Government and Politics

Government and Politics of Gaza Strip

Government structure, leadership, capital, military, and national symbols of Gaza Strip.

Government Structure

Constitutional foundations, branches, parties, and leadership.

Executive Branch: The executive structure of the Gaza Strip is complex and contested, reflecting the territory's unique and disputed political status. Since June 2007, Hamas — the Islamic Resistance Movement — has exercised de facto administrative control over the Gaza Strip following its violent takeover from the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority (PA). This division created a political split between Gaza, governed by Hamas, and the West Bank, administered by the PA under President Mahmoud Abbas. Hamas does not operate under a conventional executive branch structure recognized by most of the international community. Instead, it maintains governance through a political bureau and a separate administrative apparatus. The Political Bureau of Hamas has historically been based outside Gaza, with senior figures operating from Qatar and other regional states. Ismail Haniyeh served as the head of Hamas's political bureau for several years before his assassination in July 2024 in Tehran. Yahya Sinwar, the organization's military commander and chief architect of the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel, had been widely considered the most powerful figure inside Gaza. Sinwar was killed by Israeli forces in October 2024. The Palestinian Authority, under President Mahmoud Abbas, maintains internationally recognized executive authority over Palestinian territories in a broader legal sense, though it has had no effective governing presence in Gaza since 2007. Abbas, who has served as PA President since 2005, heads the executive branch of the Palestinian Authority from Ramallah in the West Bank. Following the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in October 2023, Hamas's governing infrastructure in Gaza was severely degraded. The conflict resulted in the destruction of significant portions of the administrative apparatus Hamas had built over nearly two decades. As of 2025, the question of who will ultimately govern the Gaza Strip remains unresolved, with ongoing international discussions involving the Palestinian Authority, Arab states, and various international stakeholders about potential post-conflict governance arrangements. No internationally recognized executive structure with clear leadership has been established for the territory in the immediate aftermath of the conflict.
Legislative Branch: The Gaza Strip does not have a fully functioning independent legislative body in the conventional sense, given its complex and contested political status. The territory is not a sovereign state, and its governance arrangements have been shaped by decades of conflict, occupation, and internal Palestinian political divisions. The Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), established under the Oslo Accords and first elected in 1996, was designed to serve as the legislative branch for the Palestinian Authority (PA) across both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The PLC is a unicameral body composed of 132 seats, with members elected through a mixed proportional and district-based system. However, the council has been effectively non-functional for many years. Following the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, in which Hamas won a majority of seats, a political rupture between Hamas and the rival Fatah movement led to Hamas seizing full control of Gaza in 2007. This effectively split Palestinian governance into two separate administrations — the PA-led West Bank and Hamas-controlled Gaza. Since that division, Hamas has governed Gaza through its own administrative structures, including a separate legislature it established called the Legislative Council of the Gaza Strip, sometimes referred to as the Hamas-aligned PLC. This body operates independently of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority and is not internationally recognized as a legitimate legislative institution by most Western governments or international organizations. Palestinian legislative elections were called for May 2021 but were indefinitely postponed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, with no rescheduled date confirmed as of the time of writing. The ongoing conflict following the Hamas-led attacks in October 2023 and the subsequent Israeli military campaign in Gaza has further disrupted any prospects for near-term legislative or electoral normalization. As a result, the Gaza Strip currently lacks a broadly recognized, democratically functioning legislative branch, and its governance remains a deeply unresolved issue tied to the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the internal Palestinian political divide.

Military

Branches, service obligations, expenditures, and manpower.

Military Branches: HAMAS maintains security forces inside Gaza in addition to its military wing, the 'Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades; the military wing ostensibly reports to the HAMAS Political Bureau but operates with considerable autonomy; there are several other militant groups operating in the Gaza Strip, most notably the Al-Quds Brigades of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which are usually but not always beholden to HAMAS's authority.

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