Middle East crisis live: Israel says it will maintain ‘security control’ of Gaza after war | Israel-Gaza war

We are restarting our coverage of the ongoing crisis in the Middle East, with Israel’s war on Gaza continuing and the Syrian rebel groups scrambling to form a transitional government in the wake of the fall of the Assad regime.

Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, has said his country’s forces will maintain “security control” over the devastated Gaza Strip, even after the war is over, with Israeli soldiers able to act with “full freedom of action” over the territory.

In a post on X, Katz, the former foreign minister, said:

After we defeat Hamas’ military and governmental power in Gaza, Israel will have security control over Gaza with full freedom of action, just as it did in Judea and Samaria (an Israeli term for the occupied West Bank).

We will not allow any terrorist organization against Israeli communities and Israeli citizens from Gaza. We will not allow a return to the reality of before October 7th.

The question of Gaza’s post-war governance has remained unresolved, a year after the 7 October 7 Hamas-led attack, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage.

Katz’s predecessor Yoav Gallant, who was sacked in November, was opposed to any prolonged Israeli control of Gaza, from which Israel withdrew troops and settlers in 2005 after decades of direct rule. Hamas seized full control of Gaza in 2007.

In May, then as defence minister, Gallant said that he would “not agree to the establishment of an Israeli military administration in Gaza”. “Israel must not have civilian control over the Gaza Strip,” Gallant said at the time, urging the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to devise a post-war plan for the territory.

In other developments:

• The head of the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism, a UN investigative body, has written to Syria’s new authorities to express a willingness to engage with them and to travel to Syria to secure evidence that could implicate top officials of the former government. “There is now the possibility of accessing evidence of the highest level of (the) regime,” he said. The comments come after the head of a US-based Syrian advocacy organization on Monday said that a mass grave outside of Damascus contained the bodies of at least 100,000 people killed by the former government of ousted President Bashar al-Assad.

• German diplomats will hold their first talks with representatives of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in Damascus today, focusing on a transitional process for Syria and the protection of minorities, the German foreign ministry said. Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni said her country was ready to engage with Syria’s new leadership after the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad, but urged caution.

• US President-elect Donald Trump characterised the ousting of Assad as an “unfriendly takeover” by Turkey, which has historically backed the opposition. “I think Turkey is very smart… Turkey did an unfriendly takeover, without a lot of lives being lost. I can say that Assad was a butcher, what he did to children,” Trump told reporters at his residence in Florida.

• Ahmed al-Sharaa, the leader of the HTS group that toppled Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, said all rebel factions would “be disbanded and the fighters trained to join the ranks of the defence ministry” during a meeting with members of the Druze community.