Blinken offers most detailed picture to date of post-war Gaza plans

Washington (CNN) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken offered his most detailed picture yet of his long-awaited plans for post-war Gaza on Tuesday as he stressed the importance of not leaving a power vacuum in the decimated enclave.

Blinken presented the “core elements” in a speech at the Atlantic Council just days before his term as top US diplomat comes to an end. Although he said the plans would be handed over to the incoming Trump team, there is no evidence that the new administration intends to follow through with them.

The war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza has raged on for more than a year, with more than 46,000 people killed in the besieged enclave, according to the Palestinian health ministry. The majority of those killed have been women and children as efforts to achieve a ceasefire and hostage deal have only in recent weeks gained traction. Blinken on Tuesday expressed optimism about such an agreement, saying that it is “ready to be concluded and implemented” if Hamas accepts.

In what could be his final public remarks as secretary of state, Blinken sought to defend the Biden administration’s policy on Gaza – a policy that has faced sharp criticism from some Democratic lawmakers and current and former US officials, as well as human rights organizations that say Israel is carrying out genocide. The Biden administration and the Israeli government have rejected that conclusion.

In a speech interrupted multiple times by protestors calling him “bloody Blinken,” the top US diplomat acknowledged the deep divisions over the administration’s policy on Gaza, noting, “I wish I could stand here today and tell you with certainty that we got every decision right. I cannot.”

‘Hard decisions’ to come

“I wish I could tell you that leaders in the region always put their people’s interests ahead of their own interests. They did not,” Blinken said as he stressed the need for the day-after plans to be executed.

He said those plans would require “all parties to summon the political will to make hard decisions, to make hard compromises,” he said, including reform from the Palestinian Authority (PA) and acceptance by the Israeli government of eventual PA rule over a unified Palestinian state.

The State Department has worked for months with partners to draw up a day-after plan for security, governance and reconstruction in Gaza, arguing that the international community could not afford to wait until a ceasefire to have such plans.

In the more immediate post-war period, “we believe that the Palestinian Authority should invite international partners to help establish and run an interim administration with responsibility for key civil sectors in Gaza, like banking, water, energy, health, civil coordination with Israel,” Blinken described. “The international community would provide funding, technical support and oversight.”

Blinken said that interim administration would include Palestinians from Gaza and members of the PA. They “would hand over complete responsibility to a fully reformed PA administration as soon as it’s feasible,” he said.

The administrators would work closely with a senior UN official “who should oversee the international stabilization and recovery effort,” Blinken said.

“An interim security mission would be made up of members of partner nation security forces and vetted Palestinian personnel. Its responsibilities would include creating a secure environment for humanitarian and reconstruction efforts and ensuring border security, which is crucial to preventing smuggling that could allow Hamas to rebuild its military capacity,” he described.

“We would stand up a new initiative to train, to equip, to vet a PA-led security force for Gaza to focus on law and order and gradually take over for the interim security mission,” Blinken said, noting that “these arrangements would be enshrined in a UN Security Council Resolution.”

Path to a Palestinian state

Without naming specific countries, Blinken said that “some of our partners have already expressed their willingness to contribute troops and police for such a mission, but if and only if it is agreed that Gaza and the West Bank are reunified under a reformed PA as part of a pathway to an independent Palestinian state.”

Blinken said that path must be “time-bound” and “conditions-based,” saying those “principles are mutually reinforcing.”

“Time-bound, because no one will believe or accept an endless process,” he said. “Conditions-based because while Palestinians have a right to self-determination, with that right comes responsibility. No one should expect Israel to accept a Palestinian state that’s led by Hamas or other extremists.”

The top US diplomat raised the prospect of the elusive Israel-Saudi normalization deal as “the best opportunity to achieve the long sought goal of Israel’s greater integration in the region, and it’s also the best incentive to get the parties to make tough decisions necessary to fully realize the aspirations of Israelis and Palestinians.”

Blinken nodded to the extremism of far-right Israeli officials like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, saying that “Israelis must abandon the myth that they can carry out de-facto annexation without cost and consequence to Israel’s democracy, to its standing, to its security.”

“We sincerely hope the parties will be prepared to make tough choices going forward, and yet, the unimpeachable reality is that up to this point, they’ve either failed to make these difficult decisions or acted in ways that put a deal and long-term peace further from reach,” he continued.

“Israel’s government has systematically undermined the capacity and legitimacy of the only viable alternative to Hamas: the Palestinian Authority,” Blinken said. “Israel continues to hold back PA tax revenues that it collects on behalf of the Palestinians, funds that belong to the Palestinians and to the PA needs to pay people who provide essential services like health care and security in the West Bank, which is vital to Israel’s own security.”

“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 of illegal outposts. Violent attacks by extremist settlers against Palestinian civilians have reached record levels,” Blinken continued.

Blinken said the US has stressed 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 rise to the Palestinians, Hamas or something just as abhorrent and dangerous will grow back.”

“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 re-emerge 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 is lost. That is a recipe for an enduring insurgency and perpetual war.”

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