Rubio to visit Middle East

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will visit Israel and Arab states in mid-February, a State Department official said, making his first trip to the Middle East after a widely condemned proposal by President Donald Trump to displace Palestinians in Gaza.

Rubio will travel to the Munich Security Conference and to Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia from February 13-18, the senior State Department official said late on Thursday.

Rights groups have condemned Trump's suggestion that Palestinians in Gaza should be permanently displaced as part of a U.S. takeover of the enclave.

Rubio said on Wednesday that Palestinians in the enclave will have to relocate in the "interim" while it is rebuilt following the Israel-Gaza war.

The U.S. official said Rubio would discuss Gaza and the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas on Israel during the trip, and would pursue Trump's approach of trying to disrupt the status quo in the region.

"The status quo can't continue. It's like wash, rinse and repeat. It becomes familiar and you begin to think this is just what life is and what we have to expect. President Trump and Marco Rubio believe that that's not the case, that things can change," the official said.

Since Jan. 25, Trump has repeatedly suggested that Palestinians in Gaza should be taken in by regional Arab nations such as Egypt and Jordan, an idea rejected by Arab states and by Palestinians. Trump's suggestion echoed long-standing Palestinian fears of being permanently driven from their homes.

U.S. ally Israel's military assault on Gaza, now paused by a fragile ceasefire, has killed more than 47,000 Palestinians in the last 16 months, the Gaza health ministry says, and provoked accusations of genocide and war crimes that Israel denies.

The assault internally displaced nearly all of Gaza's population and caused a hunger crisis.

The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on October 7, 2023, when Palestinian Hamas militants attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking some 250 hostages, Israeli tallies show.