Israel said Gazans could flee to this neighbourhood – then it was hit

Published

2 years ago

December 21, 2023

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As smoke rose into the overcast skies of Deir al Balah in Central Gaza on 5 December, the whine of an aircraft could still be heard overhead.

The Musabeh family’s home had been destroyed.

“The scene was horrific, fires burning in the house,” eyewitness Mohammed Abu Musabeh told Erem News, a UAE-based news organisation.

Among the survivors was an infant girl, Layan, a relative of Mr Abu Musabeh, who said she was blown onto a neighbour’s roof by the force of the explosion.

“How will this child continue her life after learning what happened to her family?”

Days earlier on 1 December, a temporary ceasefire had collapsed. In preparation for an invasion of southern Gaza, Israel published an interactive map which divided the territory into hundreds of small zones.

The map, Israel said, would be used to give clear and precise evacuation orders to try to keep civilians in the densely populated Gaza Strip away from active combat zones.

Using on-the-ground footage, satellite imagery and mapping software, a Sky News visual investigation found that Israel’s evacuation orders have instead been chaotic and contradictory and that a neighbourhood in Deir al Balah was hit one day after the IDF said evacuees could flee there.

Our investigation comes after a separate strike in Gaza was caught on camera by a Sky News team. It too came in an area that was supposed to be safe.

‘No safe place in Gaza’

Responding to a request for comment on our findings, the Israeli army did not deny striking the Musabeh home.

A spokesperson for the IDF said: “The IDF will act against Hamas wherever it operates, with full commitment to international law, while distinguishing between terrorists and civilians, and taking all feasible precautions to minimise harm to civilians.”

In response to our investigation, the United Nations told Sky News that it is already investigating 52 similar incidents in areas where the Israeli army told civilians it was safe to evacuate to.

“This is exactly why we as the UN have been saying that there is no safe place in Gaza,” Ajith Sunghay, head of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, told Sky News.

Chaotic orders

After the temporary ceasefire, Israel faced growing international pressure to limit civilian harm.

The IDF’s solution? The interactive map with each zone having a unique numeric ID.

On 4 December, IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari told journalists that the map would indicate “where civilians in a specific area should go to avoid being in the crossfire”.

Civilians were told to learn the number assigned to their neighbourhood and listen out for evacuation orders via social media.

Questions were immediately raised about how Gazans, who have suffered persistent internet outages, would access the online map, and how they could safely move between areas as instructed.

The UN has not officially recommended that Gazans relocate to areas suggested by the IDF, as the zones have not been agreed with all parties to the conflict.

“One of the fundamental requirements of a safe zone is that all parties agree to a particular place to be safe,” said Mr Sunghay.

On 1 December, the day hostilities resumed, the Israeli army began releasing evacuation orders.

Musabeh home hit

The Musabeh family’s neighbourhood is located in section 128 on Israel’s interactive map. It was never included in any of the IDFs evacuation orders issued on social media.

On 4 December, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesperson said on X the IDF would allow “humanitarian movement of civilians” along the coastal road from Khan Younis to Deir al Balah.

The Musabeh home lay in the heart of Deir al Balah, less than 300 metres from Shuhada street – a road explicitly marked by the Israeli army as a route by which civilians could safely reach the city.

The day after that post, on 5 December, the Musabeh home was hit.

‘I don’t know what happened to my son’

A neighbour said that their son had gone to the Musabeh home to ask for water.

“Then the airstrike happened,” the neighbour told al-Araby. “The dust came at us and cars were thrown into the air. […] I don’t know what has happened to my son.”

The footage below, captured by Gaza-based journalist Yosef al-Saifi, shows the immediate aftermath: a woman and two children calling for help on top of the ruined home, a street covered in rubble, and a car on fire.

One man runs with a young girl in his arms, her body limp and her arms badly burnt. Another man pulls a motionless boy from beneath the rubble.

The video below, also recorded by Mr al-Saifi, shows another casualty being carried, also seemingly unresponsive. A fourth casualty is placed on a blood-soaked stretcher, as firefighters tackle a blaze.

Footage of the incident verified by Sky News, including some which is too graphic to publish, shows 11 casualties in total – nine of them apparently unresponsive, including three children.

The spokesman for al Aqsa hospital told Al Jazeera Mubasher that 45 people were killed in the blast. Sky News has been unable to independently verify the exact number of those killed.

Preliminary research carried out by Airwars, an organisation specialising in the verification of airstrike casualties, found online tributes to one of those killed in the attack, Mohammad Kamal Abu Musabeh and further posts about the injured infant Layan. Information online surrounding the identity of those killed has been scarce.

A neighbour of the Musabehs told al Araby that the home had been housing between 70 and 80 people, many of them displaced from elsewhere in the Gaza Strip.

Damage seen in satellite imagery

The neighbour attributed the bombing to an Israeli aircraft, as did a report by Palestinian news agency Wafa.

Eyewitnesses reported a single explosion, and footage verified by Sky News shows that the damage was extensive. The upper floor of the building had collapsed, and its walls were blown out onto the street below.

Visible damage to the Musabeh home can also be seen in satellite imagery taken on 3 December and 6 December.

No remnants of munitions were available for Sky News to conclusively determine whether the IDF was responsible for the attack.

Two experts told Sky News that, based on the footage available, the damage was consistent with an airstrike.

“It was a large [explosion] to have caused that much damage,” says Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.

“It was not an errant rocket or artillery shell. It would be consistent with a large air-delivered munition.”

J Andres Gannon, an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University, agrees.

“Based on the footage provided, the damage seen is consistent with what we would see from a missile strike with a fairly high payload,” he says.

“There is not much burn damage aside from light metal like the vehicles, and much of the rubble is very large pieces of concrete which is different from the smaller fragments we would see from shrapnel damage caused by mortars or other light projectiles.

“Satellite footage shows damage limited to a particular quadrant of the building which suggests more accurate targeting than we would see from a bomb, so that is also consistent with the damage we would see from an air to surface missile.”

Mr Gannon says that the level of damage seen was “quite a bit higher” than could be achieved by the kind of rockets known to be used by Palestinian militant groups in Gaza.

“There is also very little shrapnel or fire damage from spent fuel that I can see, both of which would be present at the site of a smaller rocket or mortar attack,” he added.

Sky News has not seen reports of rockets being fired by any other groups in the area. The IDF later said it had, on that day, launched airstrikes “in the area of Deir al Balah”.

“During these strikes, terrorists from the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist organisations were eliminated, and a number of terrorist infrastructure were destroyed,” the post on Telegram on 6 December said.

Sky News presented the findings of this investigation to the IDF. A spokesperson declined to say whether Israel was responsible for the blast at the Musabeh family home.

‘I can’t find any rationale’

Mr Sunghay, the senior UN official, told Sky News that even if only military targets had been struck, there would still be serious questions over the IDF’s decision to tell civilians they could move to Deir al Balah on the day of, and in the days following, the strikes.

“I can’t find any rationale, to be honest,” he said.

“At a minimum you wouldn’t again reiterate that it’s a safe place. If you call it a safe place and people have gone there and you’ve struck it once, at a minimum you would wait a little while. For me, it doesn’t make sense that they kept calling it a safe zone.”

‘Warnings are not enough’

Brian Finucane, an expert legal adviser with the non-profit International Crisis Group, says that there is a requirement on warring parties to provide effective advanced warnings to civilians, where feasible.

“This calls into question whether Israel is actually taking feasible precautions,” said Mr Finucane.

“If [Israel] issues warnings urging people to relocate to a certain area and then nonetheless conducts further strikes there, that’s not really an effective advanced warning.

“But even if this warning scheme worked as advertised… Warnings are not enough. Israel still has to distinguish between civilians and combatants.”

Even receiving those warnings has been difficult. Intermittent internet and telecommunications outages have made it much harder for civilians across Gaza to find and share information about safe areas.

On 17 December, connectivity was gradually restored after a three-day blackout, the longest outage on record since the start of the present conflict, according to cybersecurity watchdog NetBlocks.

But not all Gazans have mobile devices, making access to the IDF instructions impossible for many. Many people are having to communicate and share information by word of mouth.

And even for those who do have access to phones, Israel’s official social media posts and evacuation orders have been confusing and contradictory.

Sky News analysis of the IDF’s 22 evacuation orders between 1 December and 19 December shows that only nine have included maps of the area to be evacuated. In all nine cases, these maps have directly contradicted the written orders provided.

In only six of the 22 orders did the IDF cite specific numbered zones. In all six cases, parts of the numbered zones were excluded from the static maps attached to the posts.

‘This chaos and confusion could have killed me’

The IDF’s interactive map was presented as a high-tech, humane solution to conducting urban warfare in one of the most densely populated parts of the planet.

Yet this map has never been updated to show areas being evacuated – Gazans have had to rely on static maps published via social media.

None of the evacuation orders have included any mapping of areas to which people can safely flee. Instead, these areas have simply been named.

In the four evacuation orders issued since 16 December, that too has stopped: Gazans have been told where to flee from, but not where they might flee to.

The only safe area which the IDF has mapped is a strip of coastline that Israel has called the al-Mawasi humanitarian zone. It has provided rough sketches of this zone, but has never marked it out clearly. The two maps it has produced are, when analysed in mapping software, contradictory.

Even when the orders are clear, as in the recent orders for civilians to leave the north and head towards Deir al Balah, it is often unclear how Gazans are supposed to safely make the journey.

Kamal Almashharawi, a lawyer from Gaza City who recently fled the territory, recently spoke to a friend in northern Gaza who told him it was too dangerous to even open the curtains due to fighting outside.

Mr Almashharawi was forced to flee the north himself after Israel first ordered its evacuation on 13 October.

“This chaos and confusion could have killed me,” says Mr Almashharawi, who is now in Saudi Arabia.

“I was in Khan Younis at first, and I thought that the ground invasion would start there so I had to go back to Gaza City. We hadn’t heard of any bombing there, we didn’t realise it’s because the internet was cut.”

Mr Almashharawi says that he subsequently arranged an evacuation from Gaza City for himself and around 30 family members.

“On the ‘safe passage’ I saw dead bodies on the ground. Those people read the instructions and followed the instructions, and now they’re dead.”

Mr Sunghay said the UN was planning to publish a report on incidents in areas where the IDF had told civilians to flee to, including Deir al Balah.

“If we are unable to prevent attacks and killings of civilians, what will come next is accountability and for that purpose this work is extremely important,” he said.

A spokesperson for the IDF said: “Since the beginning of the fighting, the IDF has been imploring the civilian population to temporarily evacuate from areas of intense fighting, to safer areas, in order to minimise the risk posed by remaining in areas of intense hostilities.

“The IDF carries out this effort in a variety of ways, including radio broadcasts, a dedicated website in Arabic, millions of pre-recorded phone calls and tens of thousands of live phone calls, and millions of leaflets.

“While the IDF makes these efforts to evacuate the population out of the line of fire, Hamas systematically attempts to prevent the evacuation of civilians by calling on the civilians to ignore the IDF’s requests. In doing so, Hamas endangers the civilian population of Gaza.”

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.

World

Revealed: The plan for a ‘New Gaza’ – and the four militias Israel is backing to defeat Hamas

Published

6 hours ago

October 25, 2025

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Revealed: The plan for a 'New Gaza' - and the four militias Israel is backing to defeat Hamas

Israel may have agreed to stop fighting in Gaza, but it is backing armed groups that plan to fight Hamas to the bitter end.

Sky News has confirmed for the first time that four anti-Hamas militias are all backed by Israel, and consider themselves part of a joint project to remove Hamas from power.

The groups are all operating from areas still under Israeli control, behind what’s been called the “yellow line” – the boundary for Israel Defence Forces (IDF) troop deployments established by the ceasefire agreement.

“We have an official project – me, [Yasser] Abu Shabab, [Rami] Halas, and [Ashraf] al Mansi,” says militia leader Hossam al Astal, speaking to Sky News from his base in southern Gaza.

“We are all for ‘The New Gaza’. Soon we will achieve full control of the Gaza Strip and will gather under one umbrella.”

The footage below, shared with Sky News, shows troops from Hossam al Astal’s militia parading near its base.

We used the video to identify the location of the militia’s headquarters for the first time.

It is situated on a military road that runs along the yellow line, less than 700 metres from the nearest IDF outpost.

“I’m hearing the sound of tanks now while I’m speaking, perhaps they’re out on patrol or something, but I’m not worried,” says al Astal.

“They don’t engage us, and we don’t engage them […] We’ve agreed, through the coordinator, that this is a green zone, not to be targeted by shelling or gunfire.”

The New Gaza

This area, now a patchwork of rubble and military berms, was once a leafy suburb of Gaza’s second city, Khan Younis.

Al Astal says he grew up here, but was forced to flee in 2010 after being pursued by Hamas over his involvement in militant groups aligned with their rival, the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority (PA).

He spent the next 11 years abroad, working for the PA’s security services in Egypt and Malaysia.

Two months after he returned to Gaza, he was accused of involvement in the 2018 assassination of a Hamas member in Malaysia and sentenced to death.

“When the war started, they left us locked up, hoping the Israelis would bomb the prison and rid them of us,” he says. “Two months later, we broke down the doors and escaped.”

He says that his weapons, mainly Kalashnikov rifles, are purchased from former Hamas fighters on the black market.

Ammunition and vehicles, on the other hand, are delivered through the Kerem Shalom border crossing after coordination with the Israeli military.

This is the same border crossing used by another militia leader, Yasser Abu Shabab.

Sky News previously revealed that Abu Shabab’s militia was smuggling vehicles into Gaza with the help of the Israeli military and an Arab-Israeli car dealer.

Al Astal says he uses the same car dealer. One of his vehicles appears to have Hebrew writing on the side, which has been partially scratched out.

He says his militia also receives weekly deliveries of everyday items needed to support the civilians living at the camp.

“We currently provide basic medical and education support to roughly 30 families,” he says.

“Children can get apples and bananas, food and drink, chips and so on. By contrast, in the other area, in the tents, you find five-, 10- or even 15-year-olds surviving on little more than lentils and pasta.”

He says these supplies come in via weekly deliveries. In the video below, a cargo truck can be seen at the militia’s base.

A similar cargo truck can be seen in satellite imagery of the camp, taken on 14 October.

Sky News has also confirmed that the other two militias, which are operating in the north of Gaza, are receiving supplies from Israel.

The video below, filmed by a member of Ashraf al Mansi’s militia, shows a car loaded with supplies driving towards their base.

Sky News previously confirmed that this road leads either from an IDF outpost or from the Erez border crossing with Israel.

A member of the other militia operating in northern Gaza, which is led by Rami Halas, told Sky News that coordination with the IDF is done indirectly through the District Coordination Office.

It’s part of the Israeli defence ministry, but also includes officials from the PA – Palestine’s internationally recognised government, based in the West Bank.

This fits with what we were told by al Astal, by an Israeli soldier stationed at Kerem Shalom, and by a senior commander in Abu Shabab’s militia – that coordination with the military is managed indirectly, and that the PA plays a key role.

“I have people within my group who are still, to this day, employees of the Palestinian Authority,” says al Astal.

The PA did not respond to Sky’s questions, but has previously denied having any relationship to these militias.

“The Palestinian Authority can’t admit to having a direct relationship with us,” the militia leader says.

“It already has enough issues and doesn’t want to add to that burden. You know, if word got out that they had ties with militias or with the occupation forces, you can imagine how that would look.”

Military coordination

Although he acknowledges working with Israel to secure supplies, al Astal denies he has ever coordinated military operations with the IDF.

Sky News previously reported that Israeli aircraft had intervened in two battles fought by Abu Shabab’s militia.

We asked Abu Shabab whether these were due to coordination, but did not receive a response.

Hamas accused al Astal’s militia group of direct military coordination after several of its fighters were killed when Israel intervened during a battle between the two groups on 3 October.

The footage below, published by the IDF, shows the strikes that day.

“I don’t control Israeli airstrikes,” al Astal says. “The Israelis simply saw armed Hamas military groups and struck them.”

In April, two months before he founded the militia, al Astal’s own tent was hit by an Israeli bomb. The strike killed his 22-year-old daughter, Nihad, who was seven months pregnant.

“People accuse me of collaboration,” he says. “How can anyone speak about me like that? Were the Israelis ‘joking around’ with me with a missile?”

He believes the strike was intended for a Hamas member living nearby.

“If I listed every crime against children and women, the blame wouldn’t rest on Israel but on Hamas, which hid among the people.”

Support from outside powers

Multiple sources also told Sky News that the militias are also receiving support from outside powers.

The deputy leader of Abu Shabab’s militia, Ghassan al Duhine, has twice been photographed next to a vehicle with a UAE-registered licence plate.

Sky News also found that the logo of the group’s armed wing, the Counter Terrorism Service, is almost identical to that used by a UAE-backed militia of the same name operating in Yemen.

The logo used by al Astal’s militia, the Counter Terrorism Strike Force, similarly uses the same illustration as that used by a different UAE-backed militia, also based in Yemen.

The UAE did not respond to Sky’s request for comment.

When we asked al Astal whether he enjoyed the backing of the UAE, he smiled.

“God willing, in time everything will become clear,” he said. “But yes, there are Arab countries that support our project.”

That project, al Astal says, has a name: The New Gaza.

‘No war… no Hamas, no terrorism’

“Very soon, God willing, you will see this for yourselves; we will become the new administration of Gaza. Our project is ‘The New Gaza’. No war, at peace with everyone – no Hamas, no terrorism.”

Two days after Sky News spoke to al Astal, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, used the phrase himself while suggesting that Gaza could be split indefinitely along the yellow line.

“No reconstruction funds will be going into areas that Hamas still controls,” Kushner told reporters on Wednesday.

“There are considerations happening now in the area that the IDF controls, as long as that can be secured, to start the construction as a ‘New Gaza’ in order to give Palestinians living in Gaza a place to go, a place to get jobs.”

The IDF declined to comment on these findings. Hamas, the PA and the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, the Israeli agency which manages the Israel-Gaza border, did not respond to our requests for comment.

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.

World

US ramps up ‘drug boats’ operation by sending in aircraft carrier to region

Published

6 hours ago

October 25, 2025

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US ramps up 'drug boats' operation by sending in aircraft carrier to region

The US has announced it is sending an aircraft carrier to the waters off South America as it ramps up an operation to target alleged drug smuggling boats.

The Pentagon said in a statement that the USS Gerald R Ford would be deployed to the region, including the Caribbean Sea, to “bolster US capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States homeland and our security in the Western Hemisphere”.

The vessel is the US Navy’s largest aircraft carrier. It is currently deployed in the Mediterranean alongside three destroyers, and the group are expected to take around one week to make the journey.

There are already eight US Navy ships in the central and South American region, along with a nuclear-powered submarine, adding up to about 6,000 sailors and marines, according to officials.

It came as the US secretary of war claimed that six “narco-terrorists” had been killed in a strike on an alleged drug smuggling boat in the Caribbean Sea overnight.

Pete Hegseth said his military had bombed a vessel which he claimed was operated by Tren de Aragua – a Venezuelan gang designated a terror group by Washington in February.

Writing on X, he claimed that the boat was involved in “illicit narcotics smuggling” and was transiting along a “known narco-trafficking route” when it was struck during the night.

All six men on board the boat, which was in international waters, were killed and no US forces were harmed, he said.

Ten vessels have now been bombed in recent weeks, killing more than 40 people.

Mr Hegseth added: “If you are a narco-terrorist smuggling drugs in our hemisphere, we will treat you like we treat al Qaeda. Day or NIGHT, we will map your networks, track your people, hunt you down, and kill you.”

While he did not provide any evidence that the vessel was carrying drugs, he did share a 20-second video that appeared to show a boat being hit by a projectile before exploding.

Speaking during a White House news conference last week, Donald Trump argued that the campaign would help tackle the US’s opioid crisis.

“Every boat that we knock out, we save 25,000 American lives. So every time you see a boat, and you feel badly you say, ‘Wow, that’s rough’. It is rough, but if you lose three people and save 25,000 people,” he said.

Analysis: Is the US about to invade Venezuela?

It’s a question that’s got more relevant – and more urgent – over the last 24 hours.

The US government has just deployed the world’s largest aircraft carrier and its associated battleships to the Caribbean, just off the coast of Venezuela.

So: what’s going on?

Well, on the face of it, it’s a drugs war. For weeks now, the Trump administration has been using the US military to “dismantle transnational criminal organisations and counter narco terrorism in the defence of the homeland”.

Basically: stopping the drugs supply into America.

Dealing with the demand might actually be more effective as a strategy, but that’s another story.

Donald Trump’s focus is to hit the supply countries and to hit them hard – and this is what that has looked like: drones and missiles taking out boats said to be carrying drugs from places like Venezuela into the US.

We can’t know for sure that these are drugs boats or if the people are guilty of anything, because the US government won’t tell us who the people are.

But alongside this, something bigger has been going on: a massive build-up of US troops in the Caribbean, over 6,000 sailors and marines are there.

Here’s the thing: an aircraft carrier is not remotely suited to stopping drug smuggling.

However, it is a vital element of any planned ground or air war.

Trump is focused on stopping the drugs, yes, but is there actually a wider objective here: regime change?

He has been clear in his belief in spheres of influence around the world – and his will and want to control and dominate the Western hemisphere.

Influence domination over Venezuela could fix the drug problem for sure, but much more too.

The world’s largest oil reserves? Yes, they’re in Venezuela.

On Thursday, appearing at a press conference with Mr Hegseth, Mr Trump said that it was necessary to kill the alleged smugglers, because if they were arrested they would only return to transport drugs “again and again and again”.

“They don’t fear that, they have no fear,” he told reporters.

The attacks at sea would soon be followed by operations on land against drug smuggling cartels, Mr Trump claimed.

“We’re going to kill them,” he added. “They’re going to be, like, dead.”

Some Democratic politicians have expressed concerns that the strikes risk dragging the US into a war with Venezuela because of their proximity to the South American country’s coast.

Others have condemned the attacks as extrajudicial killings that would not stand up in a court of law.

Jim Himes, a member of the House of Representatives, told CBS News earlier this month: “They are illegal killings because the notion that the United States – and this is what the administration says is their justification – is involved in an armed conflict with any drug dealers, any Venezuelan drug dealers, is ludicrous.”

He claimed that Congress had been told “nothing” about who was on the boats and how they were identified as a threat.

World

Turkey urges US to act after accusing Israel of breaching Gaza ceasefire

Published

15 hours ago

October 24, 2025

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Turkey urges US to act after accusing Israel of breaching Gaza ceasefire

Turkey has urged the US to take action after accusing Israel of violating the Gaza ceasefire deal.

The country’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Washington and its allies should consider sanctions and halting arms sales to put pressure on Israel to abide by the agreement.

Turkey, a NATO member, joined ceasefire negotiations as a mediator, and increased its role following a meeting between Mr Erdogan and Donald Trump at the White House last month.

“The Hamas side is abiding by the ceasefire. In fact, it is openly stating its commitment to this. Israel, meanwhile, is continuing to violate the ceasefire,” Mr Erdogan told reporters.

“The international community, namely the United States, must do more to ensure Israel’s full compliance to the ceasefire and agreement,” he said.

Mr Erdogan was also asked about comments from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who hinted that he would be opposed to any peacekeeping role for Turkish security forces in the Gaza Strip.

The Turkish president said talks on the issue were still underway, adding: “As this is a multi-faceted issue, there are comprehensive negotiations. We are ready to provide Gaza any form of support on this issue.”

Israel has accused Hamas of breaching the truce and previously said its recent military action in Gaza was designed to uphold the agreement.

Relations between former allies Israel and Turkey hit new lows during the Gaza war, with Ankara accusing Mr Netanyahu’s government of committing genocide, an allegation Israel has repeatedly denied.

Speaking during a visit to Israel on Friday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that a planned international security force for Gaza would have to be made up of “countries that Israel’s comfortable with,” but declined to comment specifically on Turkey’s involvement.

Around 200 US troops are working alongside the Israeli military and delegations from other countries, planning the stabilisation and reconstruction of Gaza.

The US is seeking support from other allies, namely Gulf Arab nations, to build an international security force to be deployed to Gaza and train a Palestinian security force.

Mr Rubio said many nations had expressed interest, but decisions had yet to be made about the rules of engagement. He added that countries need to know what they were signing up for.

“Under what authority are they going to be operating? Who’s going to be in charge? What is their job?” said Mr Rubio.

The secretary of state also reiterated his earlier warning to Israel not to annex the occupied West Bank, land that Palestinians want for part of an independent state.

A bill applying Israeli law to the West Bank won preliminary approval from Israel’s parliament on Wednesday.

“We don’t think it’s going to happen”, Mr Rubio said, adding that annexation “would also threaten this whole process”.

“If [annexation] were to happen, a lot of the countries that are involved in working on this probably aren’t going to want to be involved in this anymore. It’s a threat to the peace process and everybody knows it”, he added.