Antony J. Blinken, Secretary of State

Washington, D.C.

Atlantic Council Headquarters

 

 

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Thank you very much.  Thank you.  Thank you.

Well, good morning, everyone.  And Fred, to you, thank you for that incredibly generous introduction, but thank you especially for your leadership of this council over nearly two decades.  It’s wonderful to be with you today.  It’s wonderful to be in this extraordinary new location.

Back in the early 1960s, leading diplomats, public intellectuals, philanthropists, and others came together in Washington to create an organization that was founded on meeting the challenges of an increasingly interdependent world.  In attendance, among others: Secretary of State Dean Rusk, who was blunt about what he thought would be most useful for this council: “The department hoping for initiative, research, and if necessary, the boxing of State Department ears.”  (Laughter.)

That’s exactly what the council has delivered for more than six and a half decades – starting with the Trans-Atlantic relationship, growing to incorporate expertise on other parts of the world, including the region that I want to talk about today: the Middle East.

Now, from the outset, the Biden administration’s primary goal in the Middle East was not to repeat the blunder of years past of trying to transform its governments or its societies, but rather to transform relations with, between, and among U.S. partners in the region.

That’s because we saw a more integrated region as more likely to be stable and secure, to deliver economic opportunity for its people, to find solutions to shared challenges – from pandemics and terrorism to infrastructure and energy needs.  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, to deter aggression and nuclear proliferation, to avert, to de-escalate, to end conflict through diplomacy.

We moved swiftly to pursue this vision.  We deepened and broadened the Abraham Accords.  We 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.

We worked with the UN to mediate a truce in Yemen.  We continued to lead and strengthen an 87-nation counter-ISIS coalition.

In the wake of the Trump administration’s unilateral and misguided exit from the Iran nuclear deal, we made clear there was a path to mutual return to compliance if Tehran was willing to take the steps necessary.  At the same time, we strengthened America’s robust sanctions regime on Iran and delivered on President Biden’s commitment —

(Protest utterances.)

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Thank you.  I respect your views; please allow me to share mine.  Thank you.

(Protest utterances.)

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  So, to continue – at the same time, we strengthened America’s robust sanctions regime on Iran and delivered on President Biden’s commitment that Iran would not obtain a nuclear weapon on his watch.

Finally, we made significant progress toward a comprehensive agreement that would strengthen our strategic partnership with Saudi Arabia and normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

On October 10th, 2023, I was scheduled to travel to Israel and Saudi Arabia to help close remaining gaps in the normalization deal and in particular, to pursue agreement on one of its essential components: a credible pathway to a Palestinian state, with ironclad security guarantees for Israel.

But on October 7th, Hamas attacked Israel, unleashing the deadliest days for Jews since the Holocaust.  Hamas killed more than 1,200 men, women, and children – torturing, maiming, sexually assaulting many of its victims.

The overwhelming majority of Hamas’s victims were civilians.  They included citizens from more than 30 countries, among them 46 Americans.  Hamas also took more than 250 people hostage, including some 30 children and 12 Americans.  Seven of those Americans remain hostage to this day.

Now, the timing of Hamas’s attack was no accident.  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.

As notes recovered from meetings of Hamas’s top officials would later reveal, Hamas sought to spark a regional war that would derail this agreement, knowing that doing so would inflict immense suffering on civilians on all sides, including the Palestinian people whose interests they claim to represent.

In the wake of the attack, President Biden made clear the United States’ unwavering commitment to help Israel defend itself and prevent another October 7th.  He asserted his determination to avert a broader regional conflict with all the death and destruction that that would bring.  He took immediate steps to deter further aggression and prevent the conflict from spreading – deploying two of our largest aircraft carrier battlegroups, fighter jets, warships, a guided missile submarine, and troops to the region.  And he pledged unrelenting efforts to secure the release of the hostages.

He became the first U.S. president to travel to Israel in wartime, telling the Israeli people directly: You are not alone.  He reminded Israel that while the country had a right – indeed, an obligation – to defend itself, how it did so mattered.  It was imperative to protect civilians and provide them with humanitarian assistance.

These are the goals that I’ve worked to advance over a dozen trips to the region since October 7th.

(Protest utterances.)

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  All of this has been part of an all-of-administration effort, led by President Biden, including Jake Sullivan, Bill Burns, Lloyd Austin, Brett McGurk, Amos Hochstein, Barbara Leaf, and our diplomats across the region and around the globe.

Now, more than 15 months later, Hamas’s military and governance capacity has been decimated, and the masterminds behind the attack have been killed.

Tehran is on its back foot.  Its two missile attacks on Israel were thwarted by a coalition of regional partners that we assembled.  Israel’s response, which we played a central role in shaping, demolished Iran’s air defenses, left Tehran’s most sensitive military sites exposed and vulnerable, and sent a clear message of deterrence – while at the same time avoiding a dangerous escalatory cycle.

Hizballah, Iran’s most powerful proxy, is a shadow of its former self.  Its leadership – eliminated. Its terrorist infrastructure of tunnels and weapons manufacturing – ravaged.  In Lebanon, Hizballah’s battered forces have retreated north of the Litani River as part of a U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreement.

After Iran spent decades pouring billions of dollars into propping up Assad’s murderous machinery, the Assad regime has fallen, and Tehran has retreated from Syria.  None of Assad’s patrons – not Iran, not Russia, not Hizballah – were in a position to save him this time.  All were bogged down in crises of their own making, which the United States effectively exacerbated.

Iran has lost its overland supply route to Hizballah.  Many of the Assad regime’s bases, weapons factories, and weapons – including illegal chemical weapons – have been destroyed by Israel.

It’s not just what we achieved, but also what we’ve prevented.  When I traveled across the region in the days after October 7th, I heard from partners a palpable sense of alarm that regional war was coming.  The combination of American diplomatic and military action – and assistance to preserve and strengthen Israel’s deterrent – helped prevent that from happening in the weeks after October 7th, and at multiple charged moments since then.

America’s allies and partners, particularly in the Middle East, have taken note of who they can rely on to stand by their friends, and who they cannot – which powers work to defuse crises, and which powers stand back and do nothing or make problems worse.  The balance of power in the Middle East is shifting dramatically, and not in the way Hamas and its backers hoped or planned.

And yet, the region remains rife with risk, from Syria’s fragile political transition to Iran’s desperation to restore its deterrence, with all that could imply for its nuclear ambitions, to the Houthis’ ongoing attacks on Israel and international shipping, to a dearth of opportunity, the repression of dissent and human rights in several countries.

What’s more, while the strategic gains made over the last 15 months are real, they have come at tremendous and excruciating cost.  For the families of the kibbutzim, the concertgoers, the children, the soldiers killed on October 7th attack, unfathomable grief persists.  For those with loved ones and friends still being held hostage, every day brings more anguish from not knowing if their loved ones are suffering or even alive.

The ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza has inflicted immeasurable suffering on Palestinian civilians – children, women, men trapped in a conflict they did not start and are powerless to stop.  Tens of thousands of people killed in Gaza.  Nearly the entire population has lost a loved one.  Nearly the entire population is enduring hunger.  Nearly the entire population – some two million people – has been displaced, many multiple times.  Most have no home to go to, as so many homes in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed.  Gaza is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a child, to be a civilian, to be a journalist.

And as always happens in conflicts, the more people suffer, the less they feel empathy for the suffering of those on the other side.  Throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds, large majorities believe that October 7th didn’t happen – or if it did, that it was a legitimate attack on Israel’s military.  In Israel, there is almost no reporting on the conditions in Gaza and what people there endure every day.

This dehumanization is one of the greatest tragedies of the conflict.  The late Cardinal Martini once spoke of our need to be able to experience shared sorrow.  It helps us salvage from moments of loss and despair a sense of common humanity.  Without it, we lose one of the most crucial foundations for reconciliation – and eventually coexistence.

For the United States – a country with unique global engagements and responsibilities – the conflict has put our personnel, our facilities, our assets at greater risk, stretched our force posture, stockpiles, and readiness.

Terrorist groups were exploiting the crisis in Gaza to try to boost recruitment and foment anti-American sentiment.

Autocrats have cynically used the conflict to justify their aggression and atrocities, and to advance their efforts to challenge the international rules and principles that safeguard American interests and values.

And of course, it’s divided our communities – from college campuses, to houses of worship, to families.

Given the costs – especially the human costs – we have a responsibility to ensure that the strategic gains of the last 15 months endure, and lay the foundation for a better future.

All too often in the Middle East, we’ve seen how the shoes of one dictator can be filled by another, or give way to conflict and chaos; how a nation can expel one outside power only to see another take its place; how stamping out one terrorist group can spawn even more lethal successors.

So our imperative is not to turn back the clock to the way things were before October 7th.  It’s to forge a new reality for the Middle East – in which all people are more secure, all can realize their national aspirations, all can live in peace.

Is that hard to achieve?  Yes.  Peace in the region always has been.

(Protest utterances.)

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Is it hard?  Yes.  Is it impossible?  No.  Is it necessary?  Absolutely, yes.

And that’s why we’ve pursued three interrelated diplomatic goals: brokering an enduring solution to the Israel-Hizballah conflict; ending the war in Gaza; normalizing relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which will provide Palestinians and Israelis with the incentives and reassurances that they need to achieve their long-sought national aspirations.

Israel has lived for far too long with an unsustainable situation in its northern border.

Hizballah – a terrorist organization whose stated goals include the destruction of Israel – controlled large swaths of Lebanon’s territory, including lands south of the Litani River, in violation of the UN resolution that ended the last war between Israel and Hizballah – land Hizballah used, with Iran’s support, to train fighters, to stockpile arms, to build weapons and tunnels, to carry out deadly attacks on Israel.

Starting on October 7th, Hizballah launched thousands of missiles at Israeli communities without provocation, pledging to continue its attacks until Israel ended its military operation in Gaza.

Hizballah’s aggression has come at grave cost for Israelis and Lebanese people alike.  Some 70,000 Israelis have been forced from their homes along Israel’s northern border.  In Lebanon, thousands have been killed – a quarter of Lebanon’s population displaced.

Our goal in seeking a cessation of hostilities was not merely to pause the fighting and avert a broader regional war.  Rather, we aimed to prevent Hizballah from reconstituting itself in a way that can threaten Israel or continue to hold the Lebanese state and the Lebanese people hostage.  And we wanted to create conditions allowing displaced Israeli and Lebanese families to return safely to their homes.

The arrangement that we brokered, together with France, meets those benchmarks.  It empowers the government of Lebanon to retake control of its territory.  It provides Lebanon’s economy and security forces with much-needed aid and support.  It preserves Israel’s right to defend itself in accordance with international law.  It achieves Israel’s aim of delinking hostilities on its northern front from the war in Gaza.

Just since the deal was signed, Israeli forces have started to withdraw from southern Lebanon.  The Lebanese military has deployed in their place to ensure that remaining terrorist infrastructure is removed and Hizballah does not return.  The U.S. and France are working hour by hour to monitor the agreement and to address violations.

And now just six weeks after the deal, Lebanon’s parliament voted overwhelmingly to elect a new president – the first time the country has had a national leader in more than two years.  Just yesterday, it elected a new prime minister.  Both are important steps to becoming a secure, sovereign, successful nation, and to meeting the needs of the Lebanese people.

Second, we’ve sought to end the war in Gaza in a way that will lay the foundation for enduring peace, as well as to advance the legitimate aspirations of Israelis for lasting security – and Palestinians for an independent, viable state of their own.

One month into the conflict, at a meeting of G7 foreign ministers in Tokyo, I outlined principles that the United States saw as essential to achieving these goals.  The principles included: a Gaza never again ruled by Hamas or used as a platform for terrorism or other violent attacks; new Palestinian-led governance – with Gaza united with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority; no Israeli military occupation of Gaza or reduction of Gaza’s territory; no attempt after the conflict to besiege or block it; and no forceable displacement of Gaza’s population.

These principles also called for establishing a sustained mechanism for Gaza’s recovery and reconstruction, and for creating a pathway toward Israelis and Palestinians living side by side, in states of their own, with equal measures of security, freedom, opportunity, and dignity.

Now, we and our partners recognized that we wouldn’t be able to achieve these goals overnight.

The first step, we have long believed, is to achieve an initial ceasefire – six weeks – during which Israel and Hamas stop firing, Israeli forces pull back, hostages start to come home, Palestinian prisoners are released, humanitarian assistance surges into Gaza.  It will also create space for finalizing a day-after plan to allow the full withdrawal of Israeli forces, to make the ceasefire permanent, and to bring the remaining hostages home.

Once we assessed that Israel had achieved its main objective in Gaza of ensuring that Hamas was incapable of carrying out another October 7th, President Biden publicly set out his detailed ceasefire plan.  We went around the world building support for the proposal.  The UN Security Council swiftly adopted a resolution supporting it – with 14 members voting for it, not a single member voting against it.  The Arab League, countries in the region and beyond, all affirmed their support.  Hamas, the lone holdout, but now thoroughly isolated, finally accepted President Biden’s framework.

In the time since, we’ve worked relentlessly with Qatar and Egypt to negotiate the details of the agreement and its implementation.

Now, at different moments, different parties have made it hard to finalize an agreement, or events have delayed or derailed its completion.

For the past several months, Hamas has played the spoiler.  But over the past several weeks, our intensive efforts have brought us to the brink of full and final agreement.

On Sunday, the United States, Qatar, and Egypt put forward a final proposal.  The ball is now in Hamas’s court.

If Hamas accepts, the deal is ready to be concluded and implemented.

I believe we will get a ceasefire.  And whether we get there in the remaining days of our administration or after January 20th, 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, from the outset, we also recognized that we couldn’t afford to wait until a ceasefire to plan for what would follow it.  For many months, we’ve been working intensively with our partners to develop a detailed post-conflict plan that would allow Israel to fully withdraw from Gaza, prevent Hamas from filling back in, and provide for Gaza’s governance, security, and reconstruction – drawing on the principles that I originally set out in Tokyo.  We will hand it off to the Trump administration to carry forward.

But let me share a few of its core elements this morning.

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.  The international community would provide funding, technical support, and oversight.  The interim administration would include Palestinians from Gaza and representatives from the PA – selected following meaningful consultation with communities in Gaza – and would hand over complete responsibility to a fully reformed PA administration as soon as it’s feasible.

The administrators would operate in close cooperation with a senior UN official, who should oversee the international stabilization and recovery effort.

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.  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.

These arrangements would be enshrined in a UN Security Council Resolution.

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.

And therein lies the rub.  Reaching agreement will require all parties to summon the political will, to make hard decisions, to make hard compromises.

Key regional and international actors will need to fully commit to supporting Palestinian-led governance and preventing Hamas’s return.

The PA will need to carry out swift, far-reaching reform to build more transparent, accountable governance – continuing a process that it began last year.

Israel will have to accept reuniting Gaza and the West Bank under the leadership of a reformed PA.

And all must embrace a time-bound, conditions-based path toward forming an independent Palestinian state.  These principles are mutually reinforcing.

Time-bound because no one will believe or accept an endless process.  Palestinians need and deserve a clear and near horizon for political self-determination.

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 is led by Hamas or other extremists; that’s militarized or has independent armed militia; that aligns with Iran or others who reject Israel’s right to exist; that educates and preaches rejectionism; or that, unreformed, becomes a failed state.

Israelis must decide what relationship they want with Palestinians.  That cannot be the illusion that Palestinians will accept being a non-people without national rights.  Seven million Israeli Jews and some five million Palestinians are rooted in the same land.  Neither is going anywhere.

Israelis must abandon the myth 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.

Some in Israel argue that accepting a political horizon for the Palestinians would reward Hamas for October 7th.  In fact, Hamas has tried to kill the idea of two states for decades.  It hoped to destroy the Oslo Accords with relentless suicide bombs.  It sought to strangle the Arab Peace Initiative by launching the horrific Passover attacks.  Far from rewarding Hamas, accepting a political horizon would be the ultimate rebuke to its nihilistic agenda of death and destruction.

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 have either failed to make these difficult decisions, or acted in ways that put a deal and long-term peace further from reach.

Israel’s government has systematically undermined the capacity and legitimacy of the only viable alternative to Hamas: the Palestinian Authority.

Consider funding.  Israel continues to hold back PA tax revenues that it collects on behalf of the Palestinians, funds that belong to the Palestinians and that 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.

Just this week, U.S. engagement led Israel to agree to unlock hundreds of millions of dollars in PA tax revenues – a welcome step.  But these funds never should have been withheld in the first place.  And Israel continues to hold more than half a billion dollars in tax revenues that the PA urgently needs and that Palestinians are entitled to.

In the West Bank, 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 an unprecedented growth in illegal outposts.  Violent attacks by extremist settlers against Palestinian civilians have reached record levels.

We have long made the point 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 horizon for the Palestinians, Hamas, or something just as abhorrent and dangerous, will grow back.

That’s exactly what’s happened in northern Gaza since October 7th.  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.  Indeed, we assess that Hamas has recruited almost as many new militants as it has lost.  That is a recipe for an enduring insurgency and perpetual war.

The longer the war goes on, the worse the humanitarian situation gets in Gaza.

Israel faces uniquely challenging circumstances in Gaza: a civilian population trapped there with Hamas hiding in and under homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.

Indeed, Hamas has cynically weaponized the suffering of Palestinians.  In a message that Yahya Sinwar – Hamas’s military leader at the time – sent to mediators, he called the death of Palestinian civilians, and I quote, “necessary sacrifices,” and said the more innocent Palestinians were killed, the more Hamas would benefit.

These profound challenges notwithstanding, Israel’s efforts have fallen far short of meeting the colossal scale of need in Gaza.

We’ve been clear publicly and privately that there are steps Israel could take to transform the humanitarian situation in Gaza and ensure that critical aid reaches all Palestinians in need.  Those include restarting the flow of commercial goods; undertaking pauses in military operations, as it did during the successful polio vaccination campaign; and securing specific corridors for the flow of aid to storage and distribution sites.

The suffering of civilians in Gaza is a tragedy in its own right.  It’s also isolated Israel internationally and imperiled its hard-earned strides toward building relationships in the region.

The longer the humanitarian crisis in Gaza goes on, the more Arab countries that recently normalized relations with Israel will face pressure from their populations to walk away, and the greater the risk that Israel’s longstanding peace accords with Jordan and Egypt will collapse.  The ballast that these partnerships provide for Israel and the region – easy to take for granted, especially for generations who only know a world where these nations are at peace.  But their rupture would unleash even greater instability and be incredibly hard to repair.

Remaining bogged down in Gaza will harm Israel economically.  Already, foreign direct investment and Israel’s credit rating have taken real hits.  The extended mobilization of reservists is undermining tens of thousands of businesses and private sector productivity.

For its part, the Palestinian Authority repeatedly failed to undertake long-overdue reforms, like reining in corruption and a bloated bureaucracy, further eroding its support among Palestinians.  The PA’s refusal to consistently and unequivocally condemn Hamas and the killings of October 7th only entrench 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 leader.

Many partners in the region and beyond have also been unwilling to publicly condemn Hamas.  Amidst the chorus of condemnation of Israel, the silence about Hamas has been deafening.  Where was the sustained and united demand for Hamas to release hostages, to put down its arms?  Where was the urgent effort to crack down on the financing, the arms, the materials that Hamas employs to deadly effect?  Where was the opprobrium for Hamas’s heinous practice of hiding among civilians?  Had countries around the world applied this collective pressure, Hamas’s leaders might have been forced to make different decisions many months ago, and massive suffering might have been averted.

Hamas, especially, has often chosen to sit back and wait, believing that the more time passed, the more Palestinians in Gaza suffered, the greater the chances that Iran, Hizballah, and others would feel forced to attack Israel, sparking a wider war; the more international pressure would mount on Israel to unconditionally end its military operation; the greater the likelihood a rift would open between Israel and the United States.

For its part, Israel has pursued its military campaign past the point of destroying Hamas’s military capacity and killing the leaders responsible for October 7th, convinced that unrelenting military pressure was required to get Hamas to accept a ceasefire and hostage deal on Israel’s terms.  And Israel has held firm to the belief that any deviation from its intensive military effort would be interpreted by Hamas as a sign of weakness or declining will.

Some have questioned whether a different policy and approach would have changed this dynamic, whether we put too much pressure on Israel, on Hamas, on Iran – or not enough.

We have debated these questions vigorously within the administration, within the State Department, where we’ve benefitted from a range of different views.

Some believe by privately and publicly seeking to restrain and reshape Israel’s military operations, we held it back from inflicting even greater damage on Iran, on Hamas, Hizballah, on other adversaries.

Others believe we enabled the Israeli Government to pursue a military campaign that was disproportionate, self-defeating, and counter to U.S. interests.

It is crucial to ask questions like these, which will be studied for years to come.

I wish I could stand here today and tell you with certainty that we got every decision right.  I cannot.

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.

But what I can tell you is this:

First, we continue to believe the best way to create a more stable, secure, and prosperous Middle East – and deal a lasting blow to Iran, Hamas, Hizballah, and the entire so-called “axis of resistance” – is through forging a more integrated region.  And the key to achieving that integration – now more than ever – is ending this conflict in a way that realizes the longstanding aspiration of both Israelis and Palestinians to live with peace and security in states of their own.

Second, as much influence as the United States wields in the Middle East, we can’t dictate outcomes.  In the end, whether the region takes the path toward greater integration will ultimately come down not to us but to the decisions of its leaders and the decisions of its people.

Finally, we stand here today with an historic window of opportunity still open.  While seizing it cannot bring back the innocent Israeli and Palestinian lives lost, it will prevent more lives from being taken; it will break the cycle of violence and bloodshed.  We must not squander this chance.

Israel’s most deep-rooted desire from its founding has been to be accepted and treated as a normal state in the region and the world, with all the rights and responsibilities that implies.

At the same time, in Israeli hearts and minds lies the conviction that past efforts at peace have been met with rejection, violent resistance, greater insecurity – with Camp David leading to the second intifada, the unilateral withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza leading to Hizballah and to Hamas.  In the wake of October 7th, convincing Israelis otherwise will be a necessary and major undertaking.

The prospect of normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia represents 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 both Israelis and Palestinians and cut the Gordian Knot that has held back progress up to this point.

Much of the heavy lifting for normalization is complete, including negotiations on complex U.S.-Saudi elements of an agreement.

These elements include:

A strategic alliance agreement that establishes Saudi Arabia as a treaty ally of the United States.

A defense cooperation agreement that enhances military coordination and builds integrated capabilities.

An energy agreement that includes civil nuclear cooperation.

And an economic agreement to bolster bilateral trade and investment.

For both sides, October 7th has raised the stakes of the normalization deal.

For Saudi Arabia, advancing efforts to realize Palestinian self-determination was always a key component.  But now the need to end the war in Gaza and for a credible road to Palestinian statehood is all the more urgent for Riyadh.

For Israel, October 7th and its aftermath have underscored that a more integrated region and security architecture can best address threats to its security and isolate its enemies.

That is exactly what we saw in April and again in October, when, with U.S. leadership, partners in the region and beyond came together in an unprecedented way to help defend Israel against Iran’s unprecedented direct missile attacks.  It also speaks to what the world could do to put Iran’s nuclear program back in a box and ensure that Tehran never has a nuclear weapon.

In 2021, a team of documentary filmmakers traveled around Gaza asking children a simple question: What is your dream?

Many of the kids they interviewed look to be five or six years old – about the same age as my own kids.

A little girl dreamed of becoming a doctor.  Why, the interviewer asked?  To treat people in war, she said.

A boy dreamed of becoming a pilot, so that he could fly people out of the place where they were, so they could see the world, so they could be happy.

A girl dreamed of being an engineer, so she could help rebuild homes that have been destroyed.

A boy said his dream was, “To see the country, under my hands, develop into a beautiful place.”

I know Israeli girls and boys have very similar dreams.

They dream of no longer saying goodbye to older siblings and parents going off to war.

Of not spending nights in bomb shelters, or getting onto a school bus that’s attacked by terrorists.

They dream of returning to homes that they fled.

Of making destroyed communities beautiful again.

Another path is possible.  We’ve seen it.  A path toward greater integration, greater opportunity – toward peace, with lasting security.

I believe that because of the foundations we put in place, both before and after October 7th, that path is still open.

And believe that if leaders make the difficult decisions to walk that path, they’ll not only have America by their side, but a power that no adversary can match: generations of young people determined to reject the idea that conflict is inevitable and that enmity is inherited, and brave enough – brave enough – to embrace peaceful coexistence.

I thank you very much for listening.  (Applause.)

MR KEMPE:  So Secretary Blinken, thank you.  That was an important speech, and I think it will be remembered as such – looking at everything from the future of Gaza to the future of the entire Middle East, in a path.  So we don’t have much time, but I want to ask you a couple of questions that deals with what’s in that speech.

First of all, on the issue of Gaza, there were reports this morning that Hamas had accepted the ceasefire.  I wonder if you can comment on that.  And then in your comment – conversations with Middle Eastern leaders, do you feel the Middle East, and particularly the wealthier parts of the Middle East, are willing to step in to Gaza if they don’t get a firm commitment to what you’ve just called for, which is a two-state solution from President Netanyahu?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  So on the agreement, Fred, as I said, it’s right on the brink.  It’s closer than it’s ever been before.  But right now, as we sit here, we await final word from Hamas on its acceptance.  And until we get that word, we’ll remain on the brink.  That could come any time.  It could come in the hours ahead, it could come in the days ahead.  That’s what we’re looking for.  But what we’ve done over the last weeks and especially over the last days has put it right there.  And the deal is there, it’s ready to be fully and finally accepted, it’s ready to be implemented.  But right now we’ve got to wait to get the final word from Hamas.

In terms of what other countries would do, look, we’ve been talking with partners around the region and beyond for many months, as I said, to make sure that we were prepared for when we finally got a ceasefire.  And what’s clear is that while of course there’s an ongoing determination to do whatever countries can for the humanitarian needs of Palestinians who are caught in this horrific crossfire of Hamas’s making.  In terms of actually investing in the future of Gaza and its reconstruction, in security, countries will be very reluctant absent some kind of clear political horizon.  Because in their view – and it’s a view that I share – absent that, they’re simply going to be investing in something that only is going to end up right back where it is now at some point in the future.

So I think there’s a very strong and widely held belief in the region and beyond that dealing with the threat posed by Hamas militarily may be necessary, but it’s insufficient.  And absent a political dimension, what we’re looking at ultimately is an enduring insurgency that will bleed and drain Israel, and a perpetual war.  So that is something that is essential to partners throughout the region.

MR KEMPE:  What you talked about a little bit less in the speech was Iran, and the pathway to the future that you’re painting – a lot depends on which way does Iran go.  There have been all sorts of reports about discussions within the Biden administration about potentially even striking nuclear sites in Iran under certain conditions.  Can you talk a little bit about what you think the situation is with Iran?  How does one look at the nuclear sites?  What advice are you going to give those that succeed you in the Trump administration?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Look, President Biden’s been very clear.  He was determined that Iran would not acquire a nuclear weapon on his watch, and it won’t.

Now, we had a big part of Iran’s nuclear program in a box with the Iran nuclear deal.  The deal was focused on Iran’s fissile material capacity, and what that deal did was to ensure that Iran could not produce fissile material for a nuclear weapon in less than a year’s time.  And so we would have plenty of time to see it if it broke out of the agreement and did that.

Unfortunately, in pulling out of the deal and not replacing it with anything, Iran’s now at a point where it can produce fissile material for a nuclear weapon in a matter of a week or two.  Now, it doesn’t have the weapon itself.  That’s another part of the equation.  But it’s obviously in a much more dangerous place than it was when we had it boxed in with the nuclear agreement.

So I think as Iran is looking at this – and as the incoming administration is looking at this – we’ll have to see if there’s actually an opportunity on the nuclear side to get another deal.  President Trump, at the time, talked about getting a better, stronger deal from his perspective.  Okay, let’s see.  Maybe there’s an opportunity to do just that.

If not, I know that there’s a shared determination across administrations to ensure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon, one way or another.  I happen to believe that doing this pursuant to a clear, strong, verifiable agreement is the best way to have something that lasts.  But one way or another, there’s a determination in the United States, across political parties, that Iran not get a weapon.

MR KEMPE:  So a final question, and then I think we need to let you get back to the important work of bringing all this to a close, if we can.

The Atlantic Council’s a place for dialogue.  And what some of us heard today was unfortunate.  We’re not a bunch of screamers and shouters.  We’re people who try to argue out what’s the right goal.  But it doesn’t surprise you, or me, that this region stirs up emotions.

This path to the future – and let’s not forget where Europe was up until 1945, before the European Union, before NATO, before all of that.   You talked, I think, about Saudi normalization almost in that spirt.  And some people have talked about a path of integration that could create economic integration in the Middle East like the European Union, military integration – not a NATO necessarily, but countries coming closer together.  Are we closer to that now?  Saudi normalization with Israel, the Abraham Accords leading to something a little bit more far-reaching of the sort that you talked about at the end of your speech?  Or are we further away from everything that’s happened in the last couple of years?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Look, I believe we’re much closer to it.  And what we’ve done over the past four years, building on the Abraham Accords, was to try to get to their ultimate realization, which is normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel.  A lot of work went into that, including, as I described, agreements necessary between the United States and Saudi Arabia as well as between Saudi Arabia and Israel.  And as we sit here, it’s ready to go.  That could move forward tomorrow.

But it requires two things.  It requires an end to the conflict in Gaza and it requires a credible pathway to a Palestinian state.  So Israelis will have to decide if actually realizing a foundational dream – being integrated into the region, being treated like a normal country, and benefitting from being part of a security architecture that we saw in action when Iran attacked Israel, not once but twice – whether that is worth also the decisions necessary to finally resolve their relationship with the Palestinians, as well as ending the conflict in Gaza.  That’s a decision that only they can make.

And of course, as I described, especially given the history, especially given October 7th, the realization of Palestinian statehood, which is a necessary imperative, has to come – has to come – with ironclad security guarantees with Israel.  But that’s the choice.  That’s the choice.  And I believe it’s there.

Now, in this moment, because societies are so traumatized, Israelis and Palestinians, it’s incredibly hard to have that conversation.  I recognize that, and I spoke to it today, not under the illusion that anyone would hear this and embrace it tomorrow, but at least to set that foundation.  Because that conversation has to happen.  It will happen.  And whether that’s next week, next year, in a few years – we’ll see.  But it has to happen.  And I believe that the work that we’ve done and that we’ll hand off to the next administration has set a foundation not only for the conversation but to actually – actually – carry it forward.

One of the things I believe strongly, Fred, from my own experience over the last 30 years and looking at the sweep of history, is that there’s no such thing as a hereditary enemy, that we are not fated to conflict or animosity.  And even what seemed to be the most virulent and violent hatreds can go away, can change.  These last four years, probably two of my closest partners, two of our closest partners, have been Germany and Japan.  Not very long ago, it was a very different world.

We take that for granted.  We shouldn’t.  We need to be reminded of that, motivated by that.  Because it tells us that none of this is fated or predetermined.  We have the capacity to change.  We have the capacity to build peace, to find lasting security.  But it takes will.  It takes hard choices, hard decisions, risk.  And ultimately, we can try to lay out the path, but others have to walk it.  We’ll do everything we can to support them if they do that.

MR KEMPE:  Thank you so much for that message, and particularly that message at the Atlantic Council, which you know was created and stands for the resolution of these sorts of conflicts and moving into a far better place.  And just as we worked on those issues for Europe, we’re working on those issues for the Middle East as well.

So I’d ask everyone in the audience to please join me not just in thanking Secretary Blinken for today, and not just in thanking him for his work during the administration, but really a lifetime of public service.  Thank you so much.

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Thank you.  (Applause.)