Secretary of State Marco Rubio is "absolutely right" that there won't be peace in Gaza until the territory is governed by people not interested in destroying Israel, former Ambassador James Jeffrey told Newsmax on Monday.
"What you also cannot do is let the Palestinian Authority govern because they were in charge between 2000 and 2005 — when Israel withdrew — and 2007, when Hamas violently overthrew them," Jeffrey, who was the U.S. ambassador to Albania, Turkey and Iraq, said on "National Report."
"So therefore, you have local Palestinians working with an international presence, and that international presence will be supported by the United States. It will have a security component; it will have other components, and the overall impact will be to provide the kind of international presence and oversight that we've seen in Bosnia, that we've seen in Kosovo, that we've seen in other places."
He added that "it works. It sounds complicated on paper, but I've seen it work, and I've helped put these things together."
Rubio on Sunday said negotiations between Hamas and Israel are ongoing and that setting up a group to govern Gaza would take "some time" but emphasized that there is a plan to do so.
"Everyone has agreed, including Israel, that eventually, at some point here — as this process plays out — Gaza will be governed by a Palestinian technocratic group that's not Hamas, that are not terrorists, with the help and the assistance and the guidance of an international consortium like the Board of Peace," Rubio told NBC.
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Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.