On 6 July, Hamas announced it was handing over governance of Gaza to the body established by the US-brokered ceasefire of October 2025, the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG). It did so as part of the commitments demanded by Trump’s Board of Peace (BoP) – commitments the Zionist state has yet to meet (see ‘Imperialism out of Palestine’, FRFI 309, December 2025/January 2026). The organisation’s spokesman, Hazem Qassem, stated that it had acted ‘to remove any pretexts for the occupation, which continues its aggression and war of extermination.’
There has been no reciprocal move by the Zionist state. Israel has continued to expand its occupation of Gaza, bomb civilians on a daily basis and severely restrict the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza. Israel nonetheless continues to demand Hamas hand over its weapons – a demand reiterated by the pro-Zionist head of the NCAG, Nikolay Mladenov. This Hamas has consistently refused to do. The Zionist state’s stance that Hamas does not go far enough is echoed by the collaborationist Palestinian Authority (PA), where Mahmoud al-Habbash, a high-ranking PA official and adviser to President Mahmoud Abbas, accused Hamas of ‘deception’. As Qassem remarked pointedly, ‘It’s unfamiliar to see PA leaders using the same terms as some Israeli political figures describing the step Hamas took’.
Israel tramples on ceasefire
The reality is that the ceasefire agreed by an undefeated Palestinian liberation movement last year prevented the total brutal Israeli colonisation of Gaza, saw 1,900 Palestinian prisoners freed from Zionist jails, allowed in a trickle of aid to the devastated Gaza Strip and provided breathing space for the people of Gaza and the liberation movement to regroup. However, in the nine months since it was signed, Zionist forces have butchered over 2,000 Palestinians, seized 60% of the land and used bulldozers to destroy what is left of Gaza beyond the Zionist ‘yellow line’ of occupation. The Rafah border with Egypt remains almost totally closed and the number of aid trucks entering each day has been reduced to just 60.
The imperialist-backed BoP has done nothing to rein in its Zionist monster, continuing to pile pressure on Hamas. Yet Israel is not even allowing the NCAG – to which Hamas is supposed to hand power – into Gaza. In mid-July it was revealed that the BoP had quietly shelved its plans for rebuilding Gaza, and would now attempt only a small pilot scheme consisting of a tiny camp of portacabins in Rafah – construction of which would not even begin until the end of the year. The reality is that the BoP, despite being seen by imperialist powers as a blueprint for the profitable reconstruction of the territory, is in tatters, derailed by the intransigence of a Zionist state that seeks not peace but the total annihilation of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and is ramping up those objectives ahead of Israeli elections in October.
Which way forward for Gaza?
The resistance finds itself in uncharted territory. Hamas saw ceasefire negotiations as essential to allow the entry of food, medicine and building materials, the end of Zionist aggression and the phased withdrawal of occupation troops. Despite an uneasy ‘normality’ for Gaza’s Palestinians as a result of reduced Israeli bombings, progress towards those goals remains severely limited. Corralled into rat-infested canvas tents, hundreds of thousands of people are at the mercy of an inhospitable landscape. Children go days without full meals and are contracting illnesses that would be preventable without the Israeli state’s medical blockade. In June, the UN found that children accounted for 30% of the fatalities in the genocide.
Meanwhile, the options for the liberation movement are limited as it finds itself increasingly isolated outside the occupied Palestinian territories, with the exception of the unwavering solidarity of Yemen’s Ansarallah movement. Ranged against it are not just the imperialist US, Britain and the European Union, all vying for the prize of controlling Gaza, but regional powers such as Egypt, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which have openly aligned themselves with imperialism’s goals. The operations of Palestinian liberation organisations, from Hamas and Islamic Jihad to the socialist PFLP and DFLP, are severely curtailed in the surrounding states.
They are also internally undermined as the comprador PA collaborates openly with the occupation and jostles for a seat at the BoP table. Two days before the handover announcement, Qassem attacked the PA for ‘remain[ing] a spectator to the disaster occurring in the Gaza Strip’. Under the dictates of EU imperialists who see a bolstered PA as the route to liquidating the resistance, President Abbas has announced the first legislative elections for 20 years to take place in November. However, the PA has moved to ban any group which rejects the PLO as the ‘sole legitimate representative’ of the Palestinian people. A master of backstabbing opportunism, Abbas is also moving to bar his imprisoned Fatah comrade Marwan Barghouti from standing for the leadership of the PLO.
Stand with the resistance
Meanwhile the official Palestine Solidarity Campaign in Britain has abandoned the forces of liberation, allying itself instead with the collaborationist Palestinian Authority and Palestinian bourgeoisie in the West Bank, and the abiding myth of a ‘two-state’ solution. On 18 July, the PSC’s London march was again led by PA ambassador Husam Zomlot, who last year supported the pro-genocide, former foreign secretary David Lammy on Palestinian statehood. In March 2024, Zomlot posed for photos with then Manchester mayor (now, of course Prime Minister) Andy Burnham at a ‘Manchester stands with Gaza’ dinner, just five months after Burnham had appeared on a Zionist platform in the city, attacking Palestinian ‘terrorism.’
The PSC has welcomed Burnham’s comments that Labour had ‘got it wrong’ on Gaza, claiming that ‘mass pressure by our solidarity movement has forced this apology.’ But the ‘apology’ is meaningless without action: does anyone seriously believe Burnham will break with Labour’s Zionist history and impose sanctions on Israel? Or end the escalating state repression of those who defend the right of the Palestinian people to armed struggle? The PSC has no plans for any further protest until October. So much for ‘mass pressure’.
The movement in this country has failed to mobilise any real solidarity with those fighting for Palestinian self-determination and liberation. It has failed to challenge the illegitimacy of the Zionist state and Britain’s role in sustaining it. It has cosied up to members of the genocide-supporting Labour Party and collaborationist forces in Palestine while not lifting a finger to defend those targeted by the British state for supporting the resistance and calling for a free Palestine. It has demobilised the hundreds of thousands of people in this country prepared to stand with Palestine. We have to build a movement in solidarity with the Palestinian resistance that is not afraid to challenge and expose the complicity of the British imperialist state.
Louis Brehony
