BEIT HANOUN, Gaza Strip — In her new home, finally finished after she lived two years in a trailer across a dirt road, Samaher al-Masri, 40, showed a video on her cellphone of a cute preschooler, her son Majdi. He was singing: “I am a son of Palestine, I have a right and a cause . . . Even if they shoot me and I die as a martyr, I will not forget the cause.’’

Majdi, who was 6, lived through two Gazan wars, though his old family house was toppled by bulldozers in the 2014 fighting with Israel. But the day after he ended kindergarten last year, he caught his hula hoop in a door in the trailer. The door was heavy, the frame shoddy. It fell on him and crushed his skull, killing him.

“Something is missing,’’ his mother said eight months later, in the living room of her house, built on the rubble-cleared plot of the old one. “You asked me if this is better. Yes, it’s better. But I’m missing him.’’

So it is in Gaza, outwardly rebuilding and moving on from war, inwardly far from recovered. And with the region uncertain as the state of play between Israelis and Palestinians shifts, Gaza in its isolation seems at a loss for what might — or even should — come next, as it drifts further from the West Bank Palestinians and any hope of a two-state solution.

Two million tons of rubble have been cleared — about a ton for each person who lives in this cramped coastal strip. Two-thirds of the 160,000 damaged homes have been rebuilt, as have half of the 11,000 that were destroyed. Roads are better, travel faster. People gawk at their first real mall. But they are not buying much. Unemployment is high, especially among the many young people graduating from college.

In all, 50,000 people remain displaced. Electricity and water supplies are still near crisis levels. Hamas, which governs Gaza, elected a new hard-line leader. Tunnel building goes on (and, presumably, so does the construction and smuggling of weapons). On the Israeli side, the political right talks of a new war in the spring over Hamas’s rearming and expresses a desire to inflict a decisive blow.

Israel tightly controls most of what goes in and out: food, building supplies, people. Two children died recently for lack of drugs or medical access.

It is unclear how flickers of change elsewhere in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict will affect Gaza, surrounded by Israel on two sides, Egypt to the southwest, and the Mediterranean.

With President Trump in office, Israel’s right seems to feel empowered and is likely to push more settlements in the West Bank, even to toy with annexation, despite Trump’s call to slow the pace.

The Palestinian Authority, which has wide backing in the West, seems to be looking for ways to push its immediate future, including persuading the world to recognize a state of Palestine, threatening action in the United Nations, and encouraging Israeli boycotts.

Leaders of Hamas, considered a terrorist group by the United States and many other countries, do not have the same backing from the West. Interviews with political and business leaders, academics, and ordinary people can divine only a basic strategy: Improve the lives of frustrated residents as its leaders put off as long as possible what they see as the next inevitable war.

Mahmoud Zahar, a Hamas official, said that with years of failed talks, settlements expanding across the West Bank, and Trump’s apparent ambivalence about a Palestinian state, “You have two options: either to cooperate with the occupation or the resistance.’’

Interviews make it clear that there is a growing distance between Gaza and the West Bank — a central reason cited by Israelis for the impossibility of negotiations. Hamas won elections in Gaza in 2006 and took full control in 2007.

Ibrahim al-Madhoun, a columnist for the Hamas-affiliated news outlet Al Risala, raised a possibility, a very long shot, one that could conceivably be acceptable to Israel’s far right: Someday Gaza — with defined borders, no Israeli occupation, and no settlers — could be the basis for a Palestinian state.

“If there is going to be a Palestinian state, it’s going to be Gaza,’’ said Mkhaimar Abusada, associate professor at Al-Azhar University in Gaza. “Politically speaking, it’s not right. But this is what’s coming.’’ Otherwise, “I don’t think there is a grand strategy where Gaza is in 10 years or 20 years. I know Hamas will never want to give up Gaza as long as it is capable of keeping control.’’