Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that there would be no Turkish or Qatari troops deployed to Gaza as part of Phase 2 of the Trump administration’s Mideast peace plan.
Speaking at a Knesset debate on “violence and crime in the Arab sector” within Israel, Netanyahu acknowledged the dispute between his government and the Trump administration over the post-war management of Gaza.
“We have a certain argument with our friends in the United States over the composition of the executive board that will oversee the processes in Gaza,” he said.
“In the Gaza Strip, we stand before the second phase of the Trump plan. The second phase says a simple thing: Hamas will be disarmed, and Gaza will be demilitarized,” said Netanyahu. “We are adhering to these objectives, and they will be achieved. Either the easy way or the hard way. Turkish soldiers or Qatari soldiers will not be in the Gaza Strip.”
The Israeli prime minister has openly disagreed with U.S. President Donald Trump in recent days over appointments to committees intended to directly and indirectly govern Gaza, post-Hamas.
“The announcement regarding the composition of the Gaza executive board, which is subordinate to the Board of Peace, was not coordinated with Israel and runs contrary to its policy,” the prime minister’s office stated on Saturday.
One of the core disputes appears to be the role that Qatar and Turkey, both of which have taken strongly anti-Israel positions and host Hamas officials in their countries, will play in governing the Palestinian enclave.
‘Control architecture’ that centralizes power’
On Jan. 16, the Trump administration named Turkish and Qatari officials to sit on the Gaza executive board, including Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, alongside Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and former senior adviser; former U.K Prime Minister Tony Blair; and Steve Witkoff, U.S. special envoy to the Middle East.
The only Israeli on the panel is Yakir Gabay, a Cypriot-Israeli businessman.
The executive committee will manage the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, a group of Palestinian technocrats who will oversee the coastal enclave, which took its first official act in signing its mission statement on Saturday.
Both the executive board and the national committee will be overseen by the Board of Peace, chaired by Trump, which has come under fire in recent days over reports that permanent seats on the board can be bought for $1 billion and that invitees to the board include Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ to be rolled out this week in Davos is not ‘peace architecture.’ It’s ‘control architecture’ that centralizes power, dilutes legitimacy and makes a long-term sustainable peace harder,” wrote Hady Amr, former U.S. special representative for Palestinian affairs during the Biden administration. “Exempting big contributors from term limits makes membership look purchasable. Even if ‘voluntary,’ it screams transactional influence and corrodes credibility.”
At the Knesset debate on Monday, Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid slammed Netanyahu, saying that he had lost control of the committees set to govern Gaza.
Netanyahu either “agreed behind our backs that Turkey, Qatar and the Palestinian Authority would be in Gaza, or Trump doesn’t give a damn about you,” Lapid said, according to The Times of Israel.
