Gaza, year two: reconstruction as a political battlefield

Israel's offensive on the Gaza Strip has slowed in intensity without ending in doctrine. On the ground, expanded buffer zones and Israeli control of the Netzarim corridor have become a fait accompli. The population, for its part, is experiencing the end of a war by exhaustion rather than treaty.

The real game shifts across three overlapping planes.

First plane: who governs Gaza? The Palestinian Authority has announced a transitional administration, refused de facto by Israel and ignored by local actors. Egyptian engineers control the Rafah terminal ; Emirati forces hold an armed humanitarian logistics zone in the south. No actor has an interest in another's victory.

Second plane: who pays? Figures cited by the World Bank and UNDP range from 53 to 80 billion dollars over ten years. Riyadh and Abu Dhabi condition their contribution on a credible political horizon, meaning the beginning of a Palestinian state. Doha and Ankara fund in parallel, without political conditionality but with allocation preferences.

Third plane: West Bank. Settler pressure has hardened in Area C, with accelerated retroactive legalization of outposts. It is there, not in Gaza, that the liquidity of the two-state solution is decided.

Institute reading. The word reconstruction is misleading : the issue is less rebuilding a territory than fixing a legal and political status. As long as that question stays open, every construction site is a planted flag. The summer's observation to hold : the Saudi-Emirati sequence and the possible reactivation of expanded Abraham Accords, which will depend less on Washington than on Riyadh's arbitration over the oil price.