U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was in Israel on Sunday as its military intensified attacks on northern Gaza, flattening multiple highrise buildings and killing at least 13 Palestinians.
Rubio said ahead of the trip that he will be seeking answers from Israeli officials about how they see the way forward in Gaza following Israel’s attack on Hamas leaders in Qatar on Tuesday that upended efforts to broker an end to the conflict.
His two-day visit is also a show of support for an increasingly isolated Israel as the United Nations General Assembly on Friday overwhelmingly voted in favour of a non-binding resolution supporting a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu strongly opposes the recognition of a Palestinian state.
Rubio visits Israel despite anger over Qatar attack
Rubio’s visit went ahead despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s anger at Netanyahu over the Israeli strike in Doha, which he said the United States was not notified of beforehand.
On Sunday, Netanyahu, Rubio and their wives, along with U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and his wife, toured the Western Wall and the excavated tunnels near it.
“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,” Netanyahu said.
On Friday, Rubio and Trump met with Qatar’s prime minister to discuss the fallout from the Israeli operation. The dual, back-to-back meetings with Qatar and Israel illustrate how the Trump administration is trying to balance relations between key Middle East allies despite widespread international condemnation for 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 ahead of the upcoming UN General Assembly session, at which the Gaza war is expected to be a primary focus.
Meanwhile, foreign affairs ministers from Arab and Islamic nations were to meet in Doha on Sunday to forge a united front about the Israeli attack ahead of a summit in Qatar on Monday that will bring together leaders from their nations for top-level talks.
Deadly airstrikes mount
On Sunday, at least 13 Palestinians were killed and dozens were wounded in multiple Israeli strikes across Gaza, according to local hospitals.
Local hospitals said Israeli strikes targeted a vehicle near Shifa Hospital and a roundabout in Gaza City, as well as a tent in the city of Deir al-Balah, where at least six members of the same family were killed.
Two parents, their three children and the children’s aunt were killed in that strike, 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 their shelter in Gaza City.
The Israeli military did not have immediate comment on the strikes.
Israeli airstrikes reportedly hit two United Nations schools sheltering displaced Palestinians in Gaza City on Friday. Local health authorities say at least 40 Palestinians were killed in the attack. The strikes come after repeated calls from Israel’s military for residents to leave the city.
As part of its expanding operation in Gaza City, the Israeli military destroyed multiple highrise buildings on Sunday after warning residents to evacuate. Some were destroyed less than an hour after an evacuation order was posted online by military spokesperson Avichay Adraee.
According to the military, Hamas had positioned observation posts and ways to gather intelligence about troop movements in the area and militants were poised to strike Israeli troops.
Residents said the Kauther tower in the Rimal neighbourhood was flattened to the ground. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
“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.”
Nakba, Arabic for “catastrophe,” refers to a period when some 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.
Israel has strongly denied accusations of genocide in Gaza.
“The skyline of Gaza is changing,” Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz wrote on social media platform X, providing footage of the strikes that destroyed one of the buildings.
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 on Sunday.
That brings the death toll from malnutrition-related causes to 277 since late June, when the ministry started to count fatalities among adults, while another 145 children died of malnutrition-related causes since the start of the war in October 2023, the ministry said.
The Israeli defence body overseeing humanitarian aid in Gaza said that more than 1,200 trucks carrying aid, primarily food, entered Gaza over the past week. But humanitarian workers say the aid that does get into Gaza is far too insufficient for the territory’s enormous needs.
International teams also finished repair work on a water line from Israel to Gaza, one of three water lines into the territory, increasing the daily amount of water to 14,000 cubic metres.
Over the 23 months since Israel launched its offensive, Gaza’s water access has been progressively limited, and Palestinians are now enduring a second scorching summer in wartime. 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, abducting 251 people and killing some 1,200, mostly civilians, according to Israeli tallies. There are 48 hostages remaining in Gaza, of whom 20 are believed by Israel to still be alive.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 64,871 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many were civilians or combatants. It says about half of those killed were women and children. Much of the enclave has been completely destroyed, and about 90 per cent of some two million Palestinians have been displaced.
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