As for the PA, Blinken said it “repeatedly failed to undertake long-overdue reforms,” including ones to rein in corruption, decrease bloated bureaucracy, and alter its welfare program to cease payments to security prisoners based on the severity of their attack against Israelis.

He also blasted the PA for refusing to consistently and unequivocally condemn Hamas’s October 7, 2023 onslaught, saying it “only entrenched doubts among Israelis that the two communities can ever live side by side in peace.”

Reflecting on the dangerous ripple effects of the war in Gaza, Blinken noted that,
“the more people suffer, the less they feel empathy for the suffering of those on the other side."

He said of the terror group’s 2023 onslaught that started the war, in which some 1,200 were killed and 251 taken hostage, amid widespread and widely documented atrocities against civilians, including attacks on hundreds of families, in their homes and on a music festival.

“Throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds, large majorities believe that October 7 didn’t happen — or if it did, that it was a legitimate attack on Israel’s military,”

“In Israel, there is almost no reporting on the conditions in Gaza and what people there endure every day,” Blinken continued. 
“This dehumanization is one of the greatest tragedies of the conflict.”