Israel rejects Türkiye’s participation in the proposed international force in Gaza news

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar confirmed that his country will not accept the presence of Turkish armed forces in the Gaza Strip as part of any proposed international plan to end the war there.

Saar said, in a press conference in Budapest alongside his Hungarian counterpart Peter Szijjártó, today, Monday, that “countries that wish to send armed forces to Gaza must be fair towards Israel.”

Sa’ar added, “Türkiye, led by Erdogan, led a hostile approach against Israel, and therefore it is unreasonable to allow its forces to enter the Gaza Strip, and we have made that clear to our American friends.”

Sa’ar’s statements come in response to an American plan announced by President Donald Trump to deploy a multinational international force in Gaza with the aim of consolidating the ceasefire and ending the war of extermination.

The position of the Arab countries and other parties regarding participation in the proposed force is not yet clear, but Washington has contacted Indonesia, the UAE, Egypt, Qatar, Turkey, and Azerbaijan to discuss the possibility of their contribution to it.

Last week, while receiving J.D. Vance, US Vice President in Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his strong opposition to any Turkish role in Gaza, and stressed that Israel is the one who will decide which foreign forces can be allowed inside the Strip.

An international force on Israel’s mood

In the same context, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, during his visit to Israel last Friday, that the international force should include “countries that Israel welcomes,” without commenting on the possibility of Turkish forces participating.

On the 10th of this month, the Turkish Ministry of Defense announced that its armed forces were “ready to undertake any mission assigned to them” within the framework of a peacekeeping operation in the Gaza Strip.

On October 10, the first phase of the ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement between Hamas and Israel entered into force.

The second phase of the agreement includes provisions on disarming Hamas, managing the Gaza Strip, and deploying an international stabilization force, but the agreement did not specify a time frame for implementing this phase.

The agreement came after a war of extermination launched by Israel in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023, which left 68,527 Palestinian martyrs, 170,395 injured, most of them children and women, and destruction that included 90% of the infrastructure, with the cost of reconstruction estimated by the United Nations at about 70 billion dollars.