Inclusion of Palestinians missing in US-Israeli plans for region
The takeaway message of the Rubio-Netanyahu meeting is that the US president is a staunch supporter of Israel. The members of his administration are also big Israel supporters.
Netanyahu and Rubio talked about Iran, Lebanon, Syria, etc – all the military activity that Israel is conducting across the region. But they also talked about Gaza, and what was absent there was the inclusion of the Palestinians. This has been absent for many American and Israeli plans.
Netanyahu says he will defeat Hamas both militarily and politically. This was one of his main war objectives, but after 15 months of fighting, this completely failed.
You see Hamas every week as they released captives in a big show of force, which drives the right wing in Israel crazy. They say after all the fighting, the Israeli military could not achieve its goals.
They also say they want to implement Trump’s plan for the US to take over Gaza, which has been widely condemned in the region.
Absent here is any sort of plan for the Palestinian people other than expelling them from their land.
Rubio’s Middle East tour will skip key allies, players
The US secretary of state’s six-day Middle East tour, which began in Israel, will next include meetings with leaders in the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
Missing from this itinerary are key allies and players that the previous US administration frequently visited during the Gaza war. There is no stop by Rubio in the key regional powerbroker Qatar, which has been instrumental in ceasefire negotiations.
There are also no visits planned to Jordan or Egypt, key US allies who have rejected the Trump administration’s intense pressure to back a Gaza plan that would transfer the Palestinian population to their nations, a move critics said would be ethnic cleansing.
Also sidelined on this Rubio tour is the Palestinian Authority’s leader, Mahmoud Abbas, once pegged by the Biden administration as the preferred choice to take over the administration of Gaza.
Rubio breaks with tradition and sidetracks the PA, ex-US diplomat says
Nabeel Khoury says the US secretary of state has broken with the traditional set-up for US diplomats to first meet with the Israeli government and then the Palestinian Authority.
“Rubio is not doing that. So this is sidetracking the Palestinian Authority despite all the conveniences and all the cooperation and collaboration it has given the Israeli government,” the former US diplomat told Al Jazeera.
“The next stop after Israel is going to be Riyadh and possibly the United Arab Emirates,” Khoury added, arguing that this fits into “Trump’s vision, … which is rebuilding Gaza minus the Palestinian population”.
Khoury also said: “I imagine, reading behind the lines, … they’re discussing the details of the transfer of the Palestinian population somewhere else outside of Gaza. That somewhere else has yet to be determined.
“They [US and Israel] haven’t gotten any approval from either Egypt or Jordan for a mass transfer,” Khoury noted, adding, “In the end, they would have to come up with a solution, and I imagine part of that solution would be some kind of camps in the Negev desert.”
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