Israel has escalated its attacks on the Gaza Strip in the past week, with at least four Palestinians killed across the devastated enclave, including a 40-year-old woman in Khan Younis, in the past 24 hours amid daily violations of the October “ceasefire”.

Medics and local health officials report more than 25 Palestinians have been killed in the past week alone, taking the number of people killed since the ceasefire to more than 800.

The enclave has been devastated by more than two years of genocidal war, which killed more than 72,500 Palestinians.

The rising attacks come as the new United States-backed governance structures seem to have been sidelined.

Chaos and the ‘yellow line’

On the ground, the Israeli military has intensified its targeting of Palestinian police officers, recently acknowledging the killing of six officers it claimed were involved in planning imminent strikes. It provided no proof that they were planning to attack.

However, Palestinian analysts argue the targeted strikes are part of a broader strategy to maintain a state of war and undermine the US-brokered agreement.

Ahmed al-Tanani, a political analyst in Gaza, said Israel is targeting police forces to eradicate any possibility of restoring stability and to push the enclave into internal chaos. “It wants to make it an unlivable environment, forcing residents to seek displacement, which serves the strategic goal of this war,” al-Tanani said.

Simultaneously, Israeli forces are advancing further into western Gaza and expanding the “yellow line” delineating areas under Israeli military control. Al-Tanani noted that Israel has added 37km (23 miles) to this eastern zone, meaning it now controls approximately 60 percent of the enclave, effectively partitioning Palestinian territory and severely restricting freedom of movement.

Under the “ceasefire” agreement, Israel was expected to withdraw its troops from Gaza by the end of phase one, but it has refused to do so despite the truce entering its second phase.

An ’emptied’ technocratic committee

The military escalation coincides with the effective paralysis of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), a body of Palestinian technocrats established under US President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace“.

While Washington framed the 12-member NCAG as a roadmap for “reconstruction and prosperity”, Iyad al-Qarra, a political analyst, argued that the committee has been “emptied of its role” and isolated in Cairo by Israel to prevent it from functioning on the ground.

“It is difficult to separate the committee’s work from providing services to citizens, and it is hard to separate serving citizens from the security apparatus and the presence of the occupation,” al-Qarra explained. He added that a real transition requires an Israeli withdrawal from the areas it controls, which has not happened.

Academic and Israeli affairs expert Mohanad Mustafa noted that the ceasefire agreement was initially forced upon Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by the US. Now, Mustafa argued, Israel is deliberately blocking the entry of the NCAG to prevent the return of any political or civil life to Gaza, aiming to maintain a status quo of indefinite military occupation.

Al Jazeera repeatedly reached out to the NCAG for comment on these developments, but the body declined to speak to the media.

Disarmament and the US umbrella

The “Board of Peace” is chaired by Trump and features pro-Israel US figures like Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff and Marco Rubio, who have the power to decide Gaza’s future.

Adolfo Franco, a Republican strategic analyst in Washington, defended the Israeli military’s actions, stating that Israel has paused its implementation of the ceasefire because Hamas refuses to disarm.

“President Trump said two things: Hamas will be disarmed either the easy way or the hard way, and the hard way will be Israel taking over the disarmament if Hamas refuses to do it itself,” Franco said.

Hamas has said it would not disarm until Israeli forces are no longer occupying Palestinian territory.

Palestinians maintain that Israel has manipulated the agreement since day one. While the ceasefire originally stipulated the entry of 600 aid trucks daily, current figures show only 150 to 190 trucks are crossing. Al-Qarra noted that the amount of aid entering does not exceed 20 percent of what was agreed upon, with essential equipment for clearing rubble and repairing hospitals remaining entirely blocked.

Al-Qarra argued that Israel has successfully used Trump’s overarching peace narrative as a cover to continue its military operations while demanding “disarmament” – a condition he described as “a vague and unrealistic excuse”.

“Israel is now successfully taking this banner and legitimacy from the US, trading everything for the issue of disarmament,” al-Qarra said.

Meanwhile, al-Tanani revealed that Nickolay Mladenov, the representative linking the NCAG to the Board of Peace, privately acknowledges Israel’s daily violations and manipulation of aid during meetings with Palestinian factions, despite publicly adhering to the US and Israeli narratives.

A ‘sovereignty-minus’ reality

Critics have previously described the overarching US-led structure as a “corporate takeover” that reduces Palestinians to municipal workers with zero political agency.

With Israeli militias allegedly operating on the ground and international stabilisation forces failing to deploy as planned, confidence in the newly established administrative councils has evaporated among the Palestinian public.

As Israeli forces maintain their grip on the territory and continue their targeted killings, the prospect of an independent, functional administration in Gaza appears increasingly remote.

“We have returned back to square one, unfortunately,” al-Qarra concluded.