Some experts are dubious about the feasibility of Israel’s proposal; a similar attempt was made decades ago, unsuccessfully. But experts’ skepticism is mainly due to the diminished clout that clans now hold in contemporary Gazan society, and the inevitable influence that established Palestinian political movements would exert over them.
“The clans are a thing of the past,” said Yohanan Tzoreff, a senior researcher at the Tel Aviv Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), and an expert on Israeli-Palestinian relations. “Relying on them is relying on a broken reed.”
A common social structure in the Arab world, clans are agglomerations of families that forge alliances based on a presumed common ancestry. In the Gaza Strip, the larger clans — such as the Dughmush, the Sinwar, the Hilles, the Radwan, and the al-Masri to name a few — can reach up to 15,000 or 20,000 members, said Dror Zeevi, a professor of Middle East Studies at Ben Gurion University. In Gaza, each typically commands a specific economic sector, in agriculture, manufacturing or trading.
The main issue with entrusting clans with the governance of Gaza, according to the two experts, is that, since 2008, they are not powerful enough to manage the area independently and to compete against the influence and deeply embedded presence of either Fatah, the party led by PA President Mahmoud Abbas, or Hamas, the terror group that rules Gaza. READ MORE
