Gaza: An Unimplemented Agreement and a War Waged Without Announcement

Has the "Committee for Following Up Government Work" in the Gaza Strip become the obstacle to ending the war? This is what might come to mind for those following the uproar raised in the past two days about the circulating news regarding its dissolution, preparing the ground for the Gaza Management Committee to take over administrative tasks. Expectations quickly rose among Palestinians, with many linking this step to the imminent arrival of an agreement to end the war that has been ongoing for more than a thousand days.

This optimism is understandable given the killing, starvation, displacement, and collapse of all elements of life that Palestinians are experiencing. However, a calmer reading leads to a different conclusion: the problem has never been the existence or absence of an administrative committee, but rather Israel's continued circumvention of the ceasefire agreement, renegotiating its terms every time the date for its implementation approaches.

The talk of dissolving the committee gives the impression that the main obstacle to implementing the agreement was the arrangements for managing the sector, while the facts reveal that the real disagreement was, and still is, about ending the war itself. The agreement stipulated moving to a second phase that includes a permanent ceasefire, the withdrawal of Israeli forces, and the initiation of relief and reconstruction processes, principles that also gained international legitimacy after being adopted by a Security Council resolution. Nonetheless, Israel has not committed to moving to this phase; instead, it continued the war, imposing new realities on the ground.

For many months, Israel has been practically violating the agreement through ongoing military operations, assassinations, bombings, starvation policies, and targeting of Palestinians, while the transition to the second phase has been obstructed, transforming the provisions of the agreement into an open negotiation space to which new conditions that were not part of the original text are added.

In recent days, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reaffirmed that the war will not end before disarming Hamas, which constitutes the central axis in the negotiations in Cairo, where American, regional, and international pressures are being exerted to propel this path forward. In the background are American-Israeli conceptions regarding the "next day" in Gaza, linking any political or humanitarian arrangements to the issue of disarmament and reshaping the security and administrative reality in the sector.

Yet, the paradox is that the continuation of the war, in its current low-intensity form, seems to be part of managing this negotiation track itself. What is happening today is not an implementation of the ceasefire agreement, but rather a utilization of the war’s continuation as a means to impose negotiation outcomes. As long as the issue of disarmament remains unresolved, Netanyahu continues to manage a low-intensity war that is high in cost for civilians, achieving some of the war's objectives without reverting to a comprehensive military operation or moving toward a permanent ceasefire. At the same time, the war becomes a tool of ongoing political and humanitarian pressure within the negotiation process.

Here, an important internal angle emerges. Netanyahu is not only operating within field calculations but also within internal political calculations. His repeated rhetoric about "absolute victory" is accompanied by intense media activity in recent days to market what he describes as "achievements" in both military and political contexts, in a framework inseparable from electoral considerations and the government's image before the Israeli public. In this sense, the continuation of military pressure becomes part of constructing the internal political narrative, rather than merely an external negotiation tool.

Here lies the fundamental paradox: while Palestinians are preoccupied with discussions about dissolving an administrative committee, Israel seems focused on rewriting the agreement itself, redefining the conditions for its implementation. Instead of moving to the second phase as stipulated by the agreement, it has been replaced with a series of conditions: disarmament, security arrangements, reshaping the governance of the sector, and linking reconstruction to these conditions. Thus, the agreement transforms from a binding document into an open negotiation process whose rules are continually changing.

Conversely, it cannot be overlooked that the complexity of the disarmament file is also linked to a broader question raised in the ongoing negotiations about the future of Hamas and its role in administering the Gaza Strip in the post-war phase. Israel, along with international parties, links any political or security arrangements to redefining or radically reducing the movement's status, leading to the end of its governing role in the sector. However, the absence of an agreed transitional vision to date keeps this file open to a struggle of wills and gives Israel greater latitude to use it as a permanent condition to delay the transition to the next phase of the agreement.

This cannot be separated from the American stance, which does not exert genuine pressure to compel Israel to implement the agreement and the Security Council resolution, as much as it engages with the new Israeli conditions as part of the negotiation process. In this way, legal commitments transform into political bargaining space, rather than being a binding basis for any settlement.

Therefore, the real question is not: Has the committee been dissolved or not? But rather: Who is obstructing the implementation of the agreement in the first place? And who is turning the war into a continuing negotiation tool? And who benefits from keeping the second phase suspended, while the war continues in various forms, along with ongoing killing, starvation, and the imposition of new realities?

Palestinians do not need more leaks that raise expectations before each round of negotiations; rather, they need genuine political and legal obligations that put an end to the policies of reinterpreting the agreement and voiding its content. The issue is not the name of the committee, but the ongoing transformation of the ceasefire agreement into an endless negotiation process, in which both the war and settlement are managed simultaneously.

In light of this, unless the political will to stop the war is genuinely decided and the agreement is adhered to as is, all discussions about administrative arrangements or formal changes will remain mere details in a larger scene: a continuing war with different instruments, and a suspended agreement being reshaped according to the balance of power, not according to its original text.