The recent announcement of an understanding to place all weapons under the authority of a legitimate Palestinian body marks an important step that could help advance the ongoing negotiations over Gaza. Yet significant as this development may be, it also highlights a far more complicated question: who will govern Gaza on the day after?

 

While the issue of disarmament appears to be gradually moving into the realm of negotiation, the question of governing the Strip remains unresolved. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government continues to treat the proposed Palestinian administrative committee with considerable skepticism, despite the fact that it enjoys both Arab and international backing and is intended only as a transitional arrangement. This suggests that the central obstacle is no longer merely a security issue—it has become fundamentally political.

 

The problem is not Netanyahu alone, but also the pressures he faces within his governing coalition. Israel's right wing, which forms the backbone of the government, does not view the proposed Palestinian committee as a simple administrative mechanism. Rather, it sees it as the first step toward restoring Palestinian political authority in Gaza. From this perspective, it also rejects the deployment of any Arab or international force to administer the transitional phase, because such an arrangement would ultimately require Israel's withdrawal and place the Palestinian issue back at the center of regional politics—precisely the outcome this camp has sought to prevent since October 7.

 

This context helps explain the recent article by Yoav Limor, one of Israel's leading military and security commentators, writing in Israel Hayom, a newspaper closely aligned with Netanyahu and the Israeli right. Limor sharply criticized the prime minister, arguing that he had become more preoccupied with political maneuvering and public appearances alongside U.S. President Donald Trump than with achieving the war's declared objectives. Between the lines, the article clearly reflects the prevailing mood within the Israeli right, which opposes any arrangement that would allow either a Palestinian committee or an international force to administer Gaza, believing such an outcome would undermine the political goals of the war.

 

On the other side of the debate, Zaha Hassan of the Carnegie Endowment argues that the proposed peace plan amounts to a new form of social and geographic engineering designed to facilitate what is described as "voluntary migration." According to her reading of the documents produced by the so-called "Peace Council," the plan extends well beyond rebuilding housing and infrastructure. It introduces new arrangements concerning governance, population distribution, and property ownership that could fundamentally reshape post-war Gaza.

 

Hassan's analysis is particularly significant on two levels. First, it highlights the deep disagreement between Palestinians and Israelis over the interpretation of the peace framework itself. Even the recent understanding regarding Hamas's disarmament was explicitly linked to a gradual Israeli withdrawal, making the details of implementation the central point of contention—much as happened during the U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding, where technical details eventually became the core political dispute.

 

Second, profound disagreements exist within both camps over the future of Gaza after Hamas. Palestinian society remains divided, as do Arab actors and even different factions within Hamas itself. A similar debate is taking place inside Israel, where the future of Gaza is rapidly becoming one of the defining issues in the country's next political battles.

 

Taken together, these realities make the question of "the day after" increasingly uncertain. Hamas may agree to surrender its weapons under mounting pressure, yet it has little trust in either Israel or the United States. On the Israeli side, Netanyahu and the broader right continue to view population transfer as the only acceptable solution. They are therefore expected to obstruct any meaningful role for the proposed Palestinian committee. For key ideological allies such as Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir—partners Netanyahu cannot easily abandon—allowing a Palestinian governing body to return to Gaza would represent a retreat from the ideological and security principles they have embraced.

 

Consequently, Israel is likely to avoid a direct confrontation with President Trump while simultaneously pursuing a strategy of buying time, creating procedural obstacles, and delaying implementation of any agreement that does not ultimately lead either to Palestinian emigration or prevent the restoration of Palestinian governance throughout the Gaza Strip.

 

The real challenge today, therefore, is not whether Hamas can be compelled to surrender or dismantle its weapons, nor even whether it relinquishes its rule over Gaza. The far greater challenge lies in the Israeli right's vision for the future of both Gaza and the West Bank. Its ideological outlook and evolving security doctrine regard the return of any unified Palestinian authority to Gaza not as a step toward peace, but as a strategic and political defeat.