Jake Sullivan on Gaza:

There was a certain trap in the thinking of: we can get to a ceasefire and hostage deal. We negotiated one in November of 2023 and more than 100 hostages came out, and those were great days.

The guns fell silent, people came home, aid trucks went in at scale, and we overlearned the lesson from that — that that was achievable — and then thought, okay, we’re going to keep working till we get another one in place that ultimately ends the war.

And we consistently thought that it was closer than it was. It ultimately came to pass. When we left office, there was a ceasefire and hostage deal in place, but it took too long to get there, with so much suffering and death and tragedy in the meantime.

And I spend a lot of time thinking about that and having that weigh on me. But avoiding that kind of trap, I think, is an important lesson going forward.