Hamas is trying to reassert control over local families and militias after a ceasefire. Photo / Getty Images
They blindfolded eight men accused of collaborating with Israel, made them kneel and executed them at point-blank on a busy street in Gaza City.
They sent jeeps filled with fighters to pursue the Astal militia, whose leader said it co-ordinates with Israel and had recently taken up arms alongside other gangs.
They hunted the Mujaida clan until the family, decimated after a gun battle, announced it would pledge fealty to the “government” of Gaza: Hamas.
Hamas may have stopped fighting Israel, but it has launched a new, violent campaign to reassert control over local families and militias that had challenged its power during the last two years of war – including those who, according to the leaders of two clans, had received support from Israel.
From carrying out armed raids in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip to holding public executions farther north in Gaza City, Hamas is trying to send a clear message that after months of hiding from Israeli fire, the militant group is back as the only visible authority inside the Gaza Strip, according to rival militia leaders, Palestinian officials and political analysts.
Hamas’ enduring grip has significant implications for the future of Gaza and United States President Donald Trump’s peace plan.
With Israel largely restrained from attacking Hamas under the ceasefire sponsored by Trump, the group is again ruling the streets, controlling what is left of civil administration and gaining leverage in the upcoming negotiations over whether and how it will disarm and who will rule Gaza.
According to Trump’s 20-point plan, Hamas will eventually be required to “decommission its weapons” and “not have any role” in governing Gaza. But the plan lacks details, and Hamas is expected to bargain hard as the phase-two talks unfold in the coming weeks.
“Are they obtaining new cards for bargaining after the hostages are handed over? Perhaps,” said Mustafa Ibrahim, a Gaza-based political analyst.
“Hamas could manoeuvre on this issue and say, ‘We are present, we are indispensable for imposing control.’”
For months, Hamas leaders have pointed to the proliferation of rival clans and gangs to argue that Hamas should be allowed to keep some light weapons for personal protection, according to Arab mediators.
Their rivals include those quietly armed by Israel as part of what Israeli security analysts and media say was a divide-and-conquer strategy during the war.
Hamas is comfortable with the guarantees provided by mediators that Israel will not restart the war, but the “gangs are an issue in Gaza”, said Rashid al-Mohanadi, a fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs in Qatar.
Hamas’ argument, Mohanadi said, is that negotiators “should differentiate between weapons that can still be held for personal protection, while heavier weapons should be given up”.
Publicly, Hamas officials have said they are willing to relinquish governance of Gaza.
In private, however, they have argued that they are part of the Gazan social and administrative fabric and should continue to play a role, possibly as a rebranded political party merged with other Palestinian factions, according to Palestinian and other Arab officials familiar with the talks.
The details regarding disarmament and governance will have to be ironed out in negotiations with Israel that could last several months, if not longer.
Earlier this week Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he would allow Hamas to govern in the interim and said on Wednesday that he was “not bothered” by the group’s reprisal attacks.
“They did take out a couple of gangs that were very bad,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “They did take them out and killed a number of gang members. That didn’t bother me much, to be honest with you.”
For its part, Hamas has touted its crackdown as one of the many ways in which normality – and the group’s leadership – have returned to Gaza.
After the ceasefire with Israel took effect, Hamas announced the appointment of five new governors who will administer Gaza’s devastated urban centres and circulated videos on social media showing its gunmen directing traffic.
Hamas-run social media accounts have described the clashes with rebel clans as an effort to bring criminals to justice.
Many of the clans that rebelled against Hamas during the power vacuum created by the Israeli campaign were widely accused by Gazans of engaging in smuggling, gun-running, extortion, and the looting of humanitarian aid trucks.
Several Gazan factions, including a leading tribal council, have voiced their support for Hamas’ efforts to enforce the law and condemned those who collaborated with Israel.
“Our merciful hand is extended to anyone who repents,” the Radea security forces, one of Hamas’ internal security units, said in a statement on Wednesday. “Returning to the national fold is still possible at this stage.”
Militia leaders interviewed by the Washington Post offered different estimates for how long the violence will persist and what the repercussions will be.
Some Palestinian observers say they fear the internecine conflict will be protracted and divide the Palestinian people.
That may serve the interests of Israel, which has been supplying anti-Hamas militias since the outbreak of the Gaza war, according to Israeli security analysts and two militia leaders themselves.
“How many families have received threats from Hamas? Now these families are demanding weapons to defend themselves,” said Tawfik Tirawi, a former longtime head of the Palestinian Authority intelligence service.
“This is the expected scenario in a few weeks: civil war.”
Some Israeli security analysts have been struck by Hamas’ co-ordination and long-term planning.
Even as the group came under withering fire from the Israel Defence Forces in recent months, especially in Gaza City, Hamas seemed to anticipate an eventual ceasefire and shift its strategic priorities, said Shlomo Mofaz, director of the government-affiliated Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Centre.
“It became clear, and we can see this from the Gaza City incursion, that Hamas largely abandoned confrontation with the IDF in favour of strengthening its foothold internally for the day after: saving weapons, preserving manpower, and planning reprisals against clans who either co-ordinated with Israel or threatened Hamas during the war,” said Mofaz, who formerly served as the Israeli military’s top intelligence analyst.
In interviews, clan and militia leaders say they also saw Hamas move against them with methodical efficiency.
One of the first major clashes erupted before the ceasefire was announced.
On October 3, roughly 100 gunmen in Hamas uniforms arrived at a neighbourhood in Khan Younis controlled by the Mujaidas, a prominent and outspoken family historically affiliated with Fatah, a political party that rivalled Hamas, said family members and Anwar Rajab, spokesman for the Palestinian Authority’s security forces in the West Bank, citing intelligence collected by the authority.
Armed with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, Hamas fighters advanced in formation from four different directions, sparking an intense firefight.
They were only beaten back when an Israeli drone noticed the attack and fired on Hamas, according to Ali Mujaida, a senior clan leader whose house was targeted in the attack, and drone footage released by the IDF.
After the missile strike, Mujaida clansmen dragged an injured Hamas fighter into a house for interrogation and were surprised by the planning that went into the attack.
“He gave us names, locations, directives, and showed us the two separate communication lines used for unit operations,” Mujaida recalled.
Documents taken off the body of a dead Hamas fighter, which were later posted by Mujaida clansmen to Telegram, contained detailed operational instructions and aerial photographs of the neighbourhood with the targeted Mujaida houses circled in black marker.
The “Sahem”, or piercing arrow, a special unit that Hamas formed during the war to crack down on armed groups engaged in looting aid and price gouging, claimed credit for the attack.
Mujaida said one of the Sahem’s functions has been collecting intelligence on individuals or clans who break the law or collaborate with Israel and compiling a blacklist of those who should be targeted for reprisal attacks.
The Sahem are “commanders, intelligence people, drug enforcement captains – all of them experienced”, Mujaida said.
“They are scattered around Gaza, usually in plainclothes, holed up in hospitals or in tent-cities among the refugees.”
Mujaida denied that his clan worked with Israel or systematically engaged in looting. Many clan members supported Fatah, the political party that controls the Palestinian Authority based in the West Bank, while a few joined the Islamic Jihad and the Hamas military wing itself, Mujaida said.
Most Mujaida clansmen “are not affiliated with Hamas and indeed many lean towards Fatah”, said Rajab, the Palestinian Authority security official.
“Hamas feared that, either of their own accord or else in co-ordination with the PA, these families would revolt against their rule, and so Hamas needed to nip this in the bud. It was a pre-emptive strike.”
In Gaza’s clan-based society, hostility between powerful families and Hamas sometimes runs deep and reaches back decades.
After Hamas rose to power in 2007 following a bloody struggle with the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, the militant group killed members of the Gaza City-based Doghmush clan who, like the Mujaidas, maintained an affiliation with Fatah, Rujub said.
Tensions resurfaced after war broke out in October 2023, when members of the Doghmush family based in the Sabra neighbourhood of Gaza City were accused by Hamas of stealing aid and hoarding flour.
And when Israel withdrew from Gaza City last week, Hamas fighters entered the Jordanian Hospital in Sabra, leading to a confrontation that escalated into a massive shootout, said Rajab and a Doghmush clan member who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared reprisals from Hamas.
Hamas killed at least 25 Doghmush clansmen and arrested 45 in the attack, according to two members of the clan.
Several Hamas members were also killed, including the son of senior Hamas official Basem Naim.
That same evening, Hamas led eight blindfolded men to a busy street in Sabra, made them kneel and executed them at point-blank, according to a video of the event and a Hamas statement.
Neither Hamas nor the Doghmushes confirmed whether the executed men belonged to the family.
Some militia leaders predict that after Hamas subdues the Doghmush and Mujaida families in central Gaza and Gaza City – Hamas’ only current base of power – it will quickly move to establish control over the northern and southern ends of the strip and attack militias that were propped up by Israel.
Abu Shabab, a militia leader who controls the rubble-strewn area near the Egyptian border, remains a major challenger that Hamas may not easily subdue.
Hamas is now “cleaning up their own territory, forcing the clans into submission and deterring the public”, said the Doghmush clan member.
“When that is over, they will move into the less secure areas to root out the militias. Abu Shabab will be last in line.”
In a video interview from southern Gaza last week, Yusef Mazen, a leader in the Abu Shabab militia, struck a defiant note.
The 32-year-old, who was sentenced by a Hamas-run court to 15 years’ imprisonment for murdering a Hamas fighter in 2010, broke out of prison alongside his militia leader, Yasser Abu Shabab, in late 2023 when Israel began its assault on Gaza.
The militia began receiving weapons, aid and “intelligence from drones” from the Israelis this year and now boasts 2000 men, Mazen said. Abu Shabab previously denied in interviews with the Post that his men received support from Israel.
Lounging on his side and puffing on Marlboro Red cigarettes smuggled into Gaza, Mazen showed a Post reporter a pistol, a Kevlar vest and a helmet he had received from the Israeli military.
He flashed a military watch that an IDF soldier had gifted him and issued a warning to Hamas.
“We are the strongest militia in Gaza,” Mazen said. “They are scared of us. We’re not scared of them.”
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