Secretary of State Marco Rubio to visit Middle East after Trump upends US policy

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US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will visit the Middle East next week, a State Department official said, after President Donald Trump upended US policy on the region with a proposal to displace Palestinians from Gaza.

Mr Rubio will travel to the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Israel between February 13 and 18, a senior State Department official told news agencies Reuters and AFP.

Mr Trump on Tuesday said the US should take control of war-ravaged Gaza and remove its two million people to make way for reconstruction, but Mr Rubio said the following day that relocation would be for an "interim" period while the strip is rebuilt.

The proposal has been met with widespread condemnation by Palestinians, Arab countries and rights groups.

The US official said Mr Rubio would discuss Gaza on his Middle East trip and would pursue Mr Trump's approach of trying to disrupt the status quo in the region.

"The status quo can't continue. It's like wash, rinse and repeat. It becomes familiar and you begin to think this is just what life is, and what we have to expect," the official said. "President Trump and Marco Rubio believe that's not the case, that things can change."

Mr Trump has suggested Palestinians in Gaza should be taken in by Arab nations such as Egypt and Jordan, an idea rejected by their governments and Palestinians. The US President's suggestion plays on long-standing Palestinian fears of being permanently driven from their homes.

The Gaza Strip lies largely in ruins 16 months after the war broke out and Mr Trump has called the enclave a "demolition site".

The conflict, now paused by a ceasefire, has killed more than 47,500 Palestinians, the Gaza Health Ministry says, and provoked accusations of genocide and war crimes against Israel. It has also displaced nearly all of Gaza's population and caused a hunger crisis.

Speaking on Thursday, Mr Rubio suggested Mr Trump was seeking support for Gaza's reconstruction from countries that "have both the economic and technological capacity" to support the territory – thought to be a reference to wealthy Arab states in the Gulf.

"I think President Trump has offered to go in and be a part of that solution, and if some other country is willing to step forward and do it themselves, then that would be great," Mr Rubio said. "But no one seems to be rushing forward to do that – and that has to happen."

Mr Trump has named a friend from the real estate world, Steve Witkoff, as Washington's special envoy to the Middle East.

Mr Witkoff worked with an envoy from the previous Biden administration to push through the Gaza ceasefire deal last month between Israel and Hamas, which was mediated by Qatar.