Rebuilding Rafah could happen in 2 to 3 years, Vance says as he leaves Israel

By Aileen Graef, Oren Liebermann, CNN

(CNN) — Vice President JD Vance left Israel on Thursday with an optimistic note, saying Rafah, a city in the southern Gaza strip, could be rebuilt in two to three years.

Vance said Palestinians should be able to move into a “Hamas free zone” in southern Gaza “in the next couple of months.”

He told reporters in Tel Aviv before he boarded Air Force Two that the hope is for people to be able to move back to Rafah. Vance said the reconstruction effort could start “very quickly” in areas not under Hamas control.

“You’re going to have first some people, and then more, and then hopefully in a couple years, a half a million people living in security, living in comfort, and also living in a situation where they’re not threatening their Israeli neighbors,” Vance said.

It is the first time the US administration has spoken in detail about the potential timeline for the reconstruction of Gaza, which has been devastated in two years of war.

The vice president’s visit this week to the region was meant, at least in part, to ensure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains committed to the US-negotiated deal as some Trump administration officials worry he could work to thwart it, CNN previously reported.

Vance told reporters Thursday that, so far, both Israel and Hamas are respecting the ceasefire with “exceptions.”

“There are little exceptions to break out here and there that would be expected when these two parties have been at war for two years. But so far, the ceasefire is actually holding. The peace is actually holding,” he said.

Vance said he felt “pretty good” about maintaining the fragile peace but did admit there was potential for “little breakouts of violence.”

“Look, if this peace sticks, you’re going to have these little breakouts of violence. Our message to the Israelis has been: ‘help us build this peace.’ Obviously, the Israelis have their own interests, but we’re going to keep on trying to work with both them and the Gulf-Arab states to make this peace stick,” he said.

Vance acknowledged the upcoming challenges the ceasefire will face as mediators try to create a mechanism to carry out the disarmament of Hamas. The responsibility will ultimately fall to an international force to be deployed to Gaza, an effort that Vance said will require patience.

“Our hope in the administration is that the International Security Force is going to now take the lead in disarming Hamas,” he said. “That’s going to take some time, and it’s going to depend a lot on the composition of that force.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who landed just hours after Vance flew out, said the ceasefire effort remains a top priority for US President Donald Trump. He said that the efforts to date are “a very important achievement,” but added that “there’s more work to be done and bigger achievements that lie ahead, and so we’re here to work on that.”

“We feel very positive and confident that we’re going to get there, despite substantial obstacles. We’re going to get there,” Rubio said.

Vance criticizes Israeli vote on West Bank

The US vice president slammed a pair of preliminary votes in Israel’s parliament designed to advance annexation of the occupied West Bank – territory that the international community considers part of a future Palestinian state. Vance said he had been told the votes were “symbolic” and a “political stunt.”

“If it was a political stunt, it was a very stupid political stunt, and I personally take some insult to it,” Vance told reporters.

One bill to annex the West Bank passed by a single vote, 25-24, while a more limited bill to annex the settlement of Maale Adumim passed by a much wider margin, 32-9. In both cases, more than half of Israel’s Knesset did not vote. Netanyahu and his Likud party opposed the measure, but it passed in its preliminary reading anyway.

The Israeli prime minister’s office said in a statement that the bills “are unlikely to go anywhere” and were intended by the opposition to “sow discord” during Vance’s visit, even though the West Bank annexation bill only passed because of the support of Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition partners.

Annexing all or parts of the West Bank has been a goal of Israel’s right-wing for years. Many hardliners had celebrated Donald Trump’s presidency as an opportunity to advance that agenda, believing he would provide American support to a measure that would immediately face a massive international backlash. But Vance poured cold water on the idea of applying Israeli sovereignty to the West Bank.

“The West Bank is not going to be annexed by Israel. The policy of the Trump administration is that the West Bank will not be annexed by Israel. That will continue to be our policy.”

A broad coalition of Arab and Muslim states, led by Saudi Arabia, blasted the Knesset vote as a “blatant violation of international law.”

In a joint statement issued by the Saudi Foreign Ministry, the group said in a sharp rebuke that “Israel’s continued unilateral policies and illegal practices will further undermine international law and morality.” They called on Israel to stop expanding settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, has made the expansion of the Abraham Accords one of its top foreign policy goals. The accords saw Israel normalize relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and others, representing Trump’s biggest foreign policy achievement from his first term. The US is now trying to advance normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, but Riyadh has made clear that it would only happen with a viable pathway to Palestinian statehood, something openly dismissed by Israel’s right-wing.

Trump told Time Magazine in an interview published on Thursday that “Saudi Arabia will lead the way toward the Abraham Accords.” When asked whether he thought the country would join the accords by the end of the year, Trump responded, “Yes, I do. I do.”

Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said at a domestic conference on Thursday, however, “If Saudi Arabia tells us, ‘Normalization in exchange for a Palestinian state,’ then friends – no thank you. Keep riding your camels In the desert – and we’ll continue building a technological powerhouse.”

Smotrich has repeatedly made clear that one of his top priorities is annexing the West Bank.

In the Time interview, Trump bluntly said he won’t allow it.

“It won’t happen because I gave my word to the Arab countries. It will not happen,” he said. “Israel would lose all of its support from the United States if that happened.”

Speaking about the Israel-Hamas war, Trump also said that Netanyahu “would have just kept going” were it not for his intervention.

“It would have gone on for years. And I stopped him, and everybody came together when I stopped, it was amazing,” said Trump. He said the failed Israeli strike in Doha targeting senior Hamas leaders was one of the key moments that helped bring about the ceasefire “because it was so out of joint that it sort of got everybody to do what they have to do.”

Jennifer Hansler and Kylie Atwood contributed to this report.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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