US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has come out in defense of an Israeli strike on Gaza, brushing aside the blatant violation of a Washington-brokered ceasefire.
“We don’t view that as a violation of the ceasefire,” Rubio said aboard US President Donald Trump’s plane during a trip to Asia on Monday.
Israel claimed it had targeted a member of the Islamic Jihad resistance movement in central Gaza on Saturday, alleging the individual was preparing an attack on Israeli forces.
Islamic Jihad denied the allegation, confirming that a senior figure survived the Israeli strike. The movement dismissed Tel Aviv’s justification as “merely false,” aimed at fabricating threats to “legitimize its aggression and violation of the ceasefire.”
“They have the right if there’s an imminent threat to Israel, and all the mediators agree with that,” Rubio claimed, in reference to the mediators of the ceasefire agreement: Washington, Egypt, and Qatar.
Israel’s Saturday strike came shortly after Rubio departed the Israeli-occupied territories after a visit allegedly aimed at consolidating the ceasefire.
Over the last 48 hours, Israel has killed at least eight Palestinians and wounded 13 others across Gaza in violation of the ceasefire, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
During Israel’s two-year-long genocidal war on Gaza, the occupying regime killed at least 68,527 Palestinians and wounded 170,395 others, before a ceasefire agreement was reached in the besieged strip earlier this month.
