Vice President JD Vance said on Wednesday that a flurry of recent visits to Israel by top American officials was intended to oversee the fragile cease-fire deal in Gaza and not to “monitor a toddler,” as he and the Israeli prime minister insisted they were allies collaborating closely.
“We don’t want a vassal state, and that’s not what Israel is,” Mr. Vance said. “We don’t want a client state, and that’s not what Israel is. We want a partnership.”
Mr. Vance made the comments after meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, during a trip that was taking place just over a week after President Trump visited the country. Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s Middle East envoy, and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, have also been in Israel in recent days.
The vice president said the high-level visits were part of U.S. efforts to protect the cease-fire. “It’s not about monitoring in the sense of, you know, you monitor a toddler,” he said. “It’s about monitoring in the sense that there’s a lot of work, a lot of good people who are doing that work, and it’s important for the principals in the administration to keep on ensuring that our people are doing what we need them to do.”
But Mr. Vance cautioned that implementing the next steps in the cease-fire deal was “not going to be easy.”
Based on parts of a proposal put forward in September by Mr. Trump, Israel and Hamas agreed this month to a truce in their two-year war. But the cease-fire has come under increasing strain in recent days amid repeated flare-ups of violence in Gaza.
Several Trump officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations, said there was concern within the administration that Mr. Netanyahu might vacate the deal. The strategy now, the officials said, is for Mr. Vance, Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner to try to keep the prime minister from resuming an all-out assault against Hamas.
Mr. Vance said that the Trump administration was committed to moving the cease-fire to a lasting peace, so that the United States can “care less about the Middle East because our allies in the region are stepping up and taking control and taking ownership of their area of the world.”
To that end, the vice president said, the administration was looking to expand the Abraham Accords, a set of deals negotiated during the first Trump administration that established diplomatic ties between Israel and several Arab nations. The Gaza peace plan, Mr. Vance said, was a key part of that.
A number of thornier issues to reach a lasting peace have yet to be addressed, including how officials would persuade Hamas to lay down its weapons.
Mr. Netanyahu has repeatedly insisted that the militant group must disarm for the war to end, but Hamas has long regarded that demand as tantamount to surrender, with armed struggle against Israel a crucial part of the group’s ideology.
When asked on Wednesday about how they would persuade Hamas to disarm, Mr. Vance declined to provide any details. “We’re going to keep working on it,” he said. On Tuesday, Mr. Vance did not give a deadline for Hamas to disarm or say how officials would ensure the militant group agrees to that part of the cease-fire deal.
Another significant question is how large a role the United States and its allies envision for the Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Mr. Netanyahu has consistently ruled out allowing the authority to control postwar Gaza.
On Wednesday, two senior Palestinian Authority leaders — Hussein al-Sheikh, the vice president, and Majed Faraj, the intelligence chief — were expected to travel to Cairo for meetings with Egyptian officials about postwar Gaza, according to a spokesman for Mr. al-Sheikh.
Mr. Vance also met with Isaac Herzog, Israel’s president, and with hostages released from Gaza. He was expected to return to Washington on Thursday.
The initial phase of the cease-fire deal included the release last week of 20 hostages held in Gaza, while Israel released nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees in exchange. Since then, Hamas has returned the bodies of at least 15 people to Israel, and Israel has returned the bodies of more than 150 Palestinians to Gaza.
Mr. Vance expressed optimism that the truce would hold.
“I think that we have an opportunity to do something really historic, so we’re going to keep working at it with all of our friends in the Israeli government,” he said.
Tyler Pager is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
Aaron Boxerman is a Times reporter covering Israel and Gaza. He is based in Jerusalem.
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