📰 How clans are organizing to fill Gaza's leadership void
tags: [palestine]
📝 Zusammenfassung
Mohamed Solaimane (+972 Magazine) dokumentiert den beispiellosen Aufstieg von Clan-Strukturen in Gaza: Familien halten Wahlen ab, gruenden Raete mit Satzungen, erheben Kandidaturgebuehren. Hintergrund: Kollaps der Hamas-Regierung, Abhaengigkeit der Hilfsorganisationen von Clan-Registern (Egyptian Relief Committee: 450.000 Familien). Israel versuchte Clans zu rekrutieren -- scheiterte aber. Bakr-Familie wurde bombardiert, nachdem Mukhtar israelische Miliz-Angebote ablehnte. Frauen bleiben voellig ausgeschlossen: 'Das muss adressiert werden.'
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tags: [palestine]
📰 Volltext (+972 Magazine) -- Mohamed Solaimane, 26. Mai 2026
In the shade of a building in the Gaza Strip's southern coastal plain of Al-Mawasi, hands quietly rise in approval. A legal adviser moves methodically through a list, collecting signatures from those gathered. The atmosphere is deliberate and formal. It looks like any other organizational election. Except this is not a trade union or a municipal council. It is a family.
Some 160 men, representing the Murtaja branch of the Al-Astal family -- one of the besieged enclave's largest and most prominent clans -- have just elected eight candidates to their general assembly by acclamation.
These internal elections, once informal and irregular, are now taking place across Gaza at a scale residents and analysts describe as unprecedented. Families that once relied on a single mukhtar -- a community leader who is nominated rather than elected -- are restructuring into tiered representative bodies, with general assemblies, elected family councils, and formal charters.
Every family, whether it numbers a few dozen or tens of thousands, wants a council to represent it, said Faten Harb, a feminist activist, community mediator, and mukhtara elected to the Deir Al-Balah municipal council. A family without a council risks having its rights overlooked, including its access to aid.
This acceleration is occurring against the backdrop of the collapse of Hamas' governing apparatus, the continued absence of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, and the growing dependence of major aid organizations on clan-supplied registries to determine who receives assistance. Following Israel's crackdown on UNRWA and the broader international aid apparatus, Gaza's family networks have started filling a void that formal institutions were forced to vacate.
Mohamed Mansour, spokesperson for the Egyptian Relief Committee -- one of Gaza's largest humanitarian bodies -- told +972 that his organization has relied on clan-supplied registries since it began operations two years ago. These lists are the most accurate and professional, particularly because each clan representative will not exclude any family from registration. Via 40 distribution points, the committee's aid has reached 450,000 families.
# THE MECHANICS OF SELF-ORGANIZATION
Sheikh Tariq Al-Astal, who chairs both the Al-Astal family council and the National Gathering of Palestinian Tribes, Clans, and Families, described the process his family undertook as a model. What was originally a clan of six branches was re-organized into 30 sub-branches, with each branch electing delegates at a ratio of one representative per 20 members. The general assembly elects the family council, which selects its chair, deputy, and sub-committees.
Taha Al-Qassas recalled how the killing of his clan's mukhtar by an Israeli airstrike two years ago left the family without formal representation. The absence of a representative body prevented our family members from benefiting from many things, including assistance that depended on lists submitted by clan representatives.
To address this, the family founded a council, drafted a charter, and put it to a vote before a general assembly of more than 510 registered members, all male and over 16. The assembly elected a 13-member council for a four-year term, renewable once. Even candidacy fees were formalized: NIS 3,000 (around $1,000) for mukhtar, NIS 200 for council seat.
Nourhan Al-Aqqad, coordinator of the Khan Younis Families Forum, said access to aid became a central driver behind the rush to form representative clan bodies. Institutions, including the UN and other international ones, adopted this approach and contacted clan delegates and community leaders to deliver aid.
The judicial vacuum across Gaza is as significant as the humanitarian one. With courts, police, and security apparatus nearly paralyzed and only partially resuming work since the ceasefire, family councils have become the primary mechanism for resolving disputes. Even Hamas' governing bodies are directing people toward mukhtars and clan councils.
The vacuum left by government bodies that became ineffective or absent placed the burden on clans to organize social life, security, and politics. Institutions found themselves with no one to deal with but the families.
# RESISTING CO-OPTATION
The importance of clan structures has not gone unnoticed by Israel. Netanyahu publicly admitted to having activated clans in Gaza that oppose Hamas. Throughout much of the war, the Israeli army and Shin Bet have been identifying and recruiting criminals and fugitives, promising them power, money, weapons, and access to food denied to ordinary Palestinians.
The most notable product was the Popular Forces militia led by Yasser Abu Shabab, who had a reported criminal background and alleged smuggling ties to ISIS-linked networks in Sinai. With open Israeli backing, he operated in Rafah until his assassination by his own militia members in December 2025.
Yet while Israel has succeeded with some individuals, it has been unable to recruit any of Gaza's clans as a whole. Israel failed completely and utterly in winning over the families, Harb said. In fact, families whose members refused to cooperate with Israel were bombed for it.
According to Euro-Med, Israel carried out a massacre against the Bakr family a day after its mukhtar refused an Israeli demand that his family stay in Al-Shati refugee camp on condition its members serve in a pro-Israel militia. Israeli missiles killed nine family members, including women and children.
Families whose members did join Israeli-backed militias typically responded by issuing formal public statements disowning those individuals, calling their participation an act of betrayal, and warning other family members to stay away from Israeli-controlled areas.
# GAZA'S FUTURE GOVERNANCE
All clan leaders interviewed insisted that clans are not and will never be a substitute for Palestinian political leadership. All clans announced their rejection of being an alternative to the Palestinian Authority or any Palestinian body governing Gaza when the Israeli occupation attempted that.
Still, Al-Aqqad believes the elections show a profound loss of public confidence in political factions, with people increasingly favoring family structures. The recent municipal elections in Deir Al-Balah saw clan mobilization as a significant factor in success, with candidate lists avoiding party affiliation and leaning on family networks for legitimacy.
Al-Qassas urges parties to integrate elected clan structures into whatever political framework emerges, rather than treat them as an obstacle. The elections should be encouraged as a healthy institutional response to a catastrophic institutional void.
There is a significant fault line: the total exclusion of women from voting and standing. According to Al-Qassas, this is true of every clan in Gaza, regardless of family size. The general assemblies, family councils, and mukhtar positions are, without exception, exclusively male domains.
As a mukhtara, Harb mediates social disputes like marital conflicts and women's rights cases in an informal structure alongside but separate from male-dominated family councils. Female mukhtaras outperformed male counterparts in mediation, but this has not translated into formal representation.
No governmental or political effort can succeed without the clans -- especially given current wartime conditions in Gaza, Al-Qassas said. But whether integration of clan structures into Gaza's future governance will be equitable -- for smaller families, for those outside established networks, and above all for women -- remains to be answered.
Mohamed Solaimane is a Gaza-based journalist who has reported extensively on Israel's genocidal war on Gaza.
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tags: [palestine]