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2026-07-11 Israel-Palestine-Jordan
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Gaza Stabilization Force Hits Major Hurdle As Hamas Won't Disarm
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[DW] A new report from The Wall Street Journal reveals the promised International Stabilization Force (ISF) for Gaza is currently struggling to deploy an initial group of just 10 to 20 troops.
The force was originally envisioned as a 20,000-strong multinational peacekeeping presence tasked with securing Gaza and preventing the terrorist group Hamas from rebuilding its military. Instead, regional instability has severely hampered recruitment.
The deployment shortfall comes amid deep skepticism over political developments within Gaza. On Monday, Hamas announced that its governing body would step down and transfer administrative authority to a United Nations-backed Palestinian technocratic council.
Here’s the catch: Hamas conspicuously refused to commit to disarming its military wing.
Amid the continued violence, international mediators are having difficulty pushing forward the next stage of the peace plan.
The delegation of Moroccan soldiers was supposed to deploy in June, but only to a base in southern Israel, rather than in Gaza, the newspaper reported, citing a US military official and other people familiar with the plans.
Now, the timeline for their deployment to Israel has been muddied and extended to sometime in the next few months, in the latest demonstration of how the US-controlled Board of Peace has stalled in its efforts to advance the reconstruction of Gaza.
US officials in December had claimed that the ISF would begin deploying in early 2026 — another prediction that didn’t pan out as attention shifted to the US-Israeli war in Iran.
During that war, one of the five countries that had pledged to contribute troops to the ISF, Indonesia, announced that it was putting the offer on hold due to regional instability.
Four other countries — Albania, Kazakhstan, Kosovo and Morocco — are still committed to sending troops.
But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has become increasingly unwilling to cooperate with the Board of Peace as October elections in Israel approach, and has dragged its feet in signing off on the agreements necessary for establishing legal guardrails around foreign military personnel stationed abroad.
ISF troops will be based at two sites — a nearly completed logistics hub on the Israeli side of the Kerem Shalom Border Crossing and a base inside Gaza, which hasn’t been built yet, the Journal said. The two sites are meant to accommodate about 5,500 ISF personnel.
The small Moroccan delegation will first be based at the hub inside Israel and initially be tasked with expeditionary-style operations inside Gaza, like route reconnaissance, according to the report.
The Board of Peace also wants the first batch of ISF troops to help secure a pilot humanitarian zone it plans to build on the ruins of the southern Gaza city of Rafah. However,
a poor excuse is better than no excuse at all...
10 to 20 soldiers would be a wildly insufficient number for that mission, given that the Emirati-funded enclave is meant to serve tens of thousands of Paleostinians.
Construction on the compound hasn’t even begun, with a crew of Gaza land surveyors blocked from reaching the area by Hamas
 ..always the voice of sweet reason...
operatives at a checkpoint.
Board of Peace plans launch of pilot Gaza housing project, but green light elusive
[IsraelTimes] US-led body thinks it can establish Rafah-area humanitarian zone regardless of whether Hamas agrees to disarm, but needs cooperation from Israel and Palestinian technocratic panel tasked with replacing terror group
Board of Peace officials have briefed reporters in recent days about their plans to establish a pilot humanitarian zone in the Rafah area of south Gaza. The idea is to have Israel pull back its troops from the designated area and be replaced by soldiers from a yet-to-be-deployed International Stabilization Force (ISF) who would secure the borders of the humanitarian zone.
The committee of Palestinian technocrats tasked with replacing Hamas in governing the Strip would finally enter the enclave and work with the ISF to vet the tens of thousands of Palestinians coming from the Hamas-controlled “red zone” into the “green zone” that to date has been occupied by the IDF. There, tens of thousands would have access to temporary housing, humanitarian aid and safety at levels sorely lacking in the remainder of the Strip.
The Board of Peace hopes that the pilot humanitarian zone will serve as a model that can be used to separate civilians from Hamas, thereby weakening the terror group’s grip on society. The US-controlled panel overseeing the postwar management of Gaza was hoping to establish such humanitarian zones months ago but had been hoping to first coax Hamas to give up its weapons to allow reconstruction to proceed at a much greater scale.
Unwilling to condition relief for Gaza on those negotiations, the Board of Peace wants to move ahead with establishing the first humanitarian pilot zone, and its leadership discussed the idea at a meeting in Cyprus last week, according to an official from the body. But the plan remains on paper, as it still requires approval from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, which is unlikely to authorize even the smallest of IDF withdrawals as the fall parliamentary elections approach.
While a Board of Peace official said there is ongoing dialogue with Israel about the plan, an Israeli official told The Times of Israel there would be no IDF withdrawals from Gaza until Hamas agrees to disarm.
NCAG NOT ON BOARD
The plan also assumes that the Palestinian technocratic panel — the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) — will be willing to enter the Strip under such conditions.
Board of Peace officials maintain that Palestinians will be allowed to enter and exit the humanitarian zone and that they will not be under Israeli occupation.
But a source familiar with the matter said NCAG members are not on board with the plan, deeming that the humanitarian zone would still effectively be controlled by the IDF, which will be present on its outskirts.
The source likened the proposed dynamic to the one at aid distribution sites run by the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) during the war. While Israeli soldiers weren’t present at those sites, they repeatedly opened fire on Palestinians trying to make their way to them.
The source said NCAG members don’t want to legitimize the division of the Strip. The October ceasefire saw Gaza roughly divided in half by a “Yellow Line,” with Israel left in control of the eastern half. But as disarmament talks stalled in May, Netanyahu ordered troops to occupy 70 percent of the Strip, pushing the Yellow Line toward the coast and further shrinking the area where some 2 million Palestinians are largely living in tattered tent camps.
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Posted by Besoeker 2026-07-11 01:40||
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