Turkey likely to be excluded from Gaza stabilisation force after Israeli objection | Gaza

Türkiye will probably be excluded from the 5,000-person stabilization force to be established in Gaza after Israel made it clear that it does not want Turkish soldiers to join.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said it was a necessity for Israel to be satisfied with the citizenship of the multinational force established to prevent a security vacuum when the major reconstruction mission began in Gaza. Türkiye said it was willing to offer troops, but Israel announced that it did not approve of Turkish soldiers taking part in this force.

Tensions between Israel and Türkiye have increased over Syria, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is seen by the Israeli government as too close to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas itself. But excluding Türkiye from the stabilization force would be controversial because Turkey is one of the guarantors of Trump’s 20-point ceasefire agreement and is seen as one of the most capable Muslim armed forces.

It is likely that the force will still be under Egyptian leadership.

Other countries that contribute to the stabilization force, such as Indonesia and the Emirates, would still prefer to give the force UN security council authority, even if it is not itself a UN peacekeeping force.

Instead, coordination will be with a US-led military cell known as the Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC), based in the southern Israeli town of Kiryat Gat. The cell, which includes a small number of British, French, Jordanian and Emirati advisors, was opened by US vice president JD Vance on Tuesday. The CMCC also appears to be taking on an aid coordination role in Gaza, but key aid crossings remain closed.

The force will be tasked with disarming Hamas and securing a transitional Palestinian government, the formation of which is still being debated. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ruled out the Palestinian Authority’s involvement in post-war Gaza, but main Palestinian factions on Friday agreed for an independent committee of technocrats to take over management of the strip.

In a sign of tensions between Turkey and Israel, Turkish disaster response experts sent to help locate Palestinian and Israeli bodies in Gaza remained near Egypt’s border with the strip on Thursday, waiting for Israeli entry permission.

A team of 81 people affiliated with AFAD disaster management is waiting to enter the region with life detection devices and trained search dogs.

Erdogan told reporters on Friday that the United States should do more to pressure Israel, including sanctions and arms sales bans, to comply with its commitments in the Trump plan.

Rubio also said that the UN’s Palestinian aid agency Unrwa could not have any role in Gaza because it was a “subsidiary of Hamas”.

His remarks will put him at odds with several European countries, the UN and the international court of justice (ICJ), which said in an advisory opinion this week that Unrwa was an irreplaceable tool for distributing aid in Gaza.

The ICJ did not accept that Israel had presented Unrwa with indisputable evidence of irreversible infiltration by Hamas.

The joint US-Israeli opposition to Unrwa presents a dilemma, as Donald Trump acknowledges the UN’s role in aid distribution in Gaza in his 20-point plan, but appears intent on leaving out Unrwa, the main aid agency involved. The UN faces a choice about whether to confront Trump over Unrwa.

Norway, which was the country that initiated the action that led to the ICJ’s opinion this week at the UN general assembly last December, said that it had prepared a draft decision containing the ICJ’s main findings that Israel, as the occupying power, should not restrict aid supplies to Gaza. According to Trump’s ceasefire plan accepted by Israel, 600 aid trucks would enter Gaza a day. However, the daily average since the agreement has been 89 trucks per day; this was only 14% of the agreed amount.

Unrwa criticized Israel and said: “Since the start of the war in Gaza, there has also been a sharp increase in violence in the West Bank, occupied by Israel since 1967, including East Jerusalem.

“All the families know is fear and uncertainty. The increasing annexation of the West Bank continues unabated, a clear violation of international law. This must be stopped. The future of Gaza and the West Bank is one.”

Speaking to the BBC, Tom Fletcher, head of the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, said about his last visit to Gaza: “It felt like I was walking through the ruins of Hiroshima, Stalingrad or Dresden.”

Delegations from Hamas, led by Khalil Al-Hayya, and its rival Fatah, led by Hussein Al-Sheikh, met in Egypt on Friday to discuss post-war arrangements in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas said it had received “clear assurances” from mediators that “the war is effectively over.”

In a joint statement published on Hamas’s website, it was stated that the groups decided during a meeting in Cairo to “hand over the administration of the Gaza Strip to an interim Palestinian committee of independent ‘technocrats’ who will manage life affairs and basic services in cooperation with the Arab brothers and international institutions.”