US special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and Admiral Brad Cooper, the head of the US military’s Central Command, visited an Israeli army post in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, Fox News reported, as US troops began arriving in Israel as part of a force that will help oversee the ceasefire.
Witkoff and Cooper were joined in Gaza by IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, as seen in a photo published by Fox News.
Fox reported that the visit was to confirm that the agreed-upon withdrawal as part of the deal with Hamas was complete.
Confirming the visit, Cooper, in a statement, said he “just returned from a visit inside Gaza to inform how we are moving forward to establish a CENTCOM-led Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC) that will synchronize activities to support post-conflict stabilization.”
“America’s sons and daughters in uniform are answering the call to deliver peace in the Middle East in support of the Commander in Chief’s direction in this historic moment,” he said.
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“This great effort will be achieved with no US boots on the ground in Gaza,” Cooper added.
A Palestinian man pushes his bike as he and others make their way to Gaza City through the Netzarim corridor, from Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip, on October 11, 2025. (Eyad BABA / AFP)
An ABC News report, citing two officials, said on Saturday that an American military team of 200 people would arrive over the weekend, flying in from the US and other bases across the Middle East.
Cooper arrived in Israel on Friday, following Witkoff, who had arrived a day earlier along with US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, after spearheading efforts to secure the first phase of the ceasefire and hostage release agreement between Israel and Hamas, which had been negotiated in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, over the previous several days.
Trump is set to land in Israel on Monday morning and address the Knesset before departing that same day for an “in and out” visit, officials confirmed, amid the deadline for Hamas to release the hostages under the Gaza ceasefire deal he helped secure.
Trump announced Wednesday that the breakthrough deal to halt the fighting was reached after the United States and mediators in the region pressured both Israel and Hamas to end the two-year-long war sparked by the Palestinian terror group’s devastating October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
US envoy Steve Witkoff (third from left) and US President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner (right) flank Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a cabinet meeting on October 9, 2025. (Maayan Toaf / GPO)
That push sealed an agreement on a first phase that would free the remaining living Israeli hostages within days in exchange for the release of close to 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, and a pullback of IDF troops in Gaza.
The Israel Prison Service said Saturday that it had begun transferring prisoners to two jails ahead of their release as part of the Gaza ceasefire deal.
The president’s initial 20-point plan calls for Israel to maintain an open-ended military presence inside Gaza, along its border with Israel. An international force, comprised largely of troops from Arab and Muslim countries, would be responsible for security inside Gaza, though the timeline is unclear.
The IDF has said it will continue to operate defensively from the roughly 50% of Gaza — most of which is outside of urban areas — it still controls after pulling back to the agreed-upon lines. In reality, the IDF is not holding all of that territory with ground troops, with many of its posts positioned closer to the Israeli border.
This map published by the IDF on October 10, 2025, shows the IDF’s deployment in Gaza following a ceasefire. (Israel Defense Forces)
Witkoff told officials on Friday that the US would establish a center in Israel to coordinate issues concerning Gaza until there is a permanent government, according to a readout of the meeting by a person who attended it and obtained by AP. Another official who was not authorized to speak to the media confirmed the contents of the readout.
The readout said no US soldiers will be on the ground in Gaza, but there will be people who report to the US, and aircraft might operate over the Strip for monitoring. Egyptian, Qatari, Turkish, and probably Emirati military officials will be embedded in the team, likely based out of Egypt.
A different official who also spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media said that a group — including the US, Qatar, Egypt, and other countries and organizations — would be part of a mission to locate and identify hostage bodies and avoid previous issues with body misidentification. It was unclear if the 200 US troops coming to Israel would be part of that group or a separate initiative.
Meanwhile, Israel is bracing for the long-awaited return of hostages kept captive for more than two years.
“It’s been a few nights that we can’t sleep. We want them back and we feel that everything is just hanging on a thread,” Maayan Eliasi, a resident of Tel Aviv, said at a gathering at the city’s hostage square. “I can’t heal. None of us can.”
Celebrations at Hostage Square in Tel Aviv as negotiators reach a deal to secure the release of all hostages from Gaza. October 9, 2025. (Chaim Goldberg/FLASH90)
Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are holding 48 hostages, including 47 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023. They include the bodies of at least 26 confirmed dead by the IDF. Twenty are believed to be alive, and there are grave concerns for the well-being of two others, Israeli officials have said. Among the bodies held by Hamas is an IDF soldier killed in Gaza in 2014.
Questions remain over who will govern Gaza as Israeli troops gradually pull back and whether Hamas will disarm, as called for in the agreement. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who unilaterally ended a truce in March, has suggested Israel could resume its offensive if Hamas fails to disarm.
“If it’s achieved the easy way — so be it. If not, it will be achieved the hard way,” he said Friday, pledging that the next stage would bring Hamas’s disarmament.
In Gaza, relief, reckoning
Tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians loaded cars, carts, and bicycles with belongings and made their way back to their neighborhoods on Saturday, weaving through streets shrouded in dust as bulldozers began to claw through the wreckage of two years of bombardment.
Aid groups were preparing to scale up relief work, one of the many challenges ahead as a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas entered its second day.
“When people get there, they’re going to find rubble. They’ll find that their homes and their neighborhoods have been reduced to dust,” UNICEF spokesperson Tess Ingram told The Associated Press on Friday.
Palestinian women holding their children make their way to Gaza City from Nuseirat, October 11, 2025. (Photo by Eyad BABA / AFP)
As the ceasefire appeared to hold, her organization and its partners are urging Israel to reopen more crossings and allow aid to flow into Gaza more freely.
The Defense Ministry’s Coordinator of Government Activities (COGAT) said that more than 500 trucks entered Gaza on Friday, through Israel’s crossings with the Strip, almost twice the daily average, although many crossings remain closed.
The days since the announcement of the ceasefire have moved swiftly. Israel’s military confirmed it had taken effect on Friday and said the 48 hostages still in Gaza would be freed by Monday. A UN official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss details not yet public, said Israel also approved expanded aid deliveries starting Sunday.
The steps mark key steps toward ending the war ignited by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 66,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters.
The fighting has flattened entire neighborhoods and displaced around 90% of Gaza’s more than 2 million people, some of them multiple times.
This handout satellite image courtesy of Vantor, shows a view of the destruction in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on October 10, 2025. (Stephen A. Wood/Satellite image ©2025 Vantor/AFP)
The scale of destruction will likely become clearer as the military withdraws to the ceasefire lines. More than three out of every four buildings have been destroyed, the UN said in September, creating a volume of debris equivalent to 25 Eiffel Towers, much of it likely toxic.
A February assessment by the European Union and World Bank estimated $49 billion in damage, including $16 billion to housing and $6.3 billion to the health sector.
The death toll is expected to rise as more bodies that couldn’t be retrieved during Israel’s offensive are found.
