Recent reports say fighting in Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip has intensified over the last few days. This indicates that Hamas, as well as other factions, have somewhat renewed their mobility across these areas and are able to exchange fire with the Israel Defense Forces troops still present, causing damage and casualties.
According to Gaza Strip residents, Hamas and other factions are conducting disorganized guerilla warfare, attempting to hit Israeli armored vehicles and opening fire in the streets.
"People in civilian clothes armed with RPG launchers fire at any military target that moves in the area and use tunnels and shafts," a Gaza resident who is staying in one of the refugee centers told Haaretz on Sunday.
"These are not people who wait for a directive from a command room or for logistical supplies. The combat theory is to harm anything that is Israeli and moves," he adds.
He says it feels like as everyone talks about a cease-fire, Hamas is trying to ramp up the fighting in Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip – areas of which Israel claims it has gained control – to demonstrate organization and operation capabilities maintained even after four months of fighting, and also to reduce pressure from the southern Gaza Strip as much as possible.
Despite these attempts to prove its control, residents of the Gaza Strip, refugees and displaced people are questioning Hamas' control on the civilian and administrative level, and asking whether a full governmental vacuum has been created in the Gaza Strip.
In recent days, Hamas has distributed videos showing the organization arresting suspects for looting and breaking into homes that remain empty in the northern Gaza Strip.
Residents return to Gaza City, last week.Credit: Hamas Military Wing / Reuters
The goal for the organization is to present itself as able to continue governance, including police presence accompanying aid organizations and those humanitarian activities subordinate to the organization.
According to a Hamas civil aid official, the organization's ability has indeed been severely damaged, but that does not mean its role has ended: "We are trying to organize ourselves even under difficult conditions, there are police and internal security personnel on the ground, but not in a conspicuous and open manner. Every Hamas member is a target for Israel, including police cars or people in blue uniforms. That's why it's mostly plain-clothes presence."
According to the official, there is no significant need for police in the Gaza Strip at the moment, with most civilians acting responsibly such that there is no widespread looting of abandoned homes. "The main thing now is to provide food and basic things to the population and to operate civilian bodies and infrastructure that will distribute these things as fairly as possible," he added.
Residents clarify that police presence varies from region to region, with the main task being to monitor price increases and prevent mass theft of aid entering the Gaza Strip. Those who steal the equipment, they explain, are not the needy and the hungry. "The concern is criminals and war merchants who are trying to steal in order to sell, and that's what we fight against," said a member of Hamas's civil bureau.
Displaced Palestinians in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, on Sunday.Credit: Mohammed Abed / AFP
The photographed and publicized looters' arrest was meant to convey that Hamas is maintaining order on the ground. This, despite the fact that the phenomenon of theft did not begin in the past two weeks but has been occurring since the beginning of the war.
In Israel, pictures of Hamas members taking equipment were highlighted, but there are also people in the Gaza Strip who allegedly attacked security personnel and policemen.
"With all the attempts to show control, we are far from it. The most prominent thing in the media is the theft from homes or aid trucks because it's a good shot. But has anyone thought about price controls? Or the distribution of aid or the amount of diesel that merchants manage to smuggle and sell throughout the Gaza Strip?" says a human rights activist in the southern Gaza Strip. He said one of the main tasks now is to curb rising prices and prevent a total collapse of the aid system.
Smoke rising over buildings in Khan Yunis following Israeli bombardment on February 5, 2024.Credit: SAID KHATIB - AFP
However, Gaza Strip officials explain that security and civilian control varies among areas. While security and civilian infrastructures are still present in Rafah and Deir al-Balah, in other areas such presence is limited and largely dependent on the scope of the fighting. But Hamas's attempt to present a police presence, even if symbolic, in Gaza City and in several locations in the north, including Jabalya, is mainly a message to the Palestinian and larger Arab arena.
Hamas is determined to show that the organization still has the administrative capacity, and to prove that despite the Israeli statements about its collapse, the organization is still present in the entire Gaza Strip, even in the north and even after four months of fighting.