Key Points and Summary – Turkish “peacekeepers” in Gaza would inflame conflict, given Ankara’s ties to Hamas and Ottoman-era baggage, and urges closing UNRWA for enabling indoctrination and weapons storage.
-With Gaza stabilization stalling, it proposes a strategic swap: replace UNFICYP with Israeli peacekeepers in Cyprus—leveraging Israel–Cyprus interoperability and lowering costs—while exploring Greek-led monitoring on Armenia’s Turkish border to oust lingering Russian forces.
An Israeli air force F-15I Ra’am taxis down the runway during Blue Flag 2019 at Uvda Air Base, Israel, November 4, 2019. The U.S. and Israel have a strong and enduring military-to-military partnership built on trust and developed over decades of cooperation. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Kyle Cope)
-This is a chance for the Trump administration to break legacy “zombie” missions, curb UNRWA’s educational monopoly, and harden regional deterrence—contending only expansionist regimes should fear transparent Israeli/Greek monitoring.
Instead of Turkish Peacekeepers in Gaza, Send Israeli Peacekeepers to Cyprus
While the Israel-Hamas ceasefire in the Gaza Strip remains shaky, the Trump administration is pushing ahead with its plans to rebuild Gaza.
Some White House initiatives are welcome. However, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), an organization that allowed its co-option by Hamas and other terror groups, should have no role in post-war Gaza.
While UNRWA’s current leadership depicts its services as essential, it ignores its founding directors, who warned in 1951 that UNRWA should disband by 1954, lest it become a moral hazard that did more harm than good.
With newer bodies supplanting UNRWA’s reconstruction and aid roles, the UN’s specialized agency for Palestinians seeks to protect its educational monopoly.
President Donald Trump should shut down that prospect quickly, both because of how UNRWA allowed its schools to become storage depots for Hamas weaponry and because of its decades-long curricula emphasizing incitement over peace and antisemitism over tolerance.
Alas, UNRWA’s rehabilitation is not the only bad idea that outside forces seek to foist on Gaza or use to undermine the Trump peace plan.
The Challenge
As Israel withdraws from the center of the Gaza Strip, Trump is soliciting other countries that might play a role and contribute troops. Many are reticent: They understand what Western media is afraid to say.
Gaza’s population was complicit. Palestinian civilians who participated in the initial attack on Israel profited from hiding hostages. Doctors and nurses knew about tunnels under hospitals. Hamas, meanwhile, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, has gone to ground but is far from defeated. The forest fire might be 90 percent contained, but the last ten percent will be the most challenging.
The problem is that some countries, such as the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia, which Trump has approached to contribute troops, bring water to extinguish the embers.
Other countries, like Turkey, bring gasoline to fan the flames.
Allowing Turkey to send its forces to Gaza would light a fuse that could engulf the region, maybe not in a month or a year, but certainly within a decade or two. First, Turkey has a history in the area. While President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and perhaps Tom Barrack, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey, lionize the Ottoman Empire, the history of Turkish atrocities throughout its former domains creates baggage to which the White House remains blind.
Second, Turkey’s intelligence service supports Hamas, both in its religious extremism and in its calls for Israel’s eradication. To allow Turkish troops into Gaza will mean empowering Hamas with money and equipment to take on Israel, Egypt, and Jordan, all of whom the Muslim Brotherhood seeks to conquer or overthrow.
Still, while Turkey may use Trump’s lack of historical awareness and his uncritical embrace of Erdoğan to establish a beachhead, regional states should seize upon the new willingness to cross traditional redlines to resolve other longstanding crises.
Israel occupied Gaza in its Six-Day War with Egypt, and controlled the strip until 2005, when Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon withdrew Israeli forces unilaterally. Thirty-eight years was long, but Turkey’s ongoing occupation of northern Cyprus now extends into its sixth decade.
Nor is Turkey’s occupation inconsequential: The area Turkey occupies is more than nine times the size of the Gaza Strip. A United Nations force divides Cyprus from the Turkish-occupied zone. The observer mission continues, but the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) has become the poster child for UN zombie missions rather than an effective peacekeeping mechanism.
A Better Idea
By seeking to insert Turkish forces into Gaza, Erdoğan waived the traditional prohibition on states’ peacekeeping in their own neighborhood. That opens new opportunities for Trump to broker regional peace by encouraging creative new peacekeeping deployments.
For example, he might propose that Israel replace UNFICYP. Israel and Cyprus are democracies, allies, and economic and security partners.
Their militaries are interoperable. While the UN hires British, Argentine, and Slovakian troops and Irish and Chinese policemen to serve in Cyprus, Israelis would be more effective, economical, and welcome.
Nor is Cyprus the only country where Washington should push for a change of legacy peacekeeping and border force operations.
Armenia is now firmly a Western nation, but it still hosts a Russian military base and a border force, a legacy of Cold War days when its frontier with NATO-member Turkey was a potential geopolitical flashpoint.
Today, the Russians have outstayed their welcome, yet Armenians are wary of Turkey. Greece—which, like Armenia, embraces Orthodox Christianity and a pro-Western outlook—would be a natural contributor country for a replacement peacekeeping and monitoring role on the Turkish-Armenian border.
On Mount Pentadaktylos, which towers above the Cypriot capital Nicosia, Turkish soldiers painted a 1,400-foot-long flag, visible from space, to celebrate Turkey’s occupation. Fortunately, the Turkish zone’s flag, like Israel’s, has a white background and two horizontal strips.
All it would take would be a few thousand gallons of blue paint to transform the flag into Israel’s, marking its new peacekeeping and monitoring base.
Not only could Trump bolster his case for the Nobel Prize if he breaks the more than half-century deadlock in Cyprus, but his family could also make a handsome profit by investing in blue paint and, for the Armenian border, Greek flags.
It would be win-win for Cyprus and Armenia. Indeed, only regimes that fear honest monitoring and seek to hide their expansionist ambitions would oppose the Israeli and Greek roles.
About the Author: Dr. Michael Rubin
Michael Rubin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum. The opinions and views expressed are his own. A former Pentagon official, Dr. Rubin has lived in post-revolution Iran, Yemen, and both pre- and postwar Iraq. He also spent time with the Taliban before 9/11. For more than a decade, he taught classes at sea on the Horn of Africa and the Middle East, covering conflicts, culture, and terrorism to deployed US Navy and Marine units. The views expressed are the author’s own.
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EMIP
November 1, 2025 at 2:28 pm
A ludicrous analogy between peacekeeping in Gaza and Cyprus which exists only in the author’s neo-con mind. Only Michael Rubin would suggest something that would be guaranteed to start a war between Türkiye and Israel. But perhaps that’s what Rubin would like to see happen while Israel still has a steadily diminishing edge in battlefield technology if not in numbers.
Ergun Kirlikovali
November 1, 2025 at 8:49 pm
The Ottoman Empire ruled the area where Israel wreaking havoc right now for 400+ years with relative peace. Israel, on the other hand, created nothing but death and destruction in the area since 1948 with its blatantly genocidal policies. And Rubin calls it “the Ottoman baggage.” Don’t you think Rubin should have called it “the Israel baggage” in all fairness?
Yannis Stylianou
November 1, 2025 at 9:32 pm
Exists in my mind as well!
lisa
November 2, 2025 at 2:45 am
“Our army is the steel-like embodiment of Turkish unity, Turkish strength and ability, and Turkish patriotism.” -ATATURK-.
Ali Turker
November 3, 2025 at 1:32 am
What an ignorant report to expect the people of Cyprus to accept Isreal whose leaders and military are wanted for war crimes and genocide to act as peacekeepers. Only those fixated with a twisted agenda chose to ignore international law. Furthermore Northern Cyprus is occupied by Turkish Cypriots who have equal rights – the notion of Turkey occupying the north yet again shows fabricated ignorance serving an agenda which aims to push NATO’s second most powerful nation against the best interests of the US hence weakening NATO. The cost of risking Türkiye’s partnership is one NATO can ill afford.