Israel informs Arab states it wants buffer zone in post-war Gaza -
sources
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[December 02, 2023]
By Samia Nakhoul, Ahmed Mohamed Hassan and Jonathan Saul
DUBAI/CAIRO/LONDON (Reuters) -Israel has informed several Arab states
that it wants to carve out a buffer zone on the Palestinian side of
Gaza's border to prevent future attacks as part of proposals for the
enclave after war ends, Egyptian and regional sources said.
According to three regional sources, Israel related its plans to its
neighbors Egypt and Jordan, along with the United Arab Emirates, which
normalized ties with Israel in 2020.
They also said that Saudi Arabia, which does not have ties with Israel
and which halted a U.S.-mediated normalization process after the Gaza
war flared on Oct. 7, had been informed. The sources did not say how the
information reached Riyadh, which officially does not have direct
communication channels with Israel. Non-Arab Turkey was also told, the
sources said.
The initiative does not indicate an imminent end to Israel's offensive -
which resumed on Friday after a seven-day truce - but it shows Israel is
reaching out beyond established Arab mediators, such as Egypt or Qatar,
as it seeks to shape a post-war Gaza.
No Arab states have shown any willingness to police or administer Gaza
in future and most have roundly condemned Israel's offensive that has
killed more than 15,000 people and levelled swathes of Gaza's urban
areas. Hamas killed 1,200 people in its Oct. 7 raid and took more than
200 hostages.
"Israel wants this buffer zone between Gaza and Israel from the north to
the south to prevent any Hamas or other militants from infiltrating or
attacking Israel," said a senior regional security official, one of the
three regional sources who asked not to be identified by nationality.
The Egyptian, Saudi, Qatari and Turkish governments did not immediately
respond to requests for comment. Jordanian officials could not
immediately be reached for comment.
A UAE official did not respond directly when asked if Abu Dhabi had been
told about the buffer zone, but said: "The UAE will support any future
post-war arrangements agreed upon by all the concerned parties" to
achieve stability and a Palestinian state.
Asked about plans for a buffer zone, Ophir Falk, foreign policy adviser
to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told Reuters: "The plan is
more detailed than that. It's based on a three-tier process for the day
after Hamas."
Outlining the Israeli government's position, he said the three tiers
involved destroying Hamas, demilitarizing Gaza and de-radicalizing the
enclave.
"A buffer zone may be part of the demilitarization process," he said. He
declined to offer details when asked whether those plans had been raised
with international partners, including
Arab states.
Arab states have dismissed as impossible Israel's goal of wiping out
Hamas, saying it was more than simply a militant force that could be
defeated.
SQUEEZING PALESTINIANS
Israel has suggested in the past it was considering a buffer zone inside
Gaza, but the sources said it was now presenting them to Arab states as
part of its future security plans for Gaza. Israeli troops withdrew from
the enclave in 2005.
A U.S. official, who declined to be identified, said Israel had
"floated" the buffer zone idea without saying to whom. But the official
also repeated Washington's opposition to any plan that reduced the size
of Palestinian territory.
Jordan, Egypt and other Arab states have voiced fears that Israel wants
to squeeze Palestinians out of Gaza, repeating the dispossession of land
Palestinians suffered when Israel was created in 1948. The Israeli
government denies any such aim.
A senior Israeli security source said the buffer zone idea was "being
examined", adding: "It is not clear at the moment how deep this will be
and whether it could be 1 km or 2 km or hundreds of meters (inside
Gaza)."
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Military vehicles manoeuvre next to a fence, as seen from the
Israeli side of the border with Gaza, November 5, 2023.
REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun/File Photo
Any encroachment into Gaza, which is about 40 km (25 miles) long and
between about 5 km (3 miles) and 12 km (7.5 miles) wide, would cram
its 2.3 million people into an even smaller area.
In Washington, an Israeli official said the Israeli defense
establishment was talking about "some kind of security buffer on the
Gaza side of the border so that Hamas cannot gather military
capabilities close to the border and surprise Israel again."
"It is a security measure, not a political one," the official said
on condition of anonymity. "We do not intend to remain on the Gaza
side of the border."
Till now, Egypt, the first Arab state to sign a peace deal with
Israel, and Qatar, which does not have formal ties but keeps
communication channels open, have been at the centre of mediation
talks with Israel that have focused on exchanging hostages held by
Hamas for Palestinians in Israeli jails.
SHIFTING FOCUS
Two Egyptian security sources said Israel had raised the idea in
mediation talks with Egypt and Qatar of disarming northern Gaza and
setting up a buffer zone in north Gaza with international
supervision.
The sources said several Arab states opposed this. While Arab states
might not oppose a security barrier between the two sides, there was
disagreement over where it was located, they added.
The Egyptian sources said Israel had said in a meeting in Cairo in
November that the Hamas leaders should be tried internationally in
return for a full ceasefire. Mediators said the issue should be
postponed until after the war to avoid derailing talks about hostage
releases, the sources said.
A source in the Israeli prime minister's office declined to address
the reports, adding: "Netanyahu's War Cabinet has defined the war
missions: destroy Hamas and bring all the hostages back home, and we
will continue until we complete our missions."
One of the Egyptian sources said Israel, in its discussions with
Egypt and Qatar, had shifted from a focus on retaliation earlier in
the crisis towards showing a greater willingness to "rethink its
demands as mediation continued."
The regional sources compared the Gaza buffer zone plan to the
"security zone" Israel once had in south Lebanon. Israel evacuated
that zone, which was about 15 km (10 miles) deep, in 2000 after
years of fighting and attacks by Lebanon's Hezbollah.
They also said Israel's plan for post-war Gaza included deporting
leaders of Hamas, an action that would also mirror the Israeli
campaign in Lebanon in the 1980s when it drove out the leadership of
the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which had launched
attacks from Lebanon into Israel.
"Israel is ready to pay a costly price to expel and evict Hamas
completely from Gaza to other countries in the region similar to
what it did in Lebanon, but it's not the same. Getting rid of Hamas
is difficult and not certain," said another of the regional
officials familiar with the discussions.
A senior Israeli official said Israel did not consider Hamas to be
like the PLO nor believe that it would act like the PLO.
Mohammad Dahlan, Gaza's former security chief from the Palestinian
Fatah faction which was ejected from the enclave when Hamas took
control in 2007, said Israel's buffer zone plan was unrealistic and
would not protect Israeli forces.
"The buffer zone could make (Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu's
forces a target also in the zone," he said.
(Reporting by Samia Nakhoul in Dubai, Ahmed Mohamed Hassan in Cairo
and Jonathan Saul in London; Additional reporting by Dan Williams in
Jerusalem, Aidan Lewis in London and Humeyra Pamuk, Steve Holland
and Matt Spetalnick in Washington; Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing
by Daniel Flynn and Diane Craft)
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