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.”

Follow the latest updates from Gaza

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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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.

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.

Two things can be true at the same time – an adage so apt for the past day. 

This was the Trump show. There’s no question about that. It was a show called by him, pulled off for him, attended by leaders who had no other choice and all because he craves the ego boost.

Gaza deal signed – as it happened

But the day was also an unquestionable and game-changing geopolitical achievement.

Trump stopped the war, he stopped the killing, he forced Hamas to release all the hostages, he demanded Israel to free prisoners held without any judicial process, he enabled aid to be delivered to Gaza, and he committed everyone to a roadmap, of sorts, ahead.

He did all that and more.

He also made the Israel-Palestine conflict, which the world has ignored for decades, a cause that European and Middle Eastern nations are now committed to invest in. No one, it seems, can ignore Trump.

Love him or loathe him, those are remarkable achievements.

‘Focus of a goldfish’

The key question now is – will he stay the course?

One person central to the negotiations which have led us to this point said to me last week that Trump has the “focus of a goldfish”.

It’s true that he tends to have a short attention span. If things are not going his way, and it looks likely that he won’t turn out to be the winner, he quickly moves on and blames someone else.

So, is there a danger of that with this? Let’s check in on it all six months from now (I am willing to be proved wrong – the Trump-show is truly hard to chart), but my judgement right now is that he will stay the course with this one for several reasons.

First, precisely because of the show he has created around this. Surely, he won’t want it all to fall apart now?

He has invested so much personal reputation in all this, I’d argue that even he wouldn’t want to drop it, even when the going gets tough – which it will.

Second, the Abraham Accords. They represented his signature foreign policy achievement in his first term – the normalisation of relations between Israel and the Muslim world.

Back in his first presidency, he tried to push the accords through without solving the Palestinian question. It didn’t work.

This time, he’s grasped the nettle. Now he wants to bring it all together in a grand bargain. He’s doing it for peace but also, of course, for the business opportunities – to help “make America great again”.

Peace – and prosperity – in the Middle East is good for America. It’s also good for Trump Inc. He and his family are going to get even richer from a prosperous Middle East.

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Then there is the Nobel Peace Prize. He didn’t win it this year. He was never going to – nominations had to be in by January.

But next year he really could win – especially if he solves the Ukraine challenge too.

If he could bring his coexistence and unity vibe to his own country – rather than stoking the division – he may stand an even greater chance of winning.

France’s reappointed prime minister has offered to suspend controversial reforms to the country’s pension system, days after returning to the top role.

Emmanuel Macron’s pension reform, which gradually raises the age at which a worker can retire on a full pension from 62 to 64, was forced through without a vote in parliament after weeks of street protests in 2023.

Sebastien Lecornu said on Tuesday he would postpone the introduction of the scheme, one of Mr Macron’s main economic policies, until after the 2027 presidential election.

With two no-confidence votes in parliament this week, Mr Lecornu had little choice but to make the offer to secure the support of left-wing MPs who demanded it as the price of their support for his survival.

The prime minister will hope it is enough to get a slimmed-down 2026 budget passed at a time when France’s public finances are in a mess.

It will be seen as a blow to Mr Macron, leaving him with little in the way of domestic achievements after eight years in office. But it reflects the reality that giving ground on the landmark measure was the only way to ensure the survival of his sixth prime minister in under two years.

Mr Lecornu told MPs he will “suspend the 2023 pension reform until the presidential election”.

“No increase in the retirement age will take place from now until January 2028,” he added.

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The move will cost the Treasury €400m (£349m) in 2026, and €1.8bn (£1.5bn) the year after, he said, warning it couldn’t just be added to the deficit and “must therefore be financially offset, including through savings measures”.

Mr Lecornu, 39, was reappointed as prime minister by Mr Macron on Friday, four days after he resigned from the role just hours after naming his cabinet – and after political rivals threatened to topple his government.

On re-taking office, he pledged to “put an end to this political crisis, which is exasperating the French people, and to this instability, which is bad for France’s image and its interests”.

Economists in Europe have previously warned that France – the EU’s second-largest economy – faces a Greek-style debt crisis, with its deficit at 5.4%.

Mr Lecornu is hoping to bring that down to 4.7% with an overall package of cuts totalling €30bn (£26bn), but his plans were dismissed as wishful thinking by France’s independent fiscal watchdog.

Mr Macron has burned through five prime ministers in less than two years, but has so far refused to call another election or resign.