When 19-year-old Eyad Saleh needed a replacement copy of his university diploma — lost when he fled his home during the war — he did what any Gazan would do: he went to the Hamas-run government office. There was no alternative. "The only entity providing services to residents is the same body that was in place before the war, with the same employees," he told DW from Gaza City, his voice carrying the exhaustion of someone who has already calculated every exit. His diploma, he hopes, will get him a scholarship abroad — and a way out.

Last week, Hamas formally announced it would dissolve its civilian administration as part of a US-brokered peace deal reached in 2025. On the ground, the announcement has changed almost nothing. Na'ama Saeed, 39, who suffers from a chronic illness, visited the Hamas Health Ministry this week to obtain a medical referral. She was blunt: "If there were another official body we could turn to without dealing with the current government, we would not hesitate.

" No such body exists. The US peace plan, published in October 2025, envisaged a transitional National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) — fifteen Palestinian technocrats who would replace Hamas's bureaucracy. They began their work in early 2026. The problem: all fifteen are currently stranded in Cairo, waiting for Israeli permission to enter Gaza.

Ghassan Khatib, a political scientist at Birzeit University near Ramallah, is blunt about why no one is rushing to fill the vacuum.