Secretary of State Antony Blinken and President Joe Biden, face mounting contradictions as their narrative of Israeli success in Gaza clashes with the continued strength of Hamas.
“Bloody Blinken,” shouted a protester, who interrupted a speech addressed by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken at an Atlantic Council event in Washington DC. The very next day, President Joe Biden announced a Gaza ceasefire deal. Both speeches were ripe with contradictions, in an unsuccessful bid to save face.
For 15 months, Israel’s war against Gaza raged on. The publicly stated goals of the military assault, pledged by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, were to “destroy” Hamas and to return the captives held in Gaza by force. While claiming to pursue these goals, the Israeli military strategy actually manifested itself in a poorly planned mass slaughter of the Palestinian population and the destruction of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure.
The deal that has now been agreed upon by Hamas and received Israeli commitment, is a near copy and past of the agreement set forth on May 27, with some small amendments. Yet, for 8 months the Israeli leadership vowed to pursue the total defeat of Hamas and attached new conditions to a series of proposals; including demands that the Israeli military remain in the Netzarim and Philadelphi Corridors.
On May 6, when Hamas officially accepted a similar ceasefire proposal to the one agreed upon today, the Israeli response was to launch their planned assault on the southernmost city of Gaza. Israel’s military immediately captured the Rafah crossing and worked to displace over a million refugees into new so-called “safe zones”; a term that is not accepted by the United Nations.
During a press conference, journalists interrupted US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, accusing him of silence over the genocide in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/Nsa4excnq7
— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) January 16, 2025
That same month, Antony Blinken presented a report to US Congress, whitewashing Israeli crimes and their well-documented history of blocking humanitarian aid, in a bid to continue supplying military aid to Israel.
Some 8 months following the May negotiations, Israel pursued what its Premier dubbed “total victory” across the region and not only in the Gaza Strip. The United States government unquestioningly provided diplomatic, financial and military backing to Israel in its war against Lebanon and repeated military incursions throughout Gaza.
The Gaza Ceasefire Agreement: Key Points and Steps Toward Reconstruction
Biden and Blinken’s Dilemma
While Antony Blinken claimed that Tel Aviv had succeeded at achieving historic successes, in Lebanon, Syria and against Iran, he also claims that the fighting capabilities of Hamas had been significantly degraded. After providing a positive picture of the alleged Israeli successes, he then proceeds to contradict himself.
“Hamas cannot be defeated with military actions alone,” Blinken remarked, citing Israel’s failed military campaign in northern Gaza as “evidence of that.” He then states that “according to our estimates, Hamas has recruited as many new elements as it has lost”, a stunning admission that the armed wing of Hamas, the Qassam Brigades, has not been defeated or sufficiently degraded as to where it no longer possesses the ability to fight.
The US Secretary of State spoke of a trend of normalization that Washington had been pursuing prior to October 7, 2023, insinuating that the likes of Saudi Arabia are still on track to do so. Yet, he later warns that relations between Tel Aviv and its neighboring governments in Amman and Cairo are experiencing major issues that could lead to the collapse of their existing normalization agreements.
Ceasefire Deal: Hamas Celebrates Strategic Victory, Israeli Analysts Call It a Failure
Reading between the lines, it could be observed that Blinken’s statements inject Israel’s desired outcomes, before offering a sober analysis that Hamas has managed to survive and that Tel Aviv could be in real danger regionally. He first began by claiming that Hamas launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7, 2023, to obstruct Arab normalisation with Israel, so by his own standards the Israelis may have failed.
In Joe Biden’s final foreign policy address, he listed the exact same points that his Secretary of State had laid out the day before, providing an argument that the Israelis and US had prevailed across the West Asia region. However, he admits that the deal agreed upon this Wednesday was a near carbon copy of the deal he helped lay out in May, but that it took collaboration with the incoming administration of Donald Trump to see it come to fruition.
While the language employed by two American leaders seeks to convince the public that Israel and the US have emerged victorious, by all their own metrics they have failed. Hamas remains a military force in Gaza, it has emerged more popular from its conduct during the war and it ultimately required the effort of Donald Trump’s negotiating team to bring about an agreement on a ceasefire proposal that had been on the table for around 8 months.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
