Hamas has reasserted some control in the Gaza Strip in the days since the six-week ceasefire between Israel and the U.S.-designated terrorist organization went into effect.
Despite roughly 15 months of a brutal military campaign, in the days since the ceasefire commenced, Hamas has deployed its fighters to the streets to oversee aid convoys, reimpose security, stop looting, and start restoring basic services to parts of Gaza, according to Reuters.
Before the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack that instigated the current conflict, Hamas was the governing entity in the enclave, providing Palestinians with daily government services in addition to plotting against Israel. Israeli leaders said one of their primary objectives in the war was to end Hamas’s governance of the strip, but the lack of an alternative has afforded the group an opening for its return.
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“There have been security forces out on the streets, and they are more visible around the main junctions, which is something they have not been able to do without the risk of being killed for several months,” Sam Rose, a senior official with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, told the Wall Street Journal.
Over the course of the war, Israel’s forces would operate in an area and then move to a new one, but they would leave a power vacuum behind. As a result, Hamas sought to use that ungoverned space to reconstitute, and on some occasions, Israeli troops were forced to go back to locations they previously fought in to ensure Hamas couldn’t resurge.
There was also a parade of excited Hamas fighters who celebrated the ceasefire on Sunday, which Israeli officials said were carefully orchestrated attempts to exaggerate their support within Gaza.
Hamas’s presence in Gaza during the ceasefire is likely to play a role in the negotiations for how to extend the current ceasefire into a permanent cessation of hostilities. The mediators are expected to resume negotiations shortly to hammer out how the sides will move forward once the six-week pause expires.
Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, one of the mediators involved in the Israel-Hamas negotiations, said he’s “pushing” to start those conversations as soon as possible.
Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, said on Wednesday he would be traveling to Israel and Gaza to ensure ceasefire compliance.
Israeli officials have been adamant about not ending the conflict to ensure Hamas cannot reconstitute, and they have said they will not agree to end the war indefinitely if it means leaving Hamas in power. Hamas wants to remain in power in Gaza so it can survive.
The mediators will have to figure out a durable pathway forward to ensure the war does not resume following the conclusion of this six-week pause.
Trump admitted this week that he is not confident about their ability to get an agreement completed.
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“I’m not confident. It’s not our war. It’s their war,” he said from the Oval Office. “I looked at a picture of Gaza — Gaza is like a massive demolition site. That place is, it’s really, it’s got to be rebuilt in a different way.”
The Biden administration supported a revamped Palestinian Authority governing Gaza and the West Bank jointly, but it is no longer in power. The Palestinian Authority governs the West Bank, and it is not popular among Palestinians there. It used to govern Gaza before Hamas won Gaza’s 2007 elections.
