هذا التقرير متاح أيضًا بـ العربية
At a time when UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was warning of the catastrophic humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip, stressing that they are on the verge of collapse because of severe funding shortages and the sweeping restrictions Israel has imposed on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the Peace Council in the Strip came out with an explicit declaration: “There is no place for UNRWA in the new Gaza.”
The council, which is considered one of the structures for managing the transitional phase in Gaza under the framework adopted by the White House on Jan. 16, published a statement on its official account on X on Wednesday, July 1, confirming that the future of the Strip would not include a role for UNRWA. It claimed that it seeks to end what it described as the “continued dependence on aid,” adding that “the people of Gaza deserve more than that.”
What was striking about this announcement, however, was not only its content, but also the context in which it was presented. The council accompanied its post with a video clip featuring part of a speech by the US representative to the United Nations, Jeff Bartos, in which he criticized support for UNRWA and called on countries to choose between “funding incitement, terrorism, and stagnation” or “funding the Peace Council” rhetoric that mirrors the Israeli narrative toward the agency and sparked considerable controversy.
From this perspective, the announcement cannot be read as merely an administrative position toward a UN agency, or as an organizational step within postwar arrangements. Rather, it is part of a broader political context through which this new entity, launched by President Donald Trump, is trying to redraw the contours of the so-called “new Gaza” according to a specific political and security blueprint, one reduced to its humanitarian and security dimensions rather than its political and legal ones. So how does this announcement reveal the other face of the Peace Council?
Targeting the refugee issue and stripping away a historic right
This announcement carries a long list of implications affecting the Palestinian cause in general and the refugee issue in particular. UNRWA was never merely a UN institution with a humanitarian character whose mission was limited to distributing aid or providing basic services to Palestinians. For decades, it has remained a legal and historical witness to the refugee issue and its continuity since 1948, and one of the most important pillars Palestinians rely on in defending their rights before the international community.
Accordingly, removing UNRWA from the Gaza Strip does not simply mean changing the party responsible for relief efforts or replacing one source of aid with another. It represents an attempt to withdraw one of the most important international symbols that has kept the refugee issue present in international political and legal consciousness, and to strip that issue of its historical roots and its foremost UN witness over many long decades.
In the same context, this announcement seeks to invert the historical facts tied to the Palestinian cause and redirect its entire course. Instead of recognizing that the core of the crisis lies in the occupation, the absence of a just political solution, and the ongoing violations committed by Israeli forces against Palestinians, the center of accusation is shifted to UNRWA itself, holding the agency accountable for a crisis it did not create, but that arose in the first place because of the continuation of the occupation and its consequences.
From here, the Peace Council adopts a logic based on what can be called “security peace” — a peace built on reengineering the Strip in security and administrative terms — rather than a “rights-based peace” grounded in the Palestinian people’s historical and legal rights. This reveals that the issue is not about reorganizing humanitarian work in Gaza so much as it is about an attempt to redefine the Palestinian cause itself and strip it of its political and rights-based dimensions in favor of a security approach that serves the Israeli vision.
The new Gaza: fragmenting what is already fragmented
The use of the term “new Gaza,” which appeared in the message the council posted on its X account, carries an extremely dangerous political significance. The discourse here does not treat the Strip as an integral part of Palestine, nor as a geographic and political extension of the Palestinian cause. Instead, it presents it as though it were a separate entity in itself, to be redesigned and administered from outside the Palestinian national context.
This significance points toward deepening Palestinian division and even entrenching what could be described as dividing the already divided. It becomes possible to speak of a “new Gaza” and an old one, and of Palestinian areas separated demographically, security-wise, and administratively, reinforcing the logic of fragmentation and turning the hoped-for Palestinian state into isolated cantons lacking geographic and political continuity. This directly affects the unity of the Palestinian people and the unity of their land and cause.
In the same context, linking the use of this term to the announcement of UNRWA’s removal from the Strip overturns the very philosophy of the agency’s work, which was originally based on dealing with a broad segment of Gaza’s population as Palestinian refugees with a distinct legal, historical, and political status.
The discourse adopted by the council, however, suggests that Gaza’s residents are nothing more than “residents of the Strip” who need services and aid, and that UNRWA can therefore be replaced by any other organization or entity without affecting the essence of the issue.
This in itself is highly dangerous political misrepresentation, because it shifts Gazans from being rights holders to the land, return, and compensation to being beneficiaries of humanitarian services that can be managed and replaced.
Aligning with the Israeli vision
The Peace Council’s position on UNRWA closely aligns with the Israeli view, beginning with its characterization of the agency as an entity linked to “incitement, terrorism, and stagnation,” according to the video clip the council attached to its post featuring the US representative to the United Nations, Jeff Bartos. This characterization is inseparable from the same narrative the occupying state has long promoted against UNRWA, portraying the agency as supportive of the resistance or as a haven for some of its members.
This alignment does not stop at the level of rhetoric and terminology, but extends to the same political objective. Both parties — the Peace Council and Israel — converge on one demand: removing UNRWA from the Gaza Strip and freezing its role there. This is a goal Tel Aviv has sought to achieve for decades but has been unable to impose fully, and now the Peace Council appears to be performing by proxy the role Israel failed to accomplish on its own.
In light of this convergence, there appears to be an implicit understanding between the Peace Council and the Israeli government on stripping the Palestinian cause of its symbols and foundational pillars, foremost among them the refugees’ right of return the right for which UNRWA has remained the most prominent historical and institutional witness since the Nakba.
Accordingly, targeting the agency does not appear separate from a broader attempt to uproot that witness altogether, in a bid to empty the refugee issue of its legal and political constants and recast it as a manageable humanitarian file rather than an inalienable historical right.
Not a neutral mediator: the council’s other face
From the first day it began operating inside the Gaza Strip, the Peace Council did not appear as a neutral mediator or an independent transitional framework. The totality of the decisions and measures it has taken revealed that its presence was not driven by purely humanitarian motives, nor by a desire to serve as a temporary station for managing the postwar phase, or as a gateway to reconstruction and the imposition of stability and peace as it claims.
Rather, it appeared closer to an entity with a specific political function that, as noted above, fundamentally intersects with the Israeli agenda toward the Strip and the Palestinian cause.
The logical premise is that if the Peace Council truly wanted to play a humanitarian role inside Gaza, it should have begun by reinforcing the UN institutions already in place, foremost among them UNRWA, strengthening their ability to operate, and improving their performance through political, economic, and logistical support.
But for it to present itself, in such a top-down manner, as an alternative that determines who stays in the Strip and who leaves, who has the right to provide assistance and who is excluded from doing so, means that it is exceeding the role it was originally announced to perform and moving from the position of transitional administration to that of political guardianship.
This behavior is consistent with the fears and warnings that accompanied the council’s launch from the outset: that it would be given a broad role in administering Gaza not as a tool for reconstruction, but as an engineer of a new reality inside the Strip a reality politically, security-wise, administratively, and demographically reshaped in a way that serves the Israeli entity and entrenches its interests at the expense of the Palestinian cause and the rights of the Palestinian people.
Thus, the danger of the Peace Council lies not only in the decisions it issues, but in the nature of the role it seeks to entrench — a role that goes beyond relief to reengineering Gaza, beyond stability to imposing new political and security arrangements, and that transforms the Strip from an integral part of the Palestinian cause into a space subject to external administration, with its boundaries and functions drawn according to a logic that serves the occupation more than it serves the people of the land.
An early warning message: will the Arabs heed it?
It has become clear that the Peace Council is not what it was initially portrayed to be: a neutral entity or a peaceful framework seeking to impose stability and manage the current phase in the Gaza Strip. It has revealed its true face early on, appearing more like a political agent of the Israeli entity, working under American sponsorship to serve Tel Aviv’s interests at a moment when President Donald Trump needs the support of the Zionist lobby.
Regardless of whether this announcement reflects a real position that will later be translated into actual policy, or whether it is merely a tool of political pressure and blackmail aimed at forcing UNRWA to submit to the Israeli vision, the council has managed to present its credentials early and officially, exposing its true nature without equivocation, sensitivity, or even an attempt to offer balanced approaches.
Accordingly, insisting on dealing with this entity as a neutral mediator means nothing more than reproducing the same paths and following the same roads that have repeatedly led the Palestinian cause to further marginalization and attrition. The expected outcome of such a course will be nothing but a new political disaster, one in which the Palestinian cause is pushed further to the margins and Palestinians are stripped day after day of their historical and legal rights under the cover of peace and reconstruction.
Accordingly, confronting this project by every possible means is no longer a political luxury, but a national and pan-Arab necessity, as Palestinian analyst Yasser Al-Zaatreh pointed out. He noted that the responsibility here does not fall on Palestinians alone, but also extends to the guarantor states of the peace plan signed in Sharm el-Sheikh, and to Arab society as a whole a society that is no longer outside the circle of targeting in light of an Israeli project based on subjugation, expansion, and the imposition of new facts by force.
Now that the so-called Peace Council has revealed its true face, the UNRWA file can be seen as an extremely sensitive political test of Arab decision-making an attempt to gauge the pulse and measure the limits of the response in preparation for determining the course the council will pursue in the coming phase. If targeting UNRWA passes without a decisive Arab, regional, and international response, what follows will be even more dangerous, not only for Gaza’s future but for the future of the Palestinian cause as a whole.
So is it finally time for real action to put an end to this political recklessness? Or will the Arabs and the regional and international communities continue their favorite pastime of limiting themselves to statements of condemnation and denunciation from air-conditioned offices and the seats of spectators, while Gaza and the Palestinian cause are being reengineered by purely Zionist hands?