Morocco signed an agreement in Rabat on July 15 to join the planned International Stabilization Force (ISF) for Gaza — a postwar security framework taking shape while the peace it is meant to support remains unsettled.
The signing was attended by Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita, senior defence officials, Board of Peace envoy for Gaza Nickolay Mladenov and the force’s commander, Moroccan state media reported, according to Reuters.
Rabat plans to contribute senior officers, police and gendarmerie personnel and a military field hospital, joining Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kosovo and Albania among five nations committed to the US-backed force. None had deployed as of July 15. Officials familiar with Board of Peace planning told The Times of Israel that Morocco is slated to deploy first, securing a projected humanitarian pilot zone in southern Gaza.
The UN Security Council authorized the ISF in November 2025 to protect civilians, support demilitarization and accompany a gradual Israeli withdrawal. Many of those conditions remain unmet: talks in Cairo on the ceasefire’s second phase — Hamas’s disarmament, Israeli troop withdrawal, a Palestinian technocratic administration — ended with little progress, Reuters reported.
The truce has suppressed large-scale combat, not the killing. Israeli strikes on July 15 killed four Palestinians, including a six-year-old girl, health officials said; the Israeli military said it targeted a Hamas militant. More than 1,100 Palestinians, most of them civilians according to Gaza health officials, and four Israeli soldiers have died since October 2025.
Gaza is thus acquiring the institutions of a peace that does not yet exist — a security architecture assembling faster than the political bargain it is built to protect.
