Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Wednesday with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, seeking administrative reforms aimed at allowing his Palestinian Authority to play a key role in governing the Gaza Strip when the war is over. Blinken's convoy rolled into Ramallah, the defacto capital of the West Bank, from Tel Aviv after a day of talks with Israeli leaders who have shown little interest in heeding the global outcry for a two-state solution. Abbas stressed the need for a political solution starting with a State of Palestine, with East Jerusalem...

Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke to President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday about reforming the Palestinian self-rule government, as part of U.S. efforts to rally the region behind postwar plans for Gaza that also include concrete steps toward a Palestinian state. Blinken says he has secured commitments from multiple countries in the region to assist with rebuilding and governing Gaza after Israel's war against Hamas, and that wider Israeli-Arab normalization is still possible, but only if there is "a pathway to a Palestinian state." In their meeting Wednesday in the...

Antony J. Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, met on Wednesday with Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority, to discuss Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza and the role that the authority might play there when the conflict ebbs. Mr. Blinken traveled in a convoy from Tel Aviv in Israel to Ramallah, the seat of the authority, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The two men shook hands outside the authority’s headquarters and sat down for talks with their aides. The Biden administration has said it envisions a role...

President Donald Trump achieved success in the Abraham Accords by setting aside the failed idea that peace between Israel and the Arab world depended on a Palestinian state. President Joe Biden has evidently returned to that failed model for the region. On Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken pushed Israeli leaders to see a Palestinian state as part of the post-Hamas future in Gaza, despite the plummeting support among Israelis for a state composed of people who support terror against them. Blinken seemed unconcerned about the possibility that giving...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomes the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Tel Aviv. Photo: Handout/Israeli GPO/Kobi Gideon/Anadolu via Getty Images Israel will allow the UN to send experts to the northern Gaza Strip to evaluate the conditions for the future return of displaced Palestinian civilians, Secretary of State Tony Blinken said on Tuesday after his meetings with Israeli leaders. Why it matters: While necessary, the move will only modestly advance the broader U.S. goal of allowing more than 1 million Palestinians who evacuated to the southern parts...

American Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters in Saudi Arabia on Monday that the leadership of that country, and other Arab neighbors of Israel, had an “interest” in normalizing ties but would not pursue that avenue without the creation of a “Palestinian state.” “With regard to integration, to normalization, yes, we talked about that actually on every stop, including of course here in Saudi Arabia,” Blinken said. “And I can tell you this: There’s a clear interest here in pursuing that; there’s a clear interest in the region in...

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken pushed the Biden administration’s priority of establishing a Palestinian state at the end of the current war against Hamas in his meetings with Israeli leaders on Tuesday, according to multiple media reports. The Biden administration has insisted that a Palestinian state be part of the resolution of the war, though that would effectively reward Hamas for carrying out the mass murder, rape, and kidnapping of Israeli civilians in its October 7 terror attack on Israel. Support for a Palestinian state has plummeted among Israelis...

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Israeli leaders on Tuesday the Jewish state's Arab neighbors may yet accept Israel if they can establish a viable Palestinian state. Blinken visited Tel Aviv as part of a diplomatic mission in the Middle East to prevent war in Gaza from spreading into a regional conflict — his fourth such trip since the war started in October. The top U.S. diplomat spoke with the Israeli war cabinet after several days of talks in Arab states including Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and...