Gaza Between Administrative Peace and Power Peace: Where Does the Palestinian State Stand?

Today, Gaza is no longer merely a battlefield or an urgent humanitarian issue; it has transformed into a political and legal laboratory where new models for conflict resolution are being tested, re-marketed under the title of "long-term peace." However, this peace, as presented in international circles, is not based on ending the occupation or enabling the Palestinian people to exercise their right to self-determination, but rather on re-engineering the political and security reality in the Strip, within an equation that combines administrative peace and power peace, with a clear marginalization of the aspiration for an independent Palestinian state.
In this context, old ideas formulated since the beginning of the millennium are being brought to the forefront, which treated Gaza not as an integral part of a national liberation project, but as a densely populated area requiring administration and security control under external supervision.
What is being proposed today as "transitional administration" or a "technocrat committee" is not a product of the recent war, but a reproduction of approaches that view governance as a technical function, not a political practice stemming from popular will.
Administrative peace implicitly assumes that the core of the Palestinian crisis lies in "poor governance," not in the continuation of the occupation.
Hence, political representation is replaced by unelected functional structures, deriving their legitimacy from international acceptance rather than from the people.
These structures are not asked to defend national rights or represent the general will, but to manage the population: crossings, services, relief, and reconstruction, within a pre-drawn political ceiling.
In contrast, power peace constitutes the security aspect of this equation.
It is a peace conditioned on disarmament and on subjecting the Palestinian security sphere to strict oversight, through international arrangements or regional understandings.
Here, sovereignty, especially in its security dimension, transforms from an inherent right into a "deferred reward," granted only if the Palestinian side adheres to the imposed conditions of stability. Thus, disarmament is not a transitional step towards statehood, but a permanent tool to keep it deferred.
More dangerous than the reduction of powers is what this model entails in terms of re-dismantling the Palestinian geopolitical landscape.
Gaza is treated as a separate unit with its own governance system, which opens the door for generalizing the same logic to the West Bank later, transforming Palestine into a collection of administrative entities, each with its own permanent "transitional" arrangements, instead of being a single state under occupation striving for liberation.
This project is given moral cover today through humanitarian discourse, benefiting from the unprecedented catastrophe experienced by the Strip.
Amidst widespread destruction, displacement, hunger, and infrastructure collapse, people's primary concern becomes survival before any political discussion.
Here lies the ethical and political dilemma: utilizing real human suffering to pass arrangements that may shape the destiny of the Palestinian people for decades.
What is imposed in a moment of weakness may become a permanent framework for political life.
From the perspective of international law, any transitional phase under international supervision is supposed to have a defined goal and timeframe, and its purpose is to enable the people under occupation to exercise their full right to self-determination.
But what is proposed for Gaza today is closer to models of "modern guardianship": local administration in form, and effective external control in essence, with deferred sovereignty without a clear time horizon.
Therefore, the fundamental question is no longer: Who will administer Gaza administratively?
Rather, the more dangerous and deeper question is:
Is Gaza intended to be the nucleus of an independent Palestinian state, or a permanent laboratory for administrative peace and power peace, or the end of the Palestinian national project, at the hands of Israel and Hamas?
The answers to these questions will determine not only the future of Gaza, but the fate of the entire Palestinian national project.