CAIRO: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has met with Israel’s prime minister in Jerusalem for talks on the Gaza ceasefire, launching a Middle East tour a day after the latest hostage-prisoner exchange, AFP reports.
On his first visit to the region as Washington’s top diplomat, Rubio is expected to push US President Donald Trump’s widely condemned proposal to take control of Gaza and relocate its more than two million residents.
Rubio arrived hours after Hamas freed three Israeli hostages in Gaza in exchange for 369 Palestinian prisoners — the sixth swap under the fragile ceasefire.
Negotiations on a second phase of the truce, aimed at securing a more lasting end to the conflict, are expected to begin next week in Doha.
The United States, Israel’s top ally and weapons supplier, has said it is open to alternative proposals from Arab governments but insists that, for now, “the only plan is Trump’s”.
Rubio is also due to visit Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, with tough talks expected on Monday in Riyadh, a key player in Trump’s regional strategy.
Trump first floated the suggestion that Egypt and Jordan should take in Palestinians from Gaza on January 25, a proposal they strongly opposed.
In a shock announcement on February 4, after meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington, Trump proposed resettling Gaza’s 2.2 million Palestinians and the US taking control and ownership of the demolished seaside enclave, redeveloping it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
On February 10, he said Palestinians would not have the right of return to Gaza under his plan, contradicting his own officials who had suggested Gazans would only be relocated temporarily.
The US president’s comments echoed long-standing Palestinian fears of being permanently driven from their homes and were labeled as a proposal of ethnic cleansing by some critics.
US ally Israel’s military assault on Gaza, now paused by a fragile ceasefire, has killed more than 47,000 Palestinians in the last 16 months, the Gaza health ministry says, and provoked accusations of genocide and war crimes that Israel denies.
The assault internally displaced nearly all of Gaza’s population and caused a hunger crisis.
The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on October 7, 2023, when Palestinian Hamas militants attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking some 250 hostages, Israeli tallies show.
Rubio will discuss Gaza and the aftermath of the Hamas attack on Israel during the trip, and will pursue Trump’s approach of trying to disrupt the status quo in the region, a State Department official said last week.
