Factional Fighting Clouds Gaza's Future

Security Agencies, Armed Groups Vie for Dominance as Negotiators Seek Unity

GAZA CITY -- Dozens of security men filed into the garage, Kalashnikovs slapping at their thighs. Over steaming platters of lamb and rice, members of the Palestinian Authority's military intelligence and armed forces gathered to reconcile after a traffic dispute had escalated into an hour-long shootout in the street.

"We are brothers," said Maj. Gen. Moussa Arafat, head of the authority's military intelligence agency in the Gaza Strip, who called the meeting at his house June 14. "When such small issues come up, I implore you to resolve them through dialogue."

Despite the welcoming words, his men ate standing up, and many rested one hand on their weapons. Reconciliation is routinely brokered here, and just as routinely broken.

Since the Palestinian uprising began in September 2000, a handful of armed groups fighting Israel have also fought one another for dominance in the 138-square-mile Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Authority, given responsibility for governing Gaza a decade ago, runs a dozen security agencies whose members shoot at rivals -- and each other -- every few weeks. The armed branches of organizations such as the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, and Islamic Jihad assert their power and increasingly are beyond the Palestinian Authority's control. Independent armed gangs also roam the streets, imposing their will.

At the same time, the deadlocked Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the strong military measures Israel has taken in the occupied territories have eroded the power of political institutions, Palestinian legislators say. In the resulting vacuum, "the military wings of all these political parties decide what they're going to do vis-a-vis political decisions," said Marwan Kanafani, a Gaza representative to the Palestinian Legislative Council.

The most powerful force in Gaza has been the Israeli army, which has thousands of troops stationed here. But as Israel contemplates a unilateral withdrawal of troops and Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip, Palestinians, Israelis and foreign observers have voiced fears that such a move would spark a civil war among Palestinians, permit a takeover by Islamic militia forces or simply dissolve into total chaos.

"When the Israelis leave Gaza it is going to cause us a very, very, very big problem," said Sami Abu Samhadaneh, who is head of the Special Office of the Palestinian Authority's security services, a branch charged with gathering intelligence on the other security agencies. He is also connected to a militia made up of defectors from some of the dominant Palestinian factions.

Efforts to avoid upheaval have focused on stabilizing the security situation and forging some sort of accord among factions that would bring about cooperation rather than chaos. Egypt has offered to take a leading role in the effort; Israel, the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations have expressed support.

To succeed, however, Egyptian negotiators must engineer compromises among armed groups that have been empowered by the volatile security situation; some of the groups may see more benefit than risk in greater chaos, observers say.

"Hamas and the warlords are the ones who will decide what will happen," said Palestinian pollster and analyst Khalil Shikaki.

In Gaza City, armed men sit on stoops and lean in doorways, surveying, smoking, telling jokes. Many of them work for the Palestinian Authority's security services, which combined are the largest employer in Gaza, providing 30,000 jobs, according to security agency chiefs. A search is underway to find a new structure to organize the often-chaotic forces.

Under the Oslo peace accords, the Palestinian Authority was established in 1994 to create interim security forces that were expected to suppress militant groups and provide internal policing. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, whose Fatah movement dominates the authority's legislature and ministries, set up a complex, overlapping and shifting system of eight to 12 agencies. Each had separate chiefs in the West Bank and Gaza, and all the chiefs were directly responsible to Arafat, who personally oversaw security for both places. The idea was to stop any individual from rising to prominence and threatening Arafat's power. Often, analysts said, Arafat would issue conflicting orders to different agencies.

During the Palestinian uprising, or intifada, some members of the authority's forces fought Israeli soldiers, and Israel struck back at most of the agencies in the West Bank and Gaza. In a recent interview, Samir Mashrawi, a Fatah member and negotiator in talks among agencies and factions, listed each Palestinian Authority security branch whose Gaza office was hit by Israeli forces: intelligence, preventive security, police, navy, the presidential guard, military intelligence and the border forces.

Isolated in his crumbling compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah since early 2002, Arafat seemed to lose control of the security situation in Gaza. Subordinates turned against chiefs, and agencies turned against one another. Some even dared to defy Arafat.