trauma of repeated displacement from her home in Gaza city, Suha Alam felt there was little left to lose. Having fled to Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, she messaged a friend still in the north to check on the family home, only to be told that looters had got through a hole in a broken wall and stolen everything.
Gaza’s clans have long been power-brokers. They never went away under Hamas, whose cannier leaders learned not to pick quarrels with the larger families, preferring to operate in tandem or alongside them rather than in opposition. Aid officials and observers say the clans are involved in both types of crookery: in some cases they offers safe warehouses and merchants protection for their goods—for a fee; in others they arrange the theft of aid, which they later sell at extortionate prices.
One aid worker said that, if the flow of food and medicine remains clogged, thus pushing up prices, “you are going to encourage these gangs and families to consolidate and then they simply become part of the landscape.” As prices soar and so much aid is stolen and sold on, access to cash has become vital. The Palestinian Monetary Authority, based in Ramallah in the West Bank, is the closest thing the Palestinians have to a central bank. It has scrambled to put cash into the strip’s fews. Just six of Gaza’s 91 are working. Pleas to get permission from Israel for engineers to fix the broken machines have fallen on deaf ears.