In his final major address on Middle East policy, Secretary of State Tony Blinken on Tuesday outlined the Biden administration’s vision for Gaza after the war between Israel and Hamas ends — while negotiators in Qatar rushed to finalize the terms of a cease-fire and hostage-release deal that has not yet been signed.

“I believe we will get a cease-fire,” Blinken said at the Atlantic Council, stating it could come in the final days of the Biden administration or the early days of President-elect Donald Trump’s term. “From the outset, we also recognized that we couldn’t afford to wait until a cease-fire to plan for what would follow it.”

The outgoing secretary of state outlined a plan for what President Joe Biden and his foreign policy team hope to see in Gaza and the broader Middle East after the war ends — though that team will not be around to implement the vision, one that Trump may not share. 

“For many months, we’ve been working intensively with our partners to develop a detailed post-conflict plan that would allow Israel to fully withdraw from Gaza, prevent Hamas from filling back in and provide for Gaza’s governance, security and reconstruction,” Blinken said. 

He outlined core requirements that the Biden administration wants to see in Gaza, including calling for unspecified international parties to help the Palestinian Authority assume administrative control of Gaza after the war. In Blinken’s plan, the U.S. would help train and vet a PA-led security force in Gaza. But most important, and most difficult, Blinken said, is for “Gaza and the West Bank [to be] reunified under a reformed PA as part of a pathway to an independent Palestinian state.”

“Therein lies the rub,” Blinken added, noting that all regional parties, including Israel, must agree to support a pathway to a Palestinian state. Israel’s leaders have not offered any indication that they plan to support a Palestinian state in the near future. 

While acknowledging the toll of the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel and the responsibility of Hamas for failing to accept a deal, Blinken offered tough words for Israel, pleading with the Jewish state to take a different approach to the Palestinians.

“Israelis must decide what relationship they want with the Palestinians. That cannot be the illusion that Palestinians will accept being a non-people without national rights. Seven million Israeli Jews and some five million Palestinians are rooted in the same land. Neither is going anywhere,” said Blinken. “Israelis must abandon the myth that they can carry out de facto annexation without cost and consequence to Israel’s democracy, to its standing, to its security.” 

Blinken made the argument that a Palestinian state would be “the ultimate rebuke” to Hamas, which has long opposed a two-state solution, but he added that Israel also bears responsibility for the lack of a Palestinian state. 

“We sincerely hope the parties will be prepared to make tough choices going forward, and yet, the unimpeachable reality is that up to this point, they’ve either failed to make these difficult decisions or acted in ways that put a deal and a long-term peace further from reach,” he said. “Israel’s government has systematically undermined the capacity and legitimacy of the only viable alternative to Hamas, the Palestinian Authority.” 

Blinken chastised Israel’s government for withholding tax revenues from the PA and for expanding settlements in the West Bank, and decried violent attacks on Palestinians by Israeli settlers. He also argued that the situation cannot be resolved militarily and shared a U.S. assessment that Hamas “has recruited almost as many new militants as it has lost,” which seems to contradict Blinken’s previous assessment in October 2024 that Israel has “managed to dismantle Hamas’s military capacity.” 

“Without a clear alternative, a post-conflict plan and a credible political horizon for the Palestinians, Hamas or something just as abhorrent and dangerous will grow back. That’s exactly what’s happened in northern Gaza since Oct. 7,” Blinken said Tuesday. “Each time Israel completes its military operations and pulls back, Hamas militants regroup and re-emerge because there’s nothing else to fill the void.”

Blinken then outlined several arguments that he hoped might sway Israeli leaders, saying that “remaining bogged down in Gaza” is harming Israel economically and diplomatically. 

“The longer the humanitarian crisis in Gaza goes on, the more Arab countries that recently normalized relations with Israel will face pressure from their populations to walk away, and the greater the risk that Israel’s longstanding peace accords with Jordan and Egypt will collapse,” he said. 

Blinken tried to package his remarks in optimism, taking credit for progress in countering Iran’s influence in the region and broadening regional integration, though he acknowledged that progress on that front has been halted since Oct. 7, 2023. Even after decrying Hamas and criticizing Israel’s handling of the war and the Palestinian issue, Blinken said that integration is still possible.