This document is largely based on a document written by Yara Hawari who is co-director of Al-Shabaka’s, and a policy member in the organization. She previously served as the Palestine policy fellow and senior analyst. Yara completed her PhD in Middle East Politics at the University of Exeter. Al Shabaka is the only global network of Palestinian experts to produce critical policy analysis and collectively imagine a new policymaking paradigm for Palestine and Palestinians worldwide.

The announcement of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), a 15-member technocratic body chaired by Ali Shaath, signals a shift toward depoliticized governance in Gaza amid ongoing genocide. Shaath, a Palestinian civil engineer and former deputy minister of planning and international cooperation, is positioned to lead an interim governing structure tasked with managing reconstruction and service provision under external oversight. While presented as a neutral technocratic governing structure, the NCAG is more likely to function as a managerial apparatus that stabilizes conditions. This policy memo argues that technocratic governance in Gaza—particularly under US oversight, given its role as a co-perpetrator in the genocide—should be understood not as a pathway to recovery or sovereignty, but as part of a broader strategy of genocide management.

Donald Trump’s so-called Board for Peace for Gaza is easy to dismiss. It is grotesque in its colonial imagination — a Riviera fantasy rising from mass graves, brokered by billionaires and real-estate interests, insulated from the screams beneath the rubble. It carries the familiar stench of American imperial arrogance: deciding the future of a people while excluding them entirely. One does not need deep analysis to reject it; instinct alone suffices.

READ: Most glaring in Trump’s plan for Gaza is the absence of any discussion of Palestinian sovereignty

What demands far greater intellectual vigilance is what comes after the spectacle. When vulgar colonialism recedes, it is often replaced not by justice or liberation, but by management. This quieter phase of domination is precisely what Yara Hawari exposes in her incisive critique of Gaza’s technocratic turn — a shift that risks transforming genocide from an act of violence into an administrative condition.

At first glance, Gaza’s National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) appears to be a corrective to Trump’s obscenity. It is Palestinian. It is composed of engineers, planners, and professionals. It speaks........

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