Fears grow that Gaza could become ‘Mogadishu on the Mediterranean’

Gaza is facing deepening anarchy as the last remnants of civil order break down, leaving a vacuum increasingly filled by armed gangs, clans, powerful families and criminals, dozens of interviews with senior aid officials, experts and people in the territory reveal.

The interviewees described the continuing threat of famine and bombardment by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) but also a brutal new world in which guns, knives and intimidation often determine who gets desperately needed humanitarian assistance.

The five-month Israeli military offensive has removed Hamas from power in most of Gaza but the Islamist militant group has not been replaced by any other form of governance. Systematic targeting of Gaza’s police force, which Israel considers part of Hamas, and the release of hundreds of prisoners from jails by the group early in the conflict have exacerbated the chaos.

Osama Abdel Rahman Abu Daqqa, 52, a community leader in Rafah, the southernmost town in Gaza, said: “The war has changed everything but most of all there is now no security. There is nothing now for the weak. Only the strong can survive now.”

Several senior humanitarian officials used the phrase “Mogadishu on the Mediterranean” to describe a potential near future for Gaza, though most stressed it would be premature to compare the territory at present to Somalia or similar failed states.

Related: ‘Death at any moment’: fights break out as Gazans compete over airdropped aid

One senior aid official based in Gaza for many months said: “We have not yet seen a total breakdown of law and order. This is partly cultural, and there is a lot of solidarity, mutual support and sharing, but I’m not sure its very far away. Things are definitely getting worse. You hear a lot of gunfire now, particularly at night, and it seems to be families or gangs fighting each other, not the war.”

The Israeli offensive was launched after Hamas, which seized power in Gaza in 2007, sent armed militants into southern Israel on 7 October, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 250 hostages. More than 32,600 people, mostly women and children, have been killed during Israel’s subsequent offensive, according to authorities in Gaza.

After almost six months of war, about 80% of Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants are displaced and much of the territory is in ruins. International attention has focused on the limited amount of aid reaching the territory, which aid agencies say is largely due to the Israeli government’s refusal to open more access points, amid efforts to stave off a widespread famine.

Humanitarian officials point out that the breakdown of law and order threatens the most vulnerable and makes the delivery of aid to all much harder. Successive aid convoys have been described as being looted in recent weeks, some by organised armed gangs and others by desperate individuals. Senior US officials described how “lawlessness, which was always a problem in the background, has now moved to a very different level”.

One official said in March: “This is a product of, if you will, commercialisation of the assistance; criminal gangs are taking it, looting it, reselling it. They’ve monetised humanitarian assistance.”

Fights over aid have turned lethal, with reports of stabbings and shootings, in addition to the high casualties recorded in incidents involving firing by the IDF in recent weeks.

Nariman Salman, 42, who is now living in Rafah after being displaced from northern Gaza, said: “My husband and son managed to get a sack of flour from one of the trucks but on their way back were stopped by a man carrying a big knife and they had to return home empty-handed. We were eating rice and some beans and some grass. We had to beg for food from neighbours for my pregnant daughter.”

Shortly afterwards, Salman’s eldest son was stabbed to death during another attempt to get airdropped aid.

In interviewees, displaced men and woman in Gaza described problems ranging from fights between families over space in crowded makeshift encampments and shelters to recurrent petty theft. Others described what they called the widespread looting of abandoned or bombed homes and a surge in drug use after addicts looted abandoned pharmacies. Independent confirmation of the reports was difficult but many were supported by multiple sources.

Jalal Muhammad Harb Warsh Agha, 51, a livestock trader now in Rafah, said: “I was robbed several times of both valuable and really worthless things. I had six kilos of coffee, which I hoped to sell because the price of each kilo was 350 shekels. That got stolen. At another time my sons’s shoes were stolen from him during the Friday prayer. This phenomenon is new in our society and has never been so common.”

Others reported similar incidents. Moamen Abu Jarad, a 25-year-old student, described theft at a mosque last week. “I was performing ablution before Friday prayers in the mosque. My phone and some money were stolen from my jacket pocket that I left on the wall next to me,” he said.

Related: Famine is now probably present in Gaza, US says

A major contributing factor to the growing anarchy in Gaza has been the systematic targeting of local police by Israel, which says the force is part of Hamas. David Satterfield, the US envoy for Middle East humanitarian issues, said in February that police in the territory “certainly include Hamas elements” but also people who were politically unaffiliated or linked to other Palestinian factions.

Wesam Yousif Rajab, 45, a police officer now in Rafah, said he stopped going to work after Israeli strikes on police stations, cars and individuals.

“Now the people who control the situation are some gangs and people who have illegal weapons and other resources,” he said. “One of the major causes of this crime wave is that convicted criminals were freed at the beginning of the war by the local authority, which feared for their lives when bombs were hitting prisons.”

The lack of police is a challenge for aid agencies, with some turning to newly created “private security companies”.

Salem Abu Haloub, a manager of a refugee camp in Rafah, said: “When delivering aid to the area, now we rely on armed men from the general population to protect the convoy carrying aid.”

Western aid officials said attacks on trucks carrying food were increasingly organised, with “spotters” in the south of Gaza relaying information on convoys’ movements to leaders of groups preparing ambushes farther north.

The IDF’s use of private contractors to move foodstuffs and basic essentials outside the UN system has added to the chaos.

In the south of Gaza, Hamas-run ministries such as health and social development are still “just about functional”, and the group is trying to continue administration elsewhere too.

Aid officials said two convoys of food recently reached the north unscathed after a senior Hamas security official issued an order for their protection in the name of the “Palestinian security forces”.

Two days later, Faiq Mabhouh, the head of the operations directorate of Hamas’s internal security, who had been accused by Israel of organising terrorist attacks, was “eliminated”, the IDF said in a statement.

Analysts said Israel was close to achieving its principal war aim of dismantling the military and administrative capabilities of Hamas but had not yet formulated a viable plan for replacing the previous government in Gaza.

Many observers now increasingly believe there may be no “day after” but a chronic crisis instead, and so the question of stabilising the territory, even during the hostilities, is urgent.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, has rejected successive US proposals to bring in a “revitalised” Palestinian Authority, the organisation that was ousted from Gaza by Hamas in 2007, to run the territory. Israel recently barred the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (Unrwa), which fulfils many basic governmental functions, from the north of the territory.

Related: Al-Mawasi: Palestinians fleeing to ‘humanitarian zone’ find little hope

An Israeli plan to rely on local power brokers who are independent of Hamas and the authority has so far struggled to gain traction. The assassination of a clan leader in central Gaza by unknown attackers in mid-March was one significant setback. A pledge by dozens of senior community leaders in Gaza not to work with Israel without permission from Hamas or Fatah, the ruling party in the occupied West Bank, was another.

“If there is no Hamas, no Palestinian Authority … no Unrwa, and the Israelis don’t accept their responsibilities, then what is left?” said one senior western aid official who has been in Gaza since the start of the conflict. “If we are not facing total collapse of governance right now, it could happen soon.”

In many places, informal neighbourhood committees have been formed to fill the gap.

Abu Daqqa, who leads one such committee in Rafah, said: “We try to resolve conflicts in the place of the government, the police and the authorities so that society does not totally collapse.”

Some of these committees are entirely new, bringing together “community leaders, Islamists, different historic Palestinian political factions and all sorts”, while others draw on earlier associations dating back decades.

“They are the only people we can deal with if we want to avoid the aid being ripped off immediately but it isn’t a long-term solution,” one Rafah-based veteran humanitarian official said. “My fear is that something will come of this that is worse than what we have now. This is a very resilient society but after six months things are falling apart.”