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JERUSALEM: US Vice President JD Vance warned Wednesday of the tough task ahead in disarming Hamas and building a peaceful future for Gaza, as Washington sought to reassure its ally Israel over the next steps in its ambitious ceasefire deal.
Vance met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the second day of a trip to Israel, part of a diplomatic blitz in support of the US-brokered plan to end the fighting, recover hostages and, eventually, rebuild the devastated Palestinian territory.
“We have a very, very tough task ahead of us, which is to disarm Hamas but rebuild Gaza, to make life better for the people of Gaza, but also to ensure that Hamas is no longer a threat to our friends in Israel,” Vance said.
Vance had kicked off the three-day visit on Tuesday by opening the Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC) in southwest Israel, where US and allied troops will work with Israeli forces to monitor the truce and to oversee aid to Gaza.
Turkish troops?
“A lot of our Israeli friends working together with a lot of Americans to actually mediate this entire ceasefire process, to get some of the critical infrastructure off the ground, ” Vance said, after talks with Netanyahu in Jerusalem.
Vance cited an “international security force” as one of the bodies that would have to be set up. Under US President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan, this military mission would keep the peace in Gaza as Israel withdraws.
Several US allies are considering joining the force, but no American troops would be on the ground inside Gaza, instead coordinating from the CMCC in Kiryat Gat, Israel.
Reports that Israel’s outspoken critic and regional rival Turkiye could provide troops have rattled Israeli opinion.
Netanyahu said decisions on the new security force would be made in discussion with the United States, but on Turkiye’s role he said: “I have very strong opinions about that. You want to guess what they are?“
’Great optimism’
Despite an eruption of violence on Sunday, when two soldiers were killed and Israel responded with a deadly wave of air strikes, Vance expressed “great optimism” that the ceasefire would hold and the plan to end the war proceed.
Netanyahu and his wife Sara welcomed Vance and the US Second Lady Usha Vance to his office and the couples sat down for breakfast, followed by a working meeting and a televised news conference.
The Israeli leader, who has been criticized by some domestic opponents for accepting the US-backed ceasefire before Hamas was fully destroyed and before all the remains of deceased hostages are returned, defended the deal.
“We’ve been able to do two things. Put the knife up to Hamas’s throat. That was the military effort guided by Israel,” he said, thanking Trump for his diplomatic efforts in the broader Middle East, smoothing relations with Israel’s neighbors.
“And the other effort was to isolate Hamas and the Arab and Muslim world, which I think the president did brilliantly with his team. So those two things produced the hostages,” Netanyahu said.
Vance also championed the Gaza deal’s role as a “critical piece in unlocking the Abraham Accords” — a Trump administration plan to build relations between Israel and its former foes in the Arab world.
’Very, very fragile’
Israel responded to its soldiers’ deaths on Sunday with an intense wave of bombings that the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry said killed 45 Palestinians. Hamas denies any role in the killings.
Despite the violence, Hamas has continued to hand over the remains of deceased hostages in small numbers as part of the ceasefire deal, and Palestinians have welcomed the truce, their cities lying in ruins.
Displaced civilian Imran Skeik, 34, living in a tent in Al-Saraya Square in the Al-Rimal neighborhood in Gaza City, told AFP: “The situation is much better — the war has stopped, and there are no sounds of bombs and shelling like before.
“We hope the ceasefire continues and that Israel and Hamas both stick to it. We’ve started to get some rest, but there are still many problems. Will we have to stay in tents — another kind of suffering?“
Hostage remains
The Israeli military said Wednesday the remains of two more hostages returned the day before had been identified as Aryeh Zalmanovich and Master Sergeant Tamir Adar.
Zalmanovich, 85 at the time of his death, was abducted from his home in kibbutz Nir Oz and killed in captivity on November 17, 2023, the military said.
The soldier Adar, 38 when he died, was killed while fighting to defend Nir Oz on October 7, 2023, and his body was taken captive, it said.
The militants have now released 15 of the 28 hostage bodies pledged to be returned under the deal, but Hamas has said the search is hampered by the level of destruction in the territory.
The war, triggered by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, has killed at least 68,229 people in Gaza, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, figures the UN considers credible.
Hamas’s 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

TYRE: Nearly a year after a truce was meant to bring calm to Lebanon’s border with Israel, tens of thousands of people have not yet returned to ruined towns in the south, kept away by deadly Israeli strikes and slim prospects of rebuilding.
Among them, 50-year-old farmer Zeinab Mehdi, who fled her home in the border town of Naqoura last year when the war between Israel and the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah intensified, joining more than a million people fleeing the south’s hilly villages.
Mehdi, like many of those who left, placed her hopes in a US-brokered ceasefire agreed on November 26, 2024 that ordered hostilities to stop “to enable civilians on both sides of (the border) to return safely to their lands and homes.”

TRUCE DID NOT END ISRAELI STRIKES
But while rockets are no longer launched from Lebanon, Israel has kept up strikes and troops occupying hilltops in Lebanon still flatten homes, according to residents, Lebanese officials and rights organizations.
Israel says its post-truce strikes target Hezbollah’s efforts to re-establish military posts or train new fighters, accusing the group last week of hiding “terrorist activity under civilian disguise in Lebanon.” Israel said in February that it needed to keep forces in Lebanon “to defend Israeli citizens” before territory is fully handed over to Lebanese troops.
Hezbollah denies that it is seeking to reconstitute its military force in south Lebanon and says Israel is striking the area to deliberately keep civilians from ever returning home.
“Whatever house was still standing or land was still in good shape, they razed,” said Mehdi, who now works on a farming project funded by the UN Women’s agency in the coastal city of Tyre. “They pulled water pumps out from the ground and destroyed them. All the irrigation I had in the ground is broken. I have nothing.”
IMAGES SHOW POST-TRUCE DESTRUCTION
Mona Yacoubian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, described the pace of strikes as Lebanon’s “new normal.” Observers have worried that it offers a preview of how this month’s fragile ceasefire in Gaza could play out: steady strikes without full-blown war.
On October 11, Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon hit construction yards approximately 40 km (25 miles) from the border, destroying more than 300 vehicles including bulldozers and excavators.
The Israeli military said it had struck “engineering machinery used to re-establish terrorist infrastructure.” Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun said it hit civilian facilities.
Public Works Studio, a Lebanese research organization, said there had been dozens of deadly attacks on people attempting to return home and using excavators to clear the rubble of their homes or filling water tanks on their rooftops.
Reuters reviewed satellite imagery of Naqoura provided by Planet Labs showing the town on January 19, approximately two months after the ceasefire came into force, and on September 14.
Reuters counted at least two dozen structures in Naqoura in the January image that appeared to have been destroyed by September, when the image showed grayish-white marks where the structures once stood. Given the buildings were intact in January, this indicated the buildings were destroyed in strikes, rather than in rebuilding efforts.
Asked about the images showing destruction in Naqoura and in another village, Houla, the Israeli military said it conducted precise operations against Hezbollah.
“The two mentioned villages contained numerous terrorist infrastructures belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organization — located inside civilian buildings, underground, and within dense agricultural terrain,” the military said in a statement to Reuters.
’STILL LIVING IN A WAR’
More than 64,000 people remain displaced in Lebanon, including nearly 1,000 who fled areas this month where Israel carried out strikes, the International Organization for Migration says.
Some still live in schools in Tyre.
Mounifa Aidibeh, 47, transformed her catering business into a community kitchen when Israel sharply escalated its strikes on September 23, 2024, aiming to break Hezbollah and beginning what Lebanese call the “66-day war.”
Aidibeh’s Mhanna community kitchen, also supported by the UN Women’s agency, uses the harvest from Mehdi’s farming to make 1,350 meals daily for the displaced in the schools.
“We thought when the 66-day war is done, we’d of course stop. We didn’t expect people wouldn’t go back to their homes,” Aidibeh said as cooks, also displaced, tended to vats of simmering onions.
Persistent displacement is just one sign hostilities never concluded. Aidibeh pointed to a recent strike in the town of Bint Jbeil that killed children, Israel’s warnings to stay away from southern villages and the daily buzz of Israeli drones overhead.
“The war never ended for it to come back – we’re still living in a war,” she said. “The war will end when Israel leaves Lebanon. When it totally leaves Lebanon. When there’s no drone in the sky, when (Israel) doesn’t hit a house every day.”
Israel said in August that it would be willing to reduce its troop presence in Lebanon if the Lebanese army takes steps to disarm Hezbollah.

STILL NO MAJOR RECONSTRUCTION
The World Bank estimates Lebanon needs $11 billion to rebuild homes and infrastructure destroyed in the war. But major reconstruction efforts have yet to begin, with some countries conditioning recovery funds on progress to disarm Hezbollah.
Bidaya Sleiman, 41, was elected to Houla’s municipal council this year but cannot live in the border town since an Israeli strike destroyed her home last year.
She visits weekly to support the township’s modest efforts to revive public services.
“Through meeting up with people and listening to their complaints, I say the war is still ongoing and the pain of war is continuing,” she told Reuters.
Israeli strikes hit Houla this month, and satellite imagery from Planet Labs dated September 24 showed widespread new damage in the town compared to a February image. With winter approaching, Sleiman said needs for shelter will grow — but first, residents want attacks to stop.
“The first thing people want is security. Because whatever we can offer these people, or whatever the state or authorities offer in compensation – if there’s no security then there’s something missing,” she said.