Trump’s Gaza Force Risks Repeating Middle East Peacekeeping Failures

As President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio push forward with plans for an International Stabilization Force in Gaza, history offers a sobering warning international peacekeeping efforts often fail when flawed coalitions are formed. With talk of involving nations like Turkey and Pakistan in post-Hamas Gaza, alarm bells are rightly ringing in Jerusalem and Cairo.

The core idea behind Trump’s Gaza plan is to disarm Hamas and replace its rule with a multinational force to provide security and stability. But the inclusion of countries that harbor questionable allegiances risks turning this noble objective into a dangerous miscalculation.

Israel has firmly opposed Turkey’s participation, and for good reason. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is no impartial peacekeeper he's a staunch supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas’s ideological twin. His support for Islamist causes has destabilized regions from Syria to Libya, and his government’s past tolerance of radical movements suggests he would be more interested in empowering Hamas than dismantling it.

Allowing Turkish troops into Gaza would be akin to letting an arsonist patrol a fire zone. It would place Israel’s border security and Egypt’s vulnerable Sinai region at serious risk, potentially reigniting jihadist activity that has already claimed too many lives.

Pakistan’s potential inclusion brings its own hazards. During the Afghanistan war, Pakistan’s intelligence services actively enabled Taliban forces while receiving billions in Western aid. To now trust those same institutions with safeguarding Gaza is an extraordinary gamble. Even now, Pakistani leaders have signaled they will not support the disarmament of Hamas an essential requirement for peace.

Such half-measures only invite chaos. As history shows, international forces constrained by weak rules of engagement tend to become passive bystanders. In Afghanistan, NATO troops were hamstrung by caveats: Germans wouldn’t fly wounded Afghan soldiers, Hungarians refused night operations, and Norwegians restricted F-16 use. Peacekeeping in name alone has led to failure in practice.

A similar scenario played out in Lebanon. After the 2006 war, a beefed-up UNIFIL force complete with European and Turkish troops was tasked with preventing Hezbollah from rearming. The result? Hezbollah now possesses more missiles than many national armies. During recent escalations, UNIFIL not only failed to intervene but actively shielded Hezbollah by refusing to evacuate civilians from conflict zones housing terrorists.

Trump’s team must recognize that a coalition built on fragile partnerships and political appeasement will not bring peace. Instead, it risks repeating the very mistakes that prolonged war in Afghanistan and allowed Hezbollah to flourish in Lebanon.

Israel's concerns aren't paranoia they’re lessons learned from the battlefield. True peace requires clarity, conviction, and reliable partners. A Gaza force diluted by conflicting agendas or Islamist sympathies will only serve to hand Hamas and its allies a strategic victory.

Israel’s security must remain non-negotiable. Any international coalition that compromises this principle in the name of diplomacy is doomed to fail and to repeat history’s most costly errors.

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