Welcome to Hamas-run Gaza where old rules do not apply

Gaza City: The newly appointed Gaza City police captain was sitting at his desk, mopping sweat from his brow and explaining the new order of things in the Hamas-run territory, when a subordinate handed him the telephone.

Moataz Abu Khalid, the thinly bearded, previously soft-spoken captain, listened calmly and then erupted. "We are the police. The people don't threaten us. We make the threats around here," he shouted, a vein in his dripping brow bulging. He slammed the telephone against the wall and it splintered.

Welcome to the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, where the old rules no longer apply.

The phone call that had so infuriated Abu Khalid came from 20-year-old Yousuf Amara, whose cousin had been arrested a few days earlier after witnesses said he had stolen a welding machine.

"Release the prisoner," Amara told the captain, "or else I'll come down there with a gang of clansmen and take him by force."

During the past 18 months in Gaza, lawlessness and anarchy have mushroomed. The previous security forces, dominated by Fatah, were either unwilling or unable to restore order to the densely populated coastal strip.

Family clans filled the vacuum as aggrieved citizens turned to their tribes, instead of the government, to right wrongs and mete out justice.

The police rarely dared to challenge the increasingly powerful and well-armed clans. Uniformed police did not dare to enter some neighbourhoods as the balance of power seemed to tilt decisively in favour of family-run criminal gangs.

Two weeks after Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in a four-day putsch, the Islamists are desperate to deliver on their pledge of good governance.

Palestinians are watching, comparing the Hamas-run Gaza Strip with the Fatah-run West Bank, waiting to see which people prosper economically and which are plagued by criminals and gun-toting militants.

In the West Bank, President Mahmoud Abbas has secured Western aid pledges and Israeli promises to unfreeze Palestinian tax revenues. He has announced a crackdown on militants across the territory, but few think he has the power to follow through.

Boycotted by Israel, the West and even their Arab neighbours, Hamas has little hope of boosting the economic fortunes of Gaza's 1.5 million residents.