Explainer
Colonel Mendes Dias explains that the Palestinian territory is dominated by multiple clans and militias with real power over the population, which makes total control by a single Palestinian authority unlikely.
Colonel Mendes Dias considers that the stabilization of the Gaza Strip depends on a deep understanding of its tribal and social structure. “Stability and peace in the territory can only be considered taking into account these sensitivities”, he states. The military analyst warns of the risk of civil war and recalls that “each group has weapons, territory and population under control”.
In addition to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, several militias and local groups operate in the Gaza Strip, with origins in clans and tribes. “In the case of the Gaza Strip, in addition to Hamas, we already knew that there were five or six movements of this type (…) These social groupings are simultaneously political groups. They have strength, they have capacity. And they have militias.”
For the colonel, this fragmentation creates an explosive scenario: “When it is said that we can move towards a logic of civil war, it means that there are checkpoints for armed groups in each territory(…) Each group dominates its space and the population that lives there.”
This is one of the themes under analysis in the Jornal do Dia explainer, this Monday with the .
