US Vice President JD Vance speaks during a press conference following a military briefing at the Civilian Military Coordination Center in southern Israel on Tuesday. AP
Palestinians walk trough the destruction caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive in Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood in Gaza City, on Wednesday. AP
US Vice President JD Vance said on Tuesday that the US would not send troops into Gaza, reiterating a pledge made by US President Donald Trump and US officials multiple times.
“There are not going to be American boots on the ground in Gaza. The President of the United States has made that very clear. All of our military leadership has made that very clear,” Vance said at a press conference in Kiryat Gat, southern Israel, where a US-led mission is monitoring the Gaza ceasefire.
Vance added that the US would limit itself to providing “useful coordination.”
Although some 200 US troops were recently sent to Israel, Vance emphasised that they would not be on the ground in Gaza. But he said officials are beginning to “conceptualise what that international security force would look like” for the territory. Vance and other envoys projected optimism on Tuesday about Gaza ‘s fragile ceasefire agreement, calling progress better than anticipated as they visited a new center in Israel for civilian and military cooperation.
Steve Witkoff, US Special Envoy to the Middle East, speaks alongside US Vice President JD Vance and Admiral Brad Cooper, commander of the United States Central Command (CENTCOM) during a news conference following a military briefing at the Civilian Military Coordination Center in southern Israel on Tuesday. AP
Vance noted flareups of violence in recent days but said the ceasefire that began on Oct.10 is going “better than I expected” after two years of war between Israel and Hamas.
The Trump administration’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, added that “we are exceeding where we thought we would be at this time.”
Vance tried to downplay any idea that his visit - his first as vice president - was urgently arranged to keep the ceasefire in place.
He said he feels “confident that we’re going to be in a place where this peace lasts,” but warned that if Hamas doesn’t cooperate, it will be “obliterated,” echoing a Trump threat earlier in the day of “fast, furious and brutal force.”
Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and one of the architects of the ceasefire agreement, noted its complexity: “Both sides are transitioning from two years of very intense warfare to now a peacetime posture.”
Palestinians walk trough the destruction caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive in Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood in Gaza City, on Wednesday. AP
Vance is expected to stay in the region until Thursday and meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials.
US mediation has been led by envoys Witkoff and Kushner, who were scheduled to meet Egypt’s intelligence chief Hassan Rashad in Israel on Tuesday. Egypt is hosting Hamas negotiators led by the group’s exiled leader Khalil Al Hayya as they discuss both the existing ceasefire arrangements and the difficult next steps.
A Palestinian official close to the talks said Hamas encouraged the proposed formation of a technocratic committee to run Gaza without any of its representatives, but with the consent of the group as well as the Palestinian Authority.
Underscoring the fragility of the truce, Qatar, another of the mediators, on Tuesday accused Israel of “continuous violations.”
“We reiterate our condemnation of all Israeli violations and practices in Palestine, particularly the transformation of the Gaza Strip an area unfit for human life (and) the continued violation of the ceasefire,” Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani said in an annual address to the Shura Council legislative body.
Palestinians walk trough the destruction caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive in Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood in Gaza City, on Wednesday. AP
It and Turkey, which has used its role to bolster its regional position, have been key interlocutors with Hamas.
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman will meet Trump during a three-day visit to Washington next month, a source close to the government told reporters on Tuesday.
Saudi Crown Prince will arrive on Nov.17 and discuss political, economic and security files with Trump the following day, the source said on condition of anonymity.
The crown prince’s trip was revealed days into a fragile Gaza ceasefire brokered by Trump that was warmly welcomed by Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam and the world’s biggest oil exporter.
Some media reports suggest Saudi Arabia is hoping for a US security agreement after Trump’s executive order this month pledging to defend its neighbour Qatar from attacks.
Meanwhile, International organizations said they were scaling up humanitarian aid entering Gaza, while Hamas-led security forces launched a crackdown against what it called price gouging by private merchants.
The World Food Program said it had sent more than 530 trucks into Gaza in the past 10 days, enough to feed nearly half a million people for two weeks. That’s well under the 500 to 600 that entered daily before the war.
