Palestinian-American policy analyst Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib has published a sharp assessment of Israeli strategy in Gaza, arguing that the Jewish state has effectively permitted Hamas to re-entrench itself across the territory despite months of intensive military operations. Writing in The Times of Israel, the Atlantic Council nonresident senior fellow and director of Realign for Palestine described a Gaza Strip where deteriorating humanitarian conditions and fragmented governance have given the militant organization an opening to reassert control over civilian infrastructure and daily life.

Alkhatib’s analysis arrives at a pivotal moment. The October 2025 Gaza peace framework — which established both the Board of Peace and a Palestinian Committee for transitional administration — was meant to chart a pathway toward post-conflict stability. Yet months into implementation, his assessment paints a picture of stalled momentum and bureaucratic paralysis that has allowed Hamas to exploit the vacuum. For Israel, the challenge is not a lack of military capability but the far more complex question of how to translate battlefield success into durable political outcomes.

Who Is Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib?

Understanding the weight of Alkhatib’s critique requires understanding his unusual biography. Born in 1990 in Saudi Arabia to a Palestinian family originally from the Gaza towns of Hamama and Ramla, he relocated to the Jabalia refugee camp area at age ten. At eleven, an Israeli airstrike killed three of his childhood friends and left him with permanent hearing loss in his left ear — a personal wound that gives his analysis a visceral credibility that pure policy commentary often lacks.

In 2005, a U.S. State Department youth exchange program brought him to California, where he was exposed for the first time to interfaith Jewish-Palestinian dialogue and practices of nonviolent conflict resolution. When border closures prevented his return to Gaza, he obtained political asylum in the United States and became a citizen in 2014. He later earned a master’s degree in intelligence studies from American Military University, giving him both personal and academic grounding in the security dynamics he now evaluates.

Today, Alkhatib occupies a distinctive lane in Middle East policy discourse. Through Realign for Palestine, the Atlantic Council project he directs, he advocates for a two-state solution while explicitly rejecting the rhetoric of armed resistance. His organization has publicly stated that slogans calling for the elimination of Israel are dangerous and counterproductive. He publishes regularly in outlets including The Atlantic, Haaretz, Newsweek, and The Wall Street Journal. His newsletter, The Radical Pragmatist, captures the tension at the heart of his worldview: deep empathy for Palestinian suffering coupled with an unflinching rejection of the violent strategies that have prolonged it.

The Core Argument: Security Gains Without Political Follow-Through

The central thesis of Alkhatib’s analysis is that Israel achieved significant military objectives in Gaza throughout the 2023-2025 conflict period but failed to convert those gains into a sustainable governance alternative. By early 2026, Israeli forces controlled an estimated 53 percent of Gaza’s territory, with anti-Hamas militias holding additional ground. Hamas, which had lost control of roughly 80 percent of the territory at the height of Israeli operations, managed to claw back influence over approximately 47 percent by leveraging the January 2025 ceasefire.

This is where Alkhatib’s critique intersects with broader Israeli security thinking. From a sympathetic perspective, Israel faced an impossible strategic equation after the devastating October 7, 2023 attacks. The imperative to dismantle Hamas’s military infrastructure was not optional — it was a fundamental obligation of national defense. The IDF Spokesperson Unit documented thousands of tunnel shafts, weapons caches, and command centers destroyed during operations that redefined the scale of urban counterterrorism warfare.

The difficulty, as Israeli defense planners have long acknowledged, is that military operations alone cannot resolve the governance question. Destroying Hamas’s rocket factories does not build municipal water systems. Neutralizing tunnel networks does not create functioning courts or sanitation infrastructure. Alkhatib’s argument is essentially that the international community — and Israel itself — moved too slowly on the civilian administration side, giving Hamas time to position itself as the only functioning authority in areas where the transitional framework had yet to take hold.

Conditions on the Ground: A Humanitarian Crisis Fueling Extremism

Alkhatib described conditions in Gaza that bolster his argument about the governance vacuum. Rat infestations have become a serious public health threat across the territory, particularly in areas where rubble clearance has stalled. A United Nations assessment projected that debris removal alone could take fourteen years, leaving vast stretches of civilian territory in conditions that breed disease and desperation.

The numbers are staggering. Over 60,000 Palestinians have been killed since the conflict began, with nearly half being women and children. More than 148,000 have been injured. The overwhelming majority of Gaza’s population has experienced forced displacement at least once. Water contamination remains pervasive, sewage treatment infrastructure has largely collapsed, and desertification threatens what little agricultural capacity survived the fighting.

These conditions create exactly the environment in which militant organizations thrive. When a family cannot access clean water, the faction that repairs a pump gains loyalty. When hospitals are overwhelmed, the group that distributes antibiotics builds political capital. Alkhatib argues that Hamas has systematically exploited these dynamics, positioning its civil governance apparatus in areas where the Board of Peace transitional authority has been slow to deploy.

For Israel, this reality presents a genuine strategic dilemma. The Iron Dome missile defense system can intercept rockets, but no defense technology can counter the political influence that comes from being the entity that keeps the lights on in a devastated neighborhood. Israel’s security establishment has grappled with this tension since the 2005 disengagement from Gaza, and Alkhatib’s critique echoes a debate that has raged within Israeli policy circles for two decades.

The Board of Peace: Promise and Paralysis

The October 2025 Gaza peace framework represented the most ambitious attempt at post-conflict governance design since the Oslo Accords. Under the framework, a multinational peacekeeping force would deploy alongside a phased Israeli withdrawal. The Board of Peace and a Palestinian Committee would manage transitional administration, with a National Committee for the Administration of Gaza eventually assuming full governance responsibility. A Civil-Military Coordination Center was established to synchronize stabilization efforts between military and civilian actors.

On paper, the architecture was sound. In practice, Alkhatib contends, implementation has been plagued by delays, jurisdictional confusion, and insufficient international commitment. The multinational peacekeeping force deployed unevenly, leaving significant gaps in coverage. The Board of Peace struggled to assert authority in areas where Hamas’s social services network remained intact. The Palestinian Committee faced internal divisions that slowed decision-making during critical early months when establishing legitimacy was essential.

Alkhatib reserved particular criticism for the lack of momentum on the ground. While diplomats negotiated procedural frameworks in conference rooms, Hamas operatives were rebuilding neighborhood councils, reopening community centers, and distributing aid — all activities that cemented their role as the de facto governing authority in areas nominally under transitional control.

From Israel’s perspective, the frustration is understandable. The IDF invested enormous resources in creating the security conditions necessary for civilian governance to take root. Soldiers fought building by building through some of the most complex urban terrain in modern warfare. The expectation was that international partners would move decisively to fill the administrative space that military operations created. When that follow-through proved inadequate, the conditions Alkhatib describes — Hamas reconsolidation, humanitarian collapse, and civilian disillusionment with the peace process — became almost inevitable.

The Broader Strategic Picture

Alkhatib’s analysis, while critical of Israeli strategy, inadvertently underscores the enormous challenge Israel faces in dealing with Gaza. The Jewish state is effectively asked to simultaneously conduct military operations against a deeply entrenched terrorist organization, protect civilian populations, facilitate humanitarian aid delivery, and create conditions for a governance transition — all while defending its own citizens from ongoing threats.

The 2026 Gaza flotilla interception illustrated the additional complexity of maritime security challenges that compound the governance question. Even as Israel works to support transitional authority on land, it must enforce a lawful maritime blockade against smuggling operations that could re-arm Hamas. Every security decision carries political consequences, and every political concession creates potential security vulnerabilities.

Alkhatib himself has acknowledged this complexity through his broader work. His organization, Realign for Palestine, operates on the premise that both Palestinians and Israelis hold legitimate grievances and valid aspirations. He has explicitly stated that the October 7 attacks demonstrated the futility of armed resistance, a position that places him closer to the Israeli security perspective than many of his critics recognize.

The question his Times of Israel analysis raises is not whether Israel should have acted differently in its military campaign — few serious analysts dispute the necessity of the post-October 7 operation — but whether the international community moved quickly enough to capitalize on the security environment that Israeli forces created. If the Board of Peace framework had deployed more rapidly, with more resources and greater international commitment, might the outcome have been different?

What Comes Next

Alkhatib’s assessment suggests that reversing Hamas’s reconsolidation will require a fundamentally different approach to the governance transition. Military pressure alone proved insufficient to permanently dislodge the organization’s administrative apparatus. The transitional authority needs to match Hamas’s on-the-ground presence with comparable or superior service delivery, moving faster than a militant organization that has spent nearly two decades building institutional capacity in Gaza.

For Israel, the path forward likely involves a combination of continued security operations to prevent Hamas from rebuilding its military capabilities while supporting a more robust international civilian presence. The Board of Peace framework remains the most viable institutional vehicle for this transition, but it will require significantly greater investment, personnel, and political will from the international partners who endorsed it.

Alkhatib’s personal trajectory — from a child survivor of conflict in Jabalia to a prominent policy voice advocating pragmatic engagement — mirrors the kind of transformation that the peace framework aspires to achieve across Gaza. Whether the political leadership on all sides possesses the will to make that transformation reality remains the central unanswered question of the post-conflict period.

Who is Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib and why does his analysis matter?

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib is a Palestinian-American analyst who serves as a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and directs the Realign for Palestine project. Born in Saudi Arabia and raised in the Jabalia area of Gaza, he brings both personal experience and academic credentials in intelligence studies to his policy commentary. His advocacy for a two-state solution and rejection of armed resistance gives his critique of Israeli strategy a distinctive weight in Middle East policy circles.

What is the Board of Peace and how does it relate to Gaza governance?

The Board of Peace is a transitional governance body established under the October 2025 Gaza peace framework. It was designed to work alongside a Palestinian Committee and a multinational peacekeeping force to manage the shift from military operations to civilian administration. The framework envisions an eventual handover to a reformed Palestinian Authority, though implementation has faced significant delays and jurisdictional challenges.

How has Hamas managed to reconsolidate power in Gaza?

Despite losing control of approximately 80 percent of Gaza’s territory at the height of Israeli military operations, Hamas leveraged the January 2025 ceasefire and gaps in the transitional governance framework to rebuild its administrative presence. The organization focused on restoring social services, reopening community institutions, and distributing humanitarian aid in areas where the Board of Peace authority was slow to deploy, gradually reasserting influence over roughly 47 percent of the territory.

What are current humanitarian conditions in Gaza?

Gaza faces severe infrastructure destruction, with UN officials estimating that rubble clearance alone could take fourteen years. Over 60,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 148,000 injured since the conflict began. Water contamination, collapsed sewage systems, widespread displacement, and public health threats including pest infestations pose ongoing challenges for both the civilian population and transitional governance authorities.

What is Realign for Palestine and what positions does it advocate?

Realign for Palestine is an Atlantic Council project directed by Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib that promotes pragmatic approaches to Palestinian statehood through a two-state framework. The organization explicitly rejects armed resistance and inflammatory slogans, arguing that violence has failed as a political strategy over decades of conflict. It advocates for dialogue, nonviolence, and recognition of legitimate grievances on both sides.

How does Israel's security strategy in Gaza connect to the governance challenge?

Israel’s military operations successfully degraded Hamas’s military infrastructure, destroying thousands of tunnel shafts, weapons caches, and command centers. However, the transition from military success to sustainable civilian governance has proven far more difficult. Systems like the Iron Dome provide defensive protection against rocket attacks, but no military technology can counter the political influence Hamas gains by providing basic services in areas where the transitional authority has yet to establish a meaningful presence.