Why Gaza's governance question is immediate, not future
Background: what a civil administration would do, and what its absence means now.
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Discussion of Gaza's future has focused on arrangements to be settled later, while the territory has no functioning civil administration now.
A civil administration is what issues documents, runs municipalities, licenses building and directs police — functions that do not pause while political arrangements are negotiated.
Their absence is felt first in the ordinary transactions of daily life: registering a birth, obtaining a permit, reporting a crime.
No replacement authority has been established.