Palestinian Hamas terrorists stand guard at a site as Hamas says it continues to search for the bodies of deceased hostages, in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip, Dec. 3, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer

The second phase of the Trump administration’s Gaza plan has collapsed into “stalemate,” according to Gaza-born analyst Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, derailing plans to disarm Hamas and enabling the terrorist group to reassert control over aid convoys and Gaza’s three main hospitals, which he said have turned into interrogation centers for political opponents.

“Phase Two is not going to proceed,” Alkhatib, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said in a call with journalists on Tuesday. 

Under the plan, the first stage included Hamas releasing all the remaining hostages, both living and deceased, who were kidnapped by Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists during their Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel. In exchange, Israeli released thousands of Palestinian prisoners and detainees and partially withdrew its military forces in Gaza. 

Currently, the Israeli military controls 53 percent of Gaza’s territory, and Hamas has moved to reestablish control over the other 47 percent. However, the vast majority of the Gazan population is located in the Hamas-controlled half, where the Islamist group has been imposing a brutal crackdown.

The second stage of the US plan was supposed to install an interim administrative authority — a so-called “technocratic government” — deploy an International Stabilization Force — a multinational force meant to take over security in Gaza — and begin the demilitarization of Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that has ruled the enclave for nearly two decades.

“The International Stabilization Force is dead on arrival,” Alkhatib said. “The gap between what the force is meant to do versus the expectation of the volunteers is too wide.”

Alkhatib’s comments stood in stark contrast to those of US President Donald Trump, who on Wednesday told reporters at the White House that phase two of his Gaza peace plan was “going to happen pretty soon.”

“It’s going very well. We have peace in the Middle East. People don’t realize it,” Trump said. “Phase two is moving along. It’s going to happen pretty soon.”

However, Israel and Hamas have not actually reached an agreement regarding the second phase.

The United States had hoped to scale back its role in its newly built Civil-Military Coordination Center in the Israel city of Kiryat Gat, Alkhatib said, while pushing regional partners to assume responsibilities they lack the capacity or willingness to take on. 

However, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are “furious” that the process has placed Qatar and Turkey, both longtime backers of Hamas, in what Alkhatib called the “driver’s seat,” giving them outsized influence over Gaza without requiring them to shoulder the financial burden. 

“You put the Qataris in the driver’s seat, then why don’t you make them commit a billion dollars?” Alkhatib said.

Egypt and Jordan, meanwhile, lack the money and resources to train security personnel on the ground, while other partners like Pakistan and Indonesia have made clear they will not take part in disarming Hamas. 

“Israel is the only body in the world — from a brute force perspective — that can take on Hamas,” he said, arguing that the Islamist group had been “very close to defeat” before the US-brokered ceasefire took effect in October, though at an extreme cost for Gazans and after a two-year campaign he said was at times undermined by far-right elements in the Israeli government.

Meanwhile, Hamas is building a new tax economy around the flow of goods into Gaza. Alkhatib described a sharp rise in commercial shipments alongside humanitarian aid, with merchants paying 50 percent of the value of the goods in taxes and fees. 

“The same Qassam brigadiers [Hamas operatives] who were in tunnels throwing IEDs [improvised explosive devices] at Israeli soldiers are now protecting commercial goods trucks,” he said. 

He added that Hamas was continuing to seize control of the humanitarian pipeline, imposing charges on aid shipments and asserting authority over the 800 to 900 trucks entering Gaza each day.

Alkhatib’s comments came one day before the research institution NGO Monitor, which tracks anti-Israel bias among nongovernmental organizations, released a new report revealing how Hamas has long run a coordinated effort to penetrate and influence NGOs in Gaza, systematically weaponizing humanitarian aid in Gaza and tightening its grip over foreign NGOs operating in the territory.

The terrorist group has also stepped up the recruitment of teenagers, described by Alkhatib as “child soldiers,” to help enforce control over goods and movement.

Gaza’s three main hospitals — Shifa, Nasser, and Al-Aqsa — have been turned into “pseudo-government operation centers,” Alkhatib said, with the terrorist group embedding elements of its Interior, Economy, and Finance ministries inside the compounds, and using them to interrogate political opponents, levy financial penalties on businessmen, and oversee arrests.

Alkhatib said the difficulty of speaking candidly about Hamas’s conduct has created a distorted public conversation. 

“I can’t say these things without journalists saying, ‘Ahmed, I can’t believe you’re repeating Israeli talking points,'” he said. “Meanwhile, you talk to any child in Gaza about what’s happening [in the hospitals],” he added, noting that Gazans have circulated a grim joke that Hamas has “come out of the labor and delivery department” — a reference to operatives hiding in maternity wards and using pregnant women as human shields.

Part of the postwar landscape now includes several anti-Hamas militias, loosely aligned under the Abu Shabab group. While some Muslim Brotherhood–aligned outlets, including Al Jazeera, have claimed the Israel Defense Forces plan to dismantle these militias, Alkhatib argued the opposite is more likely, predicting the IDF will lean on them as the only armed actors available for post-ceasefire “mop-up” operations against Hamas cells.

In late October, The Algemeiner reported that four Israel-backed militias fighting Hamas are moving to fill the power vacuum in Gaza, pledging to cooperate with most international forces involved in rebuilding the enclave but vowing to resist any presence from Qatar, Turkey, or Iran.

Iran, like Qatar and Turkey, has spent years supporting Hamas.

Based in Khan Younis, Hossam al-Astal, commander of the Counter Terrorism Strike Force, said his group and three allied militias had coordinated in recent weeks to secure areas vacated by Hamas.

The militias, mainly in southern Gaza, are not part of US President Donald Trump’s proposed plan for a technocratic administration in the enclave.