Gaza at War with itself.

In the Mid October this year amidst the Sabra neighbourhood, masked gunmen forced seven men, blindfolded and bound, to their knees in a public square. As the crowds gathered, the shooting began.

The executions, captured on video, came just days after a ceasefire agreement was to bring peace to Gaza. But Hamas isn’t fighting Israel anymore. It is fighting Palestinians.

And with Israel, the U.S., and Gulf states all backing different factions, Gaza risks becoming a fragmented battlefield of competing militias. That has led to worries about Gaza collapsing into another war, but this time an internal one. “What we are witnessing today signals the onset of an internal Palestinian confrontation, a slide toward civil war”, said Mansour Abo Kareem, a Gaza-based political researcher, in an interview with the Media. “All the conditions for such a conflict are now present”.  

Since the truce was signed in early October, Hamas has killed dozens of people in clashes with rival armed groups. Family-based militias known as hamulas have seized control of neighborhoods, distributed aid on their terms, and openly challenged Hamas’s fighters weakened by two years of Israeli military operations.  

The violence erupted almost immediately after the peace deal took effect in early October. Clashes between Hamas forces and the Abu Wardah clan near Gaza City’s port left at least five dead. But the worst fighting came in battles with the Doghmush clan, where at least 27 people died, including eight Hamas operatives. “Children are screaming and dying, while they are burning our houses. We are trapped”, a Doghmush family member told the media reporters.

Videos showed masked Hamas’s gunmen shooting blindfolded prisoners in front of cheering crowds. The Arrow Unit, Hamas’s enforcement wing, posted the footage with a warning: “This is the fate of every traitor to the homeland and to our religion”. The executions signal deep worry within the group, Palestinian analyst Akram Attallah told the media reporters. As rival groups operate beyond their usual territories, they pose a rising threat to Hamas.

The street violence reflects deeper fractures inside the group itself. It is divided between its political leadership abroad including figures in Doha who negotiated the ceasefire, and hardliners inside Gaza who see disarmament as surrender. Some local commanders have reportedly rejected orders from the external leadership.

Meanwhile, Gaza’s clans have fractured into two opposing coalitions. One faction, organised under the pro-Hamas Higher Commission for Palestinian Tribes led by Husni al-Mughni, has defended the crackdown against what they call “Israeli-backed gangs”, looters and drug traffickers, the Palestine Chronicle reported. Clans like the al-Mujaida family quickly declared “full support” for Hamas and agreed to hand over weapons.

But a rival coalition of clans has resisted. The Doghmush clan issued a statement expressing shock at “a distressing internal campaign targeting our innocent sons, involving killing, intimidation, torture, and burning of homes with their residents inside, without any justification”.

The family said it lost some 600 members during the war and firmly rejected “all attempts by the occupation to win it over or recruit it”.

Israel has been cultivating anti-Hamas clans as proxies, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledging financing these clans. The most prominent is Yasser Abu Shabab’s Popular Forces, which now controls aid distribution at key crossings. “We maintain close ties with several Western countries, with the United States and even with Israel”, said Hossam al-Astal, commander of a rival militia in Khan Younis, in an interview with Ynet. “We want them to support residents who refuse Hamas’s rule”.

President Trump’s peace framework imagines Gaza overseen by an international authority and a technocratic government, with Hamas temporarily maintaining order while it disarms and the enclave transitions. But that ambiguity is being exploited from all sides. Ordinary Gazans are caught between them.

The fragility of the arrangement became clear when Israel halted aid and launched airstrikes on Oct. 19 after Hamas fighters killed two Israeli soldiers. Trump had warned that if the violence continues, “we will have no choice but to go in and kill them”.  

Even so, he has said Hamas actions against “very bad gangs” are acceptable and that the administration had authorised the group to act temporarily as Gaza’s police force.

For Palestinians who survived months of bombardment, the prospect of another war is devastating. Many now fear their own rulers, saying they don’t believe Hamas will disarm, even as they worry about its clan rivals and Gaza’s criminal gangs as much as renewed Israeli airstrikes.

“It’s been two years with a complete loss of law and order”, aid worker Hanya Aljamal told the reporters in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza. “We need someone to take over. As unqualified as Hamas is to rule the Strip, they are a better option than the gangs”.

Team Maverick