\u201cBut at this time, it\u2019s something that we … think might be counterproductive,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Asked about increased violence by extremist Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank, Rubio said: \u201cWe\u2019re concerned about anything that threatens to destabilise what we\u2019ve worked on\u201d.<\/p>\n
But Rubio – the latest high-ranking US visitor to Israel following Vice-President JD Vance – voiced optimism overall for preserving the peace deal.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery day there\u2019ll be threats to it, but I actually think we\u2019re ahead of schedule in terms of bringing it together, and the fact that we made it through this weekend is a good sign,\u201d Rubio said.<\/p>\n
The US is the primary military and diplomatic supporter of Israel and Rubio until recently had steered clear of criticising annexation moves championed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s far-right allies.<\/p>\n
A number of Arab and Islamic states, which the US is courting to provide troops and money for a stabilisation force in Gaza, have warned that annexation of the West Bank, led by Hamas\u2019 moderate rivals in the Palestinian Authority, was a red line.<\/p>\n
-Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cBut at this time, it\u2019s something that we … think might be counterproductive,\u201d he said. Asked about increased…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96981,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9092,28174,38610,71552,1643,3468,16945,42,78,5873,2207,8599,43,24637,2892,71551,2687,312,3045,71553,13672,3057,19554,18937,12419,1865,40,38,41,39,13118,8222,3807],"class_list":{"0":"post-96980","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-against","9":"tag-americas","10":"tag-annexation","11":"tag-annexing","12":"tag-bank","13":"tag-deal","14":"tag-gaza","15":"tag-headlines","16":"tag-in","17":"tag-israel","18":"tag-marco","19":"tag-moves","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-parliament","22":"tag-peace","23":"tag-rubio","24":"tag-saying","25":"tag-says","26":"tag-secretary","27":"tag-settler","28":"tag-state","29":"tag-steps","30":"tag-taken","31":"tag-threatened","32":"tag-threatening","33":"tag-today","34":"tag-top-news","35":"tag-top-stories","36":"tag-topnews","37":"tag-topstories","38":"tag-violence","39":"tag-warned","40":"tag-west"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96980\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}