In devastated Gaza, grandiose peace plans clash with reality

As President Donald Trump prepares for the inaugural gathering of his "Board of Peace" in Washington on Thursday, there are detailed proposals encompassing hopes and dreams for a gleaming new postwar Gaza Strip.

Then there is reality.

"Trump is trying to make things rosy, but as a matter of fact, the situation is still catastrophic," said professor Mkhaimar Abusada, a Palestinian political analyst from Gaza City who was displaced from his home during the Israel-Hamas war and now resides in Cairo.

A fragile ceasefire came into force in October, two years after the deadly Hamas-led attack on Israel that ignited the war. But the path forward is uncharted, labyrinthine and strewed with obstacles.

"The Trump ceasefire plan is struggling to succeed," Abusada said, blaming both Hamas and Israel.

Member states of the new international body tasked with rebuilding Gaza have pledged more than $5 billion for humanitarian and reconstruction efforts in the enclave, according to Trump. But that is only a fraction of what is needed. The United Nations has estimated the cost of rebuilding the territory at more than $50 billion.

Countries have also committed thousands of troops and personnel, laying the ground work for an International Stabilization Force meant to "maintain Security," Trump said.

U.S. officials are discussing plans to build a military base for peacekeepers in an Israeli-controlled area of southern Gaza, according to several Western diplomats who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to share the information publicly.

Slick Power Point presentations paint a picture of a futuristic seaside metropolis. But for now, the Israeli military and private contractors are removing unexploded ordnance and rubble from patches of the Israeli-controlled part of Gaza. There are an estimated 60 million tons of war debris to be cleared away.

Gaza barely has the basics. Experts have produced a comprehensive paper on waste management, according to internal planning documents viewed by The New York Times.

While the war is over, no one would call Gaza safe. Even under the ceasefire, Israeli strikes have killed about 600 Palestinians there, according to local health officials. Their data does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.

Israel says its near daily strikes are retaliation against militants who violated the truce or to eliminate imminent threats. But children are among the dead.

In all, 72,000 people have been killed since the start of the war, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. Israel says thousands of militants were among those killed.

Israeli forces now control about half the coastal territory, where anti-Hamas militias have taken up arms and looted aid. A weakened but resilient Hamas prevails for now in the other half, where most of the population of 2 million is living, many still displaced and in tents.

Hamas has pledged to give up the administration of Gaza, but its gunmen are still manning checkpoints, detaining and questioning people, and collecting some fees.

Any real progress in Gaza hinges upon the thorniest issues in Trump's 20-point peace plan, which was endorsed by the U.N. Security Council. They include disarming Hamas, demilitarizing Gaza and ensuring a withdrawal of Israeli forces.

Hamas is reluctant to part with its weapons. The militants rely on them to control the population, and they are also core to its identity as a fighting force against Israel.

After being caught off-guard by the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023, which left about 1,200 people dead, according to Israeli officials, Israel is deeply skeptical of the group's intentions.

For this reason, Israel is still barring the entry into Gaza of many so-called "dual use" items, saying they could be used by Hamas for military purposes. The list changes, but now includes wide-diameter steel tent poles, according to several officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the issue publicly.

The severe food shortages of the war have eased, but Western officials and aid workers accuse Israel, which strictly controls the flow of all goods into Gaza, of slow-walking other kinds of assistance.

About 80% of the buildings in Gaza were damaged or destroyed during the war, according to the United Nations. But Israel has largely limited or delayed the entry of caravans and temporary homes, despite some harsh winter weather, according to the Shelter Cluster, a group of U.N. and humanitarian agencies working on housing solutions.

About 4,000 emergency temporary housing units are either now available or in the pipeline, according to the United Nations. About 200,000 prefab relief housing units are needed to support displaced families, according to Alexander De Croo, a U.N. development official who visited Gaza this week.

The Israeli military unit that oversees the entry of aid to Gaza, known as COGAT, rejected accusations that Israel was preventing or delaying assistance.

"The reality is completely opposite," it said in a statement, adding that Israel was meeting its commitment under the ceasefire agreement.

The sole border crossing between Gaza and Egypt recently reopened for people on foot after being closed for most of the past 20 months. Only a trickle of Palestinians, mainly people seeking medical treatment abroad and their caregivers, or residents returning to the enclave from abroad, have been able to cross it.

Making headway is complicated because the main players are reluctant to take risks or make concessions before the other.

"All the structures are ready, but on the ground nothing has changed because one thing is dependent on another," said Shira Efron, chair of Israel policy at the RAND Corp., a U.S.-based research institute.

"Reconstruction and Israeli military withdrawal are contingent on disarmament and the deployment of the International Stabilization Force," she added.

After nearly 20 years of dominating Gaza, Hamas has been trying to tighten its hold on the territory, rather than giving it up, Efron said. "They are the ones enforcing law and order," she said.

"Even the seemingly simple challenge of Hamas handing over the civilian rule of Gaza -- which they said they'd agree to do -- will be complicated," she said.

Hamas will not be eager to forfeit tax revenues, and it is hard to imagine an orderly transition, she said, noting that the group's own governance of Gaza was "poor and partial at best."

The Board of Peace has appointed a committee of Palestinian technocrats as a transitional government to replace Hamas, but they are still based in Cairo.

The committee members are waiting for a safer environment and a loosening of Israeli restrictions on goods that would improve residents' lives and give them some credibility as they begin to operate in the territory, according to officials and people briefed on their thinking.

"They need to go back with something in their hands to win the hearts and minds of people in Gaza," Abusada said.

For now, committee members have been attending governance training workshops run by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, according to people briefed on their activities.

Over it all, the threat looms of a return to war.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who is facing an election this year, says he will give the ceasefire plan a chance. But if Hamas does not agree to disarm, he says, it will be done "the hard way," with a new Israeli military offensive.

The Trump administration and mediators have been drafting a phased disarmament deal that would see Hamas surrender all weapons capable of striking Israel, but would allow the group to keep some small arms, at least initially, according to officials and people familiar with the proposal.

Netanyahu appeared to reject that phased approach to disarmament that prioritizes heavy weapons such as rockets. The weapons that Hamas used during the October 2023 attack were Kalashnikov assault rifles, he said, demanding that the group hand over 60,000 of them.

In any case, it's unclear whether Hamas would even agree to this. Nickolay Mladenov, a former U.N. official now serving as the Board of Peace "high representative" for Gaza, met Hamas' chief negotiator, Khalil al-Hayya, in Cairo this month to press the group on disarmament. Al-Hayya refused to discuss the issue with him, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk about a sensitive matter.