Rubio’s two-day visit aims to show support for Israel, which faces isolation ahead of a United Nations debate on a Palestinian state.
JERUSALEM, Israel — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Israel on Sunday as the nation’s military escalated its offensives in northern Gaza, demolishing several high-rise buildings and resulting in the deaths of at least 13 Palestinians.
Prior to the trip, Rubio stated his intention to discuss with Israeli officials their perspective on the future course of action in Gaza, following Israel’s assault on Hamas leaders stationed in Qatar last week, which disrupted progress towards negotiating an end to the conflict.
Rubio’s two-day visit underscores support for the increasingly isolated Israel, especially as the United Nations prepares for what is anticipated to be a heated debate on the commitment to establishing a Palestinian state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is firmly against the recognition of a Palestinian state.
Qatar fallout
Despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s frustration with Netanyahu over the Israeli strike in Doha, claiming the United States had not been informed beforehand, Rubio’s visit continued as planned.
On Sunday, Netanyahu, Rubio, and their wives, accompanied by U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and his wife, visited the Western Wall and the adjacent excavated tunnels.
Netanyahu remarked, “I think his (Rubio’s) visit here is a testament to the durability, the strength of the Israeli-American alliance. It’s as strong and as durable as the stones of the Western Wall we just touched.”
On Friday, Rubio and Trump met with Qatar’s prime minister about the fallout from the Israeli operation. The back-to-back meetings with Israel and Qatar illustrate how the Trump administration is trying to balance relations between key Middle East allies despite widespread international condemnation of the attack.
The Doha attack, which killed at least six people, also appears to have ended attempts to secure an Israel-Hamas ceasefire and the release of hostages before the upcoming U.N. General Assembly session, at which the war in Gaza is expected to be a primary focus.
Meanwhile, Qatar’s prime minister denounced Israel as foreign ministers from Arab and Muslim nations met Sunday to discuss a possible unified response. Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, who also serves as foreign minister, said Qatar remained committed to working with Egypt and the U.S. to reach a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, but that Israel’s strike represented “an attack on the principle of mediation itself.”
Deadly airstrikes mount
On Sunday, at least 13 Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded in Israeli strikes across Gaza, according to local hospitals.
One strike on a tent in the city of Deir al-Balah killed at least six members of the same family. Two parents, their three children and the children’s aunt were killed, according to Al-Aqsa Hospital. The family was from the northern town of Beit Hanoun, and arrived in Deir al-Balah last week after fleeing a Gaza City shelter.
The Israeli military didn’t immediately comment.
Associated Press video showed what appeared to be thousands of people fleeing Gaza City on the seaside road to the south with their belongings packed on vehicles, even as smoke rose from an airstrike some distance away. Israel has been warning residents to evacuate Gaza City as it expands its operation.
“We have begun to wish for death, death, rather than this life we live today,” said Ashraf Elwan, a young man displaced from Gaza City. “Our young men have had their limbs amputated, our women have become widows, our children have become orphans, our lives have become hell.”
The Israeli military destroyed three high-rise buildings Sunday after warning residents to evacuate. One building, part of the Islamic University in Gaza City, was struck twice and flattened. Al-Shifa hospital reported casualties, but couldn’t confirm how many, saying some bodies remain trapped inside.
Before the strikes, residents scrambled to pull out belongings, tossing mattresses from balconies and wheeling away items, including suitcases.
The military said Hamas had positioned observation points on the buildings to gather intelligence about troop movements and that militants were poised to strike Israeli troops, though it offered no evidence to support those claims.
“This is part of the genocidal measures the (Israeli) occupation is carrying out in Gaza City,” said Abed Ismail, a Gaza City resident. “They want to turn the whole city into rubble, and force the transfer and another Nakba.”
The word Nakba is Arabic for catastrophe and refers to when around 700,000 Palestinians were expelled by Israeli forces or fled their homes in what is now Israel, before and during the 1948 war that surrounded its creation.
Israeli strongly denies accusations of genocide in Gaza.
Starvation in Gaza
Separately, two Palestinian adults died of causes related to malnutrition and starvation in the Gaza Strip over the last 24 hours, the territory’s Health Ministry reported Sunday.
That has brought the death toll from malnutrition-related causes to 277 since late June, when the ministry started to count adult fatalities, while another 145 children died of malnutrition-related causes since the start of the war in October 2023, the ministry said.
The Israeli defense body overseeing humanitarian aid in Gaza said that more than 1,200 trucks carrying aid, primarily food, entered Gaza over the past week. Aid workers say the aid that reaches Gaza is insufficient for the territory’s enormous needs. Much of it is also looted before it can reach Palestinians in desperate need.
International teams also finished repair work on a water line from Israel to Gaza, one of three water lines from Israel to Gaza, increasing the daily amount of water coming into Gaza from Israel to 14,000 cubic meters (3.7 million gallons), Israel said.
Since Israel launched its offensive, Gaza’s water access has been progressively limited. Parents and children often chase down water trucks that come every two or three days, filling bottles, canisters and buckets and then hauling them home.
The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251. There are still 48 hostages remaining in Gaza, of whom Israel believes that 20 are still alive.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 64,871 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t say how many were civilians or combatants.
Magdy reported from Cairo. Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel, Eric Tucker in Washington, and Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.
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