Rubio seeks answers from Israel on way forward in Gaza after Qatar strike

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JERUSALEM (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says he will be seeking answers from Israeli officials about how they see the way forward in Gaza following Israel’s attack on Hamas operatives in Qatar that has upended efforts to broker an end to the conflict.

Rubio told reporters on Saturday before leaving for Israel that President Donald Trump remained unhappy with the Israeli strike but that it would not shake U.S. support for Israel.

“We’re going to talk about what the future holds, and I’m going to get a much better understanding of what their plans are moving forward," Rubio said. “Obviously we’re not happy about it. The president was not happy about it. Now we need to move forward and figure out what comes next.”

Both Rubio and Trump met on Friday with Qatar’s prime minister to discuss the fallout from the Israeli operation, in a demonstration of how the Trump administration is trying to balance relations between key Middle East allies days after Israel targeted Hamas leaders in a strike on Doha.

The attack has drawn widespread international condemnation and appears to have ended attempts to secure an Israel-Hamas ceasefire and the release of hostages ahead of the upcoming U.N. General Assembly session at which the Gaza war is expected to be a primary focus.

Trump "wants Hamas defeated, he wants the war to end, he wants all 48 hostages home, including those that are deceased, and he wants it all at once,” he said. “And we’ll have to discuss about how the events last week had an impact on the ability to achieve that in short order.”

Rubio will have meetings in Jerusalem on Sunday and Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others.

Despite tensions between Trump and Netanyahu over the strike, Rubio will be in Israel for the two-day visit. It is a show of support for the increasingly isolated country before the United Nations holds likely contentious debate on the creation of a Palestinian state, which Netanyahu opposes.

On Friday, Rubio and Vice President JD Vance met Qatari Prime Ministers Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani at the White House. Later Friday, Trump and special envoy Steve Witkoff had dinner with the sheikh in New York, where Trump went to commemorate the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The Trump administration is walking a delicate line between two major allies after Israel took its fight with Hamas to the Qatari capital, where leaders of the militant group had gathered to consider a U.S. proposal for a ceasefire in the nearly two-year-old war in Gaza. Qatar is a key mediator, and while its leaders have vowed to press forward, the next steps are uncertain for a long-sought deal to halt the fighting and release hostages taken from Israel.

Israel’s attack Tuesday also has ruptured Trump’s hopes to secure a wider Middle East peace deal, with the rulers of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar all uniting in anger.

Trump himself has distanced himself from the strike, saying it “does not advance Israel or America’s goals” and has promised Qatar that it would not be repeated. The U.S. also joined a U.N. Security Council statement condemning the strike without mentioning Israel by name.

While in Israel, Rubio plans to visit the City of David, a popular archaeological site and tourist destination built by Israel in the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan in contested east Jerusalem.

It contains some of the oldest remains of the 3,000-year-old city. But critics accuse the site’s operators of pushing a nationalistic agenda at the expense of Palestinian residents.

Israel captured east Jerusalem, home to the city’s most important religious sites, in the 1967 Mideast war and annexed the area.

Israel claims the entire city as its eternal, undivided capital while the Palestinians claim east Jerusalem as the capital of a future state, including the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The competing claims lie at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and frequently boil over into violence.