American security contractors have been enlisted to help handle the return of displaced Palestinians to the Gaza Strip’s devastated north, the next step in the cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas, according to four officials familiar with the matter.
The contractors are poised to help secure a key zone that splits Gaza in two and is known as the Netzarim corridor, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The contractors are intended to screen vehicles ferrying Palestinians from the enclave’s south for weapons, the officials said.
In the early days of the war, the Israeli military ordered a mass evacuation of northern Gaza, forcing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to flee south. For months, Israeli soldiers have patrolled the Netzarim corridor in part to prevent Palestinians from heading back north.
But under the terms of a 42-day cease-fire now in its fifth day, Israeli troops are set to partially withdraw over the weekend and allow Gazans to head north. The truce, which went into effect on Sunday, was mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has said for months that Israel will not allow armed fighters to return to northern Gaza. Mediators sought to craft a compromise between Israel’s security demands and Hamas’s conditions for an Israeli withdrawal.
Gazans traveling on foot will be allowed to go back without inspection, according to a copy of one of the cease-fire’s annexes shared with The New York Times. Under the deal, the private contractors are set to begin checking Gazan vehicles heading north as soon as Saturday.
But it was far from clear when the mechanism would be put into effect, and two of the officials said it might take a couple of weeks.
One of the firms assigned to the corridor is Safe Reach Solutions, which conducts logistics and planning, according to a company spokesperson, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive operations. The precise role that the company and other parties would have in overseeing the inspections was unclear, as was who would fund their deployment.
The company’s website, which appears to have been registered in 2024 and created in 2025, contains almost no specific information on the organization’s activities, funding or staff members. The company also appears to have social media accounts on Instagram and Threads, but both are empty of content.
U.S. officials have not visited the Gaza Strip for years, both because of security concerns and the official no-contact policy with Hamas, the enclave’s de facto rulers.
Many of Gaza’s well over a million displaced people have crowded into an Israeli-designated “humanitarian zone” along the southern coast in Al-Mawasi. Most there have been living in squalid tent camps where finding enough food, clean water and protection from the elements is a daily struggle.
For months, they have hoped to return to their homes in the north — although it is far from clear how many of those homes are still standing in the wake of Israel’s relentless campaign against Hamas.
“At the very least, I’ll pitch a tent in the rubble,” said Bilal Kuheil, a resident of Gaza City who said his home had been destroyed in the early days of the war.
Israel hopes that the private security contractors will eventually form the nucleus of a larger international force, backed by Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, that will run Gaza in the future, two of the officials said. The Emiratis and the Saudis are not currently involved, they added.
But in the wake of the cease-fire, Hamas, which led the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that set off the war, has reasserted itself, sending its fighters to parade through the streets of Gaza in a show of strength. The images have dampened Israel’s hopes of toppling the militant group, despite 15 months of war in Gaza that killed over 45,000 people, according to Gazan health officials.
Aric Toler and Riley Mellen contributed reporting.