U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken referred to NATO enlargement, Israel-Hamas conflict during his yearend press briefing in Washington D.C.
“Here’s who cheers if we fail: Moscow, Tehran, Beijing. If we come up short, it won’t be our adversaries and competitors who stopped us. It will be ourselves.
Russia is weaker militarily, economically, diplomatically. NATO is bigger and stronger and more united than at any point in its nearly 75-year history. This year, we added our 31st member of NATO – Finland. And Sweden will join soon, bringing even greater potency and capability to our defensive alliance.
We continue to believe that Israel does not have to choose between removing the threat of Hamas and minimizing the toll on civilians in Gaza. It has an obligation to do both and it has a strategic interest to do both.
We remain very actively engaged in seeing if we can get a pause back on and hostages moving out again of Gaza. That’s something we’re on every single day.
Israel has not only a right but an obligation to defend itself and to try to make sure that October 7th never happens again. Any other country in the world faced with what Israel suffered on October 7th would do the same thing. We’ve also said – and we’ve been very clear – that how Israel does it matters and matters tremendously. And there, too, we’ve been very deeply engaged with them to maximize protections for civilians, to maximize humanitarian assistance, to minimize harm to people in Gaza”, Blinken said.
