Rubio Visits Israel as Trump Pushes Plan to Expel Palestinians From Gaza

Secretary of State Marco Rubio was meeting in Jerusalem on Sunday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel as political chaos rippled across the Middle East over President Trump’s insistent proposals to seize the devastated Gaza Strip and force out its Palestinian residents.

The trip is Mr. Rubio’s first to the region as secretary of state, and comes as Israel and Hamas are meant to be negotiating to turn a tenuous cease-fire in Gaza into a permanent end to their war.

But Mr. Trump’s improbable vision for transforming Gaza into an American-owned “Riviera of the Middle East” has overshadowed that high-stakes discussion, and Mr. Rubio is sure to be pressed for more clarity about the plan during his visits to Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

It is unclear whether Mr. Rubio will have any details to offer, however, and not only because Mr. Trump’s plan is as vague as it is contentious — it is unclear whether Mr. Rubio himself takes the president literally.

Mr. Rubio, a former Florida senator with a far more conventional worldview and style than the president, has more than once suggested that Mr. Trump’s idea is mainly a negotiating tactic meant to provoke Arab leaders into taking more responsibility for the Palestinians.

Mr. Trump surprised the world with his Gaza plan during a Feb. 4 news conference in Washington with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has since called it “a revolutionary, creative approach” that should be studied. Mr. Netanyahu has not explicitly endorsed the idea, which some Israeli officials consider impractical.

After Arab officials in the region immediately denounced it, Mr. Rubio suggested to reporters that Mr. Trump was merely trying to “get a reaction” and “stir” other nations into providing more assistance for postwar Gaza.

Since then, however, Mr. Trump has doubled down, telling reporters in the Oval Office on two other occasions and in a Fox News interview that he intends to move forward with the plan. On Friday, Mahmoud Abbas, who governs the West Bank as the president of the Palestinian Authority, said the Palestinian people “must remain” on their land.

The forced expulsion of Palestinians would be ethnic cleansing and a war crime, international law scholars say. More than 47,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli military retaliation in Gaza for a Hamas-led assault in October 2023 that killed 1,200 people. Most of the dead on both sides have been civilians.

Mr. Trump has said Jordan and Egypt should allow the Palestinian residents of Gaza to move to their countries. The idea has long been promoted by the Israeli right but flatly rejected by Arab and Palestinian leaders as well as past U.S. presidents of both parties. King Abdullah II of Jordan publicly rejected Mr. Trump’s proposal after a Wednesday meeting at the White House that was also attended by Mr. Rubio.

In a radio interview on Thursday, Mr. Rubio again spoke of Mr. Trump’s idea less as a concrete objective and more as kind of diplomatic stink bomb aimed at Arab nations.

“All these countries say how much they care about the Palestinians, but none of them want to take any Palestinians. None of them have a history of doing anything for Gaza in that matter,” Mr. Rubio said. “So the president says, all right, then this is what we’re going to do. We’ll take it on. We’ll have to move people around.”

“It’s the only plan out there right now,” he added. “Now, if someone has a better plan — and we hope they do — if the Arab countries have a better plan, then that’s great.”

Mr. Rubio suggested that any Arab proposal should address the mammoth task of reconstructing Gaza and deploying a multinational security force to fight remnants of Hamas.

“I can tell you that any plan that leaves Hamas there is going to be a problem, because Israel is not going to tolerate it.” he said.

Mr. Rubio made no mention of months of work by the Biden administration, led by former Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, to devise just such a plan. By the end of last year, Biden administration officials said they were getting close to a complex agreement that would bring Arab security forces and reconstruction funds to Gaza along with greater accountability to the Palestinian Authority, which President Joe Biden said should play a leading role in a postwar Gaza.

But any such plan is only possible once the war in Gaza comes to an end, and progress toward that depends on extending a cease-fire agreement that is set to end in March and that revolves around hostage-prisoner exchanges.

Mr. Rubio arrived in Israel on Saturday — the same day that Hamas released three Israeli hostages, including a dual American citizen, in exchange for 369 Palestinian prisoners.

The Israeli and American governments had been pressuring Hamas for days to release the hostages in hopes of sustaining the cease-fire first reached with the prodding of Biden and Trump aides in mid-January. Mr. Trump warned last Monday that Israel could cancel the agreement and that “all hell is going to break out” if Hamas did not release all remaining hostages by noon on Saturday.

Mr. Rubio is on his second trip as secretary of state. He landed in Israel on Saturday night after spending a couple of days at the Munich Security Conference, and plans to fly to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates after meetings in Jerusalem. Mr. Rubio had planned to stop in Qatar earlier, but that was not on the announced schedule.

In Saudi Arabia, Mr. Rubio and two other top Trump aides plan to meet with Russian officials to discuss ending the war in Ukraine.

Mr. Rubio’s travels have attracted little public reaction in Israel, amid uncertainty about the secretary’s influence in comparison to Steve Witkoff, the president’s Mideast envoy, and other advisers to Mr. Trump.

More broadly, Israeli government officials have warmly welcomed the Trump administration’s support for Israel. Mr. Netanyahu issued a statement on Tuesday that hailed “the president’s revolutionary vision for the future of Gaza.” He also credited Mr. Trump on Saturday with helping to ensure that the cease-fire remained intact through the weekend.

Still, it is unclear whether Mr. Netanyahu sees Mr. Trump’s plan to expel Gaza’s residents as a viable postwar strategy, even if the idea has been praised by Mr. Netanyahu’s far-right allies.

Mr. Netanyahu himself has avoided direct commentary on the premise of a U.S.-led building project in Gaza. Instead, the Israeli leadership seems more focused on a short-term goal — securing U.S. support for resuming the war if the cease-fire breaks down. Mr. Netanyahu has repeatedly said the war cannot end before Hamas is defeated, but it will be harder to renew the fighting without Mr. Trump’s blessing.

Isabel Kershner contributed reporting.