Fractured Authority and Condition-Control in Gaza
A public report tracing how control over access, services, and infrastructure shapes civilian life, responsibility, and repair in Gaza.
Public working report
Power over the conditions civilians need to live, receive care, and rebuild.
Web edition v1.6.0 28 September 2026
The report at a glance
Power over civilian life reaches beyond the person or institution formally in charge. A hospital may have staff and patients, yet be unable to provide care because fuel, medical supplies, safe roads, or evacuation permissions are unavailable. Understanding the failure means following those dependencies and identifying who could affect them.
This report calls that power condition-control: the ability to shape the conditions that let other people live and act. It examines Gaza through food, water, health care, movement, communication, records, and the possibility of recovery.
The central argument is that responsibility questions should follow specific forms of control. They cannot be settled simply by naming the formal government, and they should not disappear because several actors are involved. Each claim needs a named actor, an identifiable mechanism, a place and period, and evidence connecting the mechanism to civilian harm.
The actors have very different powers and obligations. Israel’s military and external controls, Hamas’s armed and internal authority, Egypt’s role at the border, Palestinian administrative roles, and humanitarian service delivery must be examined separately. Asking each actor to account for its conduct does not imply equal power or equal responsibility.
The report offers a way to make those questions precise. It is an analytical public working report, rather than a new judicial determination. Its proposals for prevention and repair are identified as proposals; documented conditions and legal materials retain their own sources and dates.
Why the conditions of life matter
Civilian protection includes more than avoiding immediate death or injury. People need water they can use, food they can obtain, somewhere to sleep, and treatment they can actually reach. They also need ways to contact family, preserve records, continue learning, sustain a livelihood, and participate in decisions about their future.
In this report, protected conditions means the conditions needed for civilian life and meaningful agency. It is an analytical term: the legal basis and content of any particular obligation still have to be identified. The term draws attention to the connections between everyday needs, instead of treating each loss as an isolated event.
A damaged water system illustrates the connection. Restoring it can require pipes, spare parts, fuel, technicians, safe access, and permission to enter a repair site. If one of those requirements is missing, the consequences may extend to sanitation, health, caregiving, and the time families spend finding water. Recording the damaged pipe is only the beginning of the explanation.
The same applies to recovery. Survival today does not by itself restore mobility, schooling, income, family life, or the ability to return home. Rehabilitation, assistive equipment, continued treatment, and the repair of homes and infrastructure belong within the account of civilian protection.
This perspective also preserves civilian agency. Palestinians are people who care for one another, maintain institutions, make decisions, document events, and rebuild what they can. The relevant question is how their effective options are supported or constrained, not whether they can be reduced to recipients of aid.
Who controls which part
Fractured authority means that several actors shape what happens, through different kinds of power. Formal authority, armed force, border permissions, funding, and the delivery of services are different relationships. The following map identifies the roles this report examines; the exact allocation must be established for each place, period, and case.
| Actor or institution | Role examined and boundary of the claim |
|---|---|
| Israel | Military activity and control over external access, movement, infrastructure, and other essential conditions. The ICJ’s occupation-law analysis is relevant here. It should not be replaced with an assumption that withdrawal from internal administration ended all obligations. [4] [5] |
| Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups | Armed conduct, hostage-taking, coercion, and administrative or distribution decisions where an actor exercises power. Group, unit, action, and period must be specified. Palestinian civilians are not interchangeable with Hamas or any other armed group. [8] |
| Palestinian Authority and Palestinian health authorities | Formal and administrative roles, including medical-referral functions. A role in one process does not establish control over all of Gaza. WHO’s evacuation material distinguishes Palestinian referral and coordination roles from permissions held by other authorities. [9] |
| Egypt | Border, transit, reception, and coordination roles on routes involving Egypt. These are route-specific functions, not general governance of Gaza. [9] |
| Humanitarian organizations | Care, aid delivery, coordination, and documentation. Their work can depend on access, security, supplies, and funding controlled by others. Providing a service does not give them sovereign authority over those conditions. [1] |
| Other states, donors, and international institutions | Funding, arms transfers, diplomacy, legal processes, or reconstruction decisions, where a specific mechanism is demonstrated. Influence alone is insufficient to establish control over a particular civilian outcome. |
The medical, logistical, and legal roles in this map can overlap without becoming identical. A referral committee may recognize a patient’s need, while another authority controls permission to cross a border and a receiving state controls access to treatment. A useful account follows each decision instead of attributing the whole process to one institution.
Withdrawal and continuing obligations
The 2005 withdrawal of Israeli settlements and permanent ground forces changed the form of control in Gaza. It did not make the remaining functions irrelevant. The question is which powers persisted over access, movement, airspace, the sea, essential inputs, and other conditions of civilian life.
This question has an existing legal context. In its 19 July 2024 advisory opinion, the International Court of Justice connected Israel’s occupation-law obligations in Gaza to the degree of its effective control. The Court’s 22 October 2025 advisory opinion reiterated that relationship and addressed the increase in effective control and corresponding obligations. These are advisory opinions; they are distinct from the South Africa v. Israel proceedings under the Genocide Convention. [4] [5]
Condition-control is useful here as a way to organize evidence about particular functions. It does not erase those opinions or reopen every legal question as though no court had addressed it.
Four ways civilian life depends on control
The following cases move from the general argument to specific needs. The reported figures refer to their stated periods. Each case separates what the source reports from the further responsibility question raised by this report.
1. Medical evacuation
A referral for treatment is the beginning of a process. A patient may also need prioritization, clearance, an available crossing, safe transport, acceptance by a receiving country, and admission to care. Companions, follow-up treatment, and family continuity can matter long after the border crossing itself. WHO’s public guidance expressly distinguishes a medical referral from a guarantee of evacuation. [9]
OCHA’s 14 August 2026 report described obstructions, searches, delays, and some detentions during medical evacuation operations near Rafah. It attributed the underlying health-care incident reporting to WHO. [1]
The question for this report is which decision or obstacle interrupted a patient’s access to care. An unavailable route, a withheld permission, an unsafe journey, and the absence of a receiving hospital require different evidence and different remedies. Records of the particular case are needed before responsibility for that interruption can be attributed.
The worked example in the method section shows how to keep these stages distinct.
2. Aid entry and civilian receipt
Aid can pass an inspection and still fail to reach a family. A shipment may require offloading, storage, fuel, safe roads, transport, distribution capacity, and a place where people can collect it safely. Counting entry at a crossing answers one question in that chain.
For its 3–9 August 2026 reporting period, OCHA identified Kerem Shalom as the only operational cargo crossing. Its account distinguished humanitarian cargo from commercial truckloads. [1]
These distinctions matter when accounts appear to conflict. A statement about trucks entering may be accurate while leaving unanswered whether the goods reached the intended people, met their needs, or were affordable. The first task is to compare the same stage, cargo type, place, and period. A remaining contradiction should be recorded and investigated.
Food-security classifications need the same care. The IPC analysis released on 23 July 2026 separated observed conditions for 16 April–30 June from projections for July–December. It estimated that more than 1.2 million people faced Crisis or worse during the observed period, and projected more than 1.4 million for the later period. A projection is not a new measurement of conditions on every later date. [2]
The accompanying UN agency statement described improvements as fragile and dependent on continued assistance and access. This report therefore uses food-security classifications with their period and geographic scope. It makes no undated, blanket claim about a current famine classification. [3]
3. Water, rehabilitation, and repair
OCHA’s 14 August 2026 report, citing a WASH survey completed in early July, said that 90% of the population experienced recurrent and unpredictable difficulty obtaining reliable, safe water. It also described restrictions on rehabilitation supplies and shortages affecting rehabilitation services. [1]
Water and rehabilitation show why a service cannot be understood only by counting facilities. A water network needs parts, power, access, and maintenance. A rehabilitation service needs trained staff, suitable equipment, transport, continuity of care, and living conditions that allow a patient to maintain progress.
The analytical concern is what happens when those requirements fail together. A person may survive an injury but face further preventable losses when equipment, care, or an accessible place to live is unavailable. Repair should therefore be assessed by what people can regain and sustain, as well as by what materials have entered or what buildings have reopened.
This is a proposal about how to assess recovery. Assigning a particular failure to an actor requires evidence of that actor’s decisions, capacity, constraints, and effect on the relevant service.
4. Communication, records, and the ability to be heard
People need records to establish identity, locate missing relatives, seek treatment, document injury, claim property, and pursue a remedy. They need communication to find help, receive instructions, remain connected, and make their account of events available to others.
Loss of records or communication can therefore continue to harm people after the immediate emergency. A destroyed file may affect a later medical referral or property claim; a communications interruption may prevent a family from finding one another or a witness from preserving an account.
These examples identify pathways to examine. They do not establish who caused a particular blackout, destroyed a particular archive, or bears legal responsibility for it. Those claims require incident-specific evidence. The broader point is that documentation and communication are part of the conditions of civilian continuity, not merely supplements to physical relief.
From control to responsibility and repair
Knowing who controlled a decision helps locate a responsibility question. It does not complete the argument. Evidence must also show the connection to harm, what the actor knew or could reasonably foresee, what the actor could do, and the legal or other basis for requiring a response.
This report uses answerability for the need to give an account of conduct and, where justified, to respond through prevention, disclosure, protection, investigation, or repair. The form of response depends on the role and evidence. A demand to explain a delay, for example, is different from a finding that someone must compensate for a proven injury.
Security claims, competing duties, lack of capacity, and interruptions in a causal chain must be examined. Naming a possible justification does not establish that it applies. Equally, identifying severe harm does not by itself establish which actor caused it. Both the claim and the proposed justification require scrutiny.
What prevention would require
The practical recommendation is to monitor whether essential functions are working for civilians, identify the decision points where a breakdown can be prevented, and assign a responsible route for response. The following are questions for institutions with relevant roles; they are not findings that every listed failure occurred.
| Civilian need | Question that a responsible process should answer |
|---|---|
| Treatment and evacuation | Where is the patient’s case delayed, who can act, and when will it be reviewed? |
| Food and essential supplies | Did the goods reach people safely, in a usable form and sufficient quantity? |
| Water and infrastructure | Which inputs, permissions, or access arrangements prevent repair, and who can resolve them? |
| Rehabilitation and continuity of care | Can the person obtain equipment, follow-up care, transport, and conditions that sustain recovery? |
| Records, family connections, and remedy | Are necessary records preserved, and can affected people obtain and challenge them? |
| Return and rebuilding | Can people safely regain a place to live and the practical means to continue their lives? |
A shortage, delay, or complaint should lead to a traceable account: what happened, who held the relevant decision, what evidence was considered, what action followed, and what remains unresolved. This is the report’s proposal for making prevention and repair answerable to the people affected.
What readers can ask of a claim
A useful public question is specific: Who controlled which condition, during which period, and what would change the finding? Readers can then check whether a source supports the actor-control claim, the harm claim, or both.
The same care protects against false equivalence. Israeli civilians and hostages are not the Israeli state; Palestinian civilians are not Hamas. An aid agency’s operational role is not a state’s military power. The account should preserve these differences while making every supported responsibility question visible.
Evidence, legal language, and limits
Humanitarian reports, legal decisions, scholarship, journalism, and party statements do different work. A source can be useful without proving every claim for which it might be cited.
| Material | What the reader can take from it |
|---|---|
| Humanitarian reporting | Reported conditions, operational constraints, methods, and attributed figures within a stated period. Attribution to an actor may require additional records. |
| Court orders and opinions | The particular court’s decision, reasoning, and procedural stage. An advisory opinion, provisional order, and criminal conviction are different legal acts. |
| Human-rights investigations | Documented findings and legal analysis by the named investigating body. These should be reported as that body’s findings, not silently relabelled as convictions. |
| Party statements | A position, explanation, policy, or denial. Independent corroboration may still be needed. |
| Journalism and testimony | Events, accounts, and investigations, assessed with their methods, access, and corroboration. |
| Scholarship | Historical and conceptual analysis. It is not a substitute for dated evidence of present operational conditions. |
The ICJ’s provisional measures in South Africa v. Israel and the ICC’s 21 November 2024 arrest-warrant materials must be read in their respective procedural contexts. Provisional measures do not decide the merits of the whole case; a warrant is not a conviction. The ICJ’s separate occupation-related advisory opinions remain relevant and should not be hidden behind a general statement that legal questions are unresolved. [4] [5] [6] [7]
This edition preserves a dated body of analysis. Its principal humanitarian examples come from July–August 2026. It is not a continuously updated situation report, an incident-by-incident investigation, or a comprehensive history. Its actor map and illustrative pathways do not establish every actor’s responsibility for every harm.
Existing scholarship and this report’s contribution
The connection between infrastructure, territory, economic life, and power is well established. The development record draws on critical geography, Palestine studies, international law, public-health and humanitarian work, and moral philosophy.
Representative starting points include Eyal Weizman’s work on spatial and vertical control, Helga Tawil-Souri’s account of digital occupation, Sara Roy’s work on de-development, and Aeyal Gross’s functional approach to occupation. These are distinct bodies of work, not interchangeable endorsements of this report. [10]–[13]
The contribution proposed here is practical: a repeatable way to connect a particular actor, function, civilian condition, mechanism, and source, then state what further question follows. It is offered for criticism and correction, not as a claim to have discovered indirect control or replaced existing analysis of Gaza.
Method for checking a claim
The main argument does not depend on learning a technical vocabulary. This section supplies the record needed to test it. The term HOLD means that a conclusion is withheld because the evidence is insufficient, outdated for the claim, or materially disputed. It does not mean that the harm is unimportant.
Seven functions to distinguish
| Function | Question |
|---|---|
| War making | Who uses or regulates organized force? |
| State making | Who establishes, sustains, or prevents governing authority? |
| Protection | Who can protect people from violence, deprivation, or abandonment? |
| Extraction | Who takes, taxes, withholds, appropriates, or diverts resources? |
| Adjudication | Who decides permissions, claims, appeals, and disputes? |
| Distribution | Who controls whether goods, services, or documents reach people? |
| Production | Who controls the conditions for maintaining livelihoods and rebuilding infrastructure? |
These functions are organizing questions, not a scale that awards every actor a single score.
The claim record
| Field | What must be recorded |
|---|---|
| Actor and function | The particular actor and decision or activity under examination. |
| Civilian condition | The need or effective ability affected. |
| Place and period | Where and when the claim applies. |
| Mechanism and control type | How the actor could affect the condition: direct administration, a permission, force, a supply restriction, funding, or another specified mechanism. Distinguish control from influence. |
| Source and source type | The document, authoring body, date, relevant passage, and kind of evidence. |
| Harm pathway | How the mechanism is connected to the impairment, including gaps in that connection. |
| Uncertainty and competing accounts | What is disputed, missing, or explained differently. |
| Legal or other basis | The rule, duty, role, or reason for requiring an answer, with the claim’s legal status stated. |
| Response and revision | What should be explained or done, by whom, and what evidence would change the conclusion. |
The checks before attributing responsibility
First establish the impairment, the actor’s relevant power, and a traceable mechanism. A source showing harm alone cannot establish the actor-control link. Then examine knowledge or foreseeability, capacity to prevent or reduce harm, and the basis for requiring a response. Finally, test competing explanations and limits before stating the conclusion.
The possible outcomes include a plausible pathway, a supported pathway, evidence of actor control, a responsibility question, or a supported determination under a specified standard. These are different claims, not automatic steps toward a predetermined verdict. A legal determination requires the applicable legal analysis and procedural context.
When sources differ, compare their definitions, functions, time periods, and locations. Do not average incompatible figures or select an account because it supports the desired conclusion. Differences may be reconcilable; contradictions that remain should stay visible.
Withhold or narrow a claim when the actor or condition is unspecified, the pathway cannot be traced, evidence is stale for a present-tense claim, or the method would create false equivalence. Do not use the framework to rename an existing legal finding while obscuring the body that made it.
Worked example — a patient does not reach treatment
This is an illustrative audit, not a finding about an identified patient. WHO’s published evacuation pathway supplies the process context. The individual case records would still be needed. [9]
| Stage | Evidence and question to examine |
|---|---|
| Referral | Was treatment unavailable locally, and was a referral issued and submitted? |
| Prioritization and coordination | Was the patient placed on the relevant list? Which office held the next decision? |
| Clearance and crossing | Which approvals were required? Was there a denial, an unanswered request, an unavailable crossing, or another obstacle? |
| Transport and reception | Was safe transport available, and had a receiving provider agreed to admit the patient? |
| Actual care and continuity | Did the patient receive treatment, and were necessary follow-up care and companion arrangements available? |
The fact that the patient did not reach treatment establishes the outcome to investigate. It does not, by itself, identify the failed stage or responsible actor. A justified conclusion must connect the case records to a specific decision, its effect, and the duty or role involved. If the record does not support that connection, the actor-specific conclusion remains on HOLD.
Sources and further reading
Numbers in the text lead to the sources below. Humanitarian figures remain tied to their reporting dates. Court and scholarly materials are identified separately so readers can see what kind of support each provides.
- OCHA oPt. Humanitarian Situation Report — 14 August 2026. The Gaza section principally covers 3–9 August; the water survey refers to early July. Used for dated evacuation, cargo, water, and rehabilitation reporting, with attribution retained.
- Integrated Food Security Phase Classification. Gaza Strip: Acute Food Insecurity Situation for 16 April–30 June 2026 and Projection for 1 July–31 December 2026, released 23 July 2026. Used to distinguish observation from projection and identify the classification periods.
- FAO, UNICEF, and WFP. Food security and child nutrition crises persist in Gaza despite fragile gains due to increased humanitarian assistance and commercial traffic, 23 July 2026. Agency interpretation of conditions and their dependence on continued assistance. The period-specific figures in this report follow IPC’s analysis directly.
- International Court of Justice. Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, advisory opinion, 19 July 2024; especially paragraphs 86–94. Occupation-law context, distinct from Case 192.
- International Court of Justice. Obligations of Israel in relation to the Presence and Activities of the United Nations, Other International Organizations and Third States in and in relation to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, advisory opinion, 22 October 2025. UN-hosted summary discusses effective control and occupation-law obligations.
- International Court of Justice. South Africa v. Israel, Case 192 — provisional measures, including orders of 26 January, 28 March, and 24 May 2024. Cited for the nature of provisional measures, not as a representation that the whole case has reached a final merits judgment.
- International Criminal Court. Netanyahu case information and announcement of 21 November 2024. Cited for arrest-warrant and procedural context, not conviction language.
- UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry, via OHCHR. Israeli authorities, Palestinian armed groups are responsible for war crimes, other grave violations of international law, 12 June 2024. Investigative findings concerning named actors; a commission’s findings are not criminal convictions.
- World Health Organization. Medical evacuation of patients from Gaza, 16 February 2026, and public evacuation guidance. Used for the distinction between referral, coordination, permission, and completed evacuation; not proof of an individual case.
- Eyal Weizman. “Introduction to The Politics of Verticality”, 2002. A conceptual reference on spatial control, principally developed through the West Bank; not evidence for a current Gaza incident.
- Helga Tawil-Souri. “Digital Occupation: Gaza’s High-Tech Enclosure”, Journal of Palestine Studies 41(2), 2012. Historical and conceptual context for technological control.
- Sara Roy. The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-development, expanded third edition, Institute for Palestine Studies. Historical and political-economic context.
- Aeyal Gross. “Rethinking Occupation: The Functional Approach”, 2012. A scholarly account of how functions and effective control bear on occupation analysis.
Edition and corrections
Christopher Knorr · Public Working Report · Web edition v1.6.0 · 28 September 2026. This edition uses the 18 August 2026 public report v1.5.5 as its base, restores the earlier worked-example structure, and revises organization, readability, citations, and legal context. The larger v1.5.1 development dossier remains a supporting historical record, rather than the public reading edition.
The humanitarian reporting window remains July–August 2026. The September date identifies this editorial edition; it does not turn the earlier reports into a current situation assessment. Later factual updates should identify the new source and the claim it changes.
Corrections can be sent to chrisknorr.mail@gmail.com. Please include the section, exact wording, proposed correction, and a dated source where relevant. Questions about interpretation or accessibility are also welcome.
Related research
The Gaza project entry follows the question of how responsibility relates to specific forms of control and identifies what remains open.