The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has put the Trump administration’s full support behind Benjamin Netanyahu in a visit to Jerusalem, saying Washington’s priorities were the liberation of Israeli hostages and the destruction of Hamas.
In public remarks standing alongside Netanyahu, Rubio did not mention the possibility of a ceasefire, and did not repeat his earlier criticism of Israel for carrying out an airstrike last week aimed at Hamas leaders in Doha, the capital of another close US ally, Qatar.
The state department announced that Rubio would make a stop in Doha on Tuesday on his way to London, as the Trump administration seeks to limit the damage to US relations in the Gulf caused by the Israeli strike last Tuesday.
At an emergency Arab and Islamic summit in Doha, Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, said Israel’s aim in carrying out the strike was to derail talks aimed at a ceasefire. “Whoever works diligently and systematically to assassinate the party with whom he is negotiating, intends to thwart the negotiations,” he told fellow leaders.
The Hamas leaders had been in Doha to discuss a ceasefire proposal put forward by Donald Trump in line with Israel’s wishes for a one-step deal to release all the remaining 20 hostages still believed to be alive and the bodies of 28 more thought to be dead. Hamas had in August accepted a phased ceasefire agreement along the lines put forward by the US envoy Steve Witkoff.
Rubio did not address possible ceasefire terms in Jerusalem, other than to say that the US would “continue to explore and be dedicated to” a peaceful outcome that he said depended on the elimination of Hamas.
“At the end of the day, no matter what has happened or happens, the objective remains the same, and that is all 48 of those hostages, both living and deceased, need to be home. They need to be returned,” he said.
“Hamas needs to cease to exist as an armed element that can threaten the peace and security of the region. And the people of Gaza deserve a better future. But that better future cannot begin until Hamas is eliminated.”
Rubio warned that the intended recognition of Palestine by several US allies, including the UK, France, Canada, Belgium and Australia, would make peace less likely.
“It actually makes it harder to negotiate … because it emboldens these groups,” he said, referring to Hamas and other Palestinian militants. He added that the Trump administration had warned states preparing to recognise Palestine “there will be an Israeli counter reaction to those moves” – in what may have been a reference to a possible Israeli move to annex occupied areas of the West Bank.
Rubio refrained from commenting on the planned Israeli ground offensive on Gaza City. Before that offensive, the Israel Defense Forces have been destroying blocks of flats across the city, and ordering its inhabitants to evacuate, drawing international condemnation.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians have fled Gaza City for the south, but most of the estimated million people sheltering in the urban sprawl have opted to stay, either because they are unable to move or because they have nowhere to go. Humanitarian agencies have said there is nowhere left in Gaza that is safe or suitable for displaced people.
The UN relief agency, Unrwa, said 10 of its buildings had been hit by Israeli strikes in the past four days, including seven schools and two clinics.
Netanyahu defended Israel’s tactics. “We’re not bringing down those towers to intimidate people. Those towers are serving as Hamas strongholds,” he said. “But what we’re doing is we’re telling the population … we ask you to leave. And what is Hamas doing? They’re asking them to stay, because they want to use them as human shields.”
The UN rapporteur on human rights in the occupied territories, Francesca Albanese, said the aim of the Gaza City offensive was to make it uninhabitable. “This is the last piece of Gaza that needs to be rendered unlivable,” Albanese said on Monday.
The Israeli mission to the UN rejected her remarks, blaming Hamas for the destruction. “According to her, Hamas doesn’t embed itself in civilian infrastructure, doesn’t cynically use civilians as human shields, and generally doesn’t really exist,” it said.
The IDF chief of staff, Lt Gen Eyal Zamir, is widely reported to have deep misgivings about the Gaza City offensive, arguing it would not destroy Hamas and would be costly in the lives of Israeli soldiers and hostages. According to the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, the commander told a Knesset committee on Friday that he had been left in the dark about the objectives.
“The prime minister hasn’t told us what the next stage is. We don’t know what to prepare for. If they want military rule, then they should say military rule,” Zamir is reported to have told the committee. According to the same report, he described the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the US-Israeli backed scheme to distribute food instead of the UN, as a “failure” and questioned why money was being spent on expanding it.
In an open letter to Zamir on Monday, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum asked to meet him to put its case against the Gaza City offensive.
“We demand that the fate of our loved ones not be abandoned!” the forum said in a social media post. “The IDF must present a clear policy to the public and families: no more living hostages murdered in captivity as a result of military pressure, and no more bodies disappearing under rubble, losing any chance to locate them and return them for proper burial.”
At the Doha summit, Qatar’s emir accused Israel of not caring about its hostages held in the Gaza Strip. He said its aim instead was to “ensure Gaza is no longer livable”.
Hamas leadership aides and a Qatari security officer were killed in the Israeli missile strike. The leaders reported to be the intended target were in another building at the time, according to Israeli reports.
Netanyahu said the Qatar raid was a “wholly independent decision by Israel” for which his government assumed “full responsibility”. He declined to give details of the casualties but insisted the mission had not failed.
“It didn’t fail because it had one central message … and that is, you can hide, you can run, but we’ll get you,” he said.
Israel has so far killed more than 64,000 Palestinians in Gaza according to official estimates, though many thousands more are feared buried in the rubble. The overwhelming majority of the victims have been civilians, even according to internal IDF estimates.
Netanyahu faces an arrest warrant for war crimes from the international criminal court, and the international court of justice is weighing allegations that his government is committing genocide. Israel denies the charge, claiming to be acting in self-defence after the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, which killed 1,200 Israelis, more than two-thirds of them civilians.
