There's a new sheriff in this town, and he wears a black hat and bushy beard.
On nearly every major street corner, men in camouflage pants, black T-shirts and matching caps, and beards of varying thickness stand in small groups cradling Kalashnikov assault rifles. There are 3,000 of them, placed by the Hamas-led Interior Ministry to impose order on the Gaza Strip's unruly streets.
"Our main purpose is to back up the Palestinian police in case they are unable to implement their orders," said Abu al-Amin, 44, clutching a two-way radio as he led a patrol of more than a dozen gunmen toward al-Saha Square. "We want stability. We want organized security for our citizens."
The new force's showy deployment this week was the latest sign of the Palestinian Authority's evolution into a government of rival armed camps, a result of the economic hardship and political rivalry sharpening in the Palestinian territories.
Staffed almost entirely by the armed wing of Hamas, or the Islamic Resistance Movement, the force did not deploy in the West Bank. It nevertheless is being viewed as a threat by the rest of the Palestinian security services, whose ranks are dominated by supporters of Fatah, the secular party that dominated Palestinian politics until this year. Hamas units and Fatah gunmen exchanged sporadic gunfire for hours before dawn Friday, wounding at least four people.
Even on the quiet Muslim Sabbath, the streets here were alive with talk of an imminent reckoning.
"We don't know what is right and wrong anymore," said a taxi driver who identified himself as Abu Ibrahim, 56, and was huddled with colleagues at a terminal on al-Saha Square. "Every day there is a new event, a new move by the authorities -- one day it's Hamas, the next Fatah. All we feel is confusion."
Gaza's 1.4 million residents have seen more gunmen and less order since last year, when Israel evacuated 8,500 Jewish settlers from the strip along with the soldiers who protected them. Claiming credit for Israel's withdrawal, Hamas won parliamentary elections four months later, ending Fatah's long monopoly on political power in the territories.
The Palestinian security forces now are at the heart of a political battle between Hamas officials and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president and Fatah leader, while their chain of command has been severely compromised by partisan loyalties. Abbas has called on Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas to disband the new security force.
As president, Abbas is commander in chief of the more than 70,000 members of the various Palestinian security services. But his control over them has come into question since Hamas began running the Palestinian ministries seven weeks ago.
Abbas named Rashid Abu Shabak, a Fatah loyalist, to head the Palestinian police, civil defense and powerful preventative security branch under Hamas's new interior minister, Saed Siyam. Although technically one of Siyam's deputies, Abu Shabak reports directly to Abbas. He also has close ties to Mohammed Dahlan, a Fatah member of parliament from the Gaza Strip who helped build the preventative security service more than a decade ago.
Rather than fire Abu Shabak, which could trigger violent reprisals, Siyam created the new force mostly from Hamas's armed wing, the Izzadeen al-Qassam Brigades. The brigades asserted responsibility for dozens of suicide bombings in Israel during the most recent Palestinian uprising, although they have largely abided by an informal cease-fire for more than a year.
The new force includes some members of the Popular Resistance Committees, a collection of gunmen from various factions partly responsible for firing rockets into southern Israel. The group's leader, Jamal Abu Samhadanah, was named head of the new security force, even though he has a long affiliation with Fatah.
Abbas, commonly known as Abu Mazen, has called on Hamas to integrate its armed wing into the Palestinian security forces as a step toward pursuing peace negotiations with Israel, which the radical Islamic group does not recognize. Hamas leaders have refused because doing so would undermine Hamas's founding policy of armed conflict with Israel, something it has benefited from politically over the years.
But the stance has also made it difficult for Hamas leaders to move against the young gunmen here who often claim to be acting in resistance to Israel even while engaging in common crime.
Robberies, attacks on government buildings and kidnappings by some of the large clans in the strip have been rising as the economic crisis here deepens. One driver idling at the taxi terminal said members of a Gaza clan kidnapped his son last month, and the police refused to do anything until he bought them 50 bullets for $3 each.
"We need the law to be imposed on the ground," said Abu Mohammed, 50, another driver waiting for work. "We have none now. And where were Abu Mazen's forces before?"
The government salaries many Gazans rely on as their primary income have not been paid in two months, while the U.S. threat of sanctions against banks that transfer money to the Palestinian Authority has made it nearly impossible for Hamas to collect money from the outside.
Early Friday, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zouhri was detained briefly at the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt attempting to smuggle 640,000 euros -- about $815,000 -- into the strip. Palestinian customs officials confiscated the money, and when Abu Zouhri refused to leave without it, security forces loyal to both Hamas and Abbas rushed to the scene. Abu Zouhri eventually departed, and Abbas called for an investigation.
Many here do not believe another security force, especially one so closely identified with one party, will resolve the mounting civil strife.
On some street corners, members of the new Hamas force stand alongside Palestinian police in blue camouflage, military police in red berets, preventative security troops in green camouflage and the Palestinian National Forces in green khaki uniforms. Mostly, though, they stand alone.
"What's going on now is like a volcano," Abu Ibrahim said as he watched three Hamas gunmen take positions on a traffic island of a downtown avenue. "They want Fatah to get into a civil war because their own political decisions are no good. Look at them. Police should be called and come to help, not deploy like an army."
Across the square, a dozen men in the green baseball caps of Hamas constructed a small stage on the back of a flatbed truck for an increasingly common event. Later in the day, Hamas leaders mounted the stage to ask supporters to give money, jewelry and whatever else of value they could spare to keep the government afloat.
"What will solve the crime problem is a better economy," said Asman Samdooni, 27, a Palestinian policeman. "Just pay us. Then things will change."
Amin, the commander of the small Hamas patrol, said the new force was made up of volunteers. As he and his men moved along the street, young men gathered near to offer their services.
"We support them -- the proud, the pure, the holy warriors," said Mohammed al-Saydi, 50, clutching two plastic grocery bags, as he watched Amin's group pass. 
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