Soccer Dad

The gangs of gaza

Instapundit linked to this excellent article by Martin Peretz, Mayhem in Gaza:

You don't hear much about these bewildering social formations until a long-festering inter-family (or intra-family) feud suddenly erupts and blood is shed, as it has recently with special regularity in Gaza. Journalists and academics somehow think it patronizing to recognize these antiquarian kinship groups with their raw emotions as political actors when their rhetoric strains so pompously to modernity. It would be especially insulting since their Jewish antagonists are the quintessential carriers of progress in the Middle East, those damned Zionists with their advanced science-based economy, independent judiciary, free press, hi-tech military in which individual soldiers still take responsibility and command respect, and promotion in the ranks by competence and ingenuity in the defense activities of the state. But political allegiances among the Palestinians are cemented by just those more primitive--which is to say, primal--ties. God only knows why you can talk about these with regard to Sicily but not when it comes to Palestine. In any case, the truth is that Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al Aqsa, the Popular Resistance Committee, and other armed gangs and ganglets of the national movement, such as it is, are each defined partly by ideology, partly by bloodlines. A whole village may vote for the headman's pick, which until he tells you is anyone's guess.

The problem of the gangs of Gaza goes back a ways. Writing in anticipation of Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, Dr. Eyad el-Sarraj wrote:

We are joyful of the evacuation of the Israeli settlements, and the blow to the Zionist colonial enterprise which has victimized both Jews and Palestinians. But we fear that we entered the path of civil war from its widest doors, not necessarily between Hamas and Fatah, but rather; between the various armed feudal groups. The feudality of money, weapons, and tribalism became the ruling powers in Gaza. The central Authority has decayed to a degree of helplessness. I am not surprised to know that someone is considering forming an armed militia to protect his family, and business, as he is left with no choice but to follow the same path. He may even need to prove his power by kidnapping one foreigner, and then negotiate with the authority to twist its arm, roll its dignity in the dust, and pluck out its legitimacy. It will not then be impossible that new leaders emerge from the new militias demanding the full control over their own feudalities, after liberating them! It might be also possible that one day the leaders of the militias agree on establishing a federal regime amongst between khan Younis, Rafah, Gaza, Deir El-Balah, Beit Hanon, and Jabalia.

And to whom may we credit the strengthening of the clans? Why to Yasser Arafat as Graham Usher wrote back in 1997:

"The governor's house in Rafah on the southern tip of the Gaza Strip used to be a gleaming white, three-storied apartment block on the edge of the town's main square. No longer. Today the house is a gutted shell, its vacant window frames smeared with soot and its ground floor garages protected by armed khaki-clad Palestinian soldiers.

"The destruction is the result of a chain of events in Rafah which, last week, saw thousands of Palestinians storm the governor's residence in violent protest over the way they are governed. But it is also emblematic of all that is wrong with Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority(PA) in the areas it commands and. perhaps, of what is in store should political reforms (as much as economic prosperity) not be forthcoming.

"Palestinians say the trouble started in "a fight over money" between two of Rafah's biggest clans, the Al-Dhair and Abu Samhadanah families. It should have been resolved between them or by the legal system of the Palestinian Authority(PA). But, in Rafah, divisions between civil and political authority are not so neat, which is why a spat over money can -- in the words of one Palestinian from Rafah -- "become a tribal war in which one of the tribes is the PA." . . .

(BTW, Peretz's comment about the damned Zionists reminds me of Meryl Yourish's:

Israelis create drip-irrigation technology, cures for diseases, and inventions that help the world. Palestinians create ways to cause more death and destruction, and then pass that knowledge onto other terrorists.

Technorati Tags: Israel.

Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.