Blinken says Gaza cease-fire deal ‘inside the 10-yard line’

ASPEN, Colo. – Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said Friday that an agreement to free hostages in the Gaza Strip and establish a cease-fire was close, as administration officials prepared for what they expected to be a tense visit to Washington next week by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Blinken, speaking at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado, said the talks were “inside the 10-yard line.” Hours later at the same conference, Sullivan said there was no expectation that an agreement would be reached before Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, a speech some U.S. officials fear could throw up new obstacles to an agreement with Hamas.

Sullivan said President Joe Biden would “focus his energy” in his meetings with Netanyahu “to get this deal done in the coming weeks.”

“We are mindful that there remain obstacles in the way,” Sullivan said, “and let’s use next week to try to clear through those obstacles.”

The two officials, among Biden’s closest advisers, said nothing about how Biden would juggle the crisis engulfing his re-election bid with managing the tense relationship with Netanyahu.

Instead, they focused heavily on the halting, often frustrating process of getting Israel and Hamas to agree to the details of a cease-fire deal resembling the terms that Biden proposed in May. They are seeking to put pressure on Hamas to agree to a negotiated halt in the violence and to release the Israelis and other prisoners who were taken in the terrorist attack on Oct. 7.

Blinken struck a note of hope, saying that Hamas had agreed to the framework proposed by Biden. But he acknowledged that working out the details, including providing security inside Gaza and developing a postwar plan to govern the territory and allow in more relief supplies, had taken far longer than expected.

“When I say we are inside the 10-yard line, we are,” Blinken said. “Now, we also know that with anything, the last 10 yards are often the hardest.”

He said Hamas could not return to power in Gaza but that the Israeli occupation of Gaza could not continue.

“What we can’t have is an agreement that’s followed by some kind of void that will either be filled by Hamas coming back, which is unacceptable, by Israel prolonging its occupation of Gaza, which they say they don’t want to do and is unacceptable,” Blinken said. “Or just having a vacuum that’s filled by lawlessness, that’s filled by chaos, which we see in so many parts of Gaza right now.”

Hamas officials have said they have agreed to cede civil and police control to an independent authority. U.S. officials want security control to be given to a force of Palestinians who support the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority. Hamas has insisted it will not give up control of its security forces.

Before the Oct. 7 attacks, Blinken and Sullivan were working on negotiating a deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia that would have resulted in Saudi recognition of the Israeli state – a huge breakthrough and an extension of the Trump-era Abraham Accords. That deal would also have required the creation of a separate Palestinian state, which Netanyahu has long opposed.

But restoring that negotiation has been impossible without a cease-fire. Asked if the hopes of creating a Palestinian state were still alive, Blinken jokingly quoted Sen. John McCain of Arizona, saying, “It’s always darkest before it goes completely black.”

He quickly added that hopes for an independent Palestinian state “can’t be” dead.

But Sullivan said he did not think this speech would be like Netanyahu’s 2015 address before Congress, which helped destroy public support for the Iran nuclear deal.

Sullivan said that he did not expect to see a copy of the speech but that he believed Netanyahu would discuss his remarks with Biden. Sullivan said Ron Dermer, a senior Israeli government official, and other Israeli officials were in Washington this week for meetings and gave a broad preview of the speech.

“They said he’s intending to reinforce a set of themes and arguments that are not at odds or in contradiction to our policy, American policy,” Sullivan said. “But they’re going to keep working that speech till the very last minute, just like we do on our side.”

Blinken and Sullivan both spoke about sustaining commitments to Ukraine, though they talked around the biggest threat to that financing: The possibility that Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, would be elected in November and halt the U.S. aid. Instead, they pointed to a growing number of bilateral agreements between European and Asian allies of the United States to supply Ukraine for the next decade.

They also turned to China’s growing role in supplying Russia with electronics and other high-tech products for the rebuilding of its military. Before the recent NATO summit, an orchestrated U.S. campaign to provide Europe with intelligence about the Chinese effort resulted in a strong and rare European statement demanding that Beijing stop.

“Writ large, the picture is not pretty,” Sullivan said. “China continues to be a major supplier of dual-use items to Russia’s war machine.”

U.S. officials also said this week that Russia, in response to U.S. support of Ukraine, was contemplating sending arms, including ship-killing missiles, to the Houthis in Yemen, according to a Wall Street Journal report. When asked about the report, Gen. CQ Brown, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the conference that he did not want to confirm reporting about intelligence.

“We would prefer them not to do that,” Brown said. “The key point is we do not want them to broaden the conflict. And them supporting the Houthis, if that is what they are doing, helps to broaden the conflict and just makes it more complicated in the Middle East.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.