Egypt and the European Union are preparing to expand training of Palestinian police for deployment in Gaza under US President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan for the Strip, two diplomats and a foreign official briefed on the issue have told The Times of Israel.
The force, like many components of the US framework, remains largely aspirational, said the officials, who included an Arab and a European diplomat. They noted that its size, composition, command structure, deployment zones, and responsibilities have yet to be finalized.
But with the Trump plan now backed by a United Nations Security Council resolution, and as officials await the transition to its second phase, Cairo and Brussels are increasingly focused on building out the police force — mainly by training Palestinian officers ahead of deployment.
The Security Council resolution authorizes the establishment of a temporary International Stabilization Force in Gaza to help secure the border, ensure demilitarization, protect civilians and humanitarian operations, and support and work alongside “the newly trained and vetted Palestinian police force.”
Before the war, Gaza was policed by an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 officers serving under the auspices of Hamas, which has controlled the Strip since 2007, but is supposed to cede power under the Trump plan.
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In its place, the international community is seeking to install an armed Palestinian force tasked with day-to-day law enforcement among the Strip’s approximately two million inhabitants.
Even though much about the force remains unknown, including what its exact remit will be, where it will draw personnel from, and whether it can truly supplant Hamas, both Egypt and the EU are heartily pursuing leading roles in preparing the force for its eventual deployment.
Sources indicated that both view the police as a key component allowing them to exert influence on US-led planning for Gaza’s postwar management and wider future, including the possibility that the force will become a significant political player.
Cairo and Brussels, which have been involved in prior training of Palestinian police along with Jordan, are now working to add additional cohorts of officers to those pre-existing initiatives, primarily made up of Gazans, including former officers in the territory still on the Palestinian Authority payroll, the officials said.
Officials who spoke to the Times of Israel insisted that the new force will be free of Hamas-affiliated personnel, but a report this week quoting an unnamed Palestinian official indicated that members of the terror group could continue to police Gaza as part of the newly installed body.
Palestinians interact near concrete blocks marking the Yellow Line drawn by the Israeli military in Bureij, central Gaza Strip, on November 4, 2025. (Bashar Taleb / AFP)
“We want to deploy Gazans who have familiarity with the society,” the Arab diplomat said. “They know the places, they know where to go, they know the people. That’s very important in any police force.”
No waiting to train
Meanwhile, Egypt has already begun training police, according to the diplomat.
In August, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty announced after talks with PA Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa that Egypt and Jordan were preparing Palestinian security personnel to manage the Strip and avoid a postwar security vacuum, saying that lists had been finalized for police undergoing training in both countries.
Shortly after the ceasefire agreement was signed in October, Mustafa told Reuters that the PA had nominated some 5,500 Palestinians to be trained by Egypt for the new Gaza police force, with a goal of training at least 10,000 officers total.
According to the Arab diplomat, a US-backed initiative for Egyptian training of Palestinian security forces in Gaza was conceptualized as early as March 2024.
Jordan had a preexisting training program in cooperation with the PA and the United States Security Coordinator, the Jerusalem-based body that helps bolster security coordination between Israel and the PA. But it lacked the infrastructure to train more than 3,000 officers for Gaza, so Washington welcomed an Egyptian proposal for its police academy to train additional officers, the diplomat said, adding that USSC delegations visited Egypt repeatedly last year to coordinate the effort.
A Palestinian official told AFP this week that an initial group of more than 500 officers was trained in Cairo in March, and since September, the two-month courses have resumed to train hundreds more cadets.
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa (L) and Egypt’s Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty (C) attend a press conference on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing, August 18, 2025. (Khaled Desouki / AFP)
Christophe Bigot, the EU’s special representative for the Middle East peace process, is expected to arrive in Cairo “soon” for discussions on the bloc’s role in the police force, the Arab diplomat said.
Since the ceasefire and the UNSC resolution, European officials have sought a more active role in the training efforts.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told reporters recently that the EU “discussed whether the EU police support mission could take the lead in training the Palestinian police,” and welcomed a French pledge to provide 100 police trainers.
The European diplomat confirmed reports that the bloc wants to train up to 3,000 Palestinian police officers for deployment in Gaza under a program similar to its existing police support mission in the West Bank, EUPOL COPPS.
High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice President of the European Commission, Kaja Kallas, speaks during a Security Council meeting at the United Nations headquarters, September 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
The training would be funded by the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy budget, which pays for the EUPOL COPPS mission. Being that the trainee officers are already on the PA’s payroll, their salaries would be covered by the PA, which is heavily funded by Europe.
The European diplomat said that the EU hopes, “as part of implementing the Trump plan,” to use its two civilian missions in the area, EUPOL COPPS and the border mission EUBAM Rafah, by potentially expanding their mandates, though details on how remain unclear.
Who will serve?
No official could offer a precise breakdown of how many officers have already been trained or how many viable candidates are thought to remain.
The Arab diplomat said most of the Palestinian officers trained by Egypt for the force will be from Gaza, and a small fraction will be personnel from the West Bank who have family ties to the Strip.
According to the AFP report, Hamas and Fatah — the core of the PA whose security forces were violently toppled in Gaza by Hamas in 2007 — agreed in talks brokered by Egypt late last year that 5,000 of the postwar officers would be trained by Cairo, and 5,000 more would come from the existing Hamas police force in Gaza, a stipulation that would likely draw Israeli protests.
The Arab diplomat told The Times of Israel that they were unaware of any such arrangement, and the European diplomat said the EU mission would only train those who had been vetted and confirmed as having no affiliation with Hamas.
Israel has been targeting Hamas police officers throughout the war and treats them as part of Hamas’s security apparatus.
A recent Egyptian report citing officials stated that 9,000 Palestinian officers are being prepared for the new force, with some 3,000 having already been trained by Egypt, another 3,000 undergoing training in Jordan, and an additional 3,000 to be trained by the EU.
The Arab diplomat said Egypt is expected to train a further 2,000–3,000 officers.
Officials are hoping to draw additional cohorts from PA-affiliated officers in Gaza, the Arab diplomat added, noting that many of them may no longer be physically fit for frontline duty but could also serve in leadership or administrative roles.
Since Hamas ousted the PA in 2007, some 7,000 police officers are believed to have remained in the territory on the PA payroll.
Hamas members celebrate their capture of the Preventive Security headquarters in fighting Fatah loyalist security forces in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, June 14, 2007. (AP/Eyad Albaba/File)
Michael Milshtein, a senior researcher at Tel Aviv University’s Dayan Center and former head of Palestinian affairs in Israeli military intelligence, said there were likely scant numbers of officers actually fit for reintegration after nearly two decades away from police work.
“Until 2007, they numbered in the thousands,” he said. “But today, if you’re talking about people who actually still have basic fitness, a reasonable age, and the motivation to rejoin as police officers or security personnel in Gaza,” there are far fewer.
The European diplomat said the majority of the 3,000 officers it had proposed to train would come from Gaza and be trained in Egypt, though the exact site has not been finalized.
Vetting would be handled by Israel and the US to ensure recruits are not linked to Hamas and meet basic requirements, they added, while stressing that no deployment date could be given, as neither vetting nor training has begun, and EUPOL COPPS still needs to recruit additional trainers.
The police force is intended to deploy in parallel with the ISF, the Arab diplomat said. While the timeline for the ISF’s deployment remains undefined, it is expected to “emerge in the coming weeks,” they said. Both diplomats had heard discussions that the US hopes to deploy the ISF by early 2026, but were not aware of any official timeframe.
(From left) Officials from Qatar, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan, Indonesia, and the United Arab Emirates pose for a photo during a meeting to discuss the US-backed Gaza peace plan in Istanbul on November 3, 2025. (Ozan KOSE / AFP)
The exact division of responsibility between the ISF and the police remains unclear, but officials indicated that police would likely serve within the Palestinian population, which is largely concentrated on the Hamas-controlled side of Gaza that Israeli troops have withdrawn from.
“Countries that choose to contribute to the ISF don’t want to be directly in contact with the Palestinian population,” the Arab diplomat said. “They want the Palestinian police to be in direct contact with the Palestinian population. That’s the whole idea.”
The Washington Post reported over the weekend that countries considering sending troops to the ISF remain hesitant due to fear of armed confrontations with Gazans.
The Arab diplomat said that Jerusalem had not raised hackles over the makeup of the police. “There is no serious Israeli objection about the Palestinian forces,” they said, describing Israel as “very happy” with an initial draft of the UNSC resolution, which included the clauses on the ISF and the police force.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office did not respond to a request for comment on Israel’s view of the proposed police force.
The diplomat also did not expect extreme resistance from Hamas, noting that the group agreed to the establishment of the Palestinian technocrat committee meant to supervise the security apparatus in Gaza under the US plan.
Super troopers
Both Egypt and the EU apparently see the police’s role as a significant entry point for reaching Gazans on the ground and helping mold the Strip’s post-war recovery.
Brussels — which has struggled to influence policy during the two-year Gaza war amid internal splits — sees police training as one way to gain influence over Gaza’s future security architecture, the European diplomat said.
It could also play an important role in facilitating a gradual, non-violent transition of power in Gaza by providing a viable non-Hamas security presence on the ground, the Arab diplomat noted.
“The best way to end Hamas control of Gaza is to bring an alternative… [The police force] can go and peacefully take control, get acquainted with the area, with the place. They are not Hamas, which is good,” they said.
A third foreign official likewise saw the force as capable of eventually shifting control away from Hamas, noting that personnel in the apparatus “could form the next leadership of Gaza. From those security services, from among those ranks, could be the next head of intelligence in Gaza, for example.”
However, Milshtein remained unconvinced.
“If we reach an almost utopian situation where Hamas loses its influence in Gaza, and certainly if it disarms or collapses militarily or politically, then we could talk about a reality in which these local actors might slowly start to gain power. But we’re not there,” he cautioned.
Hamas gunmen stand near a International Red Cross (ICRC) vehicle, as a search for the bodies of killed Israeli hostages takes place, in Gaza City on November 2, 2025. (Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
Cops and robbers
Today, Hamas is trying to reassert its authority in the 47 percent of the Strip it controls, using armed operatives to execute alleged dissidents, but also to secure aid shipments and public order. Some are police and some are members of its military force, both of which were devastated in the war.
Challenging that control in some areas are local armed militias opposed to the group’s rule, some of which cooperated with Israel during the war, and some of which continue to offer protection to civilians in areas of Gaza still held by the IDF.
At least one report has indicated that the groups could be integrated into the police force.
Hussam al-Astal, a former PA security officer who is today an anti-Hamas militia leader in Khan Younis, told the Kan public broadcaster that he recently received messages from American representatives indicating that his group and other such militias, including the Abu Shabab organization in Rafah, will take part in Gaza’s future under the police force.
The Arab diplomat could not confirm whether militias would be included, but said Egypt had not trained any. American and Israeli officials declined to comment on whether militia fighters would be integrated into the police force.
Hossam al-Astal (center) is seen surrounded by armed members of his group, ‘Strike Force Against Terror,’ in an undated picture from the Gaza Strip posted on Facebook. (Courtesy: Hossam al-Astal via Facebook)
Milshtein warned that such groups are both meager in size and have a toxic reputation as criminals, narcotics runners, and Israeli collaborators.
“If you take all of them together on a very, very good day, we’re talking about a few hundred. Maybe, maybe a few low thousands at most,” he said. He charged that Abu Shabab members have been linked to ISIS, and argued that bringing local militias into a police force would have “obvious” negative effects.
“It doesn’t matter if they’re getting money from the Emirates, from Egypt, from the Americans, or weapons from us. These people are, fundamentally, gang members…to say that they can present themselves as an alternative to Hamas is a complete exaggeration,” Milshtein said.
