US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will pay his first visit to the Middle East this month, a senior State Department official said Thursday, in the wake of President Donald Trump's remarks on relocating Gaza's population.
Rubio will attend the Munich Security Conference and then visit Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia from February 13-18, the official said.
Trump stunned much of the world on Tuesday when – after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – he suggested sending US forces to occupy the war-battered Gaza Strip and removing its two million people.
Rubio later said that Trump was speaking of a temporary relocation as the United States finances reconstruction of the territory following Israel's relentless assault in response to an unprecedented Hamas attack.
Speaking earlier Thursday on a visit to the Dominican Republic, Rubio suggested that Trump was also seeking support for Gaza's reconstruction from countries that "have both the economic and technological capacity" to support Gaza – a likely reference to wealthy Gulf Arab states.
"I think President Trump has offered to go in and be a part of that solution, and if some other country is willing to step forward and do it themselves, then that would be great," Rubio said.
"But no one seems to be rushing forward to do that, and that has to happen," he said.
The senior State Department official said that Trump had started a conversation on Gaza's future that Rubio would continue.
"You have to seriously talk about it," the official said.
It would be Rubio's second foreign trip after the longtime senator took the job.
Rubio, the first Hispanic secretary of state, returned late Thursday from his first trip in the position to Latin America.
The second trip will showcase a role in the Middle East for Rubio as the top US diplomat, even though Trump has named a friend from the real estate world, Steve Witkoff, as a special envoy to the region.
Witkoff teamed up with an outgoing envoy from former president Joe Biden to push a ceasefire deal last month between Israel and Hamas mediated by Qatar.
Rubio's predecessor under Biden, Antony Blinken, paid 12 visits to the region following the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas, in part to push a ceasefire.
Blinken also helped lay the groundwork for – but did not succeed in – finalizing a potentially historic deal in which Saudi Arabia would recognize Israel.
Saudi Arabia has repeated that it needs to see progress toward a Palestinian state before such a landmark step.
Trump in his first term spearheaded a deal in which the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco normalized relations with Israel – the first Arab states to do so in decades.
With AFP
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