Policy paper: Transitional justice and the institutional rebuilding of post-war Gaza — a policy vision for preserving civil peace and restoring the justice system under Security Council resolution 2803

A new Pal-Think release: «Transitional justice and the institutional rebuilding of the Gaza Strip after the war — a policy vision for preserving civil peace and restoring the justice system under Security Council resolution 2803».

In the aftermath of the war on Gaza — the sweeping collapse of the institutional, judicial and security structure, the destruction of courts, prosecution offices and law-enforcement agencies, and the loss of large numbers of official files and records — this paper opens a policy discussion of the need for a transitional approach to rebuilding the justice system and protecting civil peace in Gaza.

The paper discusses the institutional collapse's effects on society: the widening judicial and security vacuum, the accumulation of cases and disputes, and growing reliance on reconciliation, community and clan committees as emergency mechanisms for handling daily disputes in the official institutions' absence. It highlights the risks of these mechanisms hardening into permanent, unregulated substitutes, and the legal, institutional and social problems that would follow for rights and public trust.

The paper analyses several policy alternatives for rebuilding Gaza's justice sector — centralised restoration of the official system, institutionalising the clan and community structures, and tying justice to the reconstruction track and spatial justice. It concludes in favour of a hybrid transitional-justice model, balancing the urgent need to fill the judicial and security vacuum against the necessity of preserving constitutional principles and human rights, through an organised framework integrating the official judiciary, community mechanisms, digital documentation and institutional reform.

The paper stresses that rebuilding Gaza's justice system cannot be viewed as a merely legal or administrative matter: it is a fundamental condition for protecting civil peace, restoring trust between citizens and institutions, and ensuring that daily disputes and questions of property and rights do not become further forces unravelling the social fabric after the war.

This paper was issued under the «Youth Leadership Academy for Democracy and Human Rights» project implemented by Pal-Think for Strategic Studies.

Download the paper (Arabic): click here