War has raged in Gaza for over 14 months, with the US failing to secure a ceasefire despite multiple attempts [Getty/file photo]
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday he “remained hopeful” of reaching a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the war-torn Gaza Strip, and promised to use his remaining month in office to achieve it.
Blinken, however, declined to predict success after repeated disappointments in his government’s efforts to end 14 months of brutal war in the territory, which has killed thousands of Palestinians.
“Look, I’m hopeful. You have to be. We’re going to use every minute of every day of every week that we have left to try to get this done,” said Blinken, who leaves office on January 20.
“But I don’t want to hazard a guess as to what the probability is,” he said at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“It should happen. It needs to happen. We need to get people home,” he said, referring to the release of captives under a ceasefire deal.
Israel began its military onslaught in the territory on October 7 last year, and has killed at least 45,097 Palestinians since. Israel’s atrocities in the Palestinian territory has been described as a genocide.
Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip has provoked global criticism, while US – and Western – inaction on Israel’s onslaught has also sparked condemnation.
The war has also reduced much of the Palestinian enclave to rubble, leaving more than 1.9 million Palestinians – about 90 percent of Gaza’s population – displaced, according to United Nations figures.
Blinken, repeating an assessment made last week when he paid his 12th visit to the Middle East since the war began, said that Hamas was showing more flexibility due to losses inflicted on its patron Iran.
US President Joe Biden has faced criticism from the left of his Democratic Party, from Arab-Americans and from Palestinians worldwide for not doing enough to help stop the war and for not exerting greater leverage on Israel, such as providing more of the billions of dollars in US weapons on which it relies.
Blinken repeated his insistence that ending the war was in Israel’s interest and that there needed to be an agreement on post-war governance, rejecting Israeli hawks who back a longer-term presence in Gaza.
“If they wind up holding the bag, they’ll be dealing with an insurgency for years. That’s not in their interest,” he said of Israel.
“So Gaza has to be translated into something different that ensures that Hamas is not in any way in charge, that Israel doesn’t have to be, and that there’s something coherent that follows,” he said.
US President-elect Donald Trump has vowed unstinting support for Israel but has also voiced eagerness to secure a deal.
Hamas officials told The New Arab on Wednesday that the group and Israel may reach a ceasefire deal in Gaza within a few days, unless “Israel puts more obstacles”.
“The ball is in the Israeli court, and we wish that the Israeli prime minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] would put more obstacles in the way of the deal,” a Hamas official exclusively told TNA.