Disarming Hamas should not be first task of Gaza stabilisation force, Turkey says | Gaza
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said that the international stabilization force (ISF) in Gaza should prioritize the separation of Israeli troops and Hamas rather than the disarmament of the Palestinian group.
He also suggested that Indonesia and Azerbaijan, the two countries that offered to send troops, would prefer Türkiye to be a member of the planned UN-backed force, while Israel was trying to veto it.
Discussions on the composition of the force, planned peace board membership and the 15-person Palestinian technocratic committee that will handle services in Gaza have stalled as detailed talks about the ISF’s mandate heat up behind the scenes.
Speaking in Doha, Fidan said, “Disarmament cannot be the first stage of this process.” “We need to proceed in the right order and remain realistic.” He added that the ISF’s first goal “should be to separate the Palestinians from the Israelis.”
Egyptian foreign minister Badr Abdelatty supported these proposed ISF priorities and called for the force to be deployed along the “yellow line” in Gaza, which runs from north to south and separates the Israel Defense Forces in the east from broadly Hamas-controlled areas in the west.
“We need to field this force as soon as possible because one side, namely Israel, is violating the ceasefire every day, but the other side claims to be responsible, so we need monitors on the yellow side for verification and monitoring,” Abdelatty said. He added that the ISF’s mission “should be peace monitoring, not peace enforcement.”
Norwegian foreign minister Espen Barth Eide said the plan proposed by US president Donald Trump was not clear on the sequencing of ISF missions. As a result, he warned: “Different parties may say, ‘I will do my part, but only when he does his part’, so we need to bring in the peace council and the ISF this month because it is very urgent.”
He added: “We are in a very fragile ceasefire at the moment. We can go forward or we can go back. I don’t think we can stay in this situation for many more weeks. The alternatives are to return to war and slide into total anarchy, or to move forward.”
Eide said the ISF’s mandate is unclear and leaders of Muslim countries ready to provide large numbers of troops are still seeking clarity on the rules of engagement. “Are they really going to go down into the tunnels and try to fight Hamas, or are they going to work with an interim Palestinian Authority to which Hamas will voluntarily surrender their weapons and which they say they’re willing to do when the institutions are ready?” he asked, predicting that there would be no consensus behind the ISF’s mandate to physically disarm Hamas against its will.
Israel announced that it would not withdraw from Gaza until disarmament was achieved.
Qatari foreign ministry spokesman Majed Mohammed al-Ansari said the issue was whether disarmament should begin before the occupation ends. “If the people who took up arms faced the same security crisis, you could disarm one group now and two months later you could have 10 groups,” he said. What is needed, he added, is political will.
He said Qatar was not prepared again to take sole responsibility for the reconstruction of Gaza, saying if the reconstruction was the responsibility of the entire international community Israel may feel less willing “to bomb the hell out of it”.
Saudi foreign minister Dr. Manal bint Hassan Radwan warned against getting sidetracked by details or redefinition of previously agreed upon issues. Ultimately, he said, there would be no security for anyone without a Palestinian state.
Both the Gulf states and Turkey had suggested in the draft UN resolution that the disarmament of Hamas should be left to the Palestinian Authority, not the ISF, as the transfer of weapons to the Palestinians would not look like a surrender of Hamas, but would have the same practical effect.
The amendment was not accepted by the United States.
Khalil al-Hayya, Hamas’s chief negotiator and Gaza chief, said he would hand over his weapons to “the authority of the state” and later clarified that this meant a sovereign and independent Palestinian state.
“We accept the deployment of UN forces as a separation force tasked with monitoring the borders and ensuring compliance with the ceasefire in Gaza,” Hayya said, signaling that his group rejected the deployment of an international force whose task would be to disarm it.
Fidan said, “First, we need to see the committee of Palestinian technical experts take over the management of Gaza, and then we need to see the establishment of a police force consisting of Palestinians, not Hamas, to restore the security of Gaza.”
Fidan acknowledged that Trump’s chief special envoy, Steve Witkoff, was arrested while trying to work on the Russia-Ukraine deal, which could delay the process of creating new bodies. He said Türkiye and the Trump administration share the same broad goals.
Qatari prime minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani said: “The ceasefire cannot be completed unless Israeli forces are fully withdrawn. [until] “There is stability in Gaza, people can come and go, but this is not the case today.”
