Disarming Hamas should not be first task of Gaza stabilisation force, Turkey says

The international stabilisation force (ISF) in Gaza should make its priority the separation of Israeli troops and Hamas rather than the disarmament of the Palestinian group, the Turkish foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, has said.He also suggested that Indonesia and Azerbaijan, two countries that have offered to contribute troops, would prefer that Turkey was a member of the planned UN-backed force, something Israel is seeking to veto.The talks over the composition of the force, along with the membership of the planned board of peace and a 15-strong Palestinian technocratic committee to run services in Gaza, have stalled as detailed talks over the ISF mandate have raged behind the scenes.“Disarmament cannot be the first stage in this process,” Fidan said, speaking in Doha. “We need to proceed in the correct order and remain realistic.” He added that the ISF’s first goal “should be to separate Palestinians from the Israelis”.The Egyptian foreign minister, Badr Abdelatty, seconded these proposed ISF priorities, calling for the force to be deployed along the “yellow line” running north to south in Gaza that divides the Israel Defense Forces to the east from broadly Hamas-controlled areas in the west.“We need to deploy this force as soon as possible on the ground because one side, Israel, every day is violating the ceasefire, but claims the other side is responsible so we need monitors along the yellow side in order to verify and monitor,” Abdelatty said. The ISF mandate “should be peace monitoring not peace enforcement”, he added.Norway’s foreign minister, Espen Barth Eide, said the plan proposed by the US president, Donald Trump, was not clear on the sequencing of the ISF tasks. As a result, he warned: “The different parties can say ‘I will do my part but only when he has done its part’, so we need to get the board of peace and the ISF in place this month because it is very urgent.”He added: “We are now in a very fragile ceasefire. We can either go forward or backward. I do not think we can stay many more weeks in this situation. The alternatives are back to war and descent into total anarchy, or we move forward.”Eide said the ISF mandate was not clear, and leaders of Muslim countries ready to provide a large number of troops were still seeking clarification about rules of engagement. “Are they actually going to try to go down into the tunnels and fight Hamas, or are they going to work with a temporary Palestinian Authority where Hamas will actually voluntarily hand in their weapons and demobilise, which they have said they are willing to do when the institutions are in place?” he asked, predicting there would not be a consensus behind an ISF mandate to disarm Hamas physically against its will.Israel has said it will not withdraw from Gaza until disarmament has taken place.The Turkish foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, speaking in Doha on Saturday. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty ImagesMajed Mohammed al-Ansari, Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesperson, said the issue was whether disarmament had to start before the occupation ended. “You can disarm a group now and end up with 10 groups two months later if the people who took up arms are faced with the same security crisis,” he said. What was needed was political will, he added.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”.The Saudi foreign minister, Dr Manal bint Hassan Radwan, warned against being sidetracked by detail or redefinitions of what had already been agreed. She said ultimately there would be no security for anyone without a Palestinian state.The Gulf states and Turkey had both proposed in the draft UN resolution that Hamas should be required to disarm to the Palestinian Authority and not to the ISF, since a handover of weapons to fellow Palestinians would look less like a Hamas surrender, but have the same practical impact.The amendment was not accepted by the US.The Hamas chief negotiator and its Gaza chief, Khalil al-Hayya, has said it would hand over its weapons to “the authority of the state”, later clarifying that 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, signalling his group’s rejection of the deployment of an international force whose mission would be to disarm it.Fidan said: “First, we need to see the Palestinian committee of technical experts take over the administration of Gaza, and then we need to see a police force, composed of Palestinians, not Hamas, established to secure Gaza again.”Fidan acknowledged that the main Trump special envoy, Steve Witkoff, had been detained trying to work on the Russian-Ukraine deal, and this may be delaying the process of setting up the new bodies. He said Turkey and the Trump administration shared the same broad objectives.The Qatari prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani, said: “A ceasefire cannot be completed unless there is a full withdrawal of the Israeli forces – [until] there is stability back in Gaza, people can go in and out – which is not the case today.”