Gazans deserve a better future but eliminating the “barbaric animals” of Hamas is a prerequisite to that future, Marco Rubio, the U.S. secretary of state and national security advisor, told reporters alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the latter’s office in Jerusalem.
Rubio spoke to journalists on Monday before attending the opening of “pilgrimage road” at the City of David that he called “one of the most important archeological sites in the planet” that has “deep meaning to so many people in the United States.”
“It’s an honor to be here and be a part of that,” he said.
Rubio also visited the Western Wall with Netanyahu and Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, and placed a note inside.
In response to a question from one journalist, Rubio said that he doesn’t know anyone “who would not rather see a negotiated settlement in which Hamas agrees to no longer be a terrorist group, lay down their arms, free the hostages.”
“By the way, not just the hostages that they’re holding from Israel but frankly the people of Gaza that they’re also holding hostage as human shields,” he said. “That would be the ideal outcome and one we would all like to see. It’s one that’s been worked on, but I think we have to be prepared for the fact that savage terrorists don’t normally agree to things like that, but we’ll continue to pursue that route.”
Netanyahu told reporters that Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist who was recently killed at age 31 was a year older than the prime minister’s brother, Yonatan Netanyahu, who was killed in Entebbe.
“Some of these people come once in a century, but it’s their legacy that has to live on,” Netanyahu said.
In an interview with Gillian Turner, of Fox News, from Jerusalem, Rubio said that U.S. President Donald Trump wants the war in Gaza to be “over quickly, but he wants it to be over quickly with the hostages released, all of them, and with Hamas no longer being a threat.”
In Israel, Rubio met with Isaac Herzog, the Israeli president, with whom he discussed the security of Israel and “ongoing efforts to defeat Hamas and release all remaining hostages in Gaza,” according to Tommy Pigott, the principal deputy U.S. State Department spokesman.
The secretary also offered the Israeli president “his deepest condolences to the Israelis killed and injured in the horrific terrorist attack in Jerusalem on Sept. 8,” Pigott said.
On Monday, Trump stated that he just read a report in the news that “Hamas has moved the hostages above ground to use them as human shields against Israel’s ground offensive.”
“I hope the leaders of Hamas know what they’re getting into if they do such a thing,” he said. “This is a human atrocity, the likes of which few people have ever seen before. Don’t let this happen or all bets are off. Release all hostages now.”
