DAR AL HARB/ISLAM - HOLY LAND: HAMAS DOES NOT YET HAVE COMPLETE CONTROL OF GAZA

Hamas fights crime clans for total control of Gaza
Jon Swain in Gaza

THE attack came with a barrage of mortars and a rattle of machineguns. In the narrow alleys of Khan Younis in the south of the Gaza Strip, black-uniformed Hamas fighters laying siege to the compound of the Al-Astel family, one of Gaza’s infamous ruling clans, edged forward.

After a stunning victory over their secular Fatah rivals for control of Gaza and with the horrors of the fighting still fresh in people’s minds, Hamas, the militant Islamic organisation, was trying to disarm the clan known for drug smuggling and support of Fatah.

The compound held. After five hours of fighting and with two people killed, Hamas lifted its siege when a clan elder agreed to hand over their weapons.

Hamas came away with a fifth of the family’s arsenal, an official said. Abu Mohammed, a clan member, claimed it had handed over only five rifles and a pistol. Asked if this was the entire arsenal, he merely grinned.

The battle was the first sign of a growing tension between Hamas and Gaza’s most powerful families, which the organisation must confront and tame if it is to exert full control over Gaza and curb its lawlessness.

The battle was a measure, too, of the difficulties in disarming a population which some security analysts say has as many as 400,000 weapons stashed away - enough to arm one in every three people.

Hamas claimed to have collected most of the weapons of the routed Fatah security forces last week. But many more are hidden in private homes, bought by ordinary Gazan civilians to defend themselves amid the chaos. Until Hamas clamped down, guns were openly for sale twice a week on the fringes of a secondhand car market in Gaza City.

There was everything for sale, from Glock pistols to explosive charges, Kalashnikovs and M16 assault rifles. Among the favour-ites were cheap, Chinese-made pistols, often copies of Colt and other famous American brands, going for a song. These inexpensive weapons began flooding in after the Israeli withdrawal in 2005, when demand for them soared, fed by the rising internecine violence that eventually overwhelmed Gaza.

They were smuggled in by traffickers who burrowed under the Egyptian border through tunnels. The operation was centred on the border town of Rafah where a 26ft-high concrete wall divides the town into Gaza’s and Egypt’s territories.

Engaged in racketeering, car-thefts, smuggling, kidnapping and murder, the five or six big clans have contributed enormously to the criminality that had made Gaza’s political leadership so feeble and irrelevant and everyday life so frightening and dangerous.

The big test of whether Hamas is going to cooperate with the families - or smash them now that it is in charge - is the effort to free Alan Johnston, the kidnapped BBC Gaza correspondent, who spent his 100th day in captivity last week.

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1) Hamas fights crime clans for total control of Gaza