Israel and Hamas are close to signing off on a cease-fire deal proposed by the Biden administration, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday.
During a July 19 talk at the Aspen Institute think tank, Mr. Blinken said that a proposed Israel–Hamas cease-fire deal was “in the 10-yard line” and could be ratified by both sides soon.
Mr. Blinken tempered his optimism, however, adding that “the last 10 yards are often the hardest.”
“There remain some issues that need to be resolved, that need to be negotiated. We’re in the midst of doing exactly that,” he said.
One difficulty, he said, was ensuring a lasting peace for both the Israeli and Palestinian people after the war was over.
“There’s some fundamental realities that we can’t escape,” Mr. Blinken said.
“Between Gaza and the West Bank, there are somewhere over 5 million Palestinians. There are about 7 million Israeli Jews. Neither is going anywhere.”
To that end, he said that the United States remained committed to a two-state solution but that key milestones would need to be achieved before Palestinian statehood would be feasible.
“We can see a future where Israel is integrated in the region, it’s more secure, [and] the Palestinians recognize their aspirations for a state,” he said, adding that “there are important things that we need to have in order for a state to be realized.”
Barriers to Peace
Likewise, he said that the two greatest barriers to the realization of a Palestinian state in recent decades were Hamas and the Islamist regime in Iran, both of which have actively worked to sabotage regional peace deals and launched attacks against Israel’s sovereign territory.“Who tried to disrupt the Oslo Accords? Hamas. When the Arabs launched the Arab Peace Initiative, and were moving towards recognition of Israel, who .. disrupted that? Hamas,” Mr. Blinken said.
The United States and Israel would therefore need to work to ensure that “Iran and its various proxies are isolated,” Mr. Blinken said, in order to ensure the continued normalization of Israel’s relations with other powers in the region.
Mr. Blinken expressed some hope for that goal, noting that regional powers previously antagonistic toward Israel actually came to the nation’s defense in April, when Iran attacked the nation with some 300 drones and missiles.
Iran continued to pose a great threat to the stability of the region and the possibility of peace, he said, in no small part because of the regime’s continued efforts to produce fissile material that could be used in the construction of nuclear weapons.
Mr. Blinken described the state of the Iran nuclear situation as “not a good place.”
“One or two weeks is probably what the realistic breakout time is,” he said, referring to how long it would likely take Iran to build a serviceable nuclear warhead if it so chose.
On that issue, Mr. Blinken said that terminating the Obama-era Iran Nuclear Deal was “one of the biggest mistakes” made in U.S. policy in recent years and that efforts should be taken to limit Iran’s ability and desire to create nuclear material that could be used in weapons.
“If you can at least take one problem off the board, which is Iran potentially with a nuclear weapon, that’s inherently a good thing,” he said.
