On the Necessities of Filling the Governance Vacuum in the Gaza Strip

After the Hamas movement announced the dissolution of the emergency committee that was managing the Gaza Strip at the administrative and civilian levels, the Strip officially entered a state of absence of official governance.

It is true that Hamas has kept the managers and employees in the ministries, and that the Palestinian Authority still has some important activities and programs in the Strip, especially in the fields of health and education. However, it is also true that the Strip is now experiencing a state of absence of an official government to manage its affairs.

It is worth noting here that the Authority was the official governing body before mid-June 2007, and that Hamas became the official body managing governance affairs in the Strip after the division events.

It is worth noting here that the official body that is supposed to professionally and technically handle governance affairs in the Gaza Strip at this stage is the technocrat committee, according to one of the provisions of the Trump plan, which has now become Security Council Resolution No. 2803.

It is clear that Netanyahu and his right-wing government are working to impede the entry of the committee into the Gaza Strip because he focuses on the priority of disarming Hamas instead of implementing the plan as a single package, including the entry of the technocrat committee, the start of early recovery and reconstruction, and allowing the entry of tents and caravans.

Netanyahu's priority lies in disarmament, while the priority of national forces lies in the entry of the technocrat committee and its subsequent tasks, provided that this coincides with gradual withdrawals by the occupation army from the Gaza Strip, instead of increasing the area of occupation control, which has reached 70% according to Netanyahu's statements.

In addition to the continued advance west of the Yellow Line in the Strip's area, the occupation army continues to launch attacks on displaced persons' tents, including targeted assassinations.

Some indicators have emerged from the Peace Council that suggest their danger to the national cause and the future of the Strip, including the announcement of the cancellation of UNRWA operations, which symbolize the refugee issue, and granting immunity to council members at all levels, which abolishes accountability and oversight mechanisms and exposes assets and lands to the risks of permanent control. This also includes preparations for establishing a green zone east of Rafah city as a pilot project, in addition to allocating areas of land for stabilization forces.

Therefore, there are political challenges facing our people in the Strip, in addition to livelihood challenges of an economic and social nature.

The scarcity of food and medicine, high prices, the emergence of war profiteers, and some events that indicate increasing unrest in the social fabric, such as internal conflicts of a violent nature, all require coordinated intervention among active community forces.

The challenges facing our people in the Strip require advancing community initiatives and work mechanisms that work to fill the vacuum.

Palestinian society has extensive professional and administrative experience, and structures and frameworks that represent civil society organizations, the private sector, and trade unions.

We need these structures and components to cooperate in these exceptional circumstances our people are going through to fill the prevailing governance vacuum.

Certainly, this proposal is temporary and transitional until the technocrat committee enters to begin implementing its tasks.

We need to form a body of civil society organizations to provide and supervise services and monitor certain phenomena such as high prices and the fragility of civil peace.

The desired body is important to work on maintaining civil peace and social cohesion.

It is also appropriate for the body to have a national reference from Palestinian national forces, as well as from the Authority and the Organization. The body should also push to oppose displacement schemes, such as the idea of green cities, and expose their objectives, as well as oppose attempts to separate the Strip from the West Bank by pushing for participation in general elections that must include the Strip, Jerusalem, and the West Bank as unified Palestinian territories politically, legally, and geographically according to international law and the Palestinian national program.

Therefore, it is not appropriate to leave the Strip without a governance system, knowing that the occupation aims to exploit the vacuum to sow chaos in the social structure to make the Strip an unsuitable place for living with the aim of implementing the displacement and ethnic cleansing scheme.