Hamas presence in Gaza during truce is a message the terror group is still in charge

In neighborhoods leveled by 15 months of war with Israel, Hamas officials are overseeing the clearance of rubble in the wake of Sunday’s ceasefire. The Palestinian terror group’s gunmen are guarding aid convoys on Gaza’s dusty roads, and its blue-uniformed police once again patrol city streets, sending a clear message: Hamas remains in charge.

Israeli officials have described a parade of jubilant Hamas operatives that celebrated the ceasefire on Sunday in front of cheering crowds  — including in Gaza City where the terror group released three Israeli women it had been holding hostage for 471 days — as a carefully orchestrated attempt to exaggerate its strength.

But, in the days since the ceasefire took effect, Gaza’s Hamas-run administration has moved quickly to reimpose security, curb looting, and start restoring basic services to parts of the Palestinian enclave, swaths of which have been reduced to wasteland by the war, which was sparked by the terror group’s brutal October 7, 2023, onslaught in southern Israel.

Reuters spoke to more than a dozen residents, officials, regional diplomats and security experts who said that, despite Israel’s vow to destroy it, Hamas remains deeply entrenched in Gaza and its hold on power constitutes a challenge to implementing a permanent ceasefire.

The Iran-backed terror group not only controls Gaza’s security forces, but its administrators run ministries and government agencies, paying salaries for employees and coordinating with international nonprofits, they said.

On Tuesday, its police and gunmen – who for months were kept off the streets by Israeli airstrikes – were stationed in neighborhoods through the Strip.

“We want to prevent any kind of security vacuum,” said Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of the Hamas-run Gaza government media office. He said that some 700 police were protecting aid convoys and not a single truck had been looted since Sunday – a contrast to the massive theft of food by criminal gangs during the conflict.

A spokesperson for the United Nations in Geneva confirmed on Tuesday there had been no reports of looting or attacks on aid workers since the ceasefire took effect on Sunday.

The three-phase accord caps a yearlong international effort to get both Hamas and Israel to agree to a deal meant to end the war and free the hostages held in Gaza, with 33 captives set to be released over the next 42 days in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, including several serving multiple life sentences for deadly terror attacks.

Also as part of the initial stage of the accord, which includes a temporary ceasefire, a major surge of humanitarian aid has begun to flow into Gaza.

In recent weeks, Israeli airstrikes have targeted lower-ranking administrators in Gaza, in an apparent bid to break Hamas’s grip on government. Israel had already eliminated most of the terror group’s senior leadership, including political chief Ismail Haniyeh and the masterminds of the October 7 attack, Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif.

Despite the losses, Al-Thawabta said the Hamas-run administration continued to function. “Currently, we have 18,000 employees working daily to provide services to citizens,” he said.

The Hamas-run municipalities had begun on Sunday clearing the rubble from some roads to vehicles to pass, while workers repaired pipes and infrastructure to restore running water to neighborhoods. On Tuesday, dozens of heavy trucks ferried debris from destroyed buildings along the enclave’s main arteries.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not articulated a vision for Gaza’s postwar future beyond insisting that Hamas can play no role and stating that the Palestinian Authority – a body set up under the Oslo Peace Accords three decades ago that partially administers the West Bank — also cannot be trusted under its current leadership. The Israeli government did not respond to Reuters’ questions.

Joost Hiltermann, of the International Crisis Group, said the terror group’s firm grip on Gaza presented Israel with a dilemma.

“Israel has a choice, to continue fighting in the future and killing people — and that hasn’t worked in the past 15 months — or it can allow an arrangement where the Palestinian Authority takes control with Hamas’s acquiescence,” Hiltermann said.

Hamas’s military capability is hard to assess because its rocket arsenal remains hidden and many of its best-trained fighters may have been killed, Hiltermann said, but it remains by far the dominant armed group in Gaza: “Nobody is talking about the PA taking over Gaza without Hamas’s consent.”

While senior Hamas officials have expressed support for a unity government, Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority and a longtime adversary of Hamas, has not given his assent. Abbas’s office and the Palestinian Authority did not respond to a request for comment.

Fresh negotiations

Under the terms of the ceasefire, Israel must withdraw its troops from central Gaza and permit the return of Palestinians to the north during an initial six-week phase, in which 33 hostages will be released. Starting from the 16th day of the ceasefire, the two sides should negotiate a second phase, expected to include a permanent ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops and the release of more hostages.

Reconstruction, expected to cost billions of dollars and last for years, would only begin in a third and final phase.

The deal has divided opinion in Israel. While there was widespread celebration of the return of the first three hostages on Sunday, many Israelis want to see Hamas destroyed for its October 7, 2023, massacre, which saw some 3,000 terrorists burst across the border, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 251 hostages, mostly civilians, alongside acts of brutality and sexual assault.

Even before the ceasefire took effect, members of Netanyahu’s cabinet said they favored returning to war to remove Hamas from power, once hostages have returned home. Three far-right ministers resigned over the halt in fighting.

“There is no future of peace, stability and security for both sides if Hamas stays in power in the Gaza Strip,” Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said on Sunday.

Hamas spokesman Abu Ubaida told Reuters that the terror group would honor the terms of the ceasefire and urged Israel to do the same.

Fifteen months of war have left Gaza a wasteland of rubble, bombed-out buildings and makeshift encampments, with hundreds of thousands of desperate people sheltering from the winter cold and living on whatever aid can reach them. The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 46,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters.

Israel says it has killed some 20,000 combatants in battle as of January and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.

Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.

The ceasefire deal calls for 600 trucks of aid per day to reach Gaza. Al-Thawabta, the spokesman for the Hamas-run administration, said it was liaising with UN bodies and international relief organizations about security for aid routes and warehouses, but the agencies were handling the distribution of aid.

A UN damage assessment released this month showed that just clearing away the more than 50 million tons of rubble left in the aftermath of Israel’s bombardment could take 21 years and cost up to $1.2 billion.

On Sunday, as Hamas forces paraded on the streets, some residents expressed pride that the terror group that rules Gaza had survived the onslaught.

“Name me one country that could withstand Israel’s war machine for 15 months,” said Salah Abu Rezik, a 58-year-old factory worker. He praised Hamas for helping to distribute aid to hungry Gazans during the conflict and trying to enforce a measure of security.

“Hamas is an idea and you can’t kill an idea,” Abu Rezik said, predicting the group would rebuild.

Others voiced anger that Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack had brought destruction to Gaza.

“We had homes and hotels and restaurants. We had a life. Today we have nothing, so what kind of a victory is this?” said Ameen, 30, a Gaza City civil engineer, displaced in Khan Younis. “When the war stops, Hamas must not rule Gaza alone.”

No rivals

While the Palestinian Authority says it is the only authority with the legitimacy to govern postwar Gaza, it has no presence in the enclave and little popular support, polls show.

Since 2007, when Hamas drove out the Palestinian Authority dominated by the rival faction Fatah after a brief civil war, it has crushed opposition in Gaza. Supported by funds from Iran, it built a feared security apparatus and a military organization based around a vast network of tunnels — much of which Israel says it destroyed during the war.

Israel floated tentative ideas for postwar Gaza, including coopting local clan leaders – several of whom were immediately assassinated by Hamas – or using members of Gazan civil society with no ties to terror groups to run the enclave. But none has gained any traction.

Key donors, including the United Arab Emirates and US President Donald Trump’s new administration, have stressed that Hamas — which is designated as a terrorist organization by many Western countries — cannot remain in power in Gaza after the war.

Diplomats have been discussing models involving international peacekeepers, including one that would see the United Arab Emirates and the United States, along with other nations, temporarily overseeing governance, security and reconstruction of Gaza until a reformed Palestinian Authority is able to take charge.

Another model, supported by Egypt, would see a joint committee made up of both Fatah and Hamas run Gaza under the supervision of the Palestinian Authority.

Michael Milshtein, a former Israel Defense Forces intelligence officer now at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies in Tel Aviv, described Hamas’s public willingness to discuss a unity government as “cosmetic.”

“As long as they are behind the scenes, handling matters, they don’t care that there will be a committee as a front,” he said.

On Monday, shortly after taking office, Trump expressed skepticism about the Gaza ceasefire deal, when asked if he was confident that all three phases of the agreement would be implemented. He didn’t elaborate further.

A spokesperson for the Trump camp did not respond to a request for comment.