An inter-Arab security force should be set up in Gaza within weeks to prevent Hamas from retaking control, Israel’s former prime minister Ehud Barak has said.
Asked by Sky News chief presenter Mark Austin if intervention was necessary to prevent Hamas from filling the current power vacuum inside the Strip, Mr Barak said he believed a force was needed, but it should not be international.
“An inter-Arab force should be there in a few weeks, not several months,” he said, warning that the group’s readiness to give up its arms will decrease over time.
Mr Barak also said the “only condition for success” in the ceasefire plan for Gaza was the “determination” of Donald Trump.
He said there were concerns that the US president “might lose his attention to the issue” and that his plan to bring the war to a conclusion “will take time”.
“It cannot happen overnight. But the zeitgeist, the atmosphere in the world and the pressure on both sides to find a solution is created in front of our eyes. So it’s very promising.”
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However, he said the war with Hamas over the last few months has harmed Israel’s international reputation, and it would take time to fix that damage.
“It’s killed our positioning in the world,” he said. “It’s huge damage. It will take probably a generation to correct it.
“It created a feeling in the world that Israel probably executed war crimes.”
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Palestinians walk past the rubble of destroyed buildings in Gaza City. Pic: Reuters
According to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, nearly 68,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began in 2023 – when more than 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 people were taken hostage during Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel.
The Hamas-run ministry does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count, but says half of that number were women and children.
The war has also flattened huge swathes of Gaza and left nearly 170,000 people wounded, according to the ministry.
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‘If Hamas doesn’t disarm, we will disarm them’
Palestinian state ‘only sustainable’ solution
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “turned Hamas’ military defeat a year ago into an unprecedented diplomatic and political success and brought back the Palestinian issue,” Mr Barak said.
His comments refer to the creation of a Palestinian state, which he said was “the only sustainable” solution.
“Any other solution will break,” Mr Barak said. “And it’s not because we have special sentiments to the lives of the Palestinians, it’s because of our own interests.”
“Israel has a compelling imperative to separate from the Palestinians. If there is only one entity reigning over this whole area, namely Israel, it will become inevitably either non-Jewish or non-democratic.”
Calls for Hamas to disarm
It comes after aid trucks rolled into Gaza following a dispute over the return of the bodies of dead hostages that threatened Israel’s nascent ceasefire deal with Hamas.
Israel has threatened to reduce aid supplies because Hamas was returning bodies too slowly.
The militant group returned four bodies confirmed as dead hostages on Monday, as well as another four late on Tuesday, but Israeli authorities have said one of those bodies was not that of a hostage.
Several other issues are yet to be resolved, with later phases of the truce plan calling for Hamas to disarm and give up power, which it has so far refused to do.
On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump appeared to threaten Hamas over the issue, telling a press conference: “If Hamas doesn’t disarm, we will disarm them – perhaps violently.”
Meanwhile, Hamas has launched a security crackdown in Gaza, carrying out public executions and clashing with local clans.
This story originally appeared on Skynews
