Alongside US general helping oversee truce, PM says ‘we’re working in stages’ to demilitarize Strip, declares ‘we’ll achieve what we are determined to achieve’
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday said Israel’s “security responsibility for our forces and our freedom of action” in Gaza is accepted by the country’s partners, as he toured the Kiryat Gat US-Israeli headquarters of the multinational force overseeing the Israel-Hamas ceasefire.
The visit came amid ongoing Hamas violations of the current ceasefire and Israel’s response Tuesday, during which it carried out strikes across the Gaza Strip after a cell of Palestinian terror operatives killed a reservist soldier in the Rafah area.
US President Donald Trump later expressed support for the Israeli response while declaring “nothing is going to jeopardize” the ceasefire.
Standing alongside visiting US CENTCOM Commander Adm. Brad Cooper, who is one of the key American figures overseeing the ceasefire and hostage release deal’s implementation, Netanyahu said Israel “wants to ensure that the goal agreed upon by President Trump and myself, with the consent of others — the disarmament of Hamas and the demilitarization of Gaza — will be achieved.”
“We are working toward this in stages, together with other components of the plan,” he said.
The premier was referring to Trump’s full 20-point plan for ending the Gaza war, which calls for “a process of demilitarization of Gaza under the supervision of independent monitors.” However, this was included in the second phase of the plan and was not part of the Israel-Hamas agreement that was signed on October 9. That latter text only focused on the initial ceasefire, hostage-prisoner swap, IDF pullback and humanitarian aid provisions, with thornier issues pertaining to the post-war management of Gaza and Hamas’s disarmament kicked down the road.
While Trump has claimed that Hamas officials told his top envoys that it would disarm, the terror organization has repeatedly said otherwise.
“There is a real joint effort here, maintaining our security in our own hands, to achieve results that perhaps no one believed we could reach — but we are determined to try,” Netanyahu said at the Civil-Military Coordination Center. “President Trump said it simply: We will either achieve this the easy way — as we hope — or the hard way. But we will achieve what we are determined to achieve.”
Netanyahu was joined on his tour of the facility by IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, the IDF’s liaison to the Civil-Military Coordination Center Commander Maj. Gen. Yaki Dolf, Shin Bet director David Zini and senior IDF officers. He also met with US Lt. Gen. Patrick Frank, the American’s pointperson at the CMCC.
There was no immediate US statement on Netanyahu’s first visit to the Civil-Military Coordination Center, which began operations this month to coordinate humanitarian, logistical, and security assistance into Gaza while helping oversee the postwar stabilization phase.
Roughly 200 American military personnel were dispatched to set up the center, which also hosts troops from several other countries, though the CMCC’s precise structure, command hierarchy, and legal status remain undefined. It is also unclear which countries, if any, will agree to send peacekeeping troops into Gaza as part of a future UN-mandated stabilization force, among whose main challenges will be to oversee the disarmament of Hamas and the destruction of the remaining terror tunnels under the Strip.
Idea of exanding IDF hold in Gaza ‘on ice’
Also Wednesday, Hebrew media reported that Netanyahu is backing away from plans to expand the military’s “Yellow Line” of control inside Gaza after initially approving them as part of Israel’s response to the deadly attack on the soldier in Rafah.
According to the Kan public broadcaster, Netanyahu discussed the matter with senior Trump administration officials, who were unenthused, with an Israeli source saying the plans would be put off. The Ynet news site in an unsourced reported said the plans were “put on ice.”
On Tuesday, Channel 12 news reported that even before the incident in Rafah, discussions had been held between the Prime Minister’s Office and the White House on potential Israeli military action against Hamas amid growing anger in Israel over the terrorist group’s failure to return the bodies of the remaining 13 deceased hostages it is holding.
That anger was compounded earlier in the day, when the military released footage showing Hamas staging the fake recovery of Ofir Tzarfati’s partial remains in eastern Gaza City in front of the Red Cross, before handing them over on Monday night instead of the promised body of one of the remaining slain hostages.
