Blinken interrupted by shouting journalists in State Department briefing room

WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken was giving his final comments from his department’s press briefing room, touting the Biden administration’s help brokering a ceasefire deal in Gaza, when he was interrupted by two journalists.

They shouted at America’s top diplomat, accusing him of complicity in Israeli violence against Palestinian civilians in Gaza. One of the men screamed repeatedly, “Why aren’t you in the Hague?” a reference to the world’s top war-crimes court.

Blinken stopped his opening comments, asking them to “respect the process,” and said he would take questions momentarily. Both men were physically removed by diplomatic security.

He and other members of the Biden administration have faced criticism for not imposing meaningful restrictions on the supply of weapons to Israel or pushing its key ally hard enough to ease a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Israel’s military offensive against Hamas militants, who triggered the war with their Oct. 7, 2023, cross-border attack, killing some 1,200 people, has leveled vast swaths of Gaza and pushed around 90% of the population of 2.3 million from their homes. Hundreds of thousands are struggling with hunger and disease in squalid tent camps on the coast.

The campaign has killed over 46,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, who do not distinguish between civilians and militants but say women and children make up more than half of those killed.

After recovering from the interruptions, Blinken said in response to other questions that the U.S. has had “real differences” with Israel in how it has gone about defending its people and has “expressed those clearly at various points.”

But “we’ve mostly done it privately, precisely because we didn’t want to feed into Hamas’ clearly held views that if that pressure was mounting, and if there was daylight, they could do nothing,” Blinken said. That “they could refuse to engage on the negotiations, hold back on a ceasefire and releasing the hostages, and thus perpetuate the suffering, the loss for the people that they purport to represent.”

Blinken traveled to the Mideast 12 times in a bid to halt the fighting. President Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump are both claiming credit for the ceasefire deal announced Wednesday after the White House brought Trump’s Middle East envoy into the stalled negotiations.

Blinken on Thursday called the agreement “a moment of historic possibility for the region and well beyond,” even as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said a last-minute dispute with Hamas was holding up Israeli approval.

“It’s going to take tremendous effort, political courage, compromise to realize that possibility, to try to ensure that the gains that have been achieved over the past 15 months at enormous, excruciating cost are actually enduring,” Blinken said.

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AP reporter Ellen Knickmeyer contributed from Washington.