Egypt and Turkey have called for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, even as reports reveal that White House adviser Jared Kushner and the Israeli military are preparing an alternate plan to fragment the besieged enclave if the so-called “Trump peace plan” collapses.
Speaking at a joint press conference in Ankara on Wednesday, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan called for a binding legal framework for the international stabilization force that Washington seeks to deploy in Gaza. Fidan said the Palestinian resistance group Hamas has shown readiness to maintain the ceasefire, and pressed Israel to reciprocate.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty echoed that message, stating that ensuring the ceasefire holds “requires boots on the ground.” Abdelatty had earlier met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, delivering a message from President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and discussing plans for the Cairo International Conference on Early Recovery and Reconstruction in Gaza.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he was “optimistic” the UN Security Council would soon endorse the international “enforcement force,” following a G7 meeting in Canada. “I think we're making good progress on the language of the resolution,” Rubio said, “hopefully we'll have action on it very soon.”
The proposed multinational force—which could include troops from Egypt, Qatar, Turkey, and the UAE—is a cornerstone of the US plan to impose a ceasefire and control the aftermath. Washington began circulating a draft resolution last week to legitimize the force’s entry into Gaza.
Simultaneously, Israeli media reported that Kushner and the Israeli military are drafting a fallback plan in case the Trump initiative fails. According to Israel Hayom, Kushner told an Israeli contact this week that he’s working on a backup strategy, citing the difficulty of disarming Hamas and the lack of willing troop-contributing nations.
Israeli army chief Eyal Zamir told the security cabinet last week that the military is finalizing its own alternative plan for Gaza’s future, the Times of Israel reported.
At the White House, spokesperson Karoline Leavitt downplayed circulating reports of a new US military base near Gaza, dismissing a leaked document as “just a single piece of paper.” “This is not something the United States is interested in being engaged in,” she asserted.
The US and Israel are also reportedly weighing a plan to carve Gaza into controlled zones—with Israel overseeing reconstruction only in the areas under its control. Critics say such proposals would formalize Gaza’s fragmentation and cement apartheid-like conditions.
Moreover, there is now a growing likelihood that Gaza will be split de facto, with Israel controlling some zones while Hamas governs others. The second phase of Trump's plan has effectively collapsed, unnamed European official sources revealed to Reuters. They warned that reconstruction may only occur in Israeli-occupied zones, deepening Gaza’s isolation and trauma.
Since the plan’s first phase was implemented on Oct. 10, Israeli occupation forces have seized control of over half of Gaza’s coastal territory, including most agricultural land, Rafah in the south, and large swaths of Gaza City.
Nearly 2 million Palestinians now survive amid rubble, displacement, and unceasing airstrikes—packed into makeshift camps and ruins of their former homes.
