Sen. Marco Rubio said Tuesday he is not optimistic that a major peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians is near, despite recent comments made by President Donald Trump.
“The Israelis would love to have peace. The fundamental problem we have here is the definition of peace,” the Florida Republican told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota on “New Day.” “Everyone says they want peace. How do you define peace?”
“If peace means Israel can no longer retain their nature as a Jewish state or give up control of Jerusalem, if that’s peace — that’s not peace, that’s not going to happen,” Rubio said.
Trump said in a speech in Jerusalem Tuesday that both Israeli and Palestinian leaders “are ready to reach for peace.” The President has struck an increasingly optimistic tone on the prospects for peace in recent days, insisting that he is sensing a shift in the region that could draw Arab countries closer to Israel and create more favorable conditions for peace.
But Rubio, who sparred with Trump on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during the 2016 Republican presidential primary, said the Palestinians’ view of peace is at odds with those of the American people.
“From the Palestinian leadership’s perspective, I don’t think their definition of peace fits within what most of us at least here in Congress and in the United States would define as peace. And that’s always been a problem,” he said. “I think it is a very noble endeavor. I think the White House and President needs to be careful in an effort to make things better we end up making things worse.”
“It is my view that the conditions for the sort of peace we all desire do not exist, and therefore, we need to try to begin to create those conditions,” Rubio added.
Rubio also said that if reports that Trump asked two of the government’s top intelligence chiefs to publicly deny evidence of cooperation between his campaign and Russia during the 2016 election are true, that could impact the future relationship between the White House and the intelligence community.
“We have to confirm that that’s what actually happened. And I’m not disputing that it did,” he said. “If it does, I would say to you that it goes further in my mind as a member of the intelligence committee than just the focus on the Russia investigation.”
“I think it goes into the very nature of the intelligence community’s work and its ability to work with the executive branch and the presidency,” he said.