Below is the transcript of an interview excerpt that aired on January 15, 2025. A transcript of the as-aired interview will be available in its entirety once broadcasted.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: First, the firing stops. Hamas, Israel stop firing. Israel pulls back its forces. Hostages begin to be released. Prisoners come out of Israeli jails and go back. And we surge humanitarian assistance to people who so desperately need it. All of that happens during a six-week period. But also during that six weeks, we have to negotiate the understandings to get to a permanent ceasefire so that Israel pulls all of its forces out of Gaza, Hamas doesn't come back in, and there's the necessary governance, security, reconstruction arrangements so that Gaza can move forward.
QUESTION: Is that sorted?
SECRETARY BLINKEN: That's not sorted. We've worked on it intensely for the last six or seven months - intensely but quietly with Arab partners, with others. I think there's some basic understandings that we've reached, but the ceasefire itself hopefully would concentrate minds and get people to agree on what's necessary to get that day-after post-conflict plan in place.
QUESTION: So we're speaking as your successor is undergoing confirmation hearings, Senator Marco Rubio. Do you think that the Trump administration will take your ball and roll with it down the line, or could they say, hey, nice try, guys, but we don't care?
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Oh, of course, it'll - it will be up to them, but not only up to them - it'll be up to the parties and all the people concerned. I think there's a strong impetus among all involved not only to have this ceasefire that hopefully we'll achieve in the coming hours or certainly days, but to make sure that it's permanent. Israel does not have an incentive to remain bogged down in Gaza with an insurgency bleeding it, continuing to put pressure on its economy, on its reserves. The Palestinian people certainly don't need a continuation of Gaza. Countries throughout the region don't want that.
So I think there's going to be, assuming the ceasefire is reached, strong, strong pressure from all sides to make sure that it becomes permanent. And the best way to do that, I think, is through the work that we've done, but it'll be up to the administration to decide whether to try to carry that forward, whether it has some other way of doing this. The most important thing, though, is get the ceasefire, make it permanent.
QUESTION: I don't know whether you agree, but many analysts are saying that, actually, Trump's arrival has jumpstarted this and has focused people's mind and at least got this ceasefire to be serious. As you say, it's something that the President planned back in May and et cetera. There are people, like a very prominent Israeli hostage negotiator, who said this is not a great deal, this interim one. It's only about 30 hostages, many, many have died in the interim since May, that it could have been done much earlier. And I know you often - USG blames Hamas for its role in delaying.
But I don't know whether you saw what Itamar Ben-Gvir said to The Times of Israel just over the last couple of days. He basically said that: me and Smotrich have successfully prevented any ceasefire deals for the last year, and we still want to prevent this one. How do you react to that? And are you willing to agree that also Israel has held up what could have been the Biden ceasefire, which could have saved many lives many, many months ago?
SECRETARY BLINKEN: So should this have happened months ago? Yes. Could it have happened months ago? Yes. Were there occasions when each side did things that made it more difficult to get this over the finish line? Yes, including Israel. But predominantly, it's been Hamas, and certainly in the last few months, Hamas has - had refused to engage. We finally got it to re-engage. And in these last weeks in particular, Hamas has been the party that's held back on finally getting to yes, but we've managed to push to a point where, as I said, we're on the brink.
Look, I think what the basic dynamic has been, this: First, what was so important was that there had to be an agreement that this would proceed in two phases, that we had these six weeks where everyone stops firing, Israel pulls back, hostages come out, prisoners are released, humanitarian assistance goes in, and final arrangements for an enduring ceasefire are made. For months, Hamas wouldn't accept that. The President went forward, went public in May - very end of May, early June - with a detailed proposal for that. And then we went around the world, and everyone came out supporting it, including the UN Security Council. And at that point, Hamas was isolated, and it signed onto that framework. And ever since, as I said, we've been working to implement it, to get the final arrangements.
But there have been two dynamics that have really, I think, held things back more than anything else. One, Hamas was hoping, hoping, hoping that the cavalry would come to the rescue, that it would get a wider war with Lebanon and Hizballah, with Iran. And the actions that we took along with Israel made it clear that the cavalry was not coming to the rescue, it couldn't count on that.
Second, it hoped that by holding back, pressure would just mount on Israel to give in and to accede to the terms of a ceasefire/hostage deal on Hamas's terms. And there, again, that hasn't happened.
So I think as we look at it, as we've seen it, yes, have there been moments when things have happened on one side or the other that have made it harder to get it over the line? Yes, but - fundamentally, it's been Hamas, but now we're at the point where hopefully Hamas sees that the only way forward is through the ceasefire.
QUESTION: Just finally on this issue, Ben Gvir and his ilk - they are extremist firebrands that even the U.S. has sanctioned in the past. They want settlements. They say that they want to stay in Gaza. The infrastructure that the IDF is creating in Gaza points to a permanent stay there in some parts. Are you sure, is USG sure that Israel will pull out or that it will stay for, I don't know, months, years afterwards?
SECRETARY BLINKEN: What I can tell you is this, Christiane: First, it's our policy and it's been our policy very clearly, including principles that I laid out months ago at the very beginning of the conflict in Tokyo, that there can't be a permanent occupation of Gaza, that Israel has to pull out, that the territory of Gaza shouldn't be changed. And of course, it obviously can't be run by Hamas, who uses it as a base of terrorism.
The ceasefire deal itself requires the Israeli forces to pull back and then, assuming you get to a permanent ceasefire, to pull out entirely. But that's what's so critical about this post-conflict plan, the need to come to an agreement on its arrangements, because there has to be something in place that gives Israelis the confidence that they can pull out permanently and not have Hamas fill back in and not have a repeat of the last, really, decade.
