Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar reiterated on Monday that Jerusalem will not accept the inclusion of Turkish armed forces in President Donald Trump’s International Stabilization Force for the Gaza Strip.
“Countries that want or are ready to send armed forces should be at least fair to Israel,” Sa’ar declared at a news conference in Budapest, speaking alongside his Hungarian counterpart, according to Reuters.
“Turkey, led by [President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan, led a hostile approach against Israel,” the top diplomat stated. “So it is not reasonable for us to let their armed forces enter the Gaza Strip, and we will not agree to that, and we said it to our American friends.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that Jerusalem would continue to determine its own security policies, including its own red lines regarding the forces to be deployed to stabilize the Strip.
“Israel will determine which forces are unacceptable to us—that is how we act and we will continue to act,” Netanyahu told fellow ministers at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on Sunday.
“This, of course, is also acceptable to the United States, as its most senior representatives have stated in recent days,” Netanyahu stressed, adding: “Israel is an independent country. We will defend ourselves with our own strength, and we will continue to determine our own destiny.”
According to an Oct. 21 Israel Hayom report, Netanyahu has ruled out Turkey’s participation in Trump’s plan, defining it as Israel’s “red line.”
Israel Hayom cited political sources as saying that Netanyahu’s mention of “new threats” in a Knesset speech on Oct. 20 referred to the growing influence of Turkey and Qatar. Trump is said to hold Turkey and Qatar in high regard, while Israel views both nations as destabilizing forces.
Former Israeli defense minister Avigdor Liberman, who heads the opposition Yisrael Beiteinu Party, told JNS at a Knesset faction meeting on Monday afternoon he remained opposed to the sale of the F-35 fighter jet to Turkey, as well as to Turkish presence both in Syria and, “God forbid,” in Gaza.
Trump has sought to get both Ankara and Doha to supply troops for the International Stabilization Force he seeks to deploy to the Gaza Strip.
Meeting with Qatar’s Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani aboard Air Force One during a refueling stop in Doha en route to Malaysia on Saturday, the president claimed that the Gulf nation had already signaled its willingness to contribute soldiers to the peacekeeping mission.
Qatar’s deputy prime minister earlier this year stated that “we are all Hamas,” while Erdogan suggested in 2024 that Ankara could invade the Jewish state “just like we entered Karabakh, just like we entered Libya.”
