The Illusion of Statehood

It isn’t looking good 

The proposal of a US-backed international “Board of Peace” to administer post-war Gaza has been presented as a down-to-earth response to devastation. Yet, when viewed alongside Israel’s intensifying military and settler-driven campaign in the occupied West Bank, it becomes increasingly difficult to see this initiative as part of a coherent peace strategy.

Instead, it appears as one element of a broader political reality in which the Palestinian question is not being resolved, but systematically reorganized into a permanent condition of fragmentation. The central weakness of the Gaza proposal lies not in its emphasis on reconstruction, but in its deliberate avoidance of sovereignty. According to briefings cited by international media, the proposed administrative structure excludes Palestinians from meaningful political authority over borders, security, airspace or foreign relations. Governance is reduced to service delivery, health, education, utilities, while strategic decisions remain in the external hands. This arrangement closely resembles what scholars of conflict governance describe as “managed autonomy”, responsibility without power, administration without self-determination.

This model becomes even more troubling when counterpointed with developments in the West Bank. Reports by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and Human Rights Watch throughout 2024 and 2025 document an intense escalation in Israeli military raids, settler violence, home demolitions and forced displacement particularly in Jenin, Tulkarm, Nablus and Hebron.

OCHA notes that displacement levels in the parts of the northern West Bank now resemble patterns previously seen in Gaza, while the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory has warned that the cumulative effect of these actions is the “systematic erosion of Palestinian presence”. What emerges from these parallel tracks is not a roadmap to peace but a division of labour. Gaza is to be internationalized and stabilized under supervision while the West Bank is steadily weakened, fragmented and stripped of the territorial and social coherence required for statehood. The two regions, once conceived as the inseparable components of a future Palestinian state, are being treated as distinct problems to be managed through entirely different mechanisms.

Geography plays a decisive role in this transformation. In Gaza, reconstruction is increasingly discussed in economic terms, investment corridors, ports, housing projects, echoing earlier proposals, including those advanced during the Trump Administration, that framed Gaza as a site of development split from political rights. In the West Bank, meanwhile, Israeli settlement expansion continues at record levels. According to Peace Now, settlement approvals surged significantly after October 2023, while long-delayed projects such as the E1 corridor threaten to sever East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank permanently undermining territorial contiguity.

These are not isolated developments. The destruction of roads, water infrastructure and municipal facilities documented by UN agencies combined with the proliferation of checkpoints and settler-only bypass roads, has transformed Palestinian cities into disconnected enclaves. International law experts have repeatedly warned that such fragmentation violates the Fourth Geneva Convention, yet enforcement remains absent. The socioeconomic implications are equally obdurate.

History offers little optimism for such arrangements. From South Africa’s Bantustans to other externally administered territories, systems that deny political rights while promising economic relief have proven unsustainable. They may delay confrontation but they do not resolve it. If Gaza is rebuilt without sovereignty and the West Bank continues to be dismantled without scrutiny the result will not be peace but a prolonged, unstable limbo, one that ensures neither security for Israel nor freedom for Palestinians. Any genuine pathway forward must confront the central issue that current proposals carefully avoid, the continued occupation and the denial of Palestinian self-determination, both of which remain at the core of the conflict.

In Gaza, future reconstruction funds are likely to be conditional. World Bank and IMF assessments following previous conflicts show that aid flows to Gaza have consistently been tied to security benchmarks rather than development goals resulting in chronic dependency rather than sustainable growth. Analysts fear that a similar pattern will now be institutionalized with aid serving as leverage to enforce political compliance rather than to empower local institutions.

In the West Bank, the situation is more openly coercive. The World Bank’s 2024 economic update marked a severe contraction of the Palestinian economy due to movement restrictions, revenue withholding and widespread destruction of productive assets. Combined with mass arrests and labour permit cancellations, these measures have pushed unemployment and poverty to their highest levels in decades. A society struggling for daily survival cannot sustain the political mobilization necessary for independence.

Supporters of the Gaza trusteeship argue that stabilization may reduce the risk of wider war. Yet recent history suggests the opposite. Security arrangements that prioritize disarmament without addressing occupation tend to entrench cycles of resistance rather than end them. The International Crisis Group has repeatedly warned that suppressing political horizons while intensifying military control breeds decentralized and more volatile forms of conflict. The West Bank now experiencing its most sustained violence since the Second Intifada  stands as evidence of this dynamic.

Regionally, reactions remain cautious and constrained. Gulf states express willingness to fund reconstruction, but privately question whether they are being asked to underwrite an indefinite status quo. Türkiye and Qatar’s diplomatic engagement offers some balance, yet neither possesses the leverage to alter the fundamental asymmetry of power. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation continues to issue statements condemning violations of international law but its lack of enforcement mechanisms has limited its influence, a reality acknowledged even by its own officials in recent meetings.

This has led many observers to describe the current trajectory as a new form of dispossession. One that avoids formal annexation while achieving similar outcomes. Instead of declaring sovereignty over Palestinian land, Israel reshapes facts on the ground through settlement expansion, displacement and infrastructural destruction. Instead of denying Palestinian political existence outright, international actors offer administrative roles emptied of political substance.

The danger of this approach lies in its apparent normalization. By managing the humanitarian consequences of occupation without challenging its foundations, the international community risks burying the Palestinian cause beneath layers of technical governance and crisis management. Stability, in this framework, becomes a substitute for justice.

History offers little optimism for such arrangements. From South Africa’s Bantustans to other externally administered territories, systems that deny political rights while promising economic relief have proven unsustainable. They may delay confrontation but they do not resolve it. If Gaza is rebuilt without sovereignty and the West Bank continues to be dismantled without scrutiny the result will not be peace but a prolonged, unstable limbo, one that ensures neither security for Israel nor freedom for Palestinians. Any genuine pathway forward must confront the central issue that current proposals carefully avoid, the continued occupation and the denial of Palestinian self-determination, both of which remain at the core of the conflict.