Former Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who served under President Joe Biden, is now reportedly asserting that the centerpiece of President Donald J. Trump’s recently announced Gaza peace plan was actually his own work.
Appearing on former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara’s Stay Tuned with Preet podcast, Mr. Blinken startled his host by crediting himself and his team for the framework now embraced by Mr. Trump and widely praised in Jerusalem. “This is essentially the plan that we developed over many months and more or less left in a drawer for the incoming administration,” Mr. Blinken said. “And I’m very, very glad they picked it up.”
In a striking departure from his usual criticism of the president, Mr. Blinken even allowed that Mr. Trump’s plan was “cause for some hope” and deserved to be “fully implemented.”
The 20-point proposal, rolled out last week, aims to end the war between Israel and Hamas through a sequence of measures: the disarming of terrorist factions, an international humanitarian aid surge, and the creation of a transitional government in Gaza.
It also makes clear that Israel will not occupy the territory, while including what the administration has called a “Trump economic development plan” to rebuild Gaza’s shattered economy. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already expressed support.
Mr. Blinken insisted that these ideas were largely his, developed during months of consultations with “the Israelis, the Arabs, the Palestinians and others on what would be necessary for post-conflict arrangements in Gaza.” He recounted that by November of the Biden administration’s final year, “we had a basic agreement on this plan,” though several “gaps” remained.
He suggested that timing prevented his proposal from being enacted. “I thought what would happen is if we finally got to the ceasefire, which we did on our last day in office, the ceasefire had built into it a six week period for an initial ceasefire and during those six weeks, the parties would have to agree on what are the enduring conditions necessary to make this a permanent ceasefire. And that’s where this plan came in.”
According to Mr. Blinken, the Biden team left the framework for their successors, but he implied the next administration needed time to “get organized” before picking it up.
His unusual endorsement of Mr. Trump’s initiative highlights a reality often unacknowledged in Washington: while Democrats and Republicans spar over credit, the Trump administration has seized on what works and moved decisively to implement it.
Unlike its predecessors, which spoke often of Middle East peace but delivered little, the Trump White House has already secured regional realignments through the Abraham Accords and now has Israeli leadership backing its Gaza proposal.
For conservatives, Mr. Blinken’s admission is telling. A senior Biden official, long dismissive of Mr. Trump, now concedes that the president is putting into action the very plan his own administration failed to deliver.
As Mr. Blinken himself put it: “The basics of the plan, exactly what we worked on for many months… I’m very, very glad they picked it up.”
In the end, the credit now belongs not to the officials who left their work “in a drawer,” but to the president who chose to act on it.
[READ MORE: Senate Democrats Split as Schumer Leads Party Toward Shutdown]
