Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s testimony yesterday before the Senate contained two noteworthy exchanges. The first was when the secretary lamented “the extent to which [October 7] has receded in memory,” and then recounted into the congressional record some of the grisly details of Hamas’s torture and murder of innocents. The second was when Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin were asked if the Israeli government has considered what comes next after the war. Blinken responded this way:

“At some point, what would make the most sense would be for an effective and revitalized Palestinian Authority to have governance and ultimately security responsibility for Gaza. Whether you can get there in one step is a big question that we have to look at. And if you can’t, then there are other temporary arrangements that may involve a number of other countries in the region, it may involve international agencies that would help provide for security and governance.”

When Blinken says that if Gaza can’t simply be handed to the PA then “other countries in the region” can help bridge the gap, what countries might those be? He states clearly that he and the Israelis have both agreed it won’t be Israel. If that’s the case, surely Egypt will have to be involved. But Cairo doesn’t want Gaza back, and nobody wants a situation in which Israeli troops and Egyptian troops are that close to one another in such a volatile situation. Egyptian-Israeli peace is the cornerstone upon which additional Mideast peace and recognition are built.

Russia and China would love to get a foothold in Gaza, and for obvious reasons must be entirely prevented from doing so. The United Nations is a nonstarter—its area of responsibility in southern Lebanon is currently (and accurately) known as Hezbollahland, an Iranian satrapy on Israel’s border.

American troops were considered and then soundly rejected for placement on the Golan Heights by the Clinton administration; just imagine the reaction to a proposal in 2024 that would put an American lid on a boiling insurgency in the Arab world. France has been chased from Africa; it will not be setting up shop in Gaza.

Suddenly, Blinken’s mention of getting to a Palestinian government “in one step” seems the most plausible option. But “plausible” does not mean “easy.” Mahmoud Abbas struggles to control the West Bank. His visit to Jenin earlier this year was reportedly his first time there in a decade, and came only after an Israeli military operation subdued the city’s more restive pockets for him. He is 87 years old and in deteriorating health. (One struggles to imagine an 87-year-old overstressed dictator whose health is anything other than “deteriorating.”) He has no clear successor.

Here’s the point. While the Biden administration has been saying the right things, it has also been paying lip service to the party’s base by lecturing Israel on protecting civilians (no army in the history of the world has put its own soldiers in more danger in order to protect civilians than the IDF) and fretting to the New York Times about whether Israel has a long-term strategy. The administration should turn such questioning inward.

Blinken is right that Hamas must be defeated and disempowered. He is also correct that if the Palestinians are to ever have an independent state, they cannot be governed by separate entities in the West Bank and Gaza.

Israel knows what it must do in Gaza. If the American plan is for the Palestinian Authority to take over, what is it doing to prepare Abbas’s government for that eventuality? What reforms is it pressing to ensure that the corruption that felled the PA and elevated Hamas last time doesn’t repeat itself? Does Blinken believe the Palestinian Authority is anywhere close to ready to administer the Gaza Strip? If not, why not?

A lot of questions are being asked of and by the administration about Israel’s preparedness. The Palestinian Authority’s weaknesses are lurking in the White House’s blind side. If that isn’t fixed, Israel will be the only party to this conflict to have actually fulfilled its obligations.