Eight Nations Accuse Israel, Uganda to Send Troops to Gaza

Foreign ministers from eight Arab and Muslim countries issued a joint statement on Gaza on August 6, condemning Israeli strikes on health facilities, civilian infrastructure and civilians, and calling on the United Nations Security Council to take concrete action. For Belgrade, the issue is less distant than it looks on a map. It amounts to an attempt to settle a territory’s status through a Security Council decision and international forces under foreign command, the same logic Serbia knows from its own experience with Resolution 1244 and KFOR.

The statement was released by Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and signed by the top diplomats of the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Jordan, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The core claim made by the eight nations is legal rather than moral: they argue the continuing strikes breach Israel’s obligations under international law and under the comprehensive plan to end the conflict, undermining efforts to implement the plan’s second phase.

What the eight nations are asking of the Security Council

The ministers described protection of civilians, medical facilities and humanitarian workers, along with unimpeded delivery of aid across the Gaza Strip, as a legal obligation rather than a matter of goodwill. They called on the international community, and explicitly on the Security Council, to take measures ensuring Israel complies with international law and that those responsible for serious violations are held accountable.

The eight nations then did something Israeli diplomacy has spent years trying to prevent: they linked Gaza to three files Tel Aviv prefers to keep separate.

• settler attacks in the occupied West Bank
• settlement expansion and unilateral measures in Jerusalem
• any attempt to annex Palestinian territory or forcibly displace Palestinians

All three points were rejected in the same paragraph, alongside a repeated call for a two-state solution along the 1967 lines with East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state. It is a diplomatic channel that does not negotiate over Gaza itself, but preemptively shuts the door on any postwar arrangement turning into a permanent change of borders.

Kampala approves sending troops

That same day, Thursday, Uganda’s parliament passed a proposal from the defense minister and approved sending troops to the International Stabilization Force for Gaza. It is the first public sign that the country is ready to join the mission. So far only Morocco has pledged troops alongside it.

The force is envisioned as a 20,000 strong contingent under the command of US Major General Jasper Jeffers, proposed in February by the Board of Peace of US President Donald Trump. Jeffers said in May that the force would secure the conditions for peace after the war. Deployment, however, hinges on one condition: the stabilization force enters Gaza only once Israel’s phased military withdrawal is complete.

Who decides when foreign troops enter Gaza?

Formally the Board of Peace, in practice the Israeli government. The security cabinet approved last week the entry of a limited contingent of about 200 Moroccan and Ugandan troops into a pilot zone in Rafah, but every subsequent deployment of the force’s personnel requires separate approval from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yisrael Katz and Foreign Minister Gideon Saar.

We have already reported on how Tel Aviv conditioned its withdrawal from Gaza. Now Netanyahu has publicly denied agreeing to what Washington presents as settled. In a video posted on Facebook, he said Israel had not accepted the Board of Peace’s plan to disarm Hamas and that he had submitted his objections to American negotiators.

“We did not agree to that. That was not our draft.”

The point of contention is not whether Hamas should be disarmed, but in what order. The Board of Peace envisions gradual disarmament matched by a proportional Israeli withdrawal. Netanyahu wants disarmament completed before Israel gives up additional territory it took after the October 2025 ceasefire.

The European Union sided closer to the American draft than to the Arab eight in that dispute. High Representative Kaja Kallas called the plan, in a statement, “a key step to ensure Hamas is disarmed and never again poses a security threat to Israel,” framing the European view of the arrangement around a security guarantee, with no mention of the demands Doha raised the same day.

For the region, a concrete consequence follows. Ugandan and Moroccan troops in Rafah will be the first foreign contingent whose movement across a territory is approved by another country’s government rather than by the Security Council. If that pattern holds, it will set a precedent that future debates over peacekeeping mandates will cite far beyond the Middle East.