Australia, France, Spain, UAE send personnel to new center in southern Israel overseeing fragile truce; US drones look for ceasefire violations amid reports that 60% of Hamas tunnels still intact

The United States has reportedly begun deploying surveillance drones over the Gaza Strip to ensure that Israel and Hamas are complying with the ceasefire, The New York Times reported Saturday. The move comes as further nations sent representatives to help monitor US-led efforts to enforce the fragile truce.

According to the Times, citing two Israeli military officials and a US defense official, the US military has begun flying drones over the Gaza Strip to monitor the ceasefire. The flights are being conducted with Israel’s consent.

The officials did not say where the drones were being operated from.

The surveillance flights reportedly aim to provide Washington with an independent picture of the situation on the ground and assist the new Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC) in southern Israel that has begun operating to oversea the Trump deal.

The report noted that the US has in the past flown drone missions over Gaza in a bid to help locate the hostages, however, these flights appear to signal the Trump administration’s desire to verify developments in Gaza separately from Israeli intelligence channels.

“This is a very intrusive version of US monitoring on a front where Israel perceives an active threat,” Daniel B. Shapiro, a former US ambassador to Israel under the Obama administration, told the Times.

“If there was total transparency and total trust between Israel and the US, there wouldn’t be a need for this,” Shapiro said. “But obviously the US wants to eliminate any possibility of misunderstanding.”

The report said that both the IDF and US State Department declined to comment.

The report comes as the US expanded its coalition of partners involved in monitoring and sustaining the fragile ceasefire in Gaza, with additional countries sending representatives to the CMCC.

In addition to Jordan, the UK, Germany, Denmark, and Canada — whose flags were raised at the hub’s unveiling earlier this week — Australia, France, Spain, and the United Arab Emirates have also joined the initiative, a US official confirmed to The Times of Israel on Friday.

The CMCC, established under US leadership, is designed to coordinate humanitarian, logistical, and security assistance into Gaza while helping oversee the postwar stabilization phase. Roughly 200 American military personnel have been dispatched to set up the center, which currently hosts troops from several allied countries.

US Central Command (CENTCOM) stressed that American forces will not deploy into Gaza itself. “The CMCC is designed to support stabilization efforts… US military personnel will instead help facilitate the flow of humanitarian, logistical, and security assistance from international counterparts into Gaza,” CENTCOM said in a statement upon the center’s establishment.

The center was inaugurated on Tuesday by visiting US Vice President JD Vance, accompanied by CENTCOM Commander Adm. Brad Cooper and Lieutenant General Patrick Frank, who was appointed to lead the US Army team.

Despite the growing list of participants, the CMCC’s precise structure, command hierarchy, and legal status remain undefined. It is also unclear which countries, if any, will agree to send peacekeeping troops into Gaza as part of a future UN-mandated stabilization force.

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