by Yaakov Lappin
A planned $500 million American base near Gaza faces questions as no one other than IDF is willing to engage in hostilities with Hamas.
The United States is planning to establish a large, $500 million military base in Israel near the Gaza border, intended to house an international force tasked with monitoring the fragile ceasefire, according to a report published jointly last week by Ynet and the Shomrim website.
However, this plan is emerging amid a total deadlock in negotiations over the next phase of the truce, known as stage 2, as the U.S. seeks to put together a tangible International Stabilization Force (ISF) for the stated mission of disarming Hamas in the parts of Gaza that the terrorist organization still controls.
This impasse has, according to a Channel 13 report on Saturday, led the U.S. to suggest moving directly to reconstruction stages in the parts of Gaza that Israel controls (53%), a proposal Israel has reportedly rejected. Meanwhile, with no one to stop it, Hamas has begun significantly re-entrenching itself in the 47% of Gaza it controls, setting up checkpoints and collecting taxes, while also collecting unexploded IDF ammunition for its rearmament effort.
Blaise Misztal, the vice president for policy at the Washington D.C.-based Jewish Institute for National Security of America, told JNS in recent days, “The United States should absolutely have a base in Israel. But it should be an air base aimed at giving US forces greater freedom of action and easier access to multiple theaters in the Middle East, Europe, and Africa than they get from any of their current bases in Arab states.
“Such a U.S. base makes sense both because of the strategic benefit to both Israel and the United States and—since a suitable base already exists and wouldn’t have to be built—the low cost.”
Misztal contrasted that strategic concept with the current Gaza-centric plan, which he argued misses a fundamental problem. “Constructing a massive, expensive base for the purpose of administering the Gaza ceasefire, on the other hand, makes much less strategic sense, at least right now,” he cautioned.
While the U.S. is right to focus on the need to secure Gaza, he added, unless Hamas is disarmed and Gaza is demilitarized, “as President Trump’s 20-point peace plan calls for, there can be no peace. Each day that goes by without demilitarization, Hamas grows stronger and bolder.”
The core issue, Misztal explained, is “the lack of clarity—and good candidates—for troops that would make up the ISF and undertake the dangerous mission of disarming Hamas.” That absence of an ISF is unrelated to the issue of a base, and entirely related to the fact that such a force, “to fulfill its mandate, would almost certainly have to engage in hostilities with the terrorists, take losses, and cause civilian casualties. No country, other than Israel, is willing to sign up for that.”
Unless a realistic template for an ISF is formed, said Mistzal, “building bases for a non-existent force appears to be an exercise in keeping the ceasefire on life support rather than seriously grappling with the difficulties of implementing its second phase.”
Lt. Col. (res.) Dr. Shaul Bartal, who served extensively in various security capacities in Judea and Samaria and who is a senior research fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar–Ilan University, argued that a U.S. base in Israel is not inherently negative.
Bartal told JNS that the base should be viewed through the lens of U.S. global power competition, not just the local Gaza ceasefire.
“The current American interest in establishing a large base in Israel is intended, among other things, to strengthen the American presence in the Middle East against the tendency of some Arab countries to get closer to China, which is considered a threat to American hegemony in this region as well. This is even before we have talked about Israel. In this context, one can also understand the proximity between Trump and Syria and the attempt to harness the new Syria under American protection,” said Bartal.
From this perspective, Bartal noted, the base offers potential advantages for Israel, both in terms of security and economics.
He added, “A large American base will help Israel ensure the ceasefire agreement signed vis-à-vis Hamas through Egyptian-Qatari mediation. Supervised international force involvement in the Gaza Strip will help stabilize the situation in the Strip in two ways. On the one hand, it will increase deterrence against Hamas.
“Hamas will hesitate greatly to launch further attacks when there is a large American base on the border of the Strip, and the Americans are committed to ensuring the quiet. Also, a multinational force that is not Israeli will be able to operate more freely inside the Strip as it is defined according to the Trump plan that Israel agreed to—as a peacekeeping force.”
However, Bartal warned that this presence could come at a steep price for Israel’s sovereignty and freedom of action. At the time, he assed, the IDF would “continue to be responsible for securing borders and communities. But the issue of humanitarian assistance and managing the Strip’s crossings – this would be done in coordination vis-à-vis the Americans.”
On Sunday, Defense Minister Israel Katz said, “Gaza will be demilitarized down to the last tunnel and Hamas will be disarmed on the yellow side [the Israeli-controlled part of Gaza] by the IDF and in the old Gaza by an international force—or by the IDF.”
The comment appears to suggest that Israel is determined to implement the removal of Hamas’s armed capabilities if or when the ISF fails to do so on the Hamas-controlled side of Gaza.
Yaakov Lappin is an Israel-based military affairs correspondent and analyst. He is
the in-house analyst at the Miryam Institute; a research associate at
the Alma Research and Education Center; and a research associate at the
Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University. He is a
frequent guest commentator on international television news networks,
including Sky News and i24 News. Lappin is the author of Virtual Caliphate: Exposing the Islamist State on the Internet. Follow him at: www.patreon.com/yaakovlappin.
Source: https://www.jns.org/building-bases-for-a-non-existent-force/
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