In Gaza, Politics at the End of a Gun

Foot Soldiers Carry Power Struggle of Hamas and Fatah Into the Streets

GAZA CITY, May 19 -- There's a new sheriff in this town, and he wears a black hat and bushy beard.

On nearly every major street corner, men in camouflage pants, black T-shirts and matching caps, and beards of varying thickness stand in small groups cradling Kalashnikov assault rifles. There are 3,000 of them, placed by the Hamas-led Interior Ministry to impose order on the Gaza Strip's unruly streets.

"Our main purpose is to back up the Palestinian police in case they are unable to implement their orders," said Abu al-Amin, 44, clutching a two-way radio as he led a patrol of more than a dozen gunmen toward al-Saha Square. "We want stability. We want organized security for our citizens."

The new force's showy deployment this week was the latest sign of the Palestinian Authority's evolution into a government of rival armed camps, a result of the economic hardship and political rivalry sharpening in the Palestinian territories.

Staffed almost entirely by the armed wing of Hamas, or the Islamic Resistance Movement, the force did not deploy in the West Bank. It nevertheless is being viewed as a threat by the rest of the Palestinian security services, whose ranks are dominated by supporters of Fatah, the secular party that dominated Palestinian politics until this year. Hamas units and Fatah gunmen exchanged sporadic gunfire for hours before dawn Friday, wounding at least four people.

Even on the quiet Muslim Sabbath, the streets here were alive with talk of an imminent reckoning.

"We don't know what is right and wrong anymore," said a taxi driver who identified himself as Abu Ibrahim, 56, and was huddled with colleagues at a terminal on al-Saha Square. "Every day there is a new event, a new move by the authorities -- one day it's Hamas, the next Fatah. All we feel is confusion."

Gaza's 1.4 million residents have seen more gunmen and less order since last year, when Israel evacuated 8,500 Jewish settlers from the strip along with the soldiers who protected them. Claiming credit for Israel's withdrawal, Hamas won parliamentary elections four months later, ending Fatah's long monopoly on political power in the territories.

The Palestinian security forces now are at the heart of a political battle between Hamas officials and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president and Fatah leader, while their chain of command has been severely compromised by partisan loyalties. Abbas has called on Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas to disband the new security force.

As president, Abbas is commander in chief of the more than 70,000 members of the various Palestinian security services. But his control over them has come into question since Hamas began running the Palestinian ministries seven weeks ago.

Abbas named Rashid Abu Shabak, a Fatah loyalist, to head the Palestinian police, civil defense and powerful preventative security branch under Hamas's new interior minister, Saed Siyam. Although technically one of Siyam's deputies, Abu Shabak reports directly to Abbas. He also has close ties to Mohammed Dahlan, a Fatah member of parliament from the Gaza Strip who helped build the preventative security service more than a decade ago.

Rather than fire Abu Shabak, which could trigger violent reprisals, Siyam created the new force mostly from Hamas's armed wing, the Izzadeen al-Qassam Brigades. The brigades asserted responsibility for dozens of suicide bombings in Israel during the most recent Palestinian uprising, although they have largely abided by an informal cease-fire for more than a year.