U.S. Secretary of State arrives in Israel to address Gaza offensive

Jerusalem .- The United States Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, landed this Sunday at Tel Aviv airport, beginning a two-day visit to Israel in which he is expected to address the military offensive in Gaza. The head of US diplomacy will visit this afternoon, along with President Benjamin Netanyahu, the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem, the only act on his agenda officially shared for now.

Visit to a controversial tunnel in East Jerusalem

According to the Israeli NGO Peace Now – which monitors the expansion of illegal settlements – Rubio will also be present at the inauguration of a tourist tunnel in an Israeli settlement in the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan, located in occupied East Jerusalem. The presence of Rubio in this tunnel is equivalent to the “American recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the most sensitive area of the sacred basin of Jerusalem,” Peace Now denounced in a statement. The tunnel, 600 meters long, begins at the southern end of Wadi Hilweh in Silwan, runs under Palestinian homes (many expropriated), passes under the walls of the Old City, and ends near the foundations of the Western Wall and a few meters from the Al Aqsa Mosque.

Debate on the Recognition of Palestinian Statehood

Rubio’s trip takes place in the midst of Israel’s offensive to occupy Gaza City, the capital of the Palestinian enclave, and once again displace its million inhabitants, who are suffering the consequences of almost two years of war and a situation of famine due to the Israeli blockade on the entry of food.

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It also occurs before the UN General Assembly, starting next September 22, discusses the recognition of the Palestinian state, an option announced by countries such as France, the United Kingdom or Canada and rejected by the United States in reaction to the Israeli campaign in Gaza, which has left almost 65,000 dead according to Gazan authorities. Recently, Netanyahu’s radical government minister Bezalel Smotrich presented a plan to announce Israeli sovereignty over the Palestinian territory of the West Bank, occupied by Israel.

The Israeli attack in Qatar

Rubio’s arrival in Israel takes place despite the discontent of the US President Donald Trump’s Administration over the Israeli attack in Qatar against the Hamas delegation negotiating the release of Israeli hostages as part of a truce in Gaza.

The country is a great ally of the United States and one of the main negotiators to achieve a ceasefire in the Palestinian Strip. 

“(The attack) is not going to change the nature of our relationship with the Israelis, but we will have to talk about it; mainly, about what impact this has” on truce efforts, Rubio told the press yesterday in Washington, before his flight. According to a statement from Netanyahu, the attack – which failed to assassinate senior Hamas officials in Doha, but did kill the son of one of them and four other members of the Islamist group – was a “totally independent Israeli operation” that did not have prior US approval.