Rubio kicks off W Asia trip from Israel as Arabs reel from Trump’s Gaza proposal

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is kicking of a West Asia tour in Israel on Sunday, as Arab leaders reel from President Donald Trump’s proposal to transfer the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip to other countries and redevelop it under US ownership.

On Rubio’s first visit to the region as America’s top diplomat he is likely to get a warm welcome from the Israeli establishment, which has praised the plan, and pushback from Arab leaders, who have universally rejected it and are scrambling to come up with a counterproposal.

The fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas meanwhile remains intact after a major dispute threatened to unravel it last week. But the sides face a fast-approaching deadline in early March to negotiate the next phase, and the war may resume if they don’t reach an agreement.

Netanyahu has signalled readiness to resume the war after the current stage, even if that would leave dozens of hostages in captivity. At the same time, he has offered Hamas a chance to surrender and send its top leaders into exile. Hamas has rejected such a scenario.

Israel’s Defence Ministry meanwhile said Sunday it received a shipment of 900-kg MK-84 munitions from the United States. The Biden administration had paused a shipment of such bombs last year over concerns about civilian casualties in Gaza.

In a radio interview last week, Rubio indicated that Trump’s proposal was in part aimed at pressuring Arab states to come up with their own postwar plan that would be acceptable to Israel, which says Hamas can have no role in Gaza.

He also appeared to suggest that Arab countries send in troops to combat Hamas, which survived Israel’s devastating 15-month onslaught and remains in firm control of the territory.

“If someone has a better plan, and we hope they do, if the Arab countries have a better plan, then that’s great,” Rubio said Thursday on the “Clay and Buck Show.” But “Hamas has guns,” he added. “Someone has to confront those guys. It’s not going to be American soldiers.

US West Asia envoy Steve Witkoff said on Sunday that talks on phase two of a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas would continue this week “at a location to be determined” to figure out how to reach a successful conclusion.

Witkoff said they spoke about “the sequencing of phase two, setting forth positions on both sides, so we can understand ... where we are today, and then continuing talks this week at a location to be determined so that we can figure out how we get to the end of phase two successfully.”

An Israeli negotiating team will fly to Cairo on Monday to discuss continuing the implementation of the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire deal, Prime Minister Netanyahu's office said on Sunday.

Egypt says it will host an Arab summit on February 27 and is working with other countries on a counterproposal that would allow for Gaza to be rebuilt without removing its population.

3 Hamas members killed in Israeli strike

An Israeli airstrike killed three policemen east of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Sunday, the Hamas-run interior ministry said, calling it a breach of the fragile January 19 ceasefire. It said the policemen were deployed in the area to secure the entry of aid trucks into Gaza. “The ministry...condemns this crime and calls upon the mediators and the international community to compel the occupation to stop targeting the police force, which is a civil apparatus,” the ministry said in a statement. The Israeli military said the strike targeted several armed individuals.