Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in Israel late Saturday night for his first trip to the Middle East in his new role.

A State Department press statement said that Rubio will “travel to Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates from February 15-18. Secretary Rubio’s engagements with senior officials will promote U.S. interests in advancing regional cooperation, stability, and peace. The trip will center on freeing American and all other hostages from Hamas captivity, advancing to Phase II of the ceasefire agreement in Gaza, and countering the destabilizing activities of the Iranian regime and its proxies.”

Rubio has been a staunch defender of Israel in the Senate. He canceled a planned trip to South Africa later this month for a G20 summit of foreign ministers, partly because of South Africa’s diplomatic assault on Israel, including its case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

Rubio arrived hours after Hamas released three hostages, as planned, including U.S. citizen Sagui Dekel-Chen.

He is also expected to advance talks toward an expansion of the Abraham Accords agreement, and to discuss President Donald Trump’s proposal for U.S. control of Gaza, which would also involve relocating most of the current 2 million Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip to other Arab or Muslim countries.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.