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Palestinian armed group Hamas has criticised the US-created Board of Peace over its refusal to work with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), arguing that the move amounts to embracing an Israeli agenda for Gaza.
Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem said on Saturday that the board's stance represents a full alignment with the Zionist position, adding that the real aim of the decision is to shut down UNRWA's operations, stop the delivery of assistance to Palestinians and extinguish the so-called right of return.
The board, established by Washington, had announced on Friday that UNRWA's role in Gaza "is unchanged", while simultaneously ruling out any formal partnership with the agency. In a post on X, the board said it would only cooperate with "trusted partners" capable of delivering for the people of Gaza and helping produce a "deradicalised Strip" — and claimed UNRWA fails those tests.
The agency itself, established in 1949, has provided education, health and relief services to Palestinian refugees for more than seven decades, and is widely regarded by Palestinians as the institutional guardian of refugees' national rights. Palestinians tend to view UNRWA as the last international mechanism protecting their claim to return to their ancestral homeland, whereas Israeli officials have long pressed for the body's dissolution, arguing that it perpetuates Palestinian refugee claims rather than allowing them to be resolved.
Behind the board's tough public messaging, the diplomatic picture appears more mixed. The Associated Press reported on Friday that members of the Board of Peace had shown greater willingness to engage with UNRWA out of public view than their statements suggested. At the board's briefing to the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, officials identified several UN agencies as prospective partners — but UNRWA was conspicuously absent from that list.
A board official, speaking to the AP on condition of anonymity, confirmed that members have held several meetings with UNRWA representatives. The official conceded that the agency's programmes could survive if they genuinely served Gaza's residents, but insisted that "UNRWA's days are over", suggesting the board intends to replace the body rather than simply distance itself from it.
That apparent divide has created friction with the Palestinian technocratic committee appointed by the board to oversee Gaza's day-to-day governance. Philippe Lazzarini, who headed UNRWA until earlier this year, said members of that technocratic committee want to work with the agency, indicating that not all actors inside the new governing framework share the board's hostility towards it.
On Thursday, Lazzarini accused the Board of Peace of failing to deliver on its mandate, writing on X that Israeli authorities continue to obstruct even basic aid as part of a broader strategy to keep Gaza unlivable for Palestinians. He derided the board's appetite for sweeping plans, warning that elaborate schemes will do little to keep Gazans warm through the coming winter. He urged that crossing points into Gaza be reopened and that supplies be allowed in at scale.
Qassem echoed that criticism, describing it as strange that the board would take such a hostile line towards UNRWA while at the same time failing to channel assistance to Gaza itself, or to press the occupation to honour a ceasefire agreement and stop what he described as the daily killing of Palestinians in the Strip. The double complaint underlines a broader tension: the body charged with overseeing Gaza's transition is being criticised for its rhetoric toward an aid agency while being blamed for conditions on the ground that lie largely beyond its control.
The security situation remained grave over the weekend. Gaza's Ministry of Health said Israeli attacks killed seven Palestinians across the Gaza Strip in the preceding 48 hours, one of them succumbing to injuries sustained earlier. In northern Gaza, Israeli forces opened fire on a Palestinian man in Jabalia, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa. A drone strike near Joulis Street and al-Nouri Tower in the Nuseirat refugee camp killed one person and injured others.
In al-Mawasi, in the southern city of Khan Younis, a drone strike wounded several Palestinians, among them a young girl, while Israeli artillery shelled areas to the east of the city. An Israeli quadcopter also fired on Salah al-Din Street in central Gaza, wounding three people, including another girl. Such incidents, alongside the board's dispute with UNRWA, underscore the gap between the diplomatic architecture being built for Gaza's future and the daily reality faced by civilians.
Operations in the occupied West Bank also continued unabated. Israeli forces raided a building at Birzeit University near Ramallah while students were sitting final examinations, Wafa reported. In Tulkarem, troops detained a resident, Bashar Odeh, after storming his home in the Shuweika area, and questioned others during house searches in Zeita. In the Bethlehem governorate, forces sealed military gates at the entrances to western villages, blocking residents — including pedestrians — from passing through. Raids were also carried out in other localities, including the Qalandiya and Am'ari refugee camps.
The dispute over UNRWA carries weight well beyond the agency's operations. Because the body runs the school system relied on by hundreds of thousands of displaced children, an institutional rupture with the board could affect education and basic service delivery at precisely the moment Gaza's population is entering another winter under siege conditions.
Analysts suggest the board's position reflects a broader contest over who will shape Gaza's reconstruction and administration. Hardening publicly while negotiating quietly allows the board to satisfy Israeli demands for the agency's exclusion while keeping channels open with the technocratic committee it has installed — a balancing act that leaves the agency, and the Palestinians who depend on it, in limbo as the next phase of Gaza's governance takes shape.
For now, the immediate questions are practical rather than rhetorical: whether crossing points will open, whether aid shipments will be permitted at scale, and whether the board's private meetings with UNRWA produce any operational outcome. On the evidence so far, the public answer from the board is no — while the Palestinian side, from Hamas to the technocratic committee, continues to press for the agency to remain part of Gaza's future.
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