likelihood of the alternative presence actually out-governing Gaza —when there’s still a Hamas presence — is very low. Therefore, you can’t expect us to trust this proposal.’ That’s why they’re trying to fight until the last Hamas operative.
But it becomes fighting to the last Israeli soldier too. You’re losing Israeli soldiers — if not on a daily basis, certainly several a week. There is a cost to taking that approach. It’s a cliche, but it is true: Hamas is an ideology. You have to fight that with something else. It’s the lesson of such insurgencies worldwide. You do have to out-govern them. You have to have a political alternative. You cannot only do the kinetic approach. You’re never going to be able to get every last Hamas member or fighter, rather through that mix of other means. Offering a governing alternative is a critical piece of it.
Therefore, is there a recognition — something that I don’t think US officials were willing to say publicly — that there was going to be a Hamas still somewhat in power in some form after this deal is —
— No, it’s not the same thing. It’s not the same thing at all. Hamas has been shattered as a conventional military force. It has largely been disabled as a governing force. There is, from every account I’ve heard, read, talked to Palestinians and others who talk to people inside Gaza. There’s a great revulsion toward the movement and its leadership for what it brought about. Are there going to be Hamas members scattered throughout the populace? No question. Are they going to be able to impose governance? No, not, if you put the right conditions together, and the right structure would be the PA, with substantial and international involvement, technical support and a rigor in holding its feet to the fire in terms of fiscal and other accountability.

Why would Hamas agree to just unilaterally give up its governing power?
Because Hamas doesn’t have the ability to impose itself on the two million people of Gaza. If you allowed the PA, if you allowed an alternative to be stood up, that in itself is the solution.
You’re losing Israeli soldiers — if not on a daily basis, certainly several a week. There is a cost to taking that approach. It’s a cliche, but it is true: Hamas is an ideology. You have to fight that with something else. It’s the lesson of such insurgencies worldwide. You do have to out-govern them. You have to have a political alternative. You cannot only do the kinetic approach.
Sorry to return to my earlier question, but let me lay it out a bit more. A favorite question from reporters on this war has been about who’s to blame for the lack of deal to date. You obviously hear President Biden and Secretary Blinken and others repeatedly say that it was on Hamas. Throughout this whole process, there’s never been a point where the blame was pointed strictly at Israel. But when you —
I think the president has, indirectly, in his public remarks made it clear that he was holding both parties to account.
Yes, but it was either, ‘We need the parties to come to the table and negotiate’ or ‘The reason that there’s no deal right now is Hamas.’ The finger was never pointed directly or only at Israel. But when I spoke with officials from Egypt and Qatar or members of the Israeli hostage negotiating team and even some US officials, there was some admission that actually, there have been times when Prime Minister Netanyahu was the main obstacle.
Secretary Blinken in his interview with The New York Times a few days ago talked about how the US came to the realization that whenever it publicly criticized Israel or whenever there was daylight, that led Hamas to harden its positions. My takeaway from those comments was that the US would never say Netanyahu was to blame because that would lead Hamas to become more intransigent. Is that a correct read?

There have been points along the way where there has been Israeli foot-dragging or second-guessing of its position and so forth. I think the secretary put it aptly, that we had… a structure to negotiations that was very difficult to work through. You had a government that you could see, touch, talk to very directly [in Israel], and that was itself subject to all sorts of pressures from the public, from political wings, from the opposition at various points, from external communities.
Then you have Hamas, and you have those who are available to pressure [them], but they don’t make the decisions — [Hamas’s] subterranean decision-makers do. The question for the highest levels of our government was what works to get pressure on the parties to come to the table. Putting pressure on Hamas publicly was [something you] could do.
The difference is you had two parties that the US and the mediators couldn’t touch and pressure in the same way. You had one party that had security concerns that the US often shared regarding other elements of the so-called Axis of Resistance.
This issue of showing a breach or showing variance in the public domain [between the US and Israel] was a constant concern in terms of deterrence in a larger strategic sense, as well as in the hostage negotiation themselves.
I don’t think it’s any secret that at various points, the [Israeli] prime minister was the problem. But in this last period, it has been Hamas that has consistently stalled, dragged its feet, not been willing to make certain decisions, harked back to certain earlier positions, earlier negotiations. We seem to be finally somewhere near a conclusion, but we’ve been there before, and it has been almost always the case that Hamas, [particularly] the subterranean leadership stalled.
This is not to say that there was no pressure applied [on Israel]. There was pressure coming from every side, including obviously, from within his own government, from within [Netanyahu’s] own public, etc. So our pressure was additive.

How do you engage with the debate over whether pressure needed to be applied on Egypt and Qatar to exert more pressure on Hamas?
Look, I have every reason to think that the Egyptians and the Qataris have been absolutely dedicated to the task, and it’s been a thankless one at times, precisely because of the public drubbing that they have gotten periodically from a variety of directions. They have been serious, committed, methodical, tireless. I will always be thankful to those two governments for the personal engagement of their leaderships and of the negotiating teams. It at times nearly broke the health of some of the negotiators.
I don’t think it’s any secret that at various points, the [Israeli] prime minister was the problem. But in this last period, it has been Hamas that has consistently stalled
There were those who argued that there was nothing Egypt and Qatar could do to sway the Hamas leaders in Gaza, but then you had the US ask Qatar to kick Hamas officials out of Doha — as if to say that this would pressure Hamas to get serious in negotiations. So which is it?
That step wasn’t taken against Qatar. The step was to make it crystal clear to Hamas that there were other costs to pay and that there would not simply be a continued ease of sitting in Doha and stringing this out. That’s not inconsistent with our view that Qatar and Egypt have been doing the hard work all along.
But it does seem to be an admission that there is a role that Qatar could play in pressuring Hamas by kicking them out of Qatar.
Sure, but you do that once. It’s not a card you can play multiple times. The Qataris were always mindful that we might ask them to do this, and they made it very clear that they valued our relationship. There was no comparison between the relationship they had with us, or have with us, and the one that they have with Hamas as host.

You can only play that card once, but why wait 13 months to do so?
It was just getting to that point where the reckoning was, these guys aren’t serious.
Looking back at it, should it have been taken earlier?
I don’t really know how it would have changed things had we taken that move earlier. I think it’s impossible to say. [Hamas] had its own calculations, which have often been difficult-to-impossible to discern, and the subterranean leadership has been making calculations on things that we can’t always understand, even with the best of intelligence. It’s clear that [former Hamas leader] Yahya Sinwar and his brother have counted on an illusion — ultimately — which was that Hezbollah would be willing and able to engage so ferociously with Israel as to pull all the pressure off of them and Gaza. In fact, over time, things went exactly the wrong way. As to why they’re stringing it out now? I think they’re in their own world.
President Biden put forward this phased proposal that has remained the basis of negotiations. Would we be in this situation where we’ve had these dragged-out negotiations for so long if the framework had simply been a release of all hostages in exchange for an end to the war?
That’s above my pay grade, I’m afraid. It’s hard for me to go back and construct 15 months and say, ‘We should have done this or that.’ It does strike me that there are diminishing returns to continuing the war. That’s something the secretary has been saying now for several months. There are no strategic gains to be gained, no strategic military objectives to be gained. The Israeli military itself has said that.
Netanyahu talks about dismantling the governing capabilities.
Those have already been dismantled.

Netanyahu and a lot of Israeli officials argue that Hamas is still controlling the aid coming into Gaza.
I don’t think Hamas is controlling aid. It’s a highly lawless atmosphere inside Gaza. And again, unless you allow [an alternative] governance to be built, Hamas will – in a thuggish way – come back and reconstruct itself. So there is a circular dynamic here that logically needs to be broken.
On the issue of civilian casualties in Gaza, one of your former colleagues [former deputy assistant secretary for Israeli-Palestinian affairs] Andrew Miller told ’60 Minutes’ over the weekend that Israel had a higher risk tolerance for civilian casualties than the US. He believes there were times when Israel felt it was worthwhile to take out an entire building that would maybe kill a senior militant, even if that meant dozens of civilians would be killed in the process. Is that a fair assessment of how Israel approached civilian casualties?
I don’t really have anything I can add to that.
What about the claims that the US had imposed an arms embargo on Israel? I think, [former US ambassador to Israel] Jack Lew, in an interview with my boss, worked to disprove that claim, basically explaining that there may sometimes have been a slowdown from the the fast-tracking process but that there was never an actual embargo.
That’s exactly right. A slowdown of a fast track is not an embargo. It’s just not. And there was an effort — certainly in the first months after the conflict began. Hezbollah had started its volleys of attacks, and over the course of months – the tempo of the threat rose. It was then that there was an acceleration or fast-tracking [of US weapons to Israel]. I’m sure Ambassador Lew put it as well as anyone. But there was no embargo.

I wanted to turn to the aid letter — the 30-day warning that secretaries Blinken and Austin sent in October. It laid out a series of specific benchmarks that you wanted Israel to meet, or risk continued unabated military assistance. Ultimately, but did not meet most of those benchmarks, but the Biden administration determined that enough progress was made to continue military assistance to Israel. The administration has defended the way that panned out. Looking back at it, do you think it was handled the right way?
This was an exceptionally complex, arduous effort on our part that required using many different elements of our government — most recently the work of an exceptionally dedicated humanitarian envoy, Lise Grande.
But with Jack Lew on that end, with many other parts of our government on this end, that letter was an effort to lay out in very clear terms the things that Israel continued to fail to do, needed to do, and especially the structural changes in its approach to aid delivery and to dealing with humanitarian issues in general in Gaza, if [conditions] were to reverse.
The humanitarian conditions are dire. They remain dire, and they got progressively worse over the course of the last six months. These are things [in the letter] that Israel can do along with structural changes they’ve not yet done. Those structural changes — things like reopening a commercial corridor for commercial movement of goods; having day-long or days-long operational pauses so that things could move; having a clearly managed and secure corridor that takes humanitarian goods into the point of warehousing and delivery — all of these are things that that Israel can do. And there are a number of others. The letter was one tool among many daily efforts to get things reversed. But ultimately the responsibility lies with Israel.
So there’s not a feeling that you could have handled it differently? Or wouldn’t have recommended the letter approach knowing how it ended?
There are a million different ways you can go at something like this. It’s one of the worst humanitarian disasters we’ve seen in years — anywhere in the world. And with unique features. But the things that were outlined [in that letter], these are these are straight-up the things that Israel should do. So formalizing it in a letter was a way to put this clearly in front of the government.

But was it the goal for Israel to meet all those demands or just make progress on them?
The goal, of course, is to get them to meet those. The structural changes — the ones that I just articulated — are the ones that are going to be the most significant, ultimately.
Do you think that there would have been a different approach in how to respond to that progress, but not meeting, of the benchmarks had Kamala Harris won the election, given that the letter was sent beforehand, but the deadline came right afterward?
There are a million different ways you can go at something like this. It’s one of the worst humanitarian disasters we’ve seen in years — anywhere in the world.
That’s just a hypothetical that I couldn’t address.
Was the political timeline part of the calculus?
No, not that I’m aware.

One of the things you mentioned at the beginning was how you worked to restore the relationship with the Palestinians. How do you look back at that effort?
We rebuilt the relationship. We resumed the assistance, which was quite critical for Palestinian society. But it was the roads that we couldn’t get to — one of them was to start a genuine political process or negotiation.
The events of October 7 derailed the best prospect to get something started. I say derailed because it didn’t kill it. Obviously, the discussions on getting to defining a roadmap for the Palestinians via a [Saudi] normalization deal were what we were working on in 2023, and that did get derailed. Ultimately that will be something that hopefully the incoming administration will take up.
How did you envision that roadmap looking like, what was it going to require Israel to agree to?
I’m not going to go into all those details because they’re still privileged information. But we hadn’t gotten to the point of putting the pieces together and really having a detailed discussion with the Israelis about it.
So it wasn’t like this deal was on the verge of happening before October 7. It is sometimes framed that way.
There was another critical stage we were about to enter into. But no. The secretary said this a number of times. We were going out on a trip that week to begin those discussions.

What I’ve heard from different officials involved is that the price of the Palestinian component went up after October 7. Is that accurate?
Yes, the price has gone up. But I have to be honest, I hate the term ‘price,’ as if it’s some butcher’s bill to be paid. This is the fate of millions of people who have had a decades-long quest for a state. That’s a quest that we have — across multiple administrations — recognized as legitimate. It’s not just a price to be paid, and it’s not some little minor transaction. It’s something huge for the lives of those people.
I never believed that the Saudis were going to sign off on some rhetorical device [regarding Palestinian statehood]. From our discussions, it was clear that was not what they had in mind. But are there now requirements for a greater upfront downpayment on that eventual state? Definitely.
Why engage so intensely in this negotiation if Netanyahu would never agree to those payments? He’s said so repeatedly.
The nature of negotiation is that you say all sorts of things at the front end, and then you have to get down to brass tacks. Then you ultimately have to decide, as the leader on one side of the table, whether the imperative is such that you are going to make those concessions that you thought you wouldn’t.
Yes, the price has gone up. But I have to be honest, I hate the term ‘price,’ as if it’s some butcher’s bill to be paid. This is the fate of millions of people who have had a decades-long quest for a state.
And you believe that the current Israeli government is capable of making such concessions?
I didn’t think so — no. I figured that would certainly cause a rupture. But that’s not our problem to solve. We were trying to foster an environment and the terms for an eventual negotiation. How that works within Israeli domestic politics is going to be for that side of the table to figure out. Certainly, we heard all along that there were other Israeli political figures who were willing to help make up the difference. If one part of the government left, they would step in with the idea in mind that it was a strategic good for Israel to get to such an agreement.

Going back to the restoration of the relationship with the Palestinians — there was a lot of frustration in Ramallah over the lack of follow-through on some of the promises that were made during the campaign. Do you think that was justified? Was there a way that the US could have done things differently regarding reopening some of these missions in Washington or Jerusalem?
I personally regret that we didn’t find the opportunity to reopen the consulate. That would have obviously been something to discuss with the Israeli government. My own feeling was there was certainly a way to do it without suggesting that we were stepping back from [Trump’s] original move of the embassy to Jerusalem. It could have been another piece of our commitment to the Palestinians to ultimately bring them to statehood.
As President Trump said, when he announced the movement of the embassy to Jerusalem, the bounds of Jerusalem were still open to negotiation. Ultimately the Palestinians were most frustrated by the lack of a process. As we were constantly reminded, it was the first administration where there had been no such effort [for peace talks]. So that’s a regret, for sure.
Looking back on it — be it on the Jerusalem consulate issue, or just more broadly, was there an opening that you think maybe was missed?
It’s not so much whether there was an opening. It’s you decide you’re going to do what is necessary to get there. You just make the decision [to reopen the consulate]. Every year there was something momentous happening, when you look back on it: Afghanistan and the lead-up, the intelligence that pointed in the direction of Russia’s move on Ukraine in 2022, the quest for the normalization deal, many other events. It’s just one of those things where I can look back now and… wish we could have found the space to do it, and we just didn’t.
And on the effort to reform the Palestinian Authority, how do you think that has gone over the past four years?
Well, I’ve met [new PA] Prime Minister Mustafa. He’s a decent guy. I think he’s solid. He’s serious. Is he undertaking the far-ranging reform that they need? Possibly not. Do they need something in terms of a generational change? Absolutely. There are many things that any Palestinian on the street will tell you they want out of the Palestinian Authority. It’s a structure that’s overdue for real house cleaning and fresh blood and a greater diversity of political figures.
You said, ‘possibly not’ in terms of the reforms. What do you mean by that?
Well, I mean, it’s still a very sclerotic organization. [Mustafa] is making every effort to bring transparency and accountability. But it’s a long piece of work.
Do you think Mustafa should be replaced?
I’m no longer an American official, but it’s not for me to say whether he should be replaced or not.
But you’re talking about new blood. He just got there.
I’m just talking in terms of Fatah and the general PA infrastructure… [With] Fatah and Palestinian governing structures generally, there’s an older generation that really hasn’t made room for younger blood.

What about [Abbas] how has he been approaching this reform process? Do you think he’s serious?
Hard to say. But the fact is he holds three different offices (head of PA, PLO and Fatah). Three different offices are held by one man, and that’s not really a democratic mode of acting.
There are many things that any Palestinian on the street will tell you they want out of the Palestinian Authority. It’s a structure that’s overdue for real house cleaning and fresh blood and a greater diversity of political figures.
On the issue of settler sanctions — there was a lawsuit recently filed by a couple of those sanctioned who are also American citizens. My understanding was that these sanctions were not put in place to target American citizens, and that actually would be legally problematic if they did. In this case, there might have even been some oversight. There was another incident where one of the individuals sanctioned was the wrong guy and a new announcement had to be issued that corrected the man’s name. The process seemed a bit hasty at times. How do you look at it?
It’s not hasty at all. It’s really careful, methodical. Yes, mistakes are going to be made. But when they come to light, the Treasury and State have acted very quickly to correct them. But it’s the nature of sanctions work. You do it slowly, carefully, methodically. You use lots of different sources of information. You validate, you revalidate. Sometimes, yes, the fact that somebody is a dual national just hasn’t come to light, but it’s not hasty.
On this, the administration ultimately decided not to sanction far-right ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir. At the same time, there was an effective boycott of them. Do you think the way the administration handled those two correctly?
I’m not going to judge the secretary, the president on this. But what I would say is that these two ministers have had an extremely destructive effect on Palestinian lives, and therefore on Israeli security.

And yet, there wasn’t a decision to sanction them.
No, there was not
Q: Because?
There just wasn’t.
These two ministers have had an extremely destructive effect on Palestinian lives, and therefore on Israeli security.
I know you have to go, so to wrap things up, is there one anecdote that you take with you from your time in government.
December 20. The road to Damascus. That’s a memory I’ll always hold dear. That was an incredible day, from start to finish.
We mustered at the (Jordanian) embassy at four in the morning and did a long, arduous drive from the Jordanian border to Damascus, met by HTS (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham). They escorted us all day. It was kind of funny. We had a mix of military and diplomatic security officers, and we had HTS fighters — very genial, very polite — who escorted us all day.

US hostage envoy Roger Carstens was part of our mission. The first part of our visit was going to [a] compound where we believe there was a detention facility where we believe (American journalist) Austin Tice had been held twice. Roger went off with an FBI team up the hill to go see the site [and] see if there was any evidence — graffiti, anything that they could surmise might be evidence of his detention there. I stayed and laid a wreath for all the victims who had lost their lives at that site and across the country.
Then we had a day filled with meetings with civil society, the White Helmets and so forth. The last meeting of the day was with (HTS leader) Abu Mohammad al-Julani or Ahmed al-Sharaa.
In between we also met with our long-serving Syrian staff who have looked after our embassy and the residence and who had been longing for the day we would be back.
It was an incredibly emotional day because every Syrian I spoke to — whether it was one of our HTS escorts who I had a long chat with or Syrian civil society activists, the White Helmets, others that we chatted with along the way, our staff — there was such a sense of elation, of euphoria there. You could almost feel it in the air. The air was thick with it.
And then to meet with the leader of this organization — designated terrorist under US law, head of a designated terrorist organization under US law — and have a very candid, thoughtful discussion for an hour and a half. It was surreal.
I never imagined over all of these last 10-15, years — I never imagined I’d get to Damascus before I left government service. It was really emotional. So that was a real highlight from my last four years.
Charlie Summers contributed to this report.