The Phase Two Dilemma: Security Planning and Post-Conflict Stability in Gaza
As the Gaza war escalated and humanitarian conditions worsened, “day-after” discussions moved from long-term speculation to urgent diplomacy. Mounting pressure to secure hostage releases, expand humanitarian access, and contain regional spillover helped drive efforts to draft Phase One of a ceasefire framework, brokered by the United States with Egyptian support and sustained engagement by Arab partners.
The framework accepted by both Israel and Hamas is structured in two major phases. Phase One focused on halting large-scale hostilities, enabling tightly monitored humanitarian access, and initiating the release of hostages as part of a reciprocal, time-bound arrangement. Phase Two, however, presents a more complex sequencing challenge: translating temporary stabilization into a durable security regime and a viable governance architecture that will shape Gaza’s post-conflict order.
Phase Two refers to the contested implementation phase in Gaza in which end-state terms are operationalized: a durable ceasefire; Israeli redeployment from the “Yellow Line” toward agreed withdrawal lines; a governance transition that ends Hamas’ role; and a weapons pathway linked to reconstruction sequencing and security guarantees – ranging from maximalist Israeli demands for disarmament to mediator proposals to freeze and monitor stored weapons. These elements are contested by the principal parties and stakeholders, including Israel and Hamas, as well as by external mediators and prospective governance actors, over what “withdrawal,” “post-Hamas governance,” and any weapons arrangement would mean in practice and on what timeline.
Stability in Gaza cannot be achieved through tactical intelligence and operational controls alone; it requires political legitimacy and social cohesion, informed – but not replaced – by intelligence insights. The key question is whether progress in Phase Two is defined by control benchmarks (monitoring, zoning, and access rules) preferred by Israeli military doctrine or by consolidation benchmarks (clear authorization, recognized authority, and a credible transition horizon) preferred by mediators because the first can advance quickly while the second remains contested, producing policy drift.
Gaza’s Phase Two dilemma is a sequencing problem: Operational security implementation can advance through managed access, corridor control, and layered administration while the political basis of compliance remains contested. When intelligence-enabled enforcement outputs are treated as proxies for stabilization, policy can drift toward architectures optimized for control rather than toward a durable transition defined by clear authorization, legitimacy, and an agreed political horizon.
Competing Postwar Architectures
Within that context, multiple postwar architectures compete in parallel. At the emergency Arab summit in Cairo, Egypt presented a full Phase Two concept that paired a phased, technically sequenced reconstruction plan – from rubble removal to integrated rebuilding across northern and southern Gaza – with an Arab framework to channel assistance and a technocratic governance arrangement endorsed through Palestinian consensus. The concept was designed to enable a political transition culminating in recognition of a Palestinian state. Israel rejected the Cairo framework, while the White House responded with his detailed alternative plan, shifting toward a new set of rules drafted later in the Sharm el-Sheikh agreement.
At the same time, the U.S. Gaza initiative moved forward with a competing postwar architecture that introduced a proposed international “Board of Peace,” alongside an official framework that opens by announcing the formation of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG). The practical dispute has therefore shifted to Phase Two execution, where sequencing is increasingly shaped by internal security boundaries and managed access; a layered transitional governance track built around international oversight, an independent technocratic committee endorsed through Palestinian consensus, and phased institutional transfer; and weapons-related criteria used as leverage over reconstruction timelines.
In practice, mediators have pressed toward a middle-ground formula that pairs an initial, principle-level understanding on Hamas’ disarmament – without agreed implementation mechanisms – with Israeli withdrawal and noninterference in internal administration, while keeping reconstruction decisions anchored in international commitments and limiting the role of internal security boundary-making in shaping Gaza’s reconstruction geography. Mediators have sought an interim formula that accommodates acceptance of the U.S. proposal in principle, while leaving the operational mechanisms – governance authorities, sequencing benchmarks, and any weapons-related modalities – to subsequent negotiations shaped by these competing visions that still discourage donors from considering Gaza reconstruction.
Security Control Boundaries
As mediators move from Phase One to Phase Two, the key friction point is which implementation mechanisms are privileged – whether enforcement geometry, defined by access control, monitoring, and corridor management, functions as a bridge toward an authorized political pathway or becomes a substitute for it. The United States established a U.S.-led Civil-Military Coordination Centre (CMCC) in Kiryat Gat to monitor ceasefire arrangements, facilitate aid entry, and develop postwar policy options with participation from multiple countries. Yet the CMCC has prompted frustration among some participants who see limited gains, especially in translating coordination into measurably improved aid access through a coherent, enforceable mechanism, even as Israel’s far right – exemplified by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s calls to dismantle the center – presses for a more forceful security architecture aligned with Israeli military doctrine. The sequencing problem is reinforced by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s public insistence that Israel will maintain “security control” from the Jordan River to the sea, including Gaza, and by his framing of demilitarization and disarmament as prerequisites for reconstruction. This security-first ordering can accelerate control benchmarks ahead of an agreed political transition pathway, increasing the risk that enforcement geometry displaces durable consolidation and policy drifts accordingly.
Policy Drift and the Legitimacy Gap
The mechanism of concern is policy drift: intelligence-enabled enforcement measures and measurable control outputs – monitoring, zoning, and access control – can advance even while authorization, legitimacy, and social cohesion remain contested. In Gaza, this drift risk is heightened when security implementation moves ahead of a credible political transition pathway, allowing enforcement geometry to substitute for durable consolidation. The gap is sharpened by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s continued rejection of any Palestinian Authority role in governing Gaza, leaving the political basis of postwar legitimacy unresolved even as operational arrangements proceed.
Recent debates over Phase Two have often foregrounded security implementation – movement permissions, corridor management, and deconfliction arrangements – before publicly clarifying who will govern and under what mandate. This matters because the technocratic committee remains undefined in practice: Its authorities have not been clearly specified, and it is frequently insulated from core files that would determine whether it can build legitimacy, including reconstruction, internal security, and any future weapons-related modalities. Without a mandate that connects service delivery to real authority, layered administrative arrangements can function under constraint but cannot alter the underlying control environment, increasing exposure to a managed form of instability. Conversely, a credible, nonfactional Palestinian governance track –capable of evolving into state institutions that monopolize force – would offer a pathway to the legitimacy that Phase Two implementation currently lacks.
The Phase Two debate shows how a security-first sequence can advance operational control while leaving authorization, legitimacy, and social cohesion unresolved. That gap is not unique to Gaza. Iraq and Afghanistan illustrate how extensive intelligence and security activity can coexist with policy under-delivery when assumptions and sequencing choices do not align with political and social dynamics on the ground. In Iraq, early post-2003 decisions disrupted institutional continuity before a legitimate successor order could absorb the vacuum. In Afghanistan, two decades of intensive collection and security activity did not prevent rapid political breakdown in 2021. In both cases, expanded collection did not reliably improve models of incentives, legitimacy, and cohesion that determine post-conflict durability.
A recurring analytic pitfall behind this drift is quantification bias: assessment systems can privilege measurable outputs—strikes, seizures, zones controlled, and approvals issued—over variables that better predict durability, including legitimacy, consent, compliance, cohesion, and institutional credibility. Where this bias dominates, intelligence can deliver granular situational awareness without improving the political model guiding policy design.
Historical Case Studies and Their Lessons for Gaza
Across decades of U.S.-supported interventions, intelligence superiority has often enabled tactical control while underperforming in producing durable political sustainability. A recurring mismatch is mis-specified political causality: enforcement outputs are treated as stability proxies while legitimacy, authorization, and cohesion are treated as downstream variables.
The Bay of Pigs (1961) invasion assumed an externally backed landing would trigger defections and a popular Cuban uprising against Fidel Castro; instead, nationalist cohesion held and U.S. limits on overt escalation left the invading force isolated and quickly defeated. The episode illustrates a recurring constraint: Intelligence and covert capability can enable tactical action but cannot manufacture legitimacy or ensure that externally backed force will be read as acceptable authority. In Gaza, dissatisfaction with one actor can be misread as consent for an externally sponsored replacement if sovereign authorization, withdrawal horizons, and a credible political pathway remain unclear, with early warning visible in rapid “externally imposed” stigma and growing reliance on coercive access control.
In Vietnam (1965-1973), extensive intelligence visibility coexisted with a framing error that treated the conflict primarily as insurgency management rather than a legitimacy struggle; repeated disruption degraded networks without collapsing recruitment and compliance drivers while the supported order’s legitimacy eroded. Intelligence can optimize disruption but cannot substitute for a credible authority pathway when the center of gravity is political and social. In Gaza, a threat-first lens risks producing operational gains alongside declining political acceptance, signaled by open-ended security conditionality and the treatment of institutional reintegration as a standing risk.
Iraq after 2003 shows how intelligence abundance cannot offset sequencing failures: dismantling coercive state structures before building a legitimate successor authority generated legitimacy vacuums and institutional fragmentation that regenerated violence. The core mismatch lay in authority design and sequencing rather than collection. In Gaza, externally supervised bodies lacking clear authority, fiscal control, and enforceable mandates risk becoming blame-absorbing buffers under scarcity as spoilers and shadow enforcement economies expand, reflected in contested chains of command, parallel enforcement structures, and aid-capture dynamics substituting for formal governance legitimacy.
Afghanistan (2001–2021). Afghanistan is the most acute demonstration of measurement mismatch under surveillance saturation. Over two decades, the U.S. and partners built deep intelligence penetration through drones, human intelligence networks, biometrics, and signals intelligence. Yet the collapse of the U.S.-backed government in 2021 exposed the limits of intelligence-led state-building when legitimacy remains hollow. The decisive problem was not lack of visibility into insurgent networks, but overestimating the durability of an externally scaffolded authority whose compliance rested on conditional support and fragile institutional trust. In that environment, dashboards could show tactical progress while the political foundations of resilience decayed.
In Gaza, high visibility into armed networks should not be treated as evidence that a replacement governing architecture is durable if authorization and political legitimacy remain contested. Early warning indicators include persistent disputes over committee authorization and public-order command, increased reliance on substitute armed actors to police aid and order, and geographically selective reconstruction mapped onto enforcement lines.
South Lebanon (1982–2000). Israel’s experience in South Lebanon (1982–2000) is a high-relevance comparator for Gaza because it shows how a coherent intelligence-led control model can deliver sustained tactical advantage while accumulating a fatal legitimacy deficit. Israel administered a security zone through the South Lebanon Army, a locally recruited militia trained, funded, and directed through Israeli channels. Operationally, the design reduced direct exposure, enabled persistent monitoring, and outsourced daily friction; strategically, it embedded a structural vulnerability: authority flowed from external sponsorship rather than local consent—making the proxy’s identity legible as occupation by delegation. Hezbollah exploited this legitimacy gap by framing resistance as defense of dignity, sovereignty, and communal identity. In such environments, intelligence superiority interacts with grievance rather than dissolving it: proxy structures are penetrated, local compliance erodes, and tactical advantages are offset by social resilience and adaptive tactics.
A commonly repeated error occurs when enforcement is outsourced to “local” actors, as offered to Hossam Al-Ashtal, whose authority is perceived as occupation by delegation. In Gaza, an operational analog would be relying on armed enforcement and externally sponsored actors as substitutes for legitimate authority. That approach can turn stabilization into internal fragmentation, accelerate revenge dynamics, and delegitimize any transitional governing layer by association, especially when these actors intersect with access control and distribution security.
For Gaza, this is a design warning: where control architectures rely on proxies and enforcement geometry while legitimacy pathways remain thin or contested, they can generate brittle calm; in Gaza’s denser social environment, legitimacy penalties may accrue quickly if substitute armed enforcement becomes central to access control or distribution security. Early-warning indicators include substitute armed actors gaining formal roles in access control or aid distribution, and rising intra-Palestinian coercion framed as “anti-collaboration” policing rather than public order.
Across these cases, the operational pattern is consistent: intelligence can optimize disruption and enforcement, but it cannot manufacture socially recognized authority. When strategy treats intelligence as a stabilization substitute, it tends to build architectures optimized for control—surveillance, coercion, proxy enforcement—while leaving the political basis of compliance unresolved. Under pressure, such architectures often fail not gradually but abruptly once legitimacy and cohesion indicators collapse.
The Phase Two Problem
Two dynamics sharpen Gaza’s risk profile. First, Phase Two is being shaped as implementation-by-steps rather than announcement-by-settlement. Crossing management, administrative committees, force-generation discussions, and phased reconstruction mechanisms can advance without settling the political core. In such designs, progress is typically measured by control milestones (compliance, zoning, enforcement) rather than legitimacy milestones (recognized authority, consent-based governance, and a credible political horizon).
Beyond expanding control geometries, boundary hardening is becoming visible on the ground. Satellite imagery has described Israel shifting the demarcation of the “Yellow Line” and building fortifications near it, raising concerns that a ceasefire monitoring line could evolve into a de facto barrier that entrenches separation between northern and southern Gaza. Complementing this, field reporting has described Israeli forces “digging in” along the line through earthworks and berms, barbed wire, and outposts—signals of an enforcement architecture that can outlast political negotiations.
The Legitimacy Bottleneck
A concrete illustration of how authorization and security portfolios become politically determinative is visible in recent public reporting on the technocratic committee’s rollout. The committee’s first meeting was reportedly delayed by disagreements over the appointment of two members, including Sami Nasman – a former Palestinian Authority intelligence officer assigned the interior/internal security portfolio – highlighting that signature authority over the security file is contested at the outset.
This matters for ILS, an intelligence-legitimacy-social cohesion lens, as interconnected, because contested security design can translate quickly into legitimacy costs. If internal security is interpreted as an extension of external enforcement logic rather than public order under recognized authority, compliance becomes conditional, and factional suspicion intensifies. Israel’s prime minister has publicly acknowledged that Israel has “activated” some Palestinian clans opposed to Hamas – underscoring how substitute armed actors can enter the governance-by-security space under wartime conditions, and how enforcement instruments can harden into the de facto framework of “progress” absent a credible authority pathway.
This intersects with an equally operational constraint: Palestinian Authority insistence that any technocratic committee be formally subordinated to recognized Palestinian governmental authority through defined administrative command lines and explicit presidential decisions. In practice, technocracy becomes a signature-authority problem: committees cannot generate durable authority if they cannot demonstrate legal authorization, functional control, and an agreed pathway to unified governance. Where these are absent, committees risk becoming efficient administrators of scarcity under supervision, without the mandate to change the underlying geometry of control.
Disarmament as Leverage
Security-first sequencing intensifies these stresses because disarmament functions as a sequencing lever at the center of the Phase Two mediation file, reordering subsequent decisions on withdrawal, access, reconstruction approvals, and the handover of public-order functions. When disarmament is framed as a standing veto rather than as a managed outcome embedded in an authorized governance pathway, it can become a driver of strategic drift: measurable enforcement outputs advance while the political end-state remains opaque.
In his remarks during the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in January, U.S. President Donald Trump framed Hamas disarmament as a near-term deadline, warning that if Hamas did not give up its weapons within weeks, the group would face decisive military consequences. Phase Two remains stalled around unresolved issues, including Hamas disarmament and further withdrawal, reinforcing incentives for delay and selective implementation.
Israeli officials have repeatedly stated that Hamas must disarm and that Israel will ensure security in Gaza. More recent Israeli media reporting has also suggested that Israel intends to define what constitutes disarmament and how compliance would be verified.
The risk is familiar and operationally self-reinforcing. If disarmament is demanded before a credible authority pathway exists, armed capacity retains political utility and can adapt rather than disappear, including through “civilianized” enforcement roles, informal policing, or rebranded networks adjacent to governance. In that environment, maximalist or indefinite benchmarks can reopen the logic of “military resolution,” justifying continued operations to “eliminate targets” while postponing withdrawals envisaged under Phase Two—thereby hardening enforcement geometry as the de facto definition of progress. Renewed evacuation orders and boundary-hardening dynamics since the ceasefire illustrate how enforcement conditions can reassert themselves during delay.
A more politically durable pathway is to treat disarmament as a managed security outcome rather than a standing veto. Some proposals include a weapons freeze or monitored storage formula suggest an approach that – if structured credibly with guarantees and monitoring – could reduce incentives for concealment and reconstitution while avoiding an indefinite stall. Under an ILS lens, the decisive variable is legitimacy: where an authorized transitional arrangement demonstrates predictable rules, dispute-resolution capacity, and civilian protection, the political utility of weapons can diminish over time. Conversely, if disarmament is demanded before a credible authority pathway exists, armed actors retain a ready-made legitimacy narrative –portraying technocratic governance as externally imposed and unable to protect Gaza – deepening intra-Palestinian contestation and increasing risks of factional coercion. Accordingly, assessment should track drift indicators such as boundary-hardening, exception growth, access-denial trends, contested chains of command, and substitute enforcement roles intersecting with aid and movement.
Policy Recommendations
- Define an authorization chain before expanding enforcement geometry. Require Phase Two planning documents to specify who holds signature authority over rules of movement, distribution, public order, policing, and reconstruction approvals, and how disputes are adjudicated. Without this, committees risk becoming buffers that administer scarcity without mandate.
- Create legitimacy milestones alongside control milestones. Track and communicate a small set of legitimacy indicators – clarity of mandates, predictability of rules, grievance redress capacity, and civilian signals of perceived arbitrariness – so that “progress” is not measured only by zones controlled, approvals issued, or incidents reduced.
- Codify access as rules, not exceptions. Protect humanitarian operating space by shifting from discretionary permissions to transparent, rule-based access criteria, with independent monitoring and an escalation channel when access is politicized. This reduces the governance-by-exception dynamic that fuels drift.
- Replace open-ended weapons preconditions with phase-specific, time-bounded objectives. Where weapons-related criteria are used, tie them to an authorized governance pathway and define scope, duration, verification method, and safeguards against shifting benchmarks—so they do not function as a standing veto over stabilization.
- Prevent substitute enforcement from becoming governance. Explicitly limit the role of proxies and substitute armed actors in access control and distribution security; prioritize a unified public-order command under recognized authority with clear accountability mechanisms, to reduce legitimacy penalties and fragmentation risk.
- Monitor drift indicators as an early warning system. Establish a standing review that tracks boundary hardening, exception growth, access-denial trends, contested chains of command, parallel policing of aid, and geographically selective reconstruction mapped to enforcement lines. Treat these as triggers for policy adjustment – not as background noise.
- Align intelligence collection to political durability questions. Task intelligence and assessment products to answer decision-relevant questions on compliance incentives, legitimacy perceptions, cohesion fractures, and governance capacity – not only targeting and disruption – so analysis directly improves policy design rather than reinforcing measurement bias.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not an official policy or position of New Lines Institute.
Photo: A convoy accompanying a group of patients and their caregivers depart from a Red Cross hospital in Khan Unis, Gaza, accompanied by their caregivers, head toward the Rafah border crossing for evacuation on Feb. 12, 2026. (Photo by Abdallah F.s. Alattar/Anadolu via Getty Images)
