A ghastly little place: the fate of the Gaza Strip.

NAHED NIMER had just finished afternoon prayers at his home in Gaza City when he heard loud banging at the door. About twelve gunmen stormed their way in, aiming rifles at the terrified man and his family. "Come with us for ten minutes," the intruders demanded as they dragged the 58-year-old father of six away.

Two hours later, Nimer's family received a phone call from a friend telling them that their father had been admitted to a hospital. "We rushed to the emergency room, but my father was not there," recalls the oldest son, Muhammad. "We were told that he had been taken directly to the morgue. He had been brutally tortured before being shot 50 times in various parts of the body."

Nimer was a victim of the bloody power struggle that has been raging for more than a year in the Gaza Strip between the Islamic movement Hamas and its rival secular faction, Fatah. He was known as one of the political leaders of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. His murderers are believed to be members of the Fatah-controlled security forces loyal to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. The parties have been fighting each other ever since Hamas came to power in a free and fair parliamentary election in January 2006. Most of the fighting has taken place in the Gaza Strip, home to an estimated 1.4 million Palestinians, the majority of whom live in harsh conditions in scores of refugee camps.

In the Gaza Strip, unlike the West Bank, Hamas is extremely popular. That's why U.S.-backed attempts by Abbas and Fatah over the past year to undermine Hamas have so far been unsuccessful. As one of Abbas's top security advisers admitted recently, "President Abbas is in a difficult situation because Hamas is now in control."

In the last round of internecine fighting in Gaza, Abbas's security forces suffered one defeat after another. This is particularly interesting given that Abbas has more than 40,000 policemen and gunmen under his jurisdiction. Hamas, by contrast, is said to have no more than 12,000 soldiers. So how come Abbas hasn't been able to crush Hamas, especially when the U.S. and some Arab countries have given him large amounts of weapons and millions of dollars?

Abbas, like the vast majority of the Palestinians, is well aware of the fact that Hamas came to power as a result of a free and democratic vote. Undoubtedly, he and his followers would love to see Hamas removed from power. But the last thing they want is to be perceived as part of a U.S. and Israeli plot to get rid of a democratically elected government. Moreover, there is no guarantee that Fatah would win if elections were held tomorrow in the Palestinian territories. That's because it has yet to draw the appropriate conclusions from its defeat in 2006.

Fatah lost that vote mainly owing to rampant financial corruption, abuse of power, and mismanagement. Since then, its leaders have done almost nothing to implement reforms and get rid of the icons of corruption in their midst. The Fatah candidates who ran in the 2006 parliamentary election are still around, and many of them even belong to Abbas's inner circle. Instead of searching their souls and preparing to run in another free and democratic election, Abbas and his colleagues are obsessed with the dream of removing Hamas from power. They still haven't come to terms with the fact that they lost, and would be willing to do almost anything to regain what they believe should be theirs forever, if only they could get away with it.

Many Palestinians see the power struggle between Hamas and Fatah as a fight not between good guys and bad guys, but between bad guys and bad guys. The parties are not in dispute over democracy, reforms, and peace; they are killing each other for money and power. The Hamas-Fatah confrontation has resulted in a dramatic breakdown of law and order, especially in the Gaza Strip, where thousands of militiamen belonging to various factions and clans are now roaming the streets freely. Hardly a day passes without a Palestinian's falling victim to this state of anarchy and lawlessness. In the course of the fighting, which has claimed the lives of more than 160 Palestinians since the beginning of the year, children have been murdered in front of their parents, mothers and fathers have been shot execution-style in front of their children, wounded people have been disconnected from life-support machines in hospitals, bodies have been mutilated and dismembered, ambulances and medical teams have been assaulted, and schools, universities, mosques, churches, and medical centers have been blown up.

Israel's 2005 unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip has done much to aggravate the problem. By abandoning the border between Gaza and Egypt, the Israelis paved the way for the infiltration of al-Qaeda-affiliated groups. Today, there are at least three such groups operating in Gaza. In their attempts to impose a Taliban-style regime, they have bombed Internet cafes, restaurants, and schools that allegedly promote Western values. One of the groups, calling itself the Righteous Swords of Islam, threatened to behead female newscasters on Palestine TV who refuse to cover their faces.

"The Gaza Strip will soon become an international base for global jihad," said a senior Palestinian security official. "We are no longer in control and we don't know what to do. We don't have a strong leader who is capable of making tough decisions."

Most foreign journalists have stopped traveling to the Gaza Strip for fear of being kidnapped by one of the powerful gangs. In the past two years, more than 30 foreigners have been abducted for ransom. In most cases, the hostages were released in return for money and jobs in the Palestinian Authority.

By staying away from Gaza, the foreign media have left the coverage of events there in the hands of local Palestinian stringers and reporters, most of whom are affiliated with one of the factions. They have the power to decide what the world will see, hear, and read about what happens in the Gaza Strip. Needless to say, most of them are not keen on bringing Gaza's dirty laundry out into the open.

Following the Israeli "disengagement" from the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians had an opportunity to turn the area into the Middle East's Hong Kong or Singapore. Instead they have turned it into one of the world's most dangerous places, where even aid workers and human-rights activists are not safe. The former Jewish settlements of the Gaza Strip, which were supposed to be replaced with industrial zones and modern housing projects, have become training bases for armed gangs.

At a meeting with a group of businessmen last week, President Abbas admitted that anarchy in the Gaza Strip has blocked development, "and this is unfortunate." This was indeed a rare moment of truth for Abbas--the first time he did not blame his people's miseries on the "occupation." In fact, some Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are no longer afraid to say that they miss the "good old days" of Israeli occupation. In the words of a former Palestinian minister, "We were dreaming of Hong Kong and Singapore and instead we got Somalia and the Taliban."

Mr. Toameh is a Jerusalem-based journalist who specializes in Palestinian affairs.