Amidst Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza, policymakers, academics, and citizens alike have debated how the territory ought to be administered the ‘day after’ Israel’s campaign, which has killed over 40,000 Palestinians, comes to an end. One proposal which some peacebuilding academics and policymakers have called for is a ‘UN Transitional Administration’ (UN TA), where UN bureaucrats, led by a Special Representative of the Secretary-General and mandated by the UN Security Council, would assume administrative and executive responsibilities in Gaza while the final status of the territory is negotiated. While a UN TA holds promise, the historical record from Kosovo and elsewhere suggests such an institution would face perilous strategic dilemmas which will threaten its security and legitimacy.
UN Transitional Administrations have been used several times in recent decades to administer post-conflict territories with ambiguous or contested sovereignty, including East Timor and Kosovo. These administrations acted as the temporary official government for the territory, doing everything from stamping passports, issuing driver’s licences, creating national parks, regulating banks, and policing the streets. Their legacy is mixed: some criticise their neo-colonial undertones and inability to deliver their mandated goals of fostering democratic institutions. Past administrators, however, defend their legacy by noting that they were critical for delivering humanitarian aid and bringing much needed stability. Ultimately, while UN TAs were a creative and necessary solution to fill post-conflict administrative vacuums, they could not externally induce organic, long-term change: effective democratisation and institutionalisation tends to require bottom-up, indigenous political action.
Proponents of a potential UN TA in Gaza find transitional administration attractive because it would be internationally accountable, relatively impartial, and a foundation for political stability and economic development. In the scenario where Israel withdraws from Gaza, either unilaterally or as the result of a negotiated ceasefire plan, a UN TA could fill the vacuum and replace Hamas as the main governing authority in Gaza. It could facilitate redevelopment and direct foreign aid for reconstruction after the catastrophic damage inflicted by Israel on the territory. As in Kosovo, where the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) spearheaded the Kosovo-Serbia dialogue to try to resolve the conflict, so too could a ‘United Nations Mission in Gaza’ take a leadership role in a renewed peace process.
UN Transitional Administration may very well be more attractive for Palestinian and Israeli leadership than alternatives for ‘day after’ administration, such as direct Israeli governance or Hamas taking back control of the territory. However, the historical record of transitional administrations, particularly the experience of Kosovo, reveals that a similar UN TA in Gaza would face immense strategic challenges which will undermine its ability to deliver stability, build institutions, and broker final status negotiations. Difficult decisions about local governing partners, staffing security forces, and the pace of final status negotiations all might make the UN TA unwelcome in Gaza and provoke protest and discontent.
Strategic Challenge 1: Co-Opt or Exclude
The central dilemma facing a hypothetical UN TA in Gaza would be whether to co-opt remnants of Hamas into new transitional structures or whether to deny Hamas-affiliated members from governing and administrative responsibilities. The lessons learned in Kosovo illustrate this tension well. The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was a militant group of ethnic Albanians living in Kosovo who violently resisted Serbian rule. Though they enjoyed tremendous support from Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians, who faced apartheid-like conditions in a Yugoslavia ruled by Serbian nationalists, many Serbs consider the KLA a terrorist organisation, given its many attacks on Serb civilians and civil institutions. Hashim Thaci, a founder of the KLA, was indicted in 2020 for crimes against humanity conducted during the Kosovo War.
UNMIK took over governing responsibilities in Kosovo after Yugoslavia’s withdrawal from the territory in June 1999. UNMIK did not, however, inherit a blank slate: the KLA had already established proto-state institutions throughout the country, appointing mayors, collecting taxes, and establishing security forces. Though UNMIK claimed full sovereignty in Kosovo, in the early months it was the KLA that enjoyed de facto rule. In order to claim a monopoly on legitimate authority, UNMIK made a compromise: it agreed to incorporate the existing Kosovo political elite, including both the KLA and leaders of Kosovo’s government-in-exile, into the ‘joint interim administrative structure.’ UNMIK gave wartime commanders and figureheads important responsibilities in leading the transitional administration in exchange for them relinquishing their previous titles and claims.
The Kumanovo Agreement, which ended the Kosovo War, ordered the remnants of the KLA to disarm and disband. However, without any coercive authority to enforce the order, they were unwilling to unilaterally relinquish their weapons. Instead, UNMIK made another compromise – it would largely leave the organisation intact but change its name and purpose. The ‘Kosovo Liberation Army’ became the ‘Kosovo Protection Corps’ which would provide disaster response, conduct search and rescue, and provide humanitarian assistance. Such politicking largely brought the controversial wartime militant group under UNMIK’s control and neutered its threat to peace and security.
The decision to co-opt existing Kosovar elites and institutions was key for UNMIK to gain the legitimacy and security environment necessary for further reforms. When foreign powers choose the alternative – challenging existing power structures and leaving them out of power – they risk alienating the local population and instigating dissent. Take, for example, the American occupation of Iraq after its invasion in 2003. The first directive of the ‘Coalition Provisional Authority’ fired nearly 30,000 Iraqi civil servants affiliated with Saddam Hussein’s Baathist Party and barred them from becoming involved in transitional institutions. The ‘De-Baathification’ of Iraq deprived post-war Iraq of the expertise necessary to run a functioning country and contributed to social instability and the insurgency against the American occupation.
Herein lies the core dilemma of any UN Transitional Administration in Gaza. To incorporate Hamas and important Gazan elites in any governance arrangement would be difficult for Israel and its allies to accept given its stated wartime goal of eliminating Hamas and the collective trauma of October 7. Yet, excluding existing elites and power brokers would leave the UN TA without a locally-legitimate governing partner in Gaza and make it a persistent target of resistance.
A UN TA would face a related dilemma regarding its relationship with the deeply unpopular Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank. The majority of Palestinians want to disband the entity, which is widely viewed as corrupt, ineffective, and co-opted by Israel. If the UN TA co-opts or partners with the PA, it risks alienating the Palestinian public and inheriting the PA’s weak and illegitimate reputation. However, ignoring the PA would antagonise the West Bank’s political elite – however domestically unpopular – which could create coordination problems and complicate final status negotiations.
Strategic Challenge 2: Security Forces
Even if the UN Transitional Administration manages to find a balance between co-option and exclusion, it would still depend on coercive power to implement its directives. NATO peacekeepers, known as the Kosovo Protection Force (KFOR), were crucial in implementing UNMIK’s directives such as the demobilisation and transformation of the Kosovo Liberation Army into the Kosovo Protection Corps. With over 50,000 troops, KFOR was powerful enough to bring security and stability by deterring resistance to the international administration.
Given that KFOR was a NATO operation, it was relatively easy to fulfil its enrolment needs: all NATO members pledged soldiers and funds to support the mission. UNMIK also benefited from the fact that NATO had defeated Serbia/Yugoslavia militarily, extracting the concession that it could send whoever and however many troops it wanted into Kosovo.
The case is not the same for a UN TA in Gaza. While some Arab states such as Egypt and Jordan have recently warmed up to the idea of sending their soldiers as peacekeepers in Gaza, this remains tentative and subject to intense negotiation. Not only would it be expensive and difficult to build a KFOR-sized peacekeeping force in Gaza, but a UN TA would also face a vastly different political environment. Given Israel’s historic and ongoing blockade of Gaza, Israel would certainly try to vet any potential security forces entering the territory. Israel would also be wary that any weapons and military resources given to a UN TA in Gaza could one day be used against it.
For a UN TA to be successful, it would require a significant security presence to ensure stability. Stability is the necessary foundation for everything else it hopes to accomplish, such as humanitarian assistance, reconstruction, governance reform, or final status negotiations. However, the high price and weak international political appetite for staffing such a mission would make it incredibly difficult. Further exacerbating this is the political reality that Israel would enjoy much more leverage over the security presence than Serbia/Yugoslavia did in Kosovo. Without sufficient security forces, the UN TA would be over before it started.
Strategic Challenge 3: Legitimacy & Democratisation
The most important, and hitherto least discussed, group with respect to the future of governance in Gaza is, of course, Gazans themselves. In all likelihood, Gazans would view a UN Transitional Administration as deeply illegitimate. In Kosovo, UNMIK and NATO’s peacekeepers, KFOR, enjoyed considerable public support amongst Kosovo Albanians because of NATO’s role in liberating the territory. Similarly in East Timor, another territory that was put under UN Transitional Administration in 1999, the local population largely welcomed the international community because they shared a common goal of constructing a new and independent East Timorese state. In Gaza, international forces would enjoy no such welcome, and any Israeli or American influence on the administration would further taint its perceived legitimacy.
The UN’s inability to stop the war has tarnished its reputation as a neutral advocate for peace. No Palestinian leadership has called for a UN Transitional Administration; the Palestinians and their leaders have unequivocally demanded a free and sovereign Palestinian state. Unless there is clear agreement over final status negotiations and a visible schedule for recognition, any UN TA would be viewed as yet another foreign occupation of the Palestinian people.
The strategic dilemma facing a UN TA is as follows: given America’s outsized influence on the UN and its steadfast support for Israel, the UN TA would have to work tacitly within the confines of American and Israeli parameters. Even though Yugoslavia had limited influence at the UN, it still was able to make life difficult for UNMIK. Any such administration today in Gaza would face serious pressure from Israel and its allies to prevent Palestinian statehood until final status negotiations between Israel and Palestine become finalised.
UNMIK again serves as a cautionary tale for unmet national aspirations. When final status negotiations were breaking down in Kosovo, Kosovo Albanians vented their frustration towards UNMIK and took to the streets in their thousands demanding it leave the country. A similar fate, or worse, would meet a UN TA which failed to deliver on Palestinian statehood.
***
The governance model that will emerge in Gaza the ‘day after’ Israel’s war will have long-term consequences on the viability of a sovereign Palestinian state. Supporters of a two-state solution must imagine, articulate, and sell a political framework that can provide immediate stability while advancing the project of Palestinian statehood.
The UN TA is one such framework, though the debate on whether it is a viable interim governing solution for Gaza remains largely confined to Western policy circles and academic spaces. The empirical record, particularly in Kosovo, reveals that the UN-led model would be fraught with strategic challenges. There remains minimal enthusiasm among Palestinian and Israeli leadership for such a proposal, and any UN TA will be impossible without their support.
Two-state defenders should therefore turn to alternative ideas. One proposal for a multilateral coalition of Arab states is promising since it would likely have the forces necessary to exert political authority while enjoying more local legitimacy than non-Arab UN administrators. However, the dilemma on whether to exclude Hamas and pressure to develop locally-accountable transitional institutions will remain vexing issues. For any transitional model to succeed, it has no choice but to engage in an honest and intensive examination of these strategic challenges.