US flies drones over Gaza to monitor ceasefire, officials say
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A satellite photo of a US MQ-9 Reaper drone, which the US used for hostage recovery efforts in the early stages of the two-year Gaza war.
PHOTO: AIRBUS DS/NYTIMES
Natan Odenheimer and Eric Schmitt
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JERUSALEM – The US military has begun operating surveillance drones over the Gaza Strip in recent days as part of a broader effort to ensure that both Israel and Hamas adhere to a fragile ceasefire agreement, Israeli and American military officials said.
The drones have been used to monitor ground activity in Gaza with the consent of Israel, according to two Israeli military officials and a US defence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational details. They said they were not able to share the drones’ flight paths.
Those three officials added that the surveillance missions were operating to support a new Civil-Military Coordination Centre in southern Israel, which was set up last week by the US military’s Central Command, in part to monitor the ceasefire.
The truce deal, brokered by American, Qatari and Egyptian mediators earlier in October, has been strained by a recent flare-up of violence in Gaza and lingering tensions over the exchange of bodies of deceased Israelis and Palestinians.
Throughout the two-year war, the Israeli military, which is backed by the US, has extensively used drones to gather intelligence and mount its campaign against Hamas.
Though the US military has previously flown drones over Gaza to assist with locating hostages, its latest reconnaissance efforts suggest that American officials want to have their own understanding, independent of Israel, of what is happening inside the territory.
The US State Department, which oversees efforts to monitor the ceasefire, did not immediately respond to detailed queries about the drones. The Israeli military declined to comment.
Since US President Donald Trump’s visit to Israel last week, a string of top US officials have been in the country in an effort to shore up the ceasefire deal, including Vice-President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Several Trump administration officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations, said this week that there was concern within the administration that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might vacate the deal.
On Oct 24, Mr Rubio toured the new Civil-Military Coordination Centre, which includes about 200 US military personnel. The military said the centre would monitor the implementation of the ceasefire agreement, and “help facilitate the flow of humanitarian, logistical and security assistance from international counterparts” into the Strip.
“There’s going to be ups and downs and twists and turns, but I think we have a lot of reason for healthy optimism about the progress that’s being made,” Mr Rubio said.
Israel and the US are deeply intertwined on security. Washington provides Israel with arms and funding, and the two countries share intelligence. Earlier in 2025, they also collaborated on air strikes against Iranian nuclear sites.
In the early stages of the war, the US used MQ-9 Reaper drones in Gaza to support hostage recovery efforts and shared information from those drone missions with Israel, pointing to where hostages might be held.
A former American diplomat and defence official, like some Israeli officials, expressed surprise at the latest US surveillance missions in Gaza, given the two countries’ close military ties.
“This is a very intrusive version of US monitoring on a front where Israel perceives an active threat,” said Mr Daniel Shapiro, who served as the US ambassador to Israel under former president Barack Obama and as a special envoy to Israel on Iran under former president Joe Biden.
“If there was total transparency and total trust between Israel and the US, there wouldn’t be a need for this,” Mr Shapiro said. “But obviously the US wants to eliminate any possibility of misunderstanding.”
Captain Timothy Hawkins, a spokesman for the Pentagon’s Central Command, said in an interview with Israeli television channel i24 on Oct 23 that the Civil-Military Coordination Centre “includes an operations floor that enables us to monitor in real time what is happening on the ground in Gaza”.
He said they were “working very hard” to keep the ceasefire in place, acknowledging that the situation was “very fragile”. NYTIMES
