Hamas overhauls Gaza’s government but stays in charge, despite reports of a handover
Hamas dissolved its Emergency Committee and its acting government chief resigned but move creates renamed interim authority still under Hamas
GAZA (MNTV) — Hamas has restructured the government it runs in the Gaza Strip, dissolving its Emergency Committee and accepting the resignation of its acting government chief.
But contrary to a wave of international headlines declaring that the group had dissolved its “governing body” or was stepping aside, Hamas continues to govern the territory.
What took place Monday was an internal reorganization, not an abdication.
Hamas’s Government Media Office said it had completed the legal and administrative steps to wind down the Emergency Committee, and that Muhammad Abd al-Khaliq al-Farra had resigned as acting head of the Government Work Follow-up Committee and chairman of the Emergency Committee.
In their place, the remaining state apparatus will keep operating under a new name — the Temporary Authority for Government Services — staffed by civil servants and bound by existing Palestinian law.
The transitional phase will be led by Dr. Abdul Hadi al-Agha, a longtime figure in Gaza’s civil administration who served as deputy minister of endowments and religious affairs under the Follow-up Committee.
Only service, professional and technical employees will remain at their posts, the government said, to keep public services running and prevent an administrative vacuum or a collapse of security during the handover.
Hamas cast the change as a good-faith step in the Cairo negotiations — a signal of its willingness to move the postwar process forward and clear obstacles to the entry of humanitarian relief — rather than a surrender of authority.
A headline that outran the facts
That distinction was lost in much of the coverage.
Numerous outlets framed the announcement as Hamas relinquishing power in Gaza, a characterization that traces in part to Abu Dhabi’s The National, which presented remarks by Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem as a statement given directly to it — when Qassem had in fact only repeated the same press-release comments issued publicly to all media.
The result was a story, echoed widely, that overstated what Hamas had actually done.
The group has not handed Gaza to anyone: the technocratic National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), which is meant to eventually assume civil control under Palestinian figure Ali Shaath, remains based in Cairo and has still not entered the territory.
Two committees, restructured
The bodies at the center of Monday’s move have run Gaza’s day-to-day affairs for years.
The Governmental Emergency Committee framework was inaugurated in November 2019 and became the overarching structure of government after October 2023. The Government Work Follow-up Committee has served as Hamas’s de facto cabinet since 2019, when it replaced the earlier Administrative Committee.
The two have operated in tandem over the past three years.
In his resignation letter, dated Monday, al-Farra said he was stepping down from both roles and that those staying on were only service-level, professional and technical staff, kept in place to serve residents and avert an administrative and security breakdown, in line with the road map and the agreements reached by Palestinian factions in Cairo.
The remaining government body, he wrote, would operate as the Temporary Authority for Government Services under applicable Palestinian law.
The wider process — and real sticking point
The reorganization feeds into the roadmap tied to the ceasefire that took hold in October 2025 under US President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan, overseen by his Board of Peace. Nikolay Mladenov, the board’s lead Gaza envoy, welcomed the announcement on X, calling it a bridge between declarations and implementation and saying it underscored the need to conclude roadmap talks so the NCAG can take up its duties, weapons can begin to be decommissioned, Israeli forces can withdraw, and reconstruction can start.
None of that has happened. Israel has instead expanded its footprint in Gaza, controlling more than 80 percent of the territory as of July 2, and the transition to the ceasefire’s second phase — which hinges on Hamas’s disarmament — has been stalled for months.
Hamas says it will not surrender any of its weapons before a Palestinian administration is in place, while Israel rejects both a return of Hamas and, for now, a takeover by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority.
Israel dismissed Monday’s move outright.
Its public broadcaster KAN, citing an unnamed official, called the resignation a “deception with no practical significance” because personnel had stayed in place, and accused Hamas of stalling.
Hamas, which never described the step as a full handover, casts it instead as one procedural move within a process it says Israel is failing to honor.
The stakes
The maneuvering unfolds against catastrophe. Since October 2023, more than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed and over 173,000 wounded in Israel’s offensive, according to Gaza’s health authorities. Hamas’s government tied Monday’s restructuring directly to the humanitarian emergency — the blockade, sealed crossings, stalled reconstruction and continued Israeli military presence it described as part of an ongoing genocide, the subject of proceedings at the International Court of Justice.
For Gaza’s more than two million people, the question beneath the administrative reshuffle is simpler: whether any of it will finally speed the entry of food, fuel and shelter.
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