The Media Line: Gaza’s Postwar Architecture Exists on Paper but Can It Be Implemented? 

Gaza’s Postwar Architecture Exists on Paper but Can It Be Implemented?  

Hamas-free camps may become the first visible test of whether the Board of Peace can build an alternative inside Gaza, but who, if anyone, can make Hamas give up its weapons—and what will Israel, the Palestinians and the region receive in return?  

By Giorgia Valente / The Media Line  

One of the latest ideas circulating around Gaza’s postwar transition is the creation of Hamas-free camps—or, in the more cautious language of planners, “temporary communities”—inside the Israeli-controlled Green Zone, where civilians could receive shelter, services, and protection under a future Palestinian civilian authority.  

But the proposal, meant to offer a practical starting point while diplomacy remains stalled, also exposes the central problem facing President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace: much of the plan’s institutional architecture exists on paper, while the mechanisms needed to implement it inside Gaza remain blocked, incomplete, or politically contested.  

Representatives of the Board of Peace and affiliated bodies have been meeting in Cyprus this week, after a preparatory workshop in Cairo, to advance the work of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), the Palestinian technocratic body expected to replace Hamas’ rule in the Strip. The committee was announced earlier this year as a body intended to lead reconstruction and humanitarian relief, but it remains based outside Gaza and has not yet entered the enclave.  

The same uncertainty applies to the security side of the plan. The Board of Peace has been working on a Palestinian police force and an International Stabilization Force (ISF), but the operational timeline remains unclear. Moroccan officers arrived in Israel on June 18 to join the nascent ISF headquarters in southern Israel, according to the Board of Peace and reports citing the French global news agency AFP, but their arrival does not amount to an operational deployment inside Gaza. 

The Board of Peace’s immediate fallback plan appears to be the establishment of temporary communities in the Green Zone, including a first site reportedly planned near Rafah, in the part of Gaza currently held by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The idea is to create areas where civilians can access humanitarian aid, shelter, and services outside Hamas-controlled territory. Yet even this limited track faces major questions: whether Palestinians would voluntarily move into areas under Israeli military control; whether the NCAG would lose legitimacy by operating there; and whether Israel will approve the practical steps needed for construction and administration.  

Public diplomatic framing remains clear: Hamas’ disarmament is the key to unlocking Phase Two of the Gaza plan. The Board of Peace is expected to ask the UN Security Council to press Hamas to disarm, according to a report seen by The Associated Press. The report states that the principal obstacle to full implementation remains Hamas’ refusal to accept verified decommissioning, relinquish control, and allow a civilian transition in Gaza.  

Hamas has rejected that framing. The group has accused the Board’s report of ignoring what the armed group considers Israeli violations of the ceasefire, including issues of broader humanitarian access, troop pullbacks, and restrictions at Gaza’s crossings.   

That dispute has left the ceasefire framework caught in a sequencing trap. Israel says it will not withdraw without full Hamas disarmament. Hamas says it will not discuss disarmament before Israel addresses what Hamas considers a failure to implement Phase One and provides international guarantees. The Board of Peace says reconstruction cannot begin where weapons remain. Palestinians and Arab mediators argue that the absence of an Israeli withdrawal timeline and political horizon makes disarmament impossible to sell.  

Dr. Gershon Baskin, co-founder and co-director of the Alliance for Two States and Middle East director of the International Communities Organisation, argued that the Board of Peace should not wait for a perfect agreement before acting. He told The Media Line that the NCAG should not remain “a committee waiting outside Gaza,” but should instead become a functioning authority inside the Strip.  

Baskin’s proposal is built around the immediate creation of a Palestinian-administered Green Zone. In his view, the NCAG should enter the Israeli-controlled area of Gaza, Palestinian police should deploy there, the ISF should take positions along the Yellow Line, and civilians should be given the option to move into areas where shelter, food, medical care, schools, and employment can be provided.  

For Baskin, the urgency is institutional as much as humanitarian. He argued that Palestinian civilian governance must become visible on the ground before the political framework collapses into another round of violence. The Green Zone, in his view, is not meant to be a final-status solution, but an operational bridge: a way to create secure Palestinian-administered areas, move civilians into them voluntarily and safely, and gradually shrink the space controlled by Hamas and the area occupied by Israel.  

The logic is both humanitarian and political: to create a visible alternative to Hamas rule without waiting for it to accept full disarmament. Baskin argued that the Green Zone should gradually expand, while Hamas-controlled space reduces in size and Israel’s military presence becomes easier to roll back in stages.  

His emphasis is also on employment as a stabilizing tool. Reconstruction work—clearing rubble, repairing water systems, building temporary housing, staffing clinics, and reopening schools—is presented as part of a wider effort to weaken Hamas’ grip over Gazan society by giving civilians a practical alternative.  

But Katherine Prescott, a senior political advisor at the US Department of State, offered a far more skeptical assessment of where the plan stands in practice. According to Prescott, the problem is not simply technical delay, but a deeper conflict between institutions that exist formally and institutions that are still unable to function inside Gaza.  

Referring to the NCAG, she told The Media Line that “The committee exists, has a chair, has a mission statement, and has not entered Gaza. Israel blocked its members in January, and there is no current timeline for entry. The PA and Hamas both publicly support it and are both working against it behind the scenes. That is not a technical problem. That is the problem.”   

Her assessment of the ISF was equally blunt. “There is no force. There is a commander, a coordination center, and outreach to over 70 countries that has produced no firm commitments. The current design confines the ISF to a buffer zone behind the IDF’s yellow line, which means it would operate precisely where Hamas is not,” she said. That is not stabilization. That is theater with a UN mandate,” she added. 

The contradiction is visible on the ground. The ISF is central to the Board of Peace’s design, but at this stage, the force appears closer to a coordination structure than to a deployed security instrument. Morocco’s arrival is symbolically important, especially as Arab and Muslim-majority participation is necessary for the plan’s regional legitimacy. Yet without deployment inside Gaza, a legal framework, Israeli approval, and clear rules of engagement, the force cannot yet perform the role assigned to it.  

Prescott also pointed to the unresolved disarmament roadmap presented by Nickolay Mladenov, the Board of Peace’s director-general and high representative for Gaza. “There is no agreed verification mechanism, no distinction between light and heavy weapons that both parties accept, and no third party with the leverage to break the deadlock. The talks in Cairo this month are real, but the gap is not procedural,” she said.  

The disarmament proposal previously reported would require Hamas to hand over weapons in phases over eight months, allow the destruction of tunnels and military infrastructure, and transfer security authority to the NCAG. It would begin with the technocratic committee assuming security and administrative control and conclude with Israeli withdrawal after Gaza is verified as weapon-free. But Reuters also reported that Palestinian factions, including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, criticized the proposal for prioritizing disarmament over reconstruction, Israeli withdrawal, and political guarantees.  

At the same time, Israeli security concerns appear to be intensifying. According to an unsourced Kan report, senior officers in the IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate and Southern Command warned Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir that Hamas’ military wing is preparing for renewed war.  The report said Hamas was producing explosive devices and anti-tank missiles, recruiting young fighters, restarting training for its elite Nukhba force, rebuilding underground infrastructure and attempting to smuggle drones and communications equipment from Sinai.  

The same report said these senior officers believe that fighting must resume, while the United States opposes a renewed Israeli offensive and prefers to preserve the current status quo while continuing to advance the Board of Peace initiative.  

Prescott avoided characterizing intelligence assessments directly but said the public record points to the same core dilemma on Hamas’ military posture “ … Hamas is degraded and still armed enough to veto Phase Two indefinitely. That is the situation,” she noted.  

This is where the Gaza issue appears to intersect with the broader regional diplomacy now centered on Washington and Tehran. Since the June 17 memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran, US diplomatic bandwidth has been heavily absorbed by the Iran track, including talks over sanctions relief, Iranian assets, maritime access, the nuclear file, the Strait of Hormuz, and Iranian militia networks.   

“Gaza was not formally linked to the Iran war, but it was functionally deprioritized by it. The June 17 memorandum gives Washington breathing room. Whether that translates into serious reengagement on Gaza is a political question, not a diplomatic one, and the answer is not obvious,” Prescott said.  

The accountability question is also becoming more pressing, and the absence of a clear political endpoint remains one of the most sensitive issues in the postwar framework. “The Board and ISF are authorized through December 2027 with no binding political endpoint, no path to statehood, and an enforcement posture that, based on Mladenov’s own leaked correspondence, does not apply equally to both parties. That is a legitimacy problem that compounds over time,” she noted.  

“My honest summary: the architecture exists, the institutions do not function, and the central obstacle, Hamas’ weapons, has no agreed solution. Everything else is negotiation over sequencing,” Prescott added.  

For now, the Board of Peace is still moving forward. Workshops are being held. The NCAG is being prepared. Moroccan officers have arrived. Temporary communities are being discussed. Palestinian police training is being planned. The Security Council is being asked to reaffirm that Hamas must disarm.  

But the gap between planning and implementation remains wide. Hamas still holds weapons and local coercive power. Israel still controls much of Gaza and has not accepted a clear withdrawal timeline. The PA and Hamas both have reasons to resist an independent technocratic body that could bypass their influence. The ISF is not yet a deployed force. Washington is split between managing Gaza and containing the fallout from the Iran track.  

The result is a ceasefire framework that has institutions, documents, and diplomatic language, but still lacks the political leverage needed to turn them into facts on the ground. The idea of Hamas-free camps may become the first visible test of whether the Board of Peace can build an alternative inside Gaza. It may also reveal whether the plan can survive without an agreed answer to the question that has stalled every other step: Who, if anyone, can make Hamas give up its weapons—and what will Israel, the Palestinians and the region receive in return?