by Yaakov Lappin
Former defense officials offer differing assessments of U.S.-backed recruitment drive.
The announcement that the recently formed American-backed National
Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) has launched a police
recruitment drive has raised concerns about the makeup of the future
policing force.
The NCAG recently said on X that it began
recruiting Palestinians, while its website states applicants must be
Gazan residents aged 18 to 35 with no criminal record.
According
to a Reuters report, some 2,000 Palestinians signed up within hours
after applications opened. The figures were presented last week at a
Board of Peace summit in Washington, D.C., by Trump-appointed Gaza
envoy, Bulgarian diplomat Nikolay Mladenov.
U.S. Army Maj. Gen.
Jasper Jeffers, commander of the International Stabilization Force,
added that the goal is to train about 12,000 police officers.
The
prospect of an armed Palestinian police force tasked with maintaining
internal order raises key questions about vetting, loyalty and
oversight. Two former Israeli senior defense officials offered differing
perspectives on the risks and opportunities.
Meir Ben-Shabbat,
head of the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy
and Israel’s national security adviser from 2017 to 2021, told JNS he
views the creation of the force with deep suspicion.
The nature
of Gazan society after nearly two decades of Hamas rule makes the idea
of a trustworthy police force nearly impossible, he argued.
“If
we admit the truth, there is no way to ensure that problematic people,
from an Israeli perspective, will not serve in this body,” Ben-Shabbat
said.
He warned that even a rigorous initial screening process
would not provide long-term assurances. “Even if there were an ability
to filter people during recruitment, it cannot be guaranteed they will
not transfer their loyalty to Hamas or other hostile elements
immediately after they begin to serve.”
Ben-Shabbat pointed to the entrenched ideological environment in Gaza as the main obstacle.
“There
are very high support rates for Hamas in Gaza, as well as relatively
high support for the Oct. 7 attack,” he said. “More than half of the
population was born into Hamas rule, educated in Hamas institutions,
prayed in Hamas mosques and consumed Hamas media.”
As a result, he concluded, any vetting mechanism’s ability to separate civilians from Hamas ideology is doubtful.
Lt.
Col. (res.) Amit Yagur, a former deputy head of the Palestinian arena
at the IDF Planning Branch, acknowledged the risks but argued the
broader security structure mitigates them.
“I assume the names will be passed, to one degree or another, to the State of Israel for vetting by the Shin Bet,” Yagur said.
He
agreed that Gazan recruits will likely have past connections to Hamas’s
civilian infrastructure, which includes teachers, doctors and clerks.
“Hamas
wants this civilian mechanism to serve the technocratic government so
it will retain a hold on the ground,” he warned, drawing a parallel to
Hezbollah’s civilian system in Lebanon. “Therefore, there is a risk.”
However,
Yagur emphasized that ultimate authority in Gaza would rest not with
the Palestinian committee but with the U.S. military.
“The
commander of the force is Jasper Jeffers of CENTCOM,” he said. “With
CENTCOM, Israel has exceptionally close operational coordination.”
“All security issues in the Strip are managed by CENTCOM,” he added.
Addressing the police specifically, Yagur described a layered command structure.
“The
police force’s role is mainly to maintain internal order within the
Strip, and I think we have a way to control it,” he said. “The police
and the International Stabilization Force are under the Gaza Executive
Board, not the technocratic government.”
He added that civilian
ministries would handle areas such as engineering and health, while the
police would derive operational authority from the broader stabilization
force.
“There is not much decentralization of security
authorities in the Strip—this was one of Israel’s conditions,” Yagur
said. “The security issue is not removed from Israel’s hands; it is
delegated to the United States.”
He described the arrangement as a
strategic compromise allowing Israel to pursue a hostage deal while
avoiding a long-term military administration in Gaza.
“Since we chose this path, we are essentially delegating to another entity—the United States—on which we rely heavily,” he said.
Yagur
also noted the American plan includes relocating large segments of the
population to a managed area in Rafah to separate civilians from
entrenched terrorist infrastructure in central and northern 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/will-israel-be-able-to-screen-future-gazan-police-officers/
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