US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday that Washington does not view a Saturday strike in which Israel said it targeted a terror operative in Gaza as a violation of the US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
Rubio’s statement came as Israeli forces carried out another strike on Monday morning, killing two Palestinians, according to Gazan media reports. The Israel Defense Forces said terror operatives had crossed the ceasefire line and threatened troops.
On Saturday, the IDF said it carried out a drone strike in central Gaza’s Nuseirat, targeting what it said was an operative from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group who was planning an imminent attack against troops.
Palestinian media reported that one person was killed and others were injured in the strike, which hit a car. Islamic Jihad denied it was planning an attack.
Speaking Monday aboard US President Donald Trump’s plane during a trip to Asia, Rubio said, “We don’t view that as a violation of the ceasefire.”
The top US diplomat said Israel has not surrendered its right to self-defense as part of the agreement brokered by Washington, Egypt and Qatar that saw Hamas release the remaining living hostages and the bodies of a number of others held in Gaza, though it is required to release the remaining 13 bodies.
“They have the right if there’s an imminent threat to Israel, and all the mediators agree with that,” Rubio said.
Rubio additionally said the ceasefire was based on obligations on both sides, reiterating that Hamas needs to speed up the return of the remains of dead hostages.
Since the ceasefire came into effect earlier this month, Israel has carried out several strikes and fired on suspects in Gaza that it says posed an imminent threat to troops.
Hamas has said these strikes constitute a violation of the truce, but Israel says it is permitted to attack operatives who are plotting to attack soldiers or who cross the Yellow Line, to which the army withdrew under the ceasefire’s terms.
Just after Rubio’s comments to the press aboard Air Force One, Palestinian media reported that two people were killed and several others wounded in a Monday morning drone strike in the area of the village of Abasan al-Kabira, east of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.
The IDF said it carried out the strike against a group of Palestinian terror operatives who crossed the “Yellow Line” demarcating the military’s pullback in the southern Gaza Strip.
According to the military, the operatives were digging in the ground and approaching Israeli forces in the Khan Younis area, which is under IDF control as part of the ceasefire.
The operatives “posed an immediate threat” to the troops, and upon being identified, they were targeted in a strike, the IDF said.
A day earlier, an Israeli source told The Times of Israel that senior US officials told Jerusalem last week that “the next 30 days of the ceasefire agreement are crucial.”
“That’s why they want Israel to respond in a proportionate manner,” says the source, referring to any Hamas violations of the US-brokered Gaza ceasefire agreement.
A string of top White House officials, including Vice President JD Vance, were in Israel last week to make sure the ceasefire in Gaza holds, even after a deadly Hamas attack on IDF troops and its failures to hand over all the bodies of slain hostages.
“Do not act in a way that would endanger the ceasefire. We want to do everything to reach the second phase,” senior US advisers Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff also reportedly told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week.
