'We will get a cease-fire,' Blinken says as talks reach critical juncture

WASHINGTON

Negotiators will secure an agreement to end Israel's 15-month war on the besieged Gaza Strip and free hostages who remain held there, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday as negotiations reach a pivotal moment in Doha, Qatar.

"I believe we will get a cease-fire," he said during a capstone speech at the Atlantic Council thinktank that was repeatedly interrupted by pro-Palestinian protesters. "And whether we get there in the remaining days of our administration, or after Jan. 20, I believe the deal will follow closely the terms of the agreement that President Biden put forward last May and our administration rallied the world behind now."

Blinken was referencing the date of President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration.

Prisoner swap and cease-fire talks, mediated by Qatar, Egypt, and the US, have been repeatedly derailed due to new conditions imposed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu whom Israeli opposition leaders and hostage families accuse of obstructing efforts to reach a cease-fire.

The latest round of indirect talks between Hamas and Israel began earlier this month in Doha, Qatar, and the White House said Monday that they have hit a "critical point."

The top US diplomat said his team will hand off a plan to the incoming Trump administration that envisions the Palestinian Authority (PA) taking the reins in Gaza alongside international partners to help run an interim government "with responsibility for key civil sectors in Gaza, like banking, water, energy, health, civil coordination with Israel."

The international community, he said, would provide funding, technical support and oversight for the proposed administration, which would include representatives from both Palestinians within Gaza and the PA "selected following meaningful consultation with communities in Gaza, and would hand over a complete responsibility to a fully reformed PA administration as soon as it's feasible."

The representatives would work with a senior UN official who would oversee "the international stabilization and recovery effort" in Gaza, and a new PA security force would be trained and equipped "to focus on law and order and gradually take over for the interim security mission," Blinken said. They would operate in tandem with international security forces that would be tasked with "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."

Blinken said the Biden administration has assessed "that Hamas has recruited almost as many new militants as it is lost" during the Israeli campaign.

The security arrangements would be enshrined in a UN Security Council resolution, and Blinken said some of the US's international partners have expressed a willingness to contribute troops and police to aid the security effort "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, and therein lies the rub."

"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," he said.

"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. Accepting a time-bound conditions-based approach for Palestinian statehood will provide the political horizon that regional and international actors need to contribute the security forces and financial support necessary to help new Palestinian leaders govern, secure and rebuild Gaza," he added.

Israel's indiscriminate campaign on Gaza has killed more than 46,600 people, most of them women and children, since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023 cross-border attack on Israel that killed an estimated 1,200 people. Israel has continued its war in defiance of a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire.

The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants in November for Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the coastal enclave.