US secretary of state Anthony Blinken was interrupted during his farewell address on Tuesday after a protester lashed out at him blaming Joe Biden’s administration for the alleged atrocities Israel is committing against the people of Palestine.
In a video, Blinken is seen trying to keep calm as protester yelled at him. Later, Blinken asked the protester to allow him to share his views.
“You will forever be known as bloody Blinken, secretary of genocide. The blood of innocent civilians, of children is on your hands,” the protestor can be purportedly heard telling Blinken in the video that is now viral on social media.
“You have no compassion, You are a monster,” she added.
“So we continue,” Blinken said while smiling as the protester was removed from the venue.
In his farewell speech, Blinken said that the outgoing US administration would hand over the roadmap to President-elect Donald Trump’s team to pick up is a ceasefire deal is reached.
Blinken has been supporting the Israeli side and earlier denied that the US ally’s actions amount to genocide.
Blinken said that the Biden administration has pushed Israel to do more to protect civilians and to facilitate humanitarian aid into Gaza.
Further, he said that the US has been working on a detailed post-war plan for Gaza that would see Israel fully withdraw from the strip.
“For many months, we’ve been working intensely with our partners to develop a detailed post-conflict plan that would allow Israel to fully withdraw from Gaza, prevent Hamas from filling back in, and provide for Gaza’s governance, security and reconstruction,” Blinken said.
After more than 15 months of nearly uninterrupted fighting in the Gaza Strip, diplomats trying to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas expressed cautious hope Tuesday that a deal could finally be within reach.
But that optimism was tempered by the uncertainty of whether both sides would ultimately agree, by what details could still change and by the experience of months past in which ceasefire talks repeatedly collapsed.
“We believe that we are at the final stages, but until we have an announcement — there will be no announcement,” Majed al-Ansari, the Foreign Ministry spokesperson for one of the mediating countries, Qatar, told reporters Tuesday.