TEL AVIV, Israel — On Oct. 30, 2023, just three weeks after the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel sparked Israel's war in Gaza, U.S. security officials stationed in Jerusalem drew up a plan for what should be done when the war ends, according to a copy of the U.S. proposal obtained by NPR.
The memo, titled "Gaza Exit Strategy and the Morning After," made two main recommendations to the Biden administration: to immediately set up Palestinian and international security forces to prevent Hamas from resurging in postwar Gaza, and to create a "dramatic change of Israel's policy in the West Bank" that would rein in Israeli settlers and ensure a political horizon for creating a Palestinian state.
Now, more than three months into a declared ceasefire, the Trump administration has not yet set up security forces in Gaza, though Trump in mid-February is expected to announce an international stabilization force with thousands of troops from several countries to deploy in Gaza, along with efforts to raise billions of dollars for reconstruction, a U.S. official with knowledge of the subject, but who was not authorized to speak to the media, told NPR. And the U.S. has tolerated Israeli settler violence and Israeli government measures that undermine prospects for Palestinian statehood.
Even under the Biden administration, efforts to prepare a new Palestinian security force to replace Hamas in postwar Gaza ran into problems.
While the Gaza war raged on, U.S. security officials expanded an initiative to train hundreds of Palestinian Authority Security Forces in advanced law enforcement techniques, including SWAT training, according to three former U.S. military and law enforcement officers involved in the effort.
But those efforts were eventually hamstrung by concerns from both Israel and the U.S. that security training given to Palestinians could be turned against Israel, according to the former U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive security matter.
This is the story of failed U.S. efforts over the last two years to train a Palestinian police force ready to take over Gaza the day the war ends — and a look at previously unpublished U.S. plans conceived in the first weeks of the war that foretold, rather than circumvented, the pitfalls of the security forces being proposed now.
Failed U.S. security training
In the first year of the Gaza war, in 2024, U.S. officials proposed taking thousands of vetted Palestinians out of Gaza and training them in Jordan and Egypt.
"The intent was that we would have trained Palestinians to be trained during an eight-to-nine-month period and then integrate them with an international security force and build additional capacity," said one of the officials involved in formulating the proposals.
Plans to train Gazans in Egypt were quickly scrapped because of a lack of facilities for trainees.
Instead, about 700 Palestinian Authority security officers from the West Bank were SWAT-trained in Jordan and returned to the West Bank. But the training quality was mediocre, the former U.S. officials said, in part because the Palestinian officers had no access to live-fire training in the West Bank to keep up their skills, due to Israeli restrictions on using ammunition.
"We walked away very unimpressed," said one of the former American defense trainers. "One guy who went didn't bring his glasses and he could not see the [shooting] targets. And this was Palestinian police we wanted to send to Gaza."
Their training is now outdated, say the former officials, because the war in Gaza continued for longer than expected.
In addition, about 100 Palestinian security officers located in Egypt when the war broke out received security training there, according to a European diplomat who did not have permission to brief the media and spoke on condition of anonymity. But nearly 3,000 Palestinian police officers are needed for Gaza, and there is not yet an agreement to begin training them, the diplomat said.
Under the ceasefire reached in October, Arab countries including Egypt as well as the European Union have agreed to train Palestinian civil police to be deployed alongside an "international stabilization force." Indonesia on Tuesday said it was preparing thousands of troops for possible deployment, but their mandate is still unclear, other countries have not yet committed troops for that international force, and Israel's prime minister has objected to the participation of some countries, including Qatar and Turkey.
Instead of stabilizing the West Bank through strengthening the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority in the aftermath of the war, as the 2023 plan recommended, Israel took steps this week to strip some powers from the Palestinian Authority and increase Israel's grip on the West Bank. Israeli settler violence and settlement expansion has grown, and daily Palestinian life has been choked by movement restrictions and military raids.
Digital policing
Even before the war, in 2022, U.S. security advisers stationed in Jerusalem circulated a proposal to teach Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces digital policing and cyberdefense, according to two former U.S. officials involved in the proposal at the time.
The proposal offered to train Palestinian forces in software sold by the Israeli digital forensics company Cellebrite to analyze data taken from confiscated electronic devices. It also proposed training them in network analysis tools like ArcGIS, which can build threat maps from digital data, and i2 Analyst's Notebook, which detects patterns from vast volumes of information, according to two people who saw the proposal.
The plan encountered pushback and was shelved. "If you give these tools to the PA, you're giving them a tool that is very easily abused," according to a former U.S. official who was critical of the idea.
But in October 2025, with a new ceasefire in effect, the nixed cyberdefense proposal was dusted off, according to one of the people who saw the proposal and a former U.S. official.
The proposal would teach Palestinians in the West Bank the same tools for cyberdefense in order to protect critical infrastructure, like databases and police offices, according to the same two people.
The initiative would also train Palestinians belonging to newly formed anti-Hamas militias in Gaza that Israel has been arming to counter Hamas through "network analysis to feed intel and targeting cycles," according to one of the people familiar with the plans but who declined to be named, citing professional risk.
Israel wants to incorporate Gaza clans it worked with into a future police force, according to the European diplomat. But the diplomat noted that the European Union, which would support the police training, opposes this, as "those types have criminal records." For example, Yasser Abu Shabab, the now-deceased head of one of the gangs, reportedly escaped prison, where he was jailed for drug smuggling. The gang he once led has emerged as one of the main Israeli-backed militias in Gaza and has also been accused of the widespread looting of food aid.
A security vacuum in Gaza
Hamas supports handing over security responsibilities to a new Palestinian police force but insists that the force absorb thousands of police officers Hamas hired in Gaza in the years preceding the war.
"The police that are there now cannot be forsaken because they are part of the Palestinian security apparatus," said senior Hamas official Hossam Badran in an interview with NPR.
In the absence of a new police force on the ground in Gaza, masked militants, presumably affiliated with Hamas, have fanned out throughout the part of Gaza they control, manning checkpoints and reinforcing their presence in Gaza — filling the very security vacuum that U.S. officials have wanted to prevent.
"Once the IDF departs, a power vacuum could ensue," the 2023 U.S. memo warns, using the formal name for the Israeli military. "Left unaddressed, this vacuum could enable remaining Hamas/[Islamic Jihad] forces to regain control or other hostiles to exploit the vacuum."
Aya Batrawy contributed reporting from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
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