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Gaza’s ‘Phase Two’: The illusion of transition and the reality of control

Washington claims the war has entered a ‘second phase,’ but conditions in Gaza show no power shift, no end to violence, and no real sovereignty

By Mohammad al-Ayoubi | The Cradle | January 20, 2026

The announcement arrived wrapped in the familiar choreography of diplomacy. Carefully chosen language, optimistic briefings, and reassurances that the war on Gaza had reached a new stage, one that would ease suffering and open the door to political reordering.

According to Washington, “phase two” of the ceasefire agreement had begun, signaling a move away from annihilation toward stability, governance, and transition.

In Gaza, the reality was less abstract. Israeli drones continued to hover above neighborhoods already reduced to rubble, Rafah remained sealed, bodies still arrived at hospitals, and Israeli forces showed no sign of withdrawal.

Aid trickled in sporadically, reconstruction remained a distant promise, and the daily mechanics of siege carried on uninterrupted. Nothing that defines a genuine shift in conditions or authority had materially changed, except the vocabulary used to describe it.

The question raised by the US announcement is therefore not whether ‘phase two’ has begun, but whether it was ever intended to exist as anything more than a political abstraction.

Is this a real transition in the trajectory of the war, or another exercise in linguistic repackaging meant to stabilize Israel’s position without addressing the foundations of the conflict itself?

The historical record leaves little room for doubt. US involvement in Palestine has consistently revolved around managing the scale and visibility of violence, calibrating its intensity in ways that safeguard Israel’s strategic dominance while containing diplomatic fallout.

Read in this context, ‘phase two’ emerges as a political device rather than a substantive shift. It is a framework meant to absorb the aftermath of mass destruction, shield Israel from international isolation, and reorder Palestinian life under post-war conditions, all while leaving untouched the structures that made the war inevitable.

A declaration without enforcement

Ibrahim al-Madhoun, a Palestinian writer and political analyst close to Hamas, tells The Cradle that Washington’s announcement amounts to nothing more than “a political position rather than a genuine transition on the ground,” especially given Israel’s failure to comply even with the terms of the first phase.

Israeli forces continue to expand what Palestinians refer to as the ‘Yellow Line,’ a militarized buffer zone that now consumes much of Gaza’s territory. Rafah remains closed, essential goods are blocked, targeted killings continue, and no meaningful reconstruction effort has begun. The conditions that defined the war before the ceasefire remain largely intact beneath a layer of diplomatic messaging.

Hazem Qassem, Hamas’s official spokesperson, echoes this assessment, acknowledging that while the announcement appears positive in form, “what has happened so far is a media declaration that requires concrete steps on the ground.” He emphasizes that Israel has failed to meet even the benchmarks of phase one, making any talk of a second phase more aspirational than real.

In the logic of international relations, a political declaration without enforcement mechanisms is no declaration at all. The US, which possesses full capacity to pressure Israel, has once again chosen the role of “biased mediator” – or more accurately, a partner in re-engineering the war through less crude means.

Netanyahu’s moment of clarity

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement describing the move to the second phase of the Gaza agreement as “largely symbolic” cannot be read as a marginal opinion or personal estimate.

It is an official Israeli definition of the function of this phase. When Netanyahu makes such a statement immediately after Washington’s announcement, and in front of the families of captives, he makes it clear that Tel Aviv does not treat ‘phase two’ as a binding executive path, but as political and media cover, allowing it to manage time and pressure without offering substantive concessions.

More revealing still was Netanyahu’s dismissal of the proposed Palestinian governing committee as symbolic as well. The implication was unmistakable. Israel does not recognize any Palestinian administration, even one stripped of factional power and framed as technocratic, as a sovereign actor. At best, such bodies are temporary facades. At worst, they are obstacles to be bypassed or neutralized.

This position directly undermines Washington’s narrative of “phased transition.” Israel is not preparing to withdraw, hand over authority, or allow meaningful Palestinian governance to take root.

Instead, it is preserving the outer shell of an agreement while hollowing out its content, a strategy refined through decades of negotiations that maintained form while denying substance.

Seen in this light, the US announcement functions as crisis management rather than conflict resolution, while the Israeli response amounts to an admission that there is no intention to leave Gaza, empower Palestinians, or commit to a political timetable.

‘Phase two’ is designed to freeze escalation and manage fallout, not to dismantle the structures that made the war inevitable.

A first phase that never materialized

From the perspective of Palestinian factions, the premise of phase two is flawed because phase one never truly existed in practice.

Israel did not withdraw from the ‘Yellow Line,’ which now covers roughly 60 percent of Gaza’s land. It did not open the crossings, halt its killing campaign, or allow unrestricted aid. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 460 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire was announced, alongside over 1,100 violations, according to Hamas, including assassinations and incursions that continued even as the agreement was being celebrated diplomatically.

These figures alone dismantle the notion of transition.

Speaking to The Cradle, Mahfouz Manwar, a senior figure in Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), argues “talk of a second phase is premature so long as Israel has not been compelled to implement the first phase.”

What exists, he says, is an agreement that survives on paper but has collapsed on the ground, with the concept of ‘phases’ repurposed as a mechanism to legitimize continued occupation at a reduced political cost.

What a real transition would require

If ‘phase two’ had genuinely begun, its indicators would be unmistakable. Israeli forces would withdraw from occupied areas, Rafah would open fully and without political conditions, targeted killings would cease, and reconstruction materials would begin entering Gaza at scale.

None of this has occurred.

Instead, Israel continues to use Rafah as a tool of pressure, blocking any Palestinian sovereign presence, even in its most symbolic form. Authority remains firmly in Israeli hands, reshaped through security arrangements that leave the underlying power balance intact. ‘Phase two,’ as it currently stands, operates as a managed delay rather than a move toward implementation.

At the center of the ‘phase two’ narrative lies the proposal for a transitional Palestinian administration in Gaza, a question that should not be treated as a bureaucratic detail but as a core indicator of whether any real shift is underway.

According to Madhoun and Qassem, Hamas approached the administrative committee as a Palestinian necessity rather than a concession to external pressure. The movement facilitated its formation, they argue, in order to ease humanitarian suffering and remove the pretexts used to justify continued war.

The principle of such a committee was agreed upon more than a year ago with Egyptian mediation, and clear criteria were established, including local representation from Gaza, independence from the occupation, and professional rather than factional qualifications. Disagreements over specific names did arise, as Madhoun acknowledges, but some were resolved through revisions while others remain under discussion, a dynamic that Manwar describes as natural within a fragmented national context.

What is striking, however, is the absence of Fatah from the Cairo talks, reflecting a deeper structural crisis in the Palestinian political system, where authority is fragmented and accountability diffuse. The more pressing question is not whether consensus exists, but whether Israel will permit any Palestinian body to function with real authority. Thus far, the answer has been unequivocally negative.

Administration without sovereignty

The proposed committee, reportedly headed by a former deputy planning minister in the Palestinian Authority (PA), Ali Shaath, and composed of roughly 14 professionals from Gaza, has been presented as a step toward Palestinian self-administration. In reality, the environment in which it is expected to operate exposes the limits of that claim.

The backgrounds of its members have reportedly been vetted by the US, Israel, and Egypt, while its authority is tied to international oversight structures, and its freedom of movement remains subject to Israeli approval. This produces a familiar paradox: a Palestinian body tasked with administering a territory over which it exercises no control.

There is no authority over borders, airspace, or crossings, and not even autonomy over the movement of its own personnel. What emerges is not governance in any meaningful sense, but service provision under occupation, a structure designed to manage humanitarian fallout without possessing the political tools to address its causes.

Decision-making power remains external, particularly through international mechanisms overseeing reconstruction funding, reproducing a well-worn model in which local administrators operate beneath an internationalized center of control.

Hamas and the politics of withdrawal

One of the most consequential developments in this phase is Hamas’s declaration that it is prepared to relinquish administrative control of Gaza without exiting the national struggle. According to the movement’s leadership, this reflects a genuine effort to facilitate relief rather than a tactical maneuver.

By stepping back from civil governance, Hamas removes the primary Israeli-American justification for continued war. If the movement is no longer administering Gaza, the argument that military operations are necessary to dismantle its rule loses coherence. Yet history suggests that governance was never the real issue, and that Palestinian existence itself has always been treated as the fundamental problem.

Weapons and coercion

The attempt to link reconstruction to disarmament is widely viewed by Palestinian factions as a form of political blackmail. Both Hamas and PIJ reject the premise outright, arguing that it seeks to impose politically what Israel failed to achieve militarily.

Qassem states that Hamas is open to regulating weapons within a national framework, but not to surrendering them. Manwar highlights the contradiction at the heart of Israeli claims: if Israel insists it has already destroyed the resistance’s military capabilities, why does disarmament remain a central demand?

The answer lies not in security, but in symbolism. Weapons in Gaza are not merely arms, but markers of agency, and stripping them away would transform the territory from a space of resistance into one managed externally through security arrangements.

A ceasefire without an endpoint

There is little evidence that ‘phase two’ leads toward a permanent end to the war. What exists instead is a fragile pause, vulnerable to collapse, in which phases are used to reposition rather than resolve.

In its current form, ‘phase two’ risks becoming a form of undeclared trusteeship, a humanitarian administration without sovereignty, or a gradual erosion of resistance under sustained pressure.

None of these outcomes constitutes peace.

Egypt, Qatar, Turkiye, and the US are presented as guarantors of the agreement, yet even American officials concede that there has been no progress on an International Stabilization Force (ISF) and that reopening Rafah ultimately remains an Israeli decision.

This admission captures the essence of the crisis. A second phase cannot succeed so long as Israel retains veto power over every operational detail. Only sustained pressure, not diplomatic optimism, can convert an agreement from text into lived reality.

What is unfolding in Gaza points away from any genuine transition toward peace and toward a reshaping of control under new terms. ‘Phase two’ has evolved into a test of Palestinian factions, regional mediators, and the credibility of international guarantees alike.

It will either open the way to an unconditional end to the war and meaningful reconstruction, or take its place among the many agreements reduced to form without substance.

Gaza, which endured annihilation without surrender, will not be subdued by administrative committees or phased rhetoric. The struggle has expanded beyond territory and military confrontation. It is now a battle over who defines politics, who controls humanitarianism, and who ultimately holds the right to decide.

January 20, 2026 - Posted by aletho | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism