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Amid the ongoing Israeli genocide that has destroyed entire neighbourhoods, displaced the vast majority of the population, and left Palestinians in the Gaza Strip facing a multitude of humanitarian crises, US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace has been attempting to lay the foundation for a system that will govern the enclave for years to come.
As Gaza’s future is being planned from the outside, something that should go without saying apparently needs to be said: No plan can be legitimate or sustainable without people in Gaza having a real say in the decisions that will shape their lives.
For nearly three years, we in Gaza have been living among destroyed homes and worn out tents. Our families have been scattered; our friends, neighbours, and loved ones have been injured and killed; and Israeli attacks and restrictions have long since caused the collapse of the basic services needed to sustain life.
The plans and promises being put forward for our future by those outside the enclave often seem entirely disconnected from this reality. Nearly a year after last October’s so-called ceasefire, they have also not been reflected in real actions. On the ground, we have yet to see any meaningful change.
The Board of Peace has established a National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG). An International Stabilisation Force (ISF), consisting of soldiers from various countries, is also supposed to deploy to oversee security in the enclave.
No plan can be legitimate or sustainable without people in Gaza having a real say in the decisions that will shape their lives.
The NCAG is made up of Palestinians from Gaza, which seemingly sets it apart from the various redevelopment plans being proposed entirely by outsiders. People in Gaza have had no say in selecting its members, but we are clinging to hope that they can do something to improve our lives.
We have been subjected to such brutality and have been made so desperate that many would be willing to welcome anyone who can ease their suffering and bring back some sense of normal life. The names and backgrounds of the NCAG’s members are less important to us. Ultimately, we will judge it based on whether it is actually able to make a difference.
Something similar can be said for the ISF: If an international force means the Israeli military withdraws and people no longer have to live with the constant fear of bombing, incursions, or being displaced again, many would naturally see it as a chance for a safer life.
With Israeli leaders who have overseen the devastation in Gaza, including Ben-Gvir and Katz, once again openly speaking about expelling Palestinians from the Strip, it remains to be seen whether any of the Board of Peace’s redevelopment plans will be implemented or whether the ISF will ever deploy.
For now, Israel is still blocking members of the NCAG from entering Gaza and any kind of reconstruction from moving forward. But there are plenty of examples already of the disastrous results that occur when hostile and outside powers attempt to impose “solutions” on Palestinians in Gaza that serve their interests rather than those of the people who actually live here.
The case of UNRWA
One sign that the Board of Peace is not interested in consulting or representing the perspectives of Palestinians in Gaza in its plans for the future is the position it has taken on UNRWA, the UN’s agency for Palestine refugees.
On 1 July, the Board of Peace said in a social media post that “UNRWA has no place in the new Gaza”. This isn’t merely an issue of replacing one institution with another.
UNRWA is not something that is distant from our lives. The agency was established in 1949 in the aftermath of the Nakba, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced from their homes. For more than seven decades, it has provided education, healthcare, and aid and development services to Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.
The talk of excluding UNRWA from Gaza’s future also carries greater significance than the question of who will provide these services.
More than 65% of Gaza’s population are refugees registered with UNRWA who were displaced from their homes in 1948 or their descendents. For us in Gaza, UNRWA has never been just a blue logo on bags of flour. Its presence extends into the details of daily life that generations of Palestinians have known – a school children attend, a medical clinic families turn to, a lifeline refugees depend on when their options run out.
We have our own criticisms of UNRWA, but critiquing an agency is very different from wanting it to disappear. The talk of excluding UNRWA from Gaza’s future also carries greater significance than the question of who will provide these services.
UNRWA’s continued existence reflects the fact that the Palestinian refugee question remains unresolved, and Israel has long sought to dismantle the agency as a way of burying this question.
That is why, for many of us, talk of ending UNRWA’s role or replacing the agency carries a political meaning that goes far beyond the logistics of who distributes food or runs a school. It raises questions about the fate of Palestinian refugees themselves, their rights, and how their cause might be redefined without them being genuine participants in that discussion.
A dangerous precedent
The Board of Peace’s vow to exclude UNRWA from Gaza’s future is not the first time Palestinians in the enclave have been presented with an alternative to an existing system without having a meaningful role in designing it.
At the end of May last year, the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) began distributing food through militarised distribution sites that bypassed the UN and humanitarian organisations that have worked in Gaza for decades, including UNRWA.
The GHF was presented as a solution to the widespread starvation faced by Gaza’s population at the time, ignoring the fact that the same authorities offering the “solution” had created the starvation crisis to begin with.
The results were sadly predictable: In just over three months, 1,172 people were killed by the Israeli military and armed security contractors in the vicinity of GHF sites, and the world’s foremost authority on hunger officially declared that a famine was taking place.
These numbers aren’t just statistics in UN reports. I was one of the Palestinians forced to go to GHF sites in search of food for my starved family. I remember leaving before dawn on multiple occasions with my friend Ahmed for the distribution sites. Each time, I knew I might not come back.
When I hear talk today about new systems and institutions being designed for us, I can’t see them as just administrative arrangements on paper. I have experienced what an “alternative” can mean when it is not designed around people’s safety, dignity, and needs.
On one of our attempts, we ran with crowds of people towards the food amid gunfire, with Israeli tanks nearby, and snipers positioned around the area. I made it back to my family that day, but Ahmed was shot in the head and taken to the hospital in critical condition.
When I returned to our tent, my family did not ask what food I had brought back. It was enough for them that I had returned alive. Ahmed survived, but he is still in a difficult condition.
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This is why, when I hear talk today about new systems and institutions being designed for us, I can’t see them as just administrative arrangements on paper. I have experienced what an “alternative” can mean when it is not designed around people’s safety, dignity, and needs.
In Gaza, the question at the aid sites was much simpler and harsher than all the discussions about how efficient the distribution system was: Would you return to your family with food, or would you not return at all?
Living with the consequences
People in Gaza do not necessarily reject every new institution or every attempt to find new arrangements for governance, security, and reconstruction after the war. The need for an administration that can restore basic services, provide security, and rebuild Gaza is clearer to those living here than to anyone else.
We live with the destroyed homes, lack of basic services, insecurity, and absence of reconstruction every day. For us, the needs are immediate, not just abstract questions. But the GHF experience showed why it is not enough to present Palestinians with a new system and expect us to blindly trust that the people designing it have our best interests in mind.
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A secret meeting with the GHF has fuelled fears that the humanitarian system is being bent to serve the interests of the United States and Israel.
Gaza is not an administrative problem to be solved. It is a society of more than two million Palestinians. When the meetings are over, the plans are signed, and the delegations leave, we are the ones who will remain here to live with the consequences of the decisions others are making for us.
That is why a sustainable future for Gaza cannot be built through institutions and political plans designed and implemented by outsiders. If the decisions being made today will shape our lives for years and even decades to come, then the conversation must begin with the people who will live with their consequences: what we want, what we need, and what kind of future we want to build for ourselves. Gaza’s future cannot be drawn for Palestinians without them.
