QUESTION: We're joined by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in town for the United Nations General Assembly. Mr. Secretary, good morning to you.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Morning.
QUESTION: Thank you very much for being here. Boy, there's only so many times you can mention escalating tensions and risks of an all-out war before it becomes cliché, but things are definitely not going in the right direction. And I think there's a philosophy question here for the U.S. to answer: Do you end all of this violence in the Middle East by putting pressure on Israel to stop on both fronts, or do you empower Israel to finish the job?
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Look, what we've seen since the horrific attacks on October 7th are periods when we've had a real risk of escalation, a real risk of something turning into a full-blown war, including in Lebanon between Israel and Hizballah. And through diplomacy, through deterrence, we've managed to avert that in the days immediately following October 7th, more recently in April. We're focused right now on making sure that we can de-escalate, avoid a full-scale war.
But Tony, Israel's got a legitimate problem here. Starting on October 8th, Hizballah in the north from southern Lebanon started lobbing rockets and missiles into Israel. People living in northern Israel had to flee their homes - about 70,000 - and Israel understandably, legitimately wants a secure environment so people can return home. The best way to get that is through diplomacy, an agreement to pull back forces, allow people to return home in northern Israel - also many Lebanese in southern Lebanon forced from their homes. We want to get people back home. The best way to do that is not war; it's diplomacy.
QUESTION: So Hizballah went to their weapon systems. Hizballah began firing into Israel after October 7th —
SECRETARY BLINKEN: That's right.
QUESTION: — in allyship with Hamas and the people in Gaza.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Exactly.
QUESTION: Where do ceasefire talks stand? Because that - if that is their motivation there on the Hizballah side, that's the key to making them pull back and stop.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: That would certainly be one of the keys. It would be an ideal key because it would end the horrific situation in Gaza - horrific for the hostages, horrific for so many men, women, and children who've been caught in this crossfire of Hamas's making.
We've been working on this ceasefire deal for a while. We have an agreement, a piece of paper that's got 18 paragraphs. Fifteen of them are agreed. The last three continue to need some work. The problem we have right now is that Hamas hasn't been engaging on it for the last couple of weeks, and Sinwar, its leader, has been talking about an endless war of attrition. Now, if he really cares about the Palestinian people, he'd bring this agreement over the finish line.
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, do you believe that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu truly wants a ceasefire?
SECRETARY BLINKEN: If we're talking about Gaza, as I said, I think hard decisions remain to be made by Israel. But the problem right now in terms of bringing this across the finish line has - is Hamas, its refusal to engage in a meaningful way. We've been at this in recent weeks again trying to get these last —
QUESTION: So in no part do you put blame on Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu?
SECRETARY BLINKEN: So what we're seeing is this. I don't think this is a question really anymore of the substance of the agreement, because it's very close. It is a question of political will. In the first instance, that political will needs to be demonstrated by Hamas. We haven't seen it the last couple of weeks. Israel would have some hard decisions to make to bring this to a close, but we've got to see if Hamas is actually serious.
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, ProPublica has determined that two agencies found that Israel is deliberately stopping humanitarian aid from getting to civilians. And as you well know, the U.S. Government says that it has to restrict supplying weapons to a country that does this type of thing. Why have we not done so?
SECRETARY BLINKEN: So this is actually pretty typical. We had a report to put out on the humanitarian situation in Gaza and what Israel was doing to try to make sure that people got the assistance they needed, and I had different assessments from different parts of the State Department, from other agencies that were involved like USAID. My job is to sort through them, which I did, draw some conclusions from that, and we put out our report. And we found that Israel needed to do a better job on the humanitarian assistance. We've seen improvements since then. It's still not sufficient.
QUESTION: Secretary Blinken, the man in the arena, thank you very much. Appreciate it.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Good to be with you. Thanks.
