Hamas still runs security through civilian police in the limited areas of Gaza not under Israeli occupation. The resistance group announced it would give up its weapons and, according to Nikolay Mladenov, the Gaza Peace Board’s high representative, agreed to transfer civilian and security authority to a UN-recognised transitional administration. But it has not yet disarmed.
The handover depends on that administration being able to function, and it cannot do so while Israel bars Palestinian technocrats from entering Gaza and the promised international security forces have yet to deploy.
With no functioning body to receive its weapons, Hamas’s armed wing has refused to disarm until the next phase of the Gaza ceasefire is implemented. Netanyahu rejects this and demands verifiable decommissioning of all weapons, down to individual guns, before Israel withdraws.
Whatever the failings of the transition, Israel has used them as a pretext. It has refused to reciprocate with any withdrawal, turning a phased deal into a one-sided demand and holding territory hostage to conditions it keeps raising.
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Reconstruction: big promises, no money
Trump created a “Board of Peace” and recruited former British prime minister Tony Blair and Bulgarian diplomat Nickolay Mladenov as key figures. In January, he promised $10 billion in US funding to a board he controls, and Gulf allies pledged more.
No money is known to have reached Gaza reconstruction. In September, the board proposed a $2.45 billion recovery plan, to span six months. For now it remains a slide in a presentation, while two million people live among ruins.
The human cost: hunger that never left
Behind the diplomacy are people like Niyaha al-Masri, a 35-year-old mother of eight in Khan Yunis. Every day she spends six hours or more queueing at a community kitchen, because without it her family would have “nothing at all”. Her husband was wounded in both legs by an air strike. The family of 10 lives in a tent and eats one meal a day.
In August 2025, the UN-backed IPC declared famine in Gaza. The UN lifted the declaration in December after two months of improved supplies.
The World Food Programme’s Shaun Hughes says the situation is still “extremely serious”, with 1.4 million of Gaza’s roughly 2.1 million people acutely food insecure and 200,000 of them one step below famine.
Nutrition is failing, too. Medecins du Monde found that 93 percent of pregnant or breastfeeding women showed symptoms of anaemia, and only 17 percent had a varied enough diet. Hughes warned that repeated acute malnutrition in children is something people “just don’t recover from”.
Masri’s children dream of fruit and spend their days gathering scraps of nylon and cardboard to patch their tent. “I swear to God, this isn’t normal,” she said.
A ceasefire in name only
The truce did what Israel wanted: its captives came home and its border fell quiet. For Palestinians, it has brought continued killing, shrinking land, hunger and an empty promise of rebuilding.
A year on, Israel has yet to withdraw from Gaza, and no one has been held to account for breaking the terms it signed.
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