Morocco signed an agreement on July 15 formalizing its participation in the International Stabilization Force (ISF) for Gaza, according to Morocco World News, which reported that the ceremony took place at the Defense Administration headquarters in Rabat and was led by Nickolay Mladenov, the Board of Peace’s high representative for Gaza.
While Albania, Kazakhstan and Kosovo have also agreed in principle to contribute troops, Morocco is on track to become the first of the four to deploy forces on the ground in Gaza.
The agreement was signed at a meeting in Rabat attended by Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita, senior defense officials and Mladenov, along with a delegation that included the commander of the ISF, Morocco’s state news agency MAP reported.
Dina Lisnyansky, an expert on the Middle East and radical Islamic movements and a research fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University, told JNS that jihadist organizations in Gaza would not frame the arrival of Muslim forces, including Moroccan troops, in ideological terms, but would instead seek to co-opt them.
“I think what exists there is essentially treating them as potential collaborators,” Lisnyansky said, comparing the dynamic to Hezbollah’s relationship with U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon and Hamas’s relationship with UNRWA in Gaza. She predicted foreign troops entering Gaza would not be labeled infidels requiring jihad, but instead would be quietly courted at the operational level so Hamas could try to work through them.
Asked about the prospect of Hamas infiltrating a new Palestinian police force to be trained under the ISF, Lisnyansky said: “This is not a fear, it is a certainty. That is exactly what will happen. More than that, right now they are already preparing the ground for this.”
She said the scale of the challenge was immense.
“We are talking about roughly 40,000 Hamas officials, as of this moment, who are essentially trying to blur their Hamas identity,” Lisnyansky said. If the Palestinian Authority eventually enters Gaza, “a shadow force of Hamas” would operate alongside it, she added, describing the arrangement as one openly discussed by Hamas and understood by the Palestinian Authority as its only realistic path to controlling the Strip.
Lisnyansky argued that Israel’s cooperation with the ISF reflects the absence of alternatives rather than enthusiasm.
“Israel is cooperating with this process only because there is currently no other initiative,” she said, adding that maintaining Israeli control over the current situation in Gaza for as long as possible remains Jerusalem’s primary interest.
Shalom Arbel, a former senior member of the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) who served from 1988 to 2013 in human intelligence recruitment and operations, and previously as an IDF reserve major in Lebanon, Gaza and Judea and Samaria, told JNS that the move aligns with a longstanding Israeli and American interest in bringing countries such as Morocco into Gaza’s postwar framework.
“I can believe that the American-Israeli attempt, or interest, is indeed to bring in a country like Morocco, or other Arab states,” he said. “I think it is an important step and a step in the right direction.”
Arbel said Israel has historically resisted internationalizing its conflict with the Palestinians because foreign forces can complicate its freedom of action, particularly if they are unfriendly. Gaza, however, is a different case.
“We have no claims of ownership over it, we have no territorial claims over it,” Arbel said of the Gaza Strip, adding that Israel demonstrated this through its 2005 disengagement.
Detests Muslim Brotherhood affiliates
Arbel also distinguished Morocco from Arab states bordering Israel.
“Morocco is not exactly a classic Arab state—first of all, it has no border with Israel, and second, it is really West Africa. Although it is Arabic-speaking, it is a monarchy with a different composition, and it is very different, for example, from Jordan or Saudi Arabia or Egypt,” he said.
He added that Morocco’s monarchy is deeply wary of, and “even detests,” Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated movements, making Rabat, in his view, a natural counterweight to Hamas in Gaza.
Still, Arbel was unequivocal that Hamas would resist any force it viewed as limiting its influence.
“Hamas will not accept any other entity, any other soldier, any other actor from any state—and not only Morocco, even if it were Qatar—unless it is someone who helps Hamas,” he said, adding that “the entire population of the Gaza Strip is Hamas” after two decades of what he described as Hamas’s dawa-style indoctrination through welfare, courts, kindergartens and education.
Arbel said the ISF-trained Palestinian police force would inevitably include Hamas-aligned officers. The real safeguard, he argued, lies not in vetting personnel but in denying them heavy weaponry, comparing the objective to Jordanian police, who he said may despise Israel but lack the means to act because of oversight by Jordan’s intelligence services, military and monarchy.
The Rabat agreement provides “the legal framework governing the technical and operational aspects” of Morocco’s deployment, according to Morocco World News.
The outlet reported that Morocco’s contribution will include senior armed forces officers assigned to the ISF Joint Command, personnel from the Royal Gendarmerie and General Directorate of National Security, and a military field hospital. Anadolu Agency likewise described the agreement as part of Morocco’s formal accession to the Board of Peace framework for Gaza.
The Board of Peace said in a post on X: “Morocco today formally signed its Participating Country Agreement with the International Stabilization Force. Moroccan forces will support humanitarian aid delivery to Gaza and help train the Palestinian Police Force. The Board of Peace and the ISF thank His Majesty King Mohammed VI for Morocco’s unwavering dedication to regional stability, security, and for leading with action to support the people of Gaza.”
Morocco’s move follows the arrival in Israel of a Kosovar contingent that, according to Kan News, joined the ISF headquarters at the Kiryat Gat base ahead of its planned deployment to Gaza. Morocco has been listed among ISF contributing countries since January, alongside Albania, Kazakhstan and Kosovo.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military continued strikes against Hamas terrorists across the Strip.
Adham Ibrahim Shaaban Nasman, known as Abu Rateb, who served as head of operations for Hamas’s Gaza City Brigade and as a Nukhba battalion commander, was killed in an airstrike on his home in Gaza City’s Nasr neighborhood. According to the IDF, Nasman directed parts of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack and held hostages, including Romi Gonen, Emily Damari, Ziv and Gali Berman, Eitan Mor, Matan Angrest and Omri Miran.
In a separate strike, Osama Abu Taim, a Hamas squad commander in the Khan Yunis Brigade’s Eastern Battalion who participated in the Oct. 7 massacre at Kibbutz Nir Oz and the kidnapping of Nurit Cooper, Amiram Cooper and Alexander Dancyg, was killed in a drone strike on a tent in the Al-Mawasi area of Khan Yunis.
