Trump’s vision for Gaza gets a road test with Rubio’s Mideast trip

JERUSALEM — The United States’ new top diplomat, Marco Rubio, is facing a quandary.

The secretary of State has been handed a pair of seemingly contradictory policy objectives in the Middle East — by a boss who has shown little patience with subordinates who fail to reconcile his own sometimes conflicting goals.

President Trump has said he wants to empty the war-wrecked Gaza Strip of its Palestinian residents and create a “Riviera of the Middle East.” But few believe that is compatible with his aim of regional peace anchored by ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Rubio began his first Mideast visit in his new post by meeting Sunday in Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Afterward, Rubio and Netanyahu used similar language to describe the startling Gaza initiative Trump rolled out at the White House earlier this month with the Israeli leader at his side.

“The president has … been very bold about his view of what the future of Gaza should be,” Rubio said. Netanyahu, for his part, hailed Trump’s “bold vision for Gaza, for Gaza’s future.”

Trump has continued to talk up the plan in recent days, brushing aside questions not only about its viability in practical terms, but objections from human rights groups and others that it would be tantamount to ethnic cleansing.

But Rubio’s subsequent stops on this tour will take him to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia — both of which sharply reject the notion of mass displacement of Palestinians as a means of resolving the 16-month-old war in Gaza between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, a conflict now paused by a cease-fire.

Before the Gaza war, which erupted when Hamas attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto leader, “might have been willing to do normalization with Israel” in exchange for sufficient U.S. concessions, according to Aaron David Miller, a veteran Middle East negotiator for both Republican and Democratic administrations.

But now, with efforts by both Trump and Netanyahu to “finally bury” the goal of an independent Palestinian state that would include Gaza, “the price has gone way up,” Miller wrote on X.

For Netanyahu, Rubio’s visit brought welcome confirmation that the Trump administration shares his goal of wiping out Hamas.

“Hamas cannot continue as a military or government force” after the Gaza war is over, Rubio said. “They must be eliminated. It must be eradicated.”

Even if that could be achieved — Arab states and even members of Israel’s security establishment have expressed doubts — there is little agreement over what should happen next.

“Israel, the United States and Arab countries have widely different approaches to the broader solution,” analyst Zvi Bar’el wrote in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper.

Trump’s ardent wish for an overarching regional accord that includes normalized relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia dates to his first term as president. He has publicly mused more than once about the acclaim such a U.S.-brokered deal would bring him.

But the Arab world has pushed back hard on Trump’s Gaza plan. Saudi Arabia says no such regional peace is possible without a Palestinian state, and it has long been assumed that Gaza would be an integral part of such an entity.

The Trump administration has heard objections directly, but in private, from Jordan’s King Abdullah II — who also trekked to the White House, and who adamantly opposes settling Palestinian refugees in his country. Jordan already has a huge population of descendants of Palestinians who fled or were driven out of their land since the founding of Israel in 1948.

Rubio’s task, then, appears to be keeping up a drumbeat of public praise for Trump’s initiative while trying to quietly ensure that the president’s regional ambitions don’t go awry as a result.

Like other Trump allies, Rubio has sought to cast the president’s proposals as a way of shattering the mold of previous negotiating failures.

Trump is calling for “not the same tired ideas of the past, but something that’s bold and something that frankly took courage and vision in order to outline,” Rubio said. “And it may have shocked and surprised many, but what cannot continue is the same cycle where we will repeat over and over again and wind up in the exact same place.”

Trump did give himself some wiggle room by challenging Arab states to come up with their own plan for postwar Gaza. On Feb. 27, Egypt will host an Arab summit, and talks have been taking place on what to offer in place of Trump’s call for the enclave’s population to be moved out.

Netanyahu, meanwhile, has his own agenda: seeking to emphasize that the United States and Israel share a key common goal of reducing Iran’s influence.

That, too, is a complicated endeavor, because the Israeli leader frequently telegraphs a desire to use military might to neutralize the Iranian threat, while Trump has signaled his belief that negotiations — at least as overseen by him — could better achieve the desired result.

After his meeting with Rubio, Netanyahu sought to paint a picture of solidarity, saying of all the issues the two discussed, none was more important than Iran.

“Israel and America stand shoulder to shoulder in countering the threat of Iran,” the prime minister declared. “We agree that the ayatollahs must not be allowed to have nuclear weapons. We also agreed that Iran’s aggression in the region has to be rolled back.”

Over the last six months, Israel has scored some stunning military successes against Iranian proxies in the region, including pummeling the Lebanese Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah and killing its longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

In Gaza, Hamas has been greatly weakened, but it is still the dominant actor in the battered enclave, and it retains key leverage in the form of dozens of Israeli hostages it still holds.

Three more Israelis were freed on Saturday, and the families of those remaining alive in captivity, or whose bodies are still being held by Hamas, are desperately trying to prevent Netanyahu from abandoning the cease-fire, still in an initial phase that is due to conclude in early March.

Netanyahu consistently credits Trump for the releases that have taken place so far under the nearly month-old truce — an accord that was hammered out mainly under Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden — although at times, the U.S. leader’s rhetoric has gotten ahead of that of the Israeli leader and Israeli military plans.

Last week, Trump demanded the freeing of all remaining Israeli hostages, declaring that “all hell” would break loose if they were not handed over by Saturday.

But the day came and went with only the three releases mandated by the cease-fire terms.

King reported from Jerusalem and Wilkinson from Washington.