While the Palestinian Authority settles on another cabinet in Ramallah, Hamas delivers governance in Rafah. Graham Usher reports on the new Palestinian order Rafah's Philadelphi Road along the border with Egypt was once home to several thousand Palestinian refugees. Today it is a slough of bulldozed mud, crushed stone and fallen homes, keeled and abandoned like so many shipwrecks. Last month the Israeli army mounted three incursions to clear the road, pulling down apartments used by Palestinian guerrillas, unearthing tunnels that fed them arms, pushing out the people who lived there. Eighteen Palestinians were killed, including three children; 120 were wounded; nearly 200 homes were razed; nearly 2,000 Palestinians were made homeless; and three tunnels were found. For those displaced Israel's aim is not defensive or even punitive. It is rather a massive act of geo-political engineering, stirring both memory and omen. "In 1948 the Israelis transferred us to the West Bank and Gaza. Now they're transferring us to places within the West Bank and Gaza," says Hajar Abu Armana. She and her seven children are now squatting in a changing room in Rafah's football stadium, dripping with damp, shared with 30. Her house was on the border, she says. It is now a pile of pulverised concrete covered by a carpet. "I don't know where we will be moved," she says leaning on a fence hung with washing. "But I know we will be moved. We always are." She is currently moving between two organisations. One is UNRWA, the UN agency responsible for Palestinian refugees in places like Rafah. The other is Al-Salah Society, an Islamic charity whose funds were frozen in August by the Palestinian Authority for its alleged links with Hamas. The PA is nowhere. A few weeks back Housing Minister Abdel-Rahman Hamad tried to visit the devastated border area. He was forced to leave, confronted by refugees outraged by his government's failure to provide them the most minimal of services. "He sent us a message of love," shrugs Hajar. UNRWA's main challenge is to find rented accommodation in a town that already has 5,000 homeless from earlier Israeli assaults. Al-Salah's is to weather a relentless tide of requests for blankets, clothes and kitchen utensils. Workers from both organisations are aware they are trying to staunch a flood with sand, that the real crisis in Rafah is political rather than humanitarian. "Most of Rafah is housed near the border," says Mohamed Hassass, an Islamic charity worker. "The rest of the town is surrounded by Jewish settlements. So all of the edges of Rafah have been cleared of Palestinian homes. The only part that's left is the centre and there aren't enough homes there. Even if there were, we could not guarantee they would be safe homes." The issue is security and protection, not housing, he insists. He admits the PA's freeze on the funds has hindered Al-Salah's work. Employees go without pay and recipients cannot cash checks, sparking one cause for the fury vented on Hamad. Yet the charity continues, with 300 volunteers doling out supplies. Al-Salah's main Rafah warehouse is crammed to the rafters with bundles of bedding, jeans and cooking-gear. How do they pay for all this stuff if the funds are frozen? "We don't. The merchants give us credit. They know we can account for every penny we spend," says Hassass. He assumes the PA will eventually unfreeze the charity's funds, "if only because of public pressure". He is probably right. Aside from mounting emergency relief in places like Rafah, Al-Salah runs orphanages, medical centres and kindergartens. It also dispenses cash and food aid to those in need. Taken together, the institutions serve nearly 20,000 Palestinians; the aid sustains tens of thousands more, including the "poorest of the poor, like us", says Hajar. These are now essential social services in a society where one in two men are without a job and one in three families live in penury. They are not an adjunct to the PA; they have long been an alternative and are becoming its replacement. They are also its main political challenge, the motor that powers the Islamist creeping ascendancy in Gaza, far more than the armed resistance or suicide bomber. Quietly Hamas and its affiliated charities are erecting a new, parallel Islamist authority out of the debris of the old nationalist one. Ten years after Oslo -- and three years into the Intifada -- the contrast is stark and the lure clear, says Ahmed Abdullah, a Palestinian community worker. Why? "Because the Authority is rotten and Hamas is serious," he says.
