After nearly two decades running Gaza, Hamas is preparing to give up the government. Gaza's Government Media Office said this week that it had dissolved its Emergency Committee and accepted the resignation of its acting chairman, Mohammed Abdul Khaleq al-Farra, clearing the way to hand civil administration to a new, technocratic body.
That body, the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, is a UN-backed group of Palestinian technocrats meant to run the enclave's day-to-day affairs, from health to security. It describes itself as non-political, has worked from Cairo since mid-January, and has not yet begun operating inside Gaza. Its head, Ali Shaath, said the committee was ready to take over "once the necessary capacities and requirements" were in place, and named the conditions bluntly: "one authority, one law with a clear reference, and one weapon under this authority."
The handover is being arranged in the middle of a genocide. That is the position of the Republic of Türkiye, and it is the conclusion United Nations experts and major human-rights organizations have reached; the International Court of Justice is weighing the same charge in the case South Africa brought under the Genocide Convention. Israel's bombardment of Gaza has continued through a ceasefire meant to hold since last year. Its strikes have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians since the truce took hold, by Palestinian authorities' count, part of a toll that has passed 73,000, even as mediators meet in Cairo to keep the deal alive and push it toward a next phase.
Hamas casts the transition as something Israel wants to sabotage. The group says Israel is trying to engineer an "administrative vacuum," obstructing the handover to deepen Palestinian suffering and block any return to normal life, and it has urged mediators and guarantor states to press Israel to let the new committee enter and work. Hamas says it remains committed to the ceasefire until the transfer is complete.
For Türkiye, the question of who governs Gaza is not an abstraction. Ankara has been among the loudest governments against Israel's war and among the states pressing on the enclave's relief and reconstruction, and it is one of the guarantors Hamas is appealing to. A Palestinian civil authority that can actually function inside Gaza is close to the outcome Türkiye has argued for. Whether it stands depends on Israel and its backers.
The committee's own condition, one authority, one law, one weapon, points at the hardest question the transition leaves open: what becomes of Hamas's weapons, and whether Israel and the United States will accept any Palestinian body governing Gaza at all. For now the committee waits in Cairo, and Gaza waits with it.