'In Unruly Gaza, Clans Compete in Power Void'

article by STEVEN ERLANGER here.

 

...Gaza now seems more like a street-corner society, with the various security forces only more sophisticated varieties of the militant gangs that have their base in neighborhoods, refugee camps and hamullas.

The hamullas are again so powerful in Gaza that rival security forces seek to buy their loyalty with money and weapons, while hamullas seek to ensure that their members are represented in all crucial groups, including the militants of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and of course Fatah, which is supposed to be the bulwark of the Palestinian Authority.

...

Talal Okal, a political scientist at Al-Azhar University in Gaza, said, "Society has military features now." Al-Azhar was shut after Fatah gunmen beat the university's president, Adnan al-Khaldi, after he expelled pro-Fatah students for using violence. "The hamullas have their own militias or have infiltrated the various security services," Mr. Okal said. "And each militia tries to preserve its role and prevent the Palestinian Authority from exercising its functions and authority."

Arafat, in his revolutionary stage, used to talk about "the democracy of the rifle." It is a form of that "democracy" with which Mr. Abbas must now cope.

In fact, it is largely Arafat's own failure to take state-building seriously that helped create the problems here, which were evident long before he died in November, said Salah Abdel Shafi, an economist who works with the World Bank and advises Mr. Abbas. Once the symbol of Palestine disappeared with Arafat's death, many of the fissures were vividly exposed: between the secular and the religious, one group of Fatah and another, one security service and another, one clan and another, all competing for power and benefits.