Vice President JD Vance stressed Wednesday that U.S. officials were not seeking to babysit the Gaza Strip ceasefire and that Israel was a partner, not a “vassal state,” as questions rose over the next steps in the Middle East.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has hosted a string of senior American officials in recent days, exchanged words of friendship and optimism with Vance at a joint news conference in Jerusalem as Washington worked to ensure the truce brokered by President Donald Trump will hold.
“I never said it was easy, but what I am is optimistic that the ceasefire is going to hold and that we can actually build a better future in the entire Middle East,” Vance said, speaking alongside Netanyahu.
The vice president’s visit followed the arrival of Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was set to follow Thursday and meet with Netanyahu on Friday, the Israeli government said.
The vice president and the Israeli leader championed each other’s efforts in securing the ceasefire deal, which came into effect on Oct. 10.
But as a succession of U.S. representatives flocked to Israel this week after flares of violence threatened to undermine the ceasefire, Vance also appeared to seek to reassure the Israeli leader — and the world — that the U.S. wasn’t looking to overstep.
“We don’t want a vassal state and that’s not what Israel is. We don’t want a client state,” he said. “We want a partnership.”
He later clarified the role of the Americans in Israel this week as the ceasefire looked fragile and the path to the second phase of the deal appeared uncertain.
It wasn’t about “monitoring in the sense of, you know, you monitor a toddler. It’s about monitoring in the sense that there’s a lot of work, a lot a good people who are doing that work and it’s important for the principles of the administration to keep on ensuring that our people are doing what we need them to do,” Vance said.
The planned international security force in Gaza has loomed as a major question mark, with some in Israel concerned that such a force could limit its freedom to act in Gaza in the future.
Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday that “numerous of our NOW GREAT ALLIES in the Middle East, and areas surrounding the Middle East,” had “explicitly and strongly, with great enthusiasm, informed me that they would welcome the opportunity, at my request, to go into GAZA with a heavy force.”
He added that he had “told these countries, and Israel, ‘NOT YET,’” but he warned that if Hamas did not “do what is right,” or it violated the ceasefire agreement, the militant group could meet a “FAST, FURIOUS, & BRUTAL” end.
The president did not directly reference the international security force that he envisions entering Gaza to help maintain peace in the territory in the future under his 20-point plan, but appeared to be referring to the initiative.
Vance had said Tuesday that the international stabilization force envisioned by the president was still in its early planning stages, as he acknowledged that coordinating troops from different countries could be a difficult task.
