U.S. Central Command is reportedly establishing a “civil-military coordination center” in Israel, staffed with hundreds of troops, to monitor the newly implemented ceasefire in Gaza, U.S. officials have said.
U.S. outlets have reported that the military is slated to send 200 troops to Israel for the effort, with some having already been sent. The troops are there, officials said, primarily to provide “security” support and to facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid in Gaza.
The troops will stay in Israel and are not intended to enter Gaza, officials said. The group is largely made up of those who specialize in planning, security, and logistics. The effort will be led by CENTCOM head Adm. Brad Cooper.
As part of the ceasefire agreement, which Israeli officials said went into effect on Friday morning, Israel is supposed to allow hundreds of trucks of humanitarian aid into famine-stricken Gaza.
It’s unclear what type of U.S. military support is needed to facilitate that operation. As the area command responsible for the greater Middle East, CENTCOM is known for obfuscating the U.S. military’s participation in atrocities.
Middle East Special Envoy Steve Witkoff said on social media on Friday that CENTCOM “confirmed the Israeli Defense Forces completed” its partial withdrawal to the yellow line drawn for the ceasefire after the agreement began on Friday morning.
UN officials and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the primary group for Palestinian aid, have repeatedly urged Israel to restore the UN’s access to Gaza in order to fully implement the deal and combat Israel’s starvation and deprivation campaign.
The UN has said that it is ready to provide aid for all Palestinians in Gaza, with 170,000 metric tons of supplies ready to enter Gaza. Officials are just waiting for the approval from Israel to enter the region, they have said.
Israel has barred UNRWA from entering Gaza for months, having replaced most humanitarian operations in Gaza with the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) — operating sites described as “death traps” where hundreds of Palestinians were gunned down by Israeli forces.
Those sites were staffed by former U.S. Green Berets and members of an Islamophobic U.S. gang, reports said. Some reports suggest that GHF will no longer operate in Gaza after the ceasefire.
U.S. troops have not been deployed directly in Gaza outside of the disastrous “aid” pier operation in 2024. However, the U.S. military has provided extensive intelligence support for Israel throughout its genocide, on top of the attacks on surrounding Middle East countries that the U.S. has carried out in support of Israel in the past two years.
The whims of U.S. officials are crucial to the enforcement of the ceasefire, analysts have noted, with the U.S. being Israel’s primary military backer.
President Donald Trump reportedly assured Hamas negotiators that he would guarantee that Israel would not resume the genocide after the first phase of the ceasefire agreement, in which all of the remaining Israeli captives are slated to be returned. However, Israel has a long history of breaking ceasefire agreements, and Trump did not hold Israel accountable when it broke its earlier ceasefire agreement with Hamas in March.
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