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Hamas has announced its intention to hand over governing authority in Gaza after two decades in power, and has invited a US-backed interim administration to take over the running of the Palestinian territory.

It was not immediately clear how far Monday’s announcement would go towards strengthening an only partially observed ceasefire in Gaza or improving conditions in the besieged coastal strip which is still in the midst of a humanitarian crisis.

While announcing that it was ready to hand over security as part of a transition, the Hamas statement made no promise to disarm unilaterally as Israel and the US have demanded.

The interim administration to which Hamas has offered to transfer governance, known as the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), has been blocked from entering Gaza by Israel since its creation in January as part of a US-brokered ceasefire, adding further doubt to the timing of any future handover.

Analysts said the Hamas announcement was largely a symbolic gambit aimed at reviving a stalled peace process that has blocked reconstruction and humanitarian relief for Gaza’s surviving 2.1 million population. They also said the move was designed to counter Israeli-led proposals to limit relief, reconstruction, and NCAG governance to a tiny proportion of Gaza’s population in purpose-built villages in the roughly 60% of Gaza under direct Israeli army control.

The Trump administration has given backing to the plan for which officials have variously referred to as a “humanitarian city”, “alternative safe communities”, or “New Rafah” – but which the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert has called a “concentration camp”.

Mohammed al-Farra, the head of the Hamas administration, announced his resignation and the handover of power to NCAG. He suggested that Hamas would end its political direction of Gaza governance immediately but that civil servants and public workers would remain in their jobs in a professional capacity pending NCAG’s arrival.

“After I have ensured that all necessary preparations have been completed for the handover of the governmental system in the Gaza Strip, I hereby tender my resignation from my positions as chairman of the governmental work follow-up committee in the Gaza Strip and chairman of the governmental emergency committee,” al-Farra wrote, referring to two different titles Hamas adopted for its government in Gaza since its complete seizure of power in 2007.

A Hamas spokesperson, Hazem Qassem, told Agence France-Presse: “Hamas has taken a new step in that it will no longer be in charge of the Gaza Strip, in order to remove any pretexts for the occupation, which continues its aggression and war of extermination.”

The prospect of a political transition still appears remote. The NCAG is overseen by the Board of Peace established by Donald Trump as part of a ceasefire plan his administration brokered in October. However, its 13 current members, mostly prominent Palestinian professionals, have been prevented from entering Gaza by Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government, and have been stuck in Cairo since being brought together in January.

The NCAG chair, Ali Shaath, wrote on social media on Monday that the committee was “fully prepared to assume its national responsibilities as soon as the necessary resources and capabilities are available”.

In a report to the UN security council in May, the Trump-appointed high representative for Gaza, Nickolay Mladenov, pinned blame on Hamas for the impasse in the peace process. Hamas has made clear it will not give up its arms while Israel directly controls more than 60% of Gaza, commits wholesale ceasefire violations, and backs Palestinian paramilitary groups inside the territory.

Mladenov was widely criticised for lack of impartiality in failing to hold Israel to account for its violations. The Board of Peace’s response to the Hamas declaration on Monday was noncommittal, saying only it had “taken note” of the announcement.

“Ultimately, our assessment will be guided by actions, not promises, to meet the critical needs of the people of Gaza,” the board said on its social media account.

“The core principle remains one authority, one law and one weapon. This means the consolidation of all weapons under the control of the NCAG,” the statement said.

Max Rodenbeck, the Israel-Palestine project director at the International Crisis Group, said: “Given its very limited leverage and the absurdly unending misery in Gaza, and given the Board of Peace’s insistence on conditioning any progress on Hamas’s disarmament, while ignoring Israel’s daily airstrikes and efforts to capture more land, the group is keen to find some way to break the logjam.”

He added: “In the absence of any ‘political horizon’ for Palestinians it cannot just lay down its weapons, but it can at least signal its willingness to give up political power. This puts the onus back on the [Board of Peace] to show some flexibility.”

The Palestinian Authority and its Arab and European backers are struggling to shape US policy, and persuade the administration to stick to the Trump peace plan envisaging reconstruction and new governance in the whole of the Gaza Strip – rather than just in the Israeli army-run part of it, where there are hardly any Palestinians, as Israel is proposing with support from the United Arab Emirates.

“Hamas knows that if NCAG just moves into New Rafah, it would be delegitimised as the ruler of bantustans or a concentration camp,” said Muhammad Shehada, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

“Hamas is trying to recapture the initiative. They are trying to recapture the initiative and circumvent the roadblock created by the New Rafah plan,” Shehada said.

“Even if they agree to disarm unilaterally and do everything they are asked to do, Hamas knows Netanyahu will not allow reconstruction anywhere in Gaza before elections,” he added. The Israeli prime minister is struggling to keep his far-right coalition together before Israel is due to vote by late October and diplomats in the region expect little progress on Gaza’s future at least until then.