Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed support for Israel’s actions in Gaza during a Jerusalem meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“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,” said Rubio
“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,” he continued.
Rubio’s visit comes amid speculation that Israel’s recent strike on ceasefire negotiators in Doha had created a rift between the two countries. The attack was intended to assassinate key members of Hamas’s leadership, but it ended up killing five lower-level members and a Qatari security officer.
Five Hamas members were killed, along with a Qatari security officer, but the key targets all survived.
U.S. officials claimed that President Trump was informed of the attack after it happened, and that the news did not come directly from Israel.
“I’m not thrilled about the whole situation. It’s not a good situation. But I will say this, we want the hostages back, but we are not thrilled about the way that went down,” Trump told reporters last week.
However, three Israeli officials told Axios that Netanyahu notified Trump of the strike before it happened.
“Trump knew about the strike before the missiles were launched. First, there was a discussion on the political level between Netanyahu and Trump, and afterwards through military channels. Trump didn’t say no,” a senior Israeli official told the website.
The Trump administration also claimed that it had warned Qatar, a close U.S. ally, that Israel was planning to bomb the country. Qatar’s government refuted the administration’s claim.
“The statements being circulated about Qatar being informed of the attack in advance are baseless,” tweeted Qatar Foreign Ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari. “The call from a U.S. official came during the sound of explosions caused by the Israeli attack in Doha.”
In a bizarre statement during a press briefing, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt seemingly criticized the attack, while expressing support for Israel’s intent.
“Unilaterally bombing inside Qatar, a sovereign nation and close ally of the United States that is working very hard and bravely taking risks with us to broker peace does not advance Israel or America’s goals,” said Leavitt. “However, eliminating Hamas, who have profited off the misery of those living in Gaza, is a worthy goal.”
During a joint press conference with Rubio, Netanyahu defiantly defended the strike and insisted it was a success.
“It didn’t fail, because it had one central message and we considered it before we launched it, and that is, you can hide, you can run, but we’ll get you,” the Prime Minister declared.
The Doha strike is just the latest example of Israel impeding ceasefire progress in the region, which it has consistently done for nearly two years.
Last month, former State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller admitted that the Netanyahu government sabotaged ceasefire deals on multiple occasions. In an interview with an Israeli outlet, Miller detailed an Israel-Hamas deal that almost came together during the summer of 2024, before Netanyahu suddenly refused to remove soldiers from of the Philadelphi Corridor.
“That maybe was the most frustrating of all, because we were so close to getting a deal that could have certainly brought hostages home and maybe ended the war once and for all,” explained Miller. ““It was our best chance to get a deal. Hamas, for the first time, was feeling pressured to agree. We were really close to a deal, and the prime minister added these new conditions.”
The Biden and Trump administrations have refused to hold Israel accountable for such moves.
During the dual press conference, Rubio expressed skepticism that a diplomatic solution could be reached at all, exclusively blaming Hamas for the lack of progress in ceasefire negotiations.
After claiming that the U.S. would continue to push for peace, he told reporters that Hamas is “a terrorist group, a barbaric group, whose stated mission is the destruction of the Jewish state. So we’re not counting on that happening.”
“It’s obvious that Israel has no better ally than America,” Netanyahu told reporters later. “The American-Israeli alliance has never been as strong as it is now.”