“TIME TO END WAR”
President Joe Biden, whose term ends in January and who will be replaced by his predecessor Donald Trump, has backed Israel since Hamas-led gunmen attacked Israel in October 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking 250 hostages.
Since then, more than 43,500 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed in Gaza, with 2 million displaced people and much of the strip reduced to rubble.
Trump, a staunch supporter of Israel, has strongly backed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s goal of destroying Hamas. He has promised to bring peace to the Middle East, but has not said how he would accomplish that.
Blinken said Israel “has accomplished the goals that it set for itself” by taking out Hamas’s leadership and ensuring the group is unable to launch another massive attack. “This should be a time to end the war,” he said.
Hamas was not engaging in talks to bring an end to the war, but a plan would still be needed for the future of Gaza, something Blinken has spent months discussing with regional leaders.
“We also need to make sure we have a plan for what follows,” he said, “so that if Israel decides to end the war and we find a way to get the hostages out, we also have a clear plan so that Israel can get out of Gaza and we make sure that Hamas is not going back in.”
