Saleh Salem
The New Arab / December 1, 2025
Egyptian and Jordanian officers train the vanguard of a 10,000-strong Palestinian police contingent that will be sent to Gaza.
Cairo – The formation of the Gaza Stabilisation Force (GSF) is facing immense problems. Still, preparations to set up the force’s command centre continue unabated in al-Arish, a northern Sinai town located only 40 kilometres from the Gaza Strip.
Once a quiet outpost overshadowed by Sinai’s turbulent history, the town now pulses with the quiet urgency of transformation as Cairo and Washington ponder the logistics of hosting the force before it is deployed in the war-devastated Palestinian territory.
The force was top on the agenda of talks between Egyptian and US negotiators on 16 November. Among other things, the negotiators finalised precise coordinates, including the exact location of the force’s command headquarters.
This facility is expected to serve as the nerve centre of the multinational coalition tasked with shepherding Gaza through its post-ceasefire rebirth.
Troops from contributing nations will arrive in Al-Arish for induction before they are vetted through rigorous security protocols; drilled in border patrol and de-escalation; equipped with non-lethal gear and surveillance tech, and then dispatched across the frontier to enforce a hard-won calm in Gaza, according to observers with knowledge about the force.
Stabilising Sinai
There is hushed opposition to the presence of the force’s command centre in al-Arish, especially given its association with infamous international political figures, such as former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Nevertheless, a growing number of the nation’s political analysts view the presence of the same headquarters in this Egyptian town as coming with many geopolitical gains for Cairo.
“Egypt is no longer a bystander in the Palestinian file, having become an indispensable gatekeeper,” prominent political analyst Mohamed Rabie al-Dehi told The New Arab.
“Any serious solution—security, political, or economic—must now pass through Cairo’s hands,” he added.
The new outpost is supposed to function in tandem with Israel’s Civil-Military Coordination Centre (CMCC) in Kiryat Gat, forming a bilateral axis of oversight along the volatile border.
The Israelis are expected to maintain vigilance on their side of the line, monitoring for incursions and smuggling. At the same time, Egyptian commanders orchestrate operations from al-Arish, ensuring perfect handoffs of intelligence, logistics, and troop movements.
Egyptian and Jordanian officers train the vanguard of a 10,000-strong Palestinian police contingent that will be sent to Gaza.
Once deployed under the GSF umbrella, these recruits, who are drawn from different Gaza communities, will reclaim Gaza’s streets, transforming into the architects of order in a territory rife with trauma.
Al-Dehi pointed to a constellation of advantages that leverage Egypt’s geopolitical importance for the Gaza file.
These advantages, he said, include Egypt’s 12-kilometre shared border with Gaza; its sovereign control over the Rafah crossing; the sprawling logistics hub at Al-Arish Port and airport, just 40 kilometres away, and its hard-earned credibility with every major player in the Gaza crisis, from Washington and Doha to Ramallah and, when needed, Tel Aviv.
The presence of the GSF command headquarters in Sinai, other analysts say, will reframe this Egyptian territory not as a perennial liability but as a fortified gateway to regional stability.
It will, they said, afford Cairo a commanding voice in post-war deliberations, from aid distribution to reconstruction, while allowing the Egyptian military to clamp down on any security threats in Sinai.
The peninsula, vast as Israel, the occupied West Bank, and Gaza combined, yet sparsely populated by just over half a million people, has long been a tinderbox.
For nearly a decade until 2021, the Sinai endured a brutal insurgency by Islamic State-affiliated jihadists, claiming thousands of lives and billions in resources through ambushes, bombings, and sniper fire that once peaked at 40 attacks monthly.
The Hamas-led assaults on Israeli military bases and settlements within and along the Gaza envelope on 7 October 2023, reignited those embers, raising Cairo’s dread of spill-over.
Fears mounted of Gaza’s depopulated masses, over two million displaced in the ensuing war, fleeing en masse into Sinai, potentially seeding jihadist networks or straining Egypt’s fragile economy.
Whispers of Israeli plans to “transfer” Palestinians across the border only deepened the anxiety, prompting Cairo to mobilise 40,000 troops in a show of unyielding resolve.
However, the GSF command centre will be a game-changer, analysts said.
“Egypt has been meticulous,” Gen. Mukhtar al-Ghabari, a former senior Egyptian army commander, told TNA.
“By insisting on a binding UN Security Council resolution to legitimise the force and its command structure, Cairo has wrapped the entire project in unbreakable legal armour,” he added.
In Al-Ghabari’s view, Egypt’s endgame is to deliver Gaza, intact and pacified, into the hands of the Palestinian Authority, thereby closing the chapter on Hamas’s armed control of the Strip.
A stable Gaza, he argued, is the most effective firewall Egypt can erect against any jihadist threats in northern Sinai.
Conversely, he added, a fortified Sinai becomes the ultimate guarantor that no armed faction can ever again turn Gaza into a launchpad against Egyptian soil.
Existential red lines
Egyptian army tanks rumble along the border with Gaza, their turrets trained in potential breaches, while underground sensors and drone patrols seal smuggling routes.
These enhancements, analysts argue, not only deter jihadist incursions but also assuage Israeli qualms, despite Jerusalem’s veto of Turkish participation, citing Ankara’s Hamas sympathies.
Troop pledges to the GSF remain fluid, with feverish huddles slated for the coming days to quantify specific commitments by participating states.
Nevertheless, beneath this bustle, there lies an undercurrent of caution.
Analysts point to the ease of deploying tanks and assembling headquarters, but they note the difficulty of building trust.
They describe the disarmament clause in US President Donald Trump’s 20-point Gaza ceasefire plan as the “most difficult”, especially with Hamas demonstrating intransigence and apparent rejection.
The group, still entrenched in much of Gaza, despite the ceasefire, has lambasted Resolution 2803, which legalised the GSF on 17 November, as an “international guardianship” ploy, vowing to retain its arsenal.
The weapons of resistance, it said in a statement on 18 November, echoing a longstanding mantra, are inexorably linked to the occupation’s persistence.
Meanwhile, Palestinian factions, in a unified rebuke, insisted that the GSF must confine itself to civilian protection and aid facilitation, without policing powers or disarmament enforcement, lest it should devolve into an “occupier’s proxy”.
Nonetheless, several seasoned Palestinian analysts warn that Hamas views complete disarmament not as a negotiable concession but as an existential red line.
In their assessment, the movement will never voluntarily surrender its last weapons, even under the most generous reconstruction package or governance deal.
That stubborn refusal, they argue, is the fault line on which every current ceasefire-and-reconstruction plan will eventually fracture.
“Hamas’s refusal to fully disarm will be nothing short of catastrophic for the Palestinian people, for the ceasefire, and for every phase that is supposed to follow,” veteran Palestinian political analyst Osama Shaath told TNA.
“I’ve said it from day one: the real test is not the ceasefire itself, but everything that comes after it,” he continued.
If the guns stay in Hamas’s hands and the status quo calcifies, he continued, reconstruction will remain a mirage, despair will deepen, and tens of thousands of Gazans—exhausted, homeless, and hopeless—will choose exile over another decade of siege and rubble.
For Shaath, the equation is merciless: no credible disarmament means no meaningful rebuilding, no lifting of the blockade, and no future worth staying for.
Israel’s parallel reluctance, on the other hand, compounds the peril.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has baulked at Trump’s phased withdrawal, demanding Hamas’s utter dissolution first and before anything else.
Saleh Salem is an Egyptian journalist
