Israel: Netanyahu informs the United States and several regional countries that Israel intend to establish deep buffer zone in the Gaza Strip

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu informed US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Israel will establish a deep buffer zone in the Gaza Strip.

This came according to what was reported by the Israeli Broadcasting Authority from unnamed sources.

Netanyahu informed Blinken on Thursday that Israel will take security control of the Gaza Strip after the end of the war, and Israel will establish a deep security buffer zone in the Gaza Strip the day after the war”.

Egyptian and regional sources said that Israel informed several Arab countries of its desire to establish a buffer zone on the Palestinian side of the Gaza Strip borders, to prevent any future attacks on it, within the framework of proposals regarding the sector in the post-war period.

Three regional sources reported that Israel informed its neighbors Egypt and Jordan, along with the UAE, with which normalized relations in 2020, of this idea.

The sources indicated that this idea was also presented to Saudi Arabia, which doesn’t have relations with Israel and stopped normalization efforts with it through US mediation after the outbreak of the Gaza war on October 7.

The sources didn’t explain how the information reached Riyadh, which doesn’t have direct official communication channels with Israel.

The sources said that Türkiye was also informed of these plans.

The initiative doesn’t indicate that the Israeli offensive, which resumed on Friday after a seven-day truce, is near the end, but it does show that Israel is communicating with countries other than the well-known Arab mediators, such as Egypt or Qatar, as it seeks to determine the situation in Gaza in the post-war period.

No Arab country expressed its willingness to manage Gaza in the future, and most of them strongly condemned the Israeli attack, which killed more than 15,000 people and destroyed large areas of urban areas in the Strip.

A senior regional security official, one of the three sources who asked not to reveal their nationalities, said: “Israel wants to establish this buffer zone between Gaza and Israel from north to south, in order to prevent any infiltration or attack by Hamas or any other militants”.

Egypt, Jordanian, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Türkiye haven’t officially responded yet.