Secretary of State Antony Blinken assured Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that the United States will back “tangible steps towards the creation of a Palestinian state” despite Israeli disinterest in the concept following the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack.
“We talked about those efforts,” Blinken told reporters in Bahrain after meeting with Abbas. “We talked as well about the importance of reforming the Palestinian Authority, Palestinian governance, so that it can effectively take responsibility for Gaza, that — so that Gaza and the West Bank can be reunited under a Palestinian leadership.”
Israeli leaders have argued that it is inappropriate to discuss such a prospect so soon after the Hamas rampage across southern Israel, while one ambassador went so far as to declare that there is “absolutely no” Palestinian state in Israel’s post-war plans. Yet Blinken emphasized the necessity of such a settlement in his latest diplomatic tour of the Middle East, as he affirmed a link between Israeli-Palestinian peace and a diplomatic accord between Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the wider Arab world.
“All of these countries now want a region that’s more integrated,” Blinken told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. “They want a region that includes Israel. They’re prepared to do things, to make commitments, to give assurances for Israel’s security. But that also has to include the Palestinian piece.”
That conditionality represents a shift from their diplomatic posture prior to the Oct. 7 attack. Under Donald Trump and then Biden, the U.S. diplomats have brokered a series of normalization deals, beginning with the Abraham Accords that established diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
Those deals were widely perceived as mitigating Israel’s incentive to broker an agreement with the Palestinian Authority, which rejected Israel’s proposals for a two-state solution in 2000 and 2008, but the negotiations with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman were upended by the war ignited by Hamas’s invasion of southern Israel.
“He and virtually every other leader I talked to supports moving forward with integration, normalization, whatever you want to call it,” Blinken told Mitchell. “But of course, the conflict in Gaza needs to end, and there has to be a pathway for Palestinian rights.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made no mention of a state in his latest articulation of Israel’s goals for the war in Gaza.
“Our goal is to rid Gaza of Hamas terrorists and free our hostages,” he said Wednesday. “Once this is achieved, Gaza can be demilitarized and deradicalized, thereby creating a possibility for a better future for Israel and Palestinians alike.”
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Blinken, in his reference to such a future, was more specific in his emphasis on the need for a political state.
“Countries do see a way forward, a way forward through greater integration that actually provides real security for Israel and guarantees for that security, and a pathway to a Palestinian state,” Blinken told reporters during his Manama press conference. “Now, to get there, leaders have to make hard decisions, hard choices. We can’t do that for them.”
