Secretary of State Marco Rubio departed for Israel on Saturday amid signs that President Trump was growing frustrated about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s unrelenting campaign against Hamas prolonging the war in Gaza.
Mr. Rubio will land in Israel on Sunday as its military prepares for a major offensive in Gaza City. His visit comes days after an audacious Israeli airstrike targeted Hamas officials in Qatar. Arab and European officials have said that the attack would make ending the conflict even harder.
Before his departure on Saturday, Mr. Rubio told reporters that the Israeli strike in Qatar would be a focus of his conversations in Israel, and “what impact it’s going to have on efforts to get all the hostages back, get rid of Hamas and end this war. That’s the president’s priority.”
Mr. Trump told reporters this week that he was “very unhappy” about the Israeli strike in Doha, Qatar’s capital, saying that it “does not advance Israel or America’s goals.”
Mr. Trump has promised to broker an end to the nearly two-year Gaza conflict, and earlier this month submitted a fresh cease-fire proposal, which he said Israel had accepted.
But the fighting has raged on. For that, Mr. Trump and Israel blame Hamas, saying that the Palestinian militant group negotiates in bad faith. Mr. Netanyahu’s critics say he has willingly prolonged the war, prioritizing the dismantling of Hamas over the release of some 20 Israeli hostages who remain in Gaza.
Mr. Trump has done little to press Mr. Netanyahu to reach terms with Hamas, apart from his sporadic demands that Israel allow more aid into Gaza to prevent mass famine.
A State Department statement announcing Mr. Rubio’s travel and outlining his agenda did not express concern about the coming Israeli offensive into Gaza City, ahead of which Israel has ordered all residents to evacuate. The statement said that Mr. Rubio, who also serves as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, would meet with Israeli officials to discuss their “goals and objectives” for the operation.
Mr. Rubio deflected on Saturday when asked whether the United States fully supports an offensive into Gaza City. “I’m not going to get into that in the media, other than to say that the president wants this to be finished with,” he said, referring to the Gaza war generally.
But Mr. Rubio may urge Israel to conduct a swift operation, said David Makovsky, a former State Department adviser who advised Israel-Palestinian peace talks and now works at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The country could then move toward the political settlement that Mr. Trump, who does not conceal his longing for a Nobel Peace Prize, hopes to clinch.
“I tend to think his time frame is to do it quickly,” Mr. Makovsky said. But he added that a U.S. push to “get it over with” may not “comport with the reality on the ground” — the prospect of grueling urban warfare in the devastated Gazan capital.
It is unclear whether Mr. Rubio will rebuke Israeli officials over the strike in Qatar, a close U.S. partner that hosts a major American air base. On Friday, the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Britain issued a joint statement condemning the attack as a violation of Qatar’s sovereignty, and said it “poses a serious risk to achieving a negotiated deal” to end the Gaza war.
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