Blinken defends US policy on Gaza as his final State Department briefing is interrupted by protests

WASHINGTON (AP) — Outgoing Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday defended Biden administration policies on Israel’s war with Hamas after a ceasefire agreement in Gaza was reached, facing protests that interrupted his final news conference at the State Department.

He said he expected the deal — announced by President Joe Biden and Qatar on Wednesday — to be implemented over the weekend. He called it “a moment of historic possibility for the region and well beyond” even as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said a last-minute dispute with Hamas was holding up Israeli approval.

“It’s going to take tremendous effort, political courage, compromise to realize that possibility, to try to ensure that the gains that have been achieved over the past 15 months at enormous, excruciating cost are actually enduring,” Blinken said.

As he touted the deal, two people in the room accused him of complicity in Israeli violence against Palestinian civilians in loud outbursts that forced him to pause. One shouted, “Why aren’t you in the Hague?” referring to the International Criminal Court based in the Dutch city. Blinken asked them to “respect the process.” Both men were physically removed by Diplomatic Security officers.

While protests are common in large public gatherings, including just this week when Blinken delivered an address on the Middle East at a Washington-based think tank, they are rare, if not unprecedented, in the State Department briefing room.

After recovering from the interruptions, Blinken said in response to other questions that the U.S. has had “real differences” with Israel in how it has gone about defending its people and has “expressed those clearly at various points.”

But “we’ve mostly done it privately, precisely because we didn’t want to feed into Hamas’ clearly held views that if that pressure was mounting, and if there was daylight, they could do nothing,” Blinken said. That “they could refuse to engage on the negotiations, hold back on a ceasefire and releasing the hostages, and thus perpetuate the suffering, the loss for the people that they purport to represent.”

Blinken and other members of the Biden administration have faced severe criticism for not imposing meaningful restrictions on the supply of weapons to Israel or pushing its key ally hard enough to ease a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Israel's military offensive against Hamas militants — who triggered the war with their Oct. 7, 2023, cross-border attacks that killed some 1,200 people — has leveled vast swaths of Gaza and pushed around 90% of the population of 2.3 million from their homes. Hundreds of thousands are struggling with hunger and disease in squalid tent camps on the coast.

The campaign has killed over 46,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, who do not distinguish between civilians and militants but say women and children make up more than half of those killed.

Blinken traveled to the Mideast 12 times in a bid to halt the fighting. President Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump are both claiming credit for the ceasefire deal after the White House brought Trump’s Middle East envoy into the stalled negotiations.

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AP reporter Ellen Knickmeyer contributed from Washington.