WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The war in Gaza has “not yet” ended, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Sunday, describing the release of the hostages held by Hamas as the first phase, while details on what happens after that still need to be worked out.
He said Hamas had “basically” agreed to President Donald Trump’s proposal and the framework for releasing the hostages, while meetings were underway to coordinate the logistics of that.
“They have also agreed, in principle and generalities, to enter into this idea about what’s going to happen afterwards,” he said. “A lot of details are going to have to be worked out there.”
He said the U.S. would know “very quickly” whether Hamas was serious or not during the current technical talks to coordinate the release of the hostages.
“Priority number one, the one that we think we can achieve something very quickly on hopefully, is the release of all the hostages in exchange for Israel moving back” to the yellow line – where Israel stood within Gaza in the middle of August – Rubio said.
He described the second phase of the long-term future of Gaza as “even harder.”
“What happens after Israel pulls back to the yellow line, and potentially beyond that, as this thing develops? How do you create this Palestinian technocratic leadership that’s not Hamas?” Rubio said. “How do you disarm any sort of terrorist groups that are going to be building tunnels and conducting attacks against Israel? How do you get them to demobilize?”
“All that work, that’s going to be hard, but that’s critical, because without that, you’re not going to have lasting peace,” he added.
(Reporting by Jasper Ward and David Morgan; Writing by Michelle Nicholls; Editing by Louise Heavens)
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