This Editor’s Note was sent out earlier Wednesday in ToI’s weekly update email to members of the Times of Israel Community. To receive these Editor’s Notes as they’re released, join the ToI Community here.

US President Donald Trump was here last week, endured an eternity of bombastic speeches in the Knesset before delivering his own spectacularly optimistic “dawn of a new Middle East” address, and then dashed to Egypt to gather much of the world’s leadership behind his plan for peace in Gaza.

His vice president, JD Vance, is snarling traffic outside my office as I write — holding meetings with Israel’s prime minister, president, et al., having sped directly from the airport yesterday to the US Army Central Command’s brand new Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC) for Gaza, in southern Israel.

His special envoy Steve Witkoff was also here this week; so, too, his son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner — both of them making their second visit of the month. His Secretary of State Marco Rubio will be returning for his second October trip tomorrow.

It’s safe to say that maintaining the Gaza ceasefire, securing the return of the remaining 13 deceased hostages, stabilizing Gaza, and setting it on the road to what he and his officials repeatedly call peace, is high on the US president’s list of foreign policy priorities, if not at the very top.

Formally opened yesterday by Vance in the cause of that Gaza stabilization mission, the CMCC has the air of a serious operation. It has taken over three floors of a tall cargo-handling building in Kiryat Gat and, when Vance, Witkoff, Kushner and CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper welcomed local and international press, it bustled with activity. There are separate floors for American and Israeli personnel, and one level shared by them both. Big screens have been set up, maps posted. Knots of US troops were engaged in conversation. There are Brits, Danes, Germans, Canadians and Jordanians too. Israel’s deputy chief of staff Tamir Yadai emerged from a meeting; other senior IDF Southern Command officers were also in evidence.

But it is, again, in Kiryat Gat, southern Israel. Not in Gaza.

A key priority for the center, Vance told reporters, is to set up an “International Stabilization Force” for the Strip, as envisioned in Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan. The task is still in its early stages, he acknowledged, and it won’t be easy. Indeed, he said, the parties are only now beginning “to conceptualize what that international security force would look like.”

And while Vance emphasized one thing the force will not involve — “there are not going to be American boots on the ground in Gaza” — he presented the issue of what it will involve as a still-open question: “How do you take the Gulf Arab........

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