Blinken’s bold farewell address to the Middle East
This article was updated on January 15 to reflect the news of Israel and Hamas reaching a cease-fire and hostage deal.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s last scheduled speech as the United States’ top diplomat, delivered at the Atlantic Council yesterday, was one of hope for the Middle East.
Yes, you read that correctly.
It was a bell-ringer of a farewell, an audacious exit that challenges all Middle East parties to seize the historic opportunities before them to achieve lasting peace and regional integration. It came one day before Israel and Hamas agreed to a cease-fire and hostage deal.
Beyond that, the US secretary of state laid out a detailed postwar plan for Gaza’s reconstruction. Perhaps most importantly of all, and despite ongoing war and the conventional wisdom of despair, he said that the Middle East was coming closer to a more promising and enduring path of economic and security integration.
‘No such thing as a hereditary enemy’
“What we’ve done over the past four years,” Blinken said, “building on the Abraham Accords, was to try to get to their ultimate realization, which is normalization 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 of the conflict in Gaza, and it requires a credible pathway to a Palestinian state.”
Speaking from an Atlantic Council stage, it seemed natural that he would reflect on centuries of European wars and grievances that ultimately resulted in grand reconciliation, therein drawing out a lesson for pessimists about the Middle East.
“As always happens in conflicts,” he said, referring to Israelis and Palestinians, “the more people suffer, the less they feel empathy for the suffering of those on the other side.”
Yet in a discussion with me on stage following his speech, Blinken said: “One of the things I believe strongly, Fred, from my own experience over the last thirty 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.”
Blinken laughed to himself and added: “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.”
It’s worth reading every word of one of the most significant speeches of the Biden administration, which you can access here. It doesn’t spare in its criticism of Israel or the Palestinians, nor is it in any way naïve about the difficulties of achieving breakthrough outcomes for the region of the sort that occurred in Europe following World War II and the Cold War.
“Throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds,” Blinken said, “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 this conflict,” Blinken said. “The late Cardinal [Carlo Maria] 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.”
Seize the historic moment
News gatherers will focus on the details for a postwar Gaza that the US secretary of state outlined, and they are important. They focus on several crucial principles: “a Gaza never again ruled by Hamas or used as a platform for terrorist or other violent attacks. New Palestinian-led governments—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 forcible displacement of Gaza’s population.”
Others will focus on Blinken’s comment that much of the heavy lifting is complete for a Saudi-Israeli normalization agreement, including a strategic alliance agreement that establishes Saudi Arabia as a US treaty ally and a defense cooperation agreement between Washington and Riyadh that enhances military coordination and integration. Negotiations have also made progress on an energy agreement that includes civil-nuclear cooperation and an economic agreement that bolsters trade and investment, Blinken said.
For me, however, the most significant message of the speech was the unique opportunity to seize a historic moment and put the Middle East on a more positive trajectory. Above all, that’s because Iran, long the primary impediment to progress, is on its back foot, weaker than at any point in the past thirty years.
Iran’s proxies are reeling. The terrorist masterminds behind Hamas’s October 7 attack have been killed, and the group’s military capacity has been decimated. Hezbollah, Iran’s most significant proxy, has seen its leadership eliminated along with much of its military potential. The Assad regime in Syria has collapsed, with Iranian forces having largely retreated from the country. Beyond that, Iran’s two unprecedented direct missile attacks on Israel were met by US and Israeli countermeasures, which resulted in Tehran inflicting relatively little damage. At the same time, Iran’s own air defenses have proven porous.
What’s necessary now, Blinken said, is for Israel “to accept reuniting Gaza and the West Bank” under the leadership of a reformed Palestinian Authority. Beyond that, he argued, “all must embrace a time-bound, conditions-based path toward forming an independent Palestinian state.”
Building on each other’s successes
Here’s what also gives me hope from the US side as a new administration comes into office.
The Biden administration saw that it was prudent to build upon what was arguably the first Trump administration’s single biggest foreign policy accomplishment, the Abraham Accords. In doing so, the Biden administration brought Saudi Arabia and Israel within sight of normalization. (Blinken said that the timing of the Hamas attack was “no accident,” and that notes recovered from top Hamas officials showed they sought a regional war “to derail this agreement.”)
It’s difficult for me to imagine that incoming US President Donald Trump would want to do anything other than build upon his own Abraham Accords to achieve a further-reaching economic and security integration among Israel and the Arab neighbors with whom it has achieved normalization.
It’s encouraging as well that Jake Sullivan, the Biden administration’s national security advisor, is coordinating closely with Mike Waltz, who will take his seat in the Trump administration. Brett McGurk, Biden’s Middle East negotiator, was in Qatar engaging in cease-fire and hostage release talks alongside the incoming Trump administration’s Steve Witkoff, too. Our own N7 Initiative, a partnership between the Atlantic Council and the Jeffrey M. Talpins Foundation, sees much potential ahead with the incoming administration.
Out of the horrors of the period following October 7, 2023, some historic good could yet emerge in the Middle East, and it could come because of the Biden and Trump administrations building on each other’s successes.
“I believe that if leaders make the difficult decisions to walk that path [toward greater integration and opportunity],” said Blinken, “they will 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 to embrace peaceful coexistence.”
