A week after US President Donald Trump signed the Gaza peace plan in Egypt, Hamas said a committee of technocrats will take over governing postwar Gaza, representing several Palestinian factions.The groups said they had agreed to the arrangement after Hamas claimed to have received “clear guarantees” from mediators that “the war has effectively ended.”Hamas said in the statement that Palestinian factions agreed in a Cairo meeting to hand “over the administration of the Gaza Strip to a temporary Palestinian committee composed of independent ‘technocrats’, which will manage the affairs of life and basic services in cooperation with Arab brothers and international institutions”.The Hamas statement did not specify who would serve on the proposed Palestinian technocratic committee, which is expected to require US approval before taking shape.The statement also called for a meeting to “agree on a national strategy and to revitalise the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.” Hamas, which is not part of the PLO, is facing its longtime rival, Fatah, the group that dominates the organisation.This comes amid an appeal from Fadwa Barghouti, wife of prominent Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti, who urged Trump on Friday to intervene for her husband’s release from an Israeli prison. In a letter to Trump, she asked him to push for his discharge. Marwan Barghouti has been serving multiple life sentences since 2002 for deadly attacks on Israelis but is seen by many Palestinians as a potential unifying figure for their national movement.Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement on Friday that Hamas “cannot be involved in governing Gaza in the future.”He added that all countries backing Trump’s plan, providing funding, personnel, or both, have agreed to this.He also said that “there is no plan B” for Gaza, only Trump’s broad peace plan, and warned that Israel’s annexation of the West Bank would “threaten the peace process.”Rubio also said Israel has fulfilled its commitments under the first phase of the 20-point Trump plan, which began with the ceasefire on October 10.He added that Israel would need to be “comfortable” with the composition of the international force set to enter Gaza during the second phase, which is still being finalized, as cited by the Times of Israel.
