Israel insists on maintaining security control in Gaza despite a US-brokered ceasefire. Photo / Getty Images
Israel insists that it will maintain control of security inside Gaza despite signing up to a US-brokered ceasefire that foresees the deployment of an international security force.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told ministers that Israel would decide for itself where and when to strike its foes and which countries would be allowed to send troops to police the truce.
“Israel is an independent state. We will defend ourselves by our own means and we will continue to determine our fate,” Netanyahu said. “We do not seek anyone’s approval for this. We control our security.”
Meanwhile, AFP footage showed an Egyptian convoy in Gaza bringing rescuers and heavy machinery to speed up the search for the remains of deceased Israeli hostages Hamas says are lost in the rubble of the devastated Palestinian territory.
Low-loader trucks flying the Egyptian flag transported bulldozers and mechanical diggers into Gaza, accompanied by tipper trucks sounding their horns and flashing their lights, en route to an Egyptian aid committee based in Al-Zawayda.
Israel Government spokeswoman Shosh Bedrosian said Netanyahu had personally approved the arrival of the Egyptian team.
“Now, this is a technical team only, and none of these personnel are in the military,” she said.
“The team are allowed entry beyond the IDF’s Yellow Line position into Gaza territory to conduct the search for our hostages.”
Under the terms of a US-brokered ceasefire, as Israeli forces withdraw after the end of two years of brutal fighting against Hamas, an international force, expected to be drawn from mainly Arab or Muslim countries, is supposed to secure Gaza.
But Israel opposes any role for its regional rival Turkey, and Netanyahu, under fire from hardliners in his own coalition for even agreeing the ceasefire, took a stern line on Sunday as Government ministers met in Jerusalem.
“We made clear with respect to international forces that Israel will determine which forces are unacceptable to us,” he said, one day after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio wound up the latest in a parade of high-level visits by Washington officials.
Later, Bedrosian put it more starkly: “The prime minister has said it’s going to be done the easy way or the hard way, and Israel will have overall security control of the Gaza Strip.
“Gaza will be demilitarised and Hamas will have no part in governing the Palestinian people.”
Aid agencies complain that humanitarian convoys still do not have enough access to Gaza to alleviate the famine conditions in parts of the territory, and families there are still going hungry.
AFP journalists followed the family of 62-year-old grandmother Hiam Muqdad for a day in their Gaza City neighbourhood, where they live in a tent next to their ruined home and her barefoot grandchildren gather domestic waste and twigs to burn to heat water.
“When they said there was a truce, oh my God, a tear of joy and a tear of sadness fell from my eye,” Muqdad told AFP. “The child’s dream is gone. In the past, they used to go to the park, but today children play on the rubble.”
Israel has withdrawn its forces within Gaza to the so-called “Yellow Line” but remains in control of more than half the territory, approves every UN aid convoy going through its borders and has carried out at least two strikes since the ceasefire.
To underline Israel’s independence of action, Netanyahu said it had pummelled Gaza with 150 tonnes of munitions on October 19 after two of its soldiers were killed, and had conducted a strike on Saturday targeting an Islamic Jihad militant.
The United States and allies have set up a truce monitoring centre in southern Israel – the Civil-Military Coordination Centre (CMCC) – and dispatched a string of top officials from President Donald Trump’s administration to promote the ceasefire.
The latest Israeli strike came just as Rubio was leaving Jerusalem, but Washington’s top diplomat said he remained optimistic the ceasefire would broadly hold if Hamas agrees to disarm and hand over the rule of Gaza.
Rubio told reporters that Washington did not expect the Yellow Line to become Gaza’s new border and that Israel would eventually pull back.
“I think, ultimately, the point of the stabilisation force is to move that line until it covers hopefully all of Gaza, meaning all of Gaza will be demilitarised,” Rubio told reporters on his plane as he flew on to Qatar.
The main Palestinian factions, including Hamas, have agreed to form a committee of technocrats to administer Gaza alongside the ceasefire and reconstruction effort.
But Hamas has resisted calls for its immediate disarmament and has launched a crackdown on rival Palestinian gangs and armed groups in Gaza.
On Saturday, Mousa Abu Marzouk, Hamas’ head of international relations and legal affairs, warned: “Excluding Hamas from maintaining stability in the Gaza Strip could lead to chaos and a security vacuum.”
Hamas insists it is serious about returning the remaining 13 hostage bodies.
They include 10 Israelis kidnapped during the group’s attack on October 7, 2023, that triggered the conflict, one Israeli missing since 2014, a Thai and a Tanzanian worker.
Hamas has already returned the remaining 20 living hostages and 15 bodies of hostages.
But Hamas warns it will struggle to find the bodies of the others in the ruins of Gaza, where more than 68,500 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire, according to figures from the health ministry of the Hamas-run territory deemed reliable by the UN.
Bedrosian dismissed this, telling reporters: “Hamas knows where our hostages are, and we know they are aware of their locations... If Hamas made more of an effort, they would be able to retrieve the remains of our hostages.”
- Agence France-Presse