On Sunday the secretary of state Marco Rubio met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in Jerusalem, where they discussed the insistent proposals of President Trump for the United States to take over the devastated strip and force his Palestinian residents, among other issues.
The journey is Rubio’s first in the region as a secretary of state, and comes while uncertainty is increasing that Israel and Hamas can or are willing to transform a tenuous ceased to fire to Gaza into a permanent end of their war.
But the controversial vision of Mr. Trump for transforming Gaza into a “Middle East Riviera” owned by American owned by those high -level negotiations, and Mr. Rubio will surely be pressed for greater clarity on the proposal during his visits to the Next visits days in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Trump “was very daring on what the future for Gaza should be, not the same tired ideas of the past,” said Rubio in the prepared observations delivered together with Mr. Netanyahu on Sunday after the two met privately. “It may have shocked and surprised many, but what cannot continue is the same cycle in which we repeat more and several times and end in the same place.”
Mr. Rubio also spoke of the need to look at any security threats deriving from the new government in Syria and the imperative of disarming Hezbollah in Lebanon. And he said that Iran is the “common theme in all these challenges”, using a more aggressive language to describe that nation that Mr. Trump in general makes to call it “the greatest source of instability in the region”.
“Behind each terrorist group, behind every act of violence, behind every destabilizing activity, behind everything that threatens peace and stability for the millions of people they call this region at home, is Iran,” said Rubio.
Netanyahu said he thanked Mr. Rubio for “Inquivocal support for America for Israeli policy in Gaza to go on”. However, the Netanyahu government has not yet presented a long -term strategy for Gaza to the Israeli or American public.
“I want to ensure to all those who now listen to us, President Trump and I am working in full cooperation and coordination between us,” said Netanyahu, who met the president at the White House on February 4th.
Trump surprised the world with his Gaza plan during a press conference that day with Mr. Netanyahu, who since then called him “a revolutionary and creative approach” which should be studied.
On Sunday Netanyahu said he and Mr. Rubio had discussed “Bold Vision for Gaza, for the future of Gaza – how we can work together to ensure that that future becomes a reality”.
Netanyahu said later on Sunday that “it was not a surprise” when Mr. Trump presented his vision of Gaza to the world on February 4 in Washington. “We knew and we talked about it in advance,” said Israeli Prime Minister at his cabinet in filmed observations distributed by his office.
Some Israeli officials consider the little practical idea and experts say that it would be a serious violation of international law.
After the Arabic officials of the Region immediately reported the proposal, Rubio had suggested that Mr. Trump was simply trying to “get a reaction” and “shake” other nations in providing greater assistance for the post -war Gaza.
Since then, however, Mr. Trump has doubled, telling journalists in the oval office on two other occasions and in a Fox News interview that he intends to go on with the plan. Friday, Mahmoud Abbas, who governs the West Bank as president of the Palestinian authority, said that the Palestinian people “must remain” on their land.
The forced expulsion of the Palestinians would be an ethnic cleaning and a war crime, they say scholars of international law. More than 47,000 Palestinians were killed by Israeli military retaliation in Gaza for an assault led by Hamas in October 2023 who killed 1,200 people. Most of the dead on both sides have been civil.
Trump said that Jordan and Egypt should allow Gaza’s Palestinian residents to move to their countries. The idea was long promoted by the Israeli right but categorically rejected by the Arab and Palestinian leaders, as well as by the past presidents of the United States of both sides. King Abdullah II of Jordan publicly rejected Mr. Trump’s proposal after a Wednesday meeting in the White House in which Rubio also participated.
Rubio declared in a radio interview on Thursday that any Arab proposal for a post -war Gaza should face the mammoth the task of reconstructing the territory and distributing a multinational security force to combat Hamas’ remains.
But this would be possible only once the war in Gaza will end, which depends on the extension of an agreement of ceased the fire that revolves around the exchanges of hostages and prisoners. The first phase of the current ceased agreement will end in March.
Neither Mr. Rubio nor Mr. Netanyahu referred to their public observations on Sunday to the status of negotiations for the next phase of the agreement. Steve Witkoff, the special correspondent of Mr. Trump in the Middle East, said in an interview with Fox News on Sunday that talks about the second phase of the agreement of ceased the fire this week.
Later on Sunday, Mr. Netanyahu’s office said that the Israeli leader had spoken to Mr. Witkoff and informed him that he would convene Israel’s security cabinet on Monday to discuss the second phase of the agreement.
The indirect negotiations for a permanent termination of hostility and the release of all the remaining living hostages of Hamas’s imprisonment should have started two weeks ago and had to be finalized by the end of next week. Mr. Netanyahu’s spokesman denied that these interviews are underway.
Israel and Hamas both said that the other side violated the terms of the ceasefire. On Sunday, Hamas accused Israel of violating and showing a lack of commitment to the ceased agreement by preventing the entry of trailers to Gaza to host displaced Palestinians and delay the talks for the next phase of the agreement.
Israeli officials recognized the regiment of the entrance of the living trailer in Gaza, saying during the weekend that the problem would have been discussed in the next few days, without elaborating the reasons for the delay.
In the meantime, Mr. Trump seems to have given Mr. Netanyahu a little room for maneuver for changing the terms of the agreement or for having resumed to fight in Gaza, if he had chosen to do it, saying in a post on social media Saturday that the United States would return any decision taken by the Israeli government.
Both Netanyahu and Rubio spoke on Sunday of the need to eliminate Hamas’ military and government skills. The Israeli Defense Ministry has announced that a 2000 pound bomb expedition, which had been supported by the Biden administration, had arrived in Israel during the night. U.S. military officials have said that these bombs are not suitable for urban combat, although the Israeli soldiers have dropped them to Gaza.
Rubio’s arrival in Israel on Saturday evening came hours after Hamas released three Israeli hostages, including a double American citizen, in exchange for 369 Palestinian prisoners. Sunday, Rubio released a written declaration in which he says that Hamas “still holds 73 hostages including the native of the New Jersey Edan Alexander and the remains of four Americans murdered in Gaza. Now they have to go home. “
Israeli and American governments had put pressure on Hamas for days to release the hostages in the hope of supporting the ceased the fire reached for the first time in mid -January with the aim of Biden and Trump Aides. Trump warned last Monday that Israel could cancel the agreement and that “all hells are about to burst” if Hamas has not released all the hostages by Saturday.
Mr. Rubio is on his second journey as secretary of state. He landed in Israel after a stop at the Monaco security conference and was supposed to fly to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Mr. Rubio had planned to stop in Qatar previously, but was not in the announced program.
In Saudi Arabia, Mr. Rubio and two other Trump’s best assistants plan to meet Russian officials to discuss to put an end to the War of Russia in Ukraine.
Michael Crowley Reports contributed by Washington e Patrick Kingsley Reports contributed by Jerusalem.