As Gazan civilians suffer through Winter, Hamas still controls 2 million people - analysis

BySETH J. FRANTZMANNOVEMBER 10, 2026 18:50

It has been 1,131 days since October 7. Hamas continues to control all 2 million civilians in Gaza, as it did prior to the massacre.

Today, Hamas controls around 30 percent of Gaza, and all the civilians have been forced to move to this small area it governs.

The US-backed ceasefire and peace plan of October 2025 envisioned having an international force in Gaza with a technocratic committee running the enclave. However, Israel’s elections and the Iran war have postponed most progress in Gaza.

On Monday, the Board of Peace, created as part of the peace plan, posted a statement about the winter conditions in the enclave. It said that there had been severe flooding in Gaza.

This has harmed tens of thousands of people who are stuck in tents. “These people were already living in precarious conditions, exposed to cold and unsafe conditions,” the board noted.

BoP enables humanitarian aid, says it's not enough

Meanwhile, the board says that it has been enabling humanitarian aid to enter Gaza, but warned that “the gains are not enough. They must be protected and accelerated.”

It noted that it has urged the Israeli government to authorize the entry of essential materials for temporary shelter. The statement also said Hamas should lay down its arms.

In other words, the Board of Peace believes Israel’s response is insufficient. It said that the “time for assurances without implementation has passed.” It argued that the civilians in Gaza “cannot afford continued inaction.”

The challenge in Gaza is that most of these problems were well known. A year ago, the peace and ceasefire plan was new. Hamas was still handing over the bodies of hostages.

By January 2026, the US had received backing from the UN for the peace plan. There was also the US Central Command-backed Civil-Military Coordination Center in Kiryat Gat that was helping with the logistics of humanitarian aid entering Gaza. A lot seemed to be working well.

High hopes at the time envisioned the International Stabilization Force (ISF) coming into being in the spring of 2026. Around five countries were believed to be committed, and more were expected to agree.

However, the beginning of the Iran war in February 2026 appeared to put some of these plans on hold, or at least slow them down. Kosovo and Albania did send a handful of personnel to examine how they might deploy forces. The US supported a new logistics center near the Gaza border. The basic elements of the next steps were in place by the summer of 2026.

However, that summer saw another round of postponements for what might come next. Ostensibly, this was because of Israel’s elections. The theory was that the governing coalition couldn’t be pressured to do anything because it wouldn’t want to appear “soft” on Hamas.

The governing coalition’s policy prior to October 7, 2023, had been to transfer cash to Hamas as part of the theory that paying Hamas would “deter” it from war. After the terrorist organization’s invasion, there was a brief period of unity in Israel when the rhetoric in Jerusalem argued that Hamas was similar to ISIS and that there wouldn’t be Hamas in Gaza after the war.

However, that narrative changed by 2024, shifting to a mission of degrading Hamas’s “military and governance” capabilities.

Essentially, Hamas would remain but be weakened, similar to the “mowing the grass” concept before October 7. From that point onward, any suggestion of a “day after” plan or enabling civilians in Gaza to move to civilian “bubbles” or “pilot zones” where they would be free of Hamas was shelved. There would be no possibility of civilians leaving the Hamas area.

Most of Hamas military command killed

It should be noted that by the fall of 2024, most Hamas commanders had been killed. This included almost all Hamas platoon, company, battalion, and brigade commanders.

By 2025, some of Hamas’s commanders had been replaced, but the new faces were killed off as well.

Nevertheless, even a weakened Hamas continued to recruit. The IDF tactic in Gaza was to call on civilians to leave areas so that Hamas and the civilians would then leave an area and the IDF would conquer it.

This happened up to seven times in some cases. In Zeitoun in Gaza, for instance, the IDF conquered the area seven times. In other places such as Jabalya, the IDF captured it at least three times. Over the course of the war, the IDF began to raze many of the areas in Gaza, systematically destroying most of the homes.

The result was that the civilians all had to move to an area around the central refugee camps in Gaza. Perhaps a million civilians had moved several times during the war.

They had to evacuate Gaza City when the war began and move to southern Gaza. Then they had to move back north when the IDF went into Khan Yunis and Rafah in 2024.

Then they had to leave the north again in the fall of 2024. Then, in March, they had to leave southern Gaza again, and in August and September, they had to leave Gaza City again.

This led to Hamas basically moving around Gaza, from the north to the south, to the center, to the north again, to the south again, and then to the center again.

The result when the ceasefire deal began in October 2025 was that Hamas continued to control the central refugee camps area and parts of western Gaza. The IDF controlled the rest. This was about half of Gaza.

Since the ceasefire, the IDF has expanded its control, overseeing around 70% of Gaza. Anyone who leaves the Hamas zone is viewed as a possible terrorist. Civilians have no way to leave.

The plans envisioned by the Trump administration and the Board of Peace, such as deploying the ISF and reconstruction, have not materialized. It seems that Washington may be waiting to see the results of the Israeli elections. The Trump administration also has its own issues after the US midterms.

The result for people in Gaza is that they are in limbo. Israel does not seem ready to work with any kind of technocratic committee. No real progress is being made. Progress is plausible in the future, but it will require commitments from various countries.

Hamas has said it has agreed to some ceasefire and peace-deal concepts. However, it is unclear how it can be disarmed. The IDF does not want to go into the rest of Gaza and try to disarm around 10,000 Hamas gunmen hiding among 2 million people.

That seems an impossible task. Armored and infantry brigades are not good at disarming a few fighters hiding among civilians. It is an impossible task.

On the other hand, letting civilians leave the Hamas area could deprive Hamas of its ability to “swim” amongst the civilians.

This worked in the Mosul operation, enabling the defeat of ISIS. In fact, historically, this is how wars are won. Civilians can leave the area, and the enemy is defeated.

Various concepts in Gaza that envisioned a different scenario have not panned out. For a while in 2025, there was talk of “militias” running part of Gaza. The militias proved a failure. They didn’t help civilians. This is because militias usually act like a mafia, and mafias aren’t good at creating the conditions for civilian life to thrive.

The current situation is that there is no initiative to create an area for civilians to live free of Hamas. This has the result of leaving them all under Hamas rule, just as it was before October 7.

The Board of Peace wants to see change. However, it will also need to give its activities teeth, such as deploying the ISF and rebuilding parts of Gaza to show what the future can look like.

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