US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday appeared to criticize Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s goal of seizing 70 percent of Gaza to defeat Hamas, saying that the statement was not part of US President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan to end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian terror group.
“We have a plan — it doesn’t call for that,” Rubio said. “And at the end of the day, we understand that what we want, and I think what the Israelis would ultimately want, is a Gaza that is governed by a non-Hamas entity.”
Rubio was responding to Representative Rose DeLauro, the top-ranking Democrat on the US House Appropriations Committee, who pressed him on how the administration’s 20-point plan is progressing.
Netanyahu announced last week that he ordered the Israel Defense Forces to take control of 70% of the Gaza Strip after acknowledging a week earlier that Israel already holds 60% of the territory, significantly more than the roughly 53% it was allowed to temporarily continue occupying as part of the deal with Hamas.
In response to Netanyahu’s vow to expand Israel’s grip on Gaza, Hamas accused him of a “dangerous escalation” and charged that Jerusalem was violating the October 2025 ceasefire that halted two years of war sparked by its devastating invasion of southern Israel.
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The October deal was envisioned as part of a larger process that would see the terror group disarm and the enclave demilitarized, but progress toward that vision has stalled, with Hamas refusing to lay down its weapons and Israel continuing to strike deep inside Gaza as they accuse each other of repeated violations of the ceasefire.
“No one is going to invest money in Gaza until Hamas is demilitarized because they know there is going to be another war,” Rubio said during Tuesday’s hearing, stressing that the deployment of the International Stabilization Force and other elements of Trump’s plan cannot move forward until Hamas gives up its weapons.
Palestinian gunmen from Hamas and Islamic Jihad gather next to Eid al-Fitr prayers in Gaza City, Friday, March 20, 2026. (AP/Abdel Kareem Hana)
His remarks came as mediators are set to renew disarmament talks with Hamas in Egypt on Thursday, two Arab diplomats involved in the process told The Times of Israel, as the negotiators consider alternatives to Trump’s 20-point plan.
In May, a document obtained by The Times of Israel showed that the US-led Board of Peace won’t hold Israel to the terms of the ceasefire if Hamas does not accept the international panel’s framework to disarm.
While the Board of Peace’s High Representative for Gaza, Nickolay Mladenov, warned that refusal from Hamas to disarm could lead to the resumption of the war, he went much further in the document, and said that Israel would not be expected to halt attacks in Gaza or ensure humanitarian aid enters the Strip.
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She died more than four decades ago, but Leah Goldberg remains a magnetic and enigmatic figure: Israel’s most beloved poet, a powerful woman who lived with her mother and never married, who reinvented herself from the ashes of World War I through her magical writing.
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