Jerusalem – The new top diplomat of the United States, Marco Rubio, is facing a dilemma.
The State Secretary was preserved in the Middle East a few apparently contradictory political goals – by a boss who has shown little patience with subordinates who sometimes do not reconcile his own contradicting goals.
President Trump said he wanted to empty the war strips of his Palestinian residents and create a “Riviera of the Middle East”. But only a few believe that this is compatible with its goal of regional peace, which is anchored by the relationships between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Rubio began his first visit to the Middle East in his new post by meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday in Jerusalem.
Afterwards, Rubio and Netanyahu used a similar language to describe the astonishing Gaza initiative that Trump introduced in the White House with the Israeli guide at the beginning of this month.
“The president was very brave in terms of his perspective on what the future of the Gaza Strip should be,” said Rubio. For his part, Netanyahu laid Trump's “brave vision for Gaza for the future of Gazas”.
Trump has continued to improve the plan in the past few days and not only in practical terms, but also the objections of human rights groups and others that it is equivalent to ethnic cleaning, with the cleaning.
But Rubios subsequent stops on this tour will bring him to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia-bodies lean on the concept of the mass shift of the Palestinians as a means to solve the 16-month-old war in Gaza between Israel and the Palestine Group Hamas, strongly from a militant group, A conflict that now thought of a ceasefire.
Before the Gaza Red, which broke out when the Hamas attacked South Sala on October 7, 2023, the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, the Kingdom's DE Facto leader, could be ready to carry out normalization with Israel to carry out sufficient US concessions to make for sufficient US concessions, according to Aaron David Miller, an experienced negotiator in the Middle East for Republican and Democratic Administrations.
But now, with efforts by Trump and Netanyahu, the goal of an independent Palestinian state that would belong to Gaza to finally be buried, wrote Miller about X.
For Netanyahu, Rubio's visit brought a welcome confirmation that the Trump government shares its goal to wipe out Hamas.
“Hamas cannot be continued as a military or government authority,” said Rubio after the Gaza stream war is over. “They have to be eliminated. It has to be eradicated. “
Even if this could be achieved -Arab states and even members of the Israel security company have expressed doubts -there is little agreement about what should happen next.
“Israel, the United States and the Arab countries pursue very different approaches for the broader solution,” said Analyst Zvi Bar'el in the Haaretz newspaper Israel.
Trump's passionate desire for a comprehensive regional agreement that includes normalized relationships between Israel and Saudi Arabia comes from his first term as president. He thought more than once about the recognition that such a American deal would bring him.
But the Arab world has hard back the Gaza plan from Trump. Saudi Arabia says that no regional peace is possible without a Palestinian state, and it has long been assumed that Gaza would be an integral part of such a unit.
The Trump government has objections directly, but privately from Jordan's king Abdullah II, who also belonged to the White House and reluctantly opposed to colonize the Palestinian refugees in his country. Jordan already has a large population of descendants of Palestinians who have fled their country since Israel was founded in 1948 or have been driven out of their country.
Rubio's task therefore seems to keep a drumbeat of the public praise for Trump's initiative up to date while trying to ensure that the regional ambitions of the President do not go wrong.
Like other Trump allies, Rubio tried to fulfill the President's proposals in order to destroy the form of earlier negotiation failure.
Trump “does not demand the same tired ideas of the past, but something that is brave and something that honestly took courage and vision to implement,” said Rubio. “And many may have shocked and surprised, but what cannot go on is the same cycle in which we repeatedly repeat and end up in the same place.”
Trump gave himself a scope by challenging the Arab states to develop their own plan for post -war gaza. On February 27, Egypt will organize an Arabic summit, and talks have been held, which instead of Trump's demand that the population of the enclave is extracted.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu has its own agenda: They try to emphasize that the United States and Israel have an important common goal of reducing Iran's influence.
This is also a complicated undertaking, since the Israeli guide often telegraphs to use military power to neutralize the Iranian threat, while Trump signals his conviction that negotiations – at least supervised by him – could better achieve the desired result.
After meeting Rubio, Netanyahu tried to paint a picture of solidarity and to say about all the topics that had discussed the two was more important than Iran.
“Israel and America are shoulder on shoulder to counter the threat of Iran,” said the Prime Minister. “We agree that the Ayatollahs are not allowed to have nuclear weapons. We also agreed that Iran's aggression must be rolled back in the region. “
In the past six months, Israel has achieved some breathtaking military successes against Iranian deputies in the region, including the Hislim group of the Lebanese Shiite Muslim group Hisbollah and the killing of its long -time leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Hamas was severely weakened in Gaza, but it is still the dominant actor in the smashed enclave, and it retains the key contracts in the form of dozens of Israeli hostages that still holds it.
Three other Israelis were freed on Saturday, and the families of the people who remain alive in captivity or whose bodies are still kept by Hamas are desperately trying to prevent Netanyahu from giving up the ceasefire, still in an initial phase that is too Finally, owe at the beginning of March.
Netanyahu consistently attributes Trump to the publications that have so far been under the almost monthly ceasefire-a agreement that was mainly underpined under Trump's predecessor Joe Biden, although the rhetoric of the US leader is sometimes the Deses of Israeli leader and Israeli military plans.
Last week Trump demanded the liberation of all remaining Israeli hostages and explained that “hell” breaks off if they were not handed over by Saturday.
But the day came and only went with the three publications prescribed by the ceasefire conditions.
King reported from Jerusalem and Wilkinson from Washington.