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Secretary of State Marco Rubio will travel to Israel this week, arriving in the country days after an Israel airstrike in Qatar against Hamas officials led to a major rift with the Trump administration.
Israeli media has reported that Rubio will visit the inauguration of a controversial archaeological site in east Jerusalem built by an Israeli settler group in a Palestinian neighborhood.
After Israel, Rubio will join President Donald Trump in Britain for an official state visit. Rubio also serves as Trump's White House national security adviser.
Rubio's trip to Israel was planned long before Israeli airstrikes in Qatar on Tuesday, which targeted Hamas officials involved in negotiations toward a ceasefire in the Gaza war. U.S. officials have said little about whether Rubio intends to reiterate Trump's displeasure with the Israeli airstrikes in Qatar or in any way reprimand Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Rubio "will convey America's priorities in the Israel-Hamas conflict and broader issues concerning Middle Eastern security, reaffirming the U.S. commitment to Israeli security. He will also emphasize our shared goals: ensuring Hamas never rules over Gaza again and bringing all the hostages home," State Department deputy spokesman Tommy Pigott said in a statement.
Rubio also intends to discuss Israel's new offensive in Gaza and the shared opposition to widening international recognition of a Palestinian state, Pigott said. Qatar was not mentioned in the statement.
The surprise Israeli strike on Hamas leaders in Qatar has led to tensions with Washington. The Trump administration has generally been highly supportive of Israeli strikes against Hamas, Iran, Yemen and shared adversaries across the region, but Washington has also been pushing for a ceasefire and an end to the nearly two-year war. In attacking negotiators in Doha, Israel may have upset a delicate balance with another key U.S. ally and the main hub for indirect peace talks.
The strikes could also imperil hopes to broaden the Abraham Accords, a series of normalization agreements brokered between Israel and four Arab states that was the standout foreign policy achievement of Trump's first term.
U.S. officials have not clarified if or when Trump was notified by Israeli officials about the Tuesday attack on Doha, saying only that the president had been told that strikes were underway by the Pentagon, prompting a scramble to warn Qatari officials. Shortly after the bombing, Trump called Mohammed and told him that "such a thing will not happen again on their soil,” according to White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt.
In London, Rubio will also meet with the new British foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, who succeeded David Lammy as Britain's top diplomat after a cabinet reshuffle last week. The meeting comes at a complex moment for U.S.-U.K. relations; British ambassador to the U.S. Peter Mandelson was fired on Thursday after new details emerged of his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.