Secretary of State Antony Blinken confirmed on Jan. 14 that a Gaza cease-fire and hostage deal is close.
In his last major foreign policy speech while heading the State Department, Blinken told the Atlantic Council foreign policy think tank that the United States, Egypt, and Qatar put forward a final proposal on Jan. 12.
“The ball is now in Hamas’s court,” he said. “If Hamas accepts the deal, it is ready to be concluded and implemented.”
Blinken spoke for about 45 minutes and almost entirely about the Middle East.
Reports that a deal was close have proliferated, with Middle East envoys of both President Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump meeting in Qatar’s capital, Doha, with the heads of Israel’s intelligence agencies. Hamas representatives were reportedly in the same building.
A cease-fire would likely be temporary, the first phase in a projected three-phase plan.
It would be the first since late November 2023, when more than 100 Israeli hostages were released during an eight-day pause in the fighting.
Hamas, “the lone holdout, but now thoroughly isolated, finally accepted President Biden’s framework,” Blinken said, because the United Nations Security Council, Arab League, and other key nations already had.
The first step being sought, he said, is an initial six-week cease-fire in which the fighting stops.
“Israeli forces pull back, [and] hostages start to come home. Palestinian prisoners are released. Humanitarian assistance surges into Gaza,” he said.
The cease-fire’s first phase, Blinken said, would also “create space” to work toward a permanent cease-fire, complete withdrawal of Israeli forces, and release of the remaining hostages.
He described the role of international partners in Gaza going forward, a plan that will be handed off to the Trump administration.
U.S. policies, he said, played a significant role in the chain of events pushing Hamas toward a cease-fire.
Fifteen months after the Oct. 7 attack, he said, “Hamas military and governance capacity has been decimated, and the masterminds behind the attack have been killed.”
“Tehran is on its back foot,” he said.
The United States assembled a group of regional partners who supported Israel in responding to Iran’s two missile attacks.
Israel’s attack demolished Iranian air defenses, left sensitive sites exposed, and sent a message of deterrence while avoiding dangerous escalation, he said.
Terrorist group Hezbollah, which he called “a shadow of its former self,” has retreated north of the Litani River in Lebanon as part of a cease-fire brokered by Washington.
The Bashar al-Assad government fell in Syria, and Iran has retreated from Syria.
“None of Assad’s patrons, not Iran, not Russia, not Hezbollah, were in a position to save them this time. All were bogged down in crises of their own making, which the United States effectively exacerbated.”
Blinken touted the administration’s other achievements in the Middle East, including pursuing regional integration to make the region more stable and secure, he said.
“A more integrated region is also in a stronger position to prevent any one of its neighbors from dominating the others, or any outside country from dominating the region,” he said.
The Biden administration, he said, “deepened and broadened the Abraham Accords” and “spearheaded new coalitions like I2U2, bringing together India, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States to tackle shared challenges.”
“We announced a groundbreaking economic corridor connecting India, the Middle East, and Europe,” he said. The United States continued to lead an 87-nation coalition countering ISIS terrorists.
Blinken took issue with Trump’s decision, in his first term, to abrogate the nuclear treaty with Iran forged by the Obama administration.
Calling the exit “unilateral and misguided,” Blinken said, “We made clear there was a path to mutual return to compliance if Iran was willing to take the steps necessary.”
The Biden administration had made progress toward normalizing relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. On Oct. 10, 2023, Blinken said, he was scheduled to travel to Saudi Arabia “to help close remaining gaps.”
Such a deal would include, he said, “a credible pathway to a Palestinian state with ironclad security guarantees for Israel.”
That was derailed by Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.
“The timing of Hamas’s attack was no accident,” he said. “Israel’s growing integration in the region, the prospect of normalization with Saudi Arabia, posed an existential threat to Hamas’s power, its ambitions to dominate the Palestinian political landscape, its raison d'etre, which is the rejection of two states and the destruction of Israel.”
Should Saudi-Israel relations normalize, elements of the agreement would likely include a strategic alliance establishing Saudi Arabia as a treaty ally of the United States, plus agreements bolstering defense, energy, and trade cooperation.
Blinken expressed sympathy for each side—the damage Israel suffered on Oct. 7, the devastation Gaza has undergone in the ensuing war—and also warned them of the risks of not making peace.
Gaza civilians’ suffering has “isolated Israel internationally and imperiled its hard-earned strides toward building relationships in the region,” he said.
If it doesn’t secure long-term peace, it risks losing Arab partners with whom it has made peace, including Jordan and Egypt, he said.
Remaining bogged down in Gaza would cost Israel economically, hurting its credit ratings and foreign investment even more, he said.
Israel has erred, he said, by freezing a half billion dollars in tax revenue meant for the Palestinian Authority (PA).
On the Palestinian side, he said, the PA’s “refusal to consistently and unequivocally condemn Hamas and the killings of Oct. 7 only entrenched doubts among Israelis that the two communities can ever live side by side in peace, as have the PA’s payments to the families of terrorists and the antisemitic remarks of its leaders.
“Many partners in the region and beyond have also been unwilling to condemn Hamas publicly. Amidst the chorus of condemnation of Israel, the silence about Hamas has been deafening,” he said.
