Blinken Admits: Pressure on Israel Caused Hamas to Pull Back from Deals

Secretary of State Antony Blinken admitted that pressure on Israel caused Hamas to pull back from potential ceasefire and hostage deals, in an interview with the New York Times that was released in a podcast Saturday.

From the transcript (via State Department):

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  I think the question we had was:  How can we most effectively both shape the conflict but also bring – bring an end to the conflict?  And the focus on getting a ceasefire/hostage agreement was what was in our estimation the quickest and most durable way to get an end.  And as I said, Hamas – one – when they saw Israel under pressure publicly, they pulled back.  The other thing that got Hamas to pull back was their belief, their hope that there’d be a wider conflict – that Hizballah would attack Israel, that Iran would attack Israel, that other actors would attack Israel, and that Israel would have its hands full and Hamas could continue what it was doing.  So we’ve worked very hard to make sure that that didn’t happen.

Hezbollah and Iran did, in fact, attack Israel, though Israel’s missile defense systems, and ultimately its counterattacks — often against the wishes of the Biden-Harris administration — were effective.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.