Hamas’s aim to retain authority in Gaza involves keeping the guns

With no law, order or any alternative administration under the ceasefire, the group is using violence to deter rivals

Throughout Israel's two-year war in Gaza, aid officials working in the territory avoided naming Hamas in conversations they suspected might be intercepted, instead referring to the militant Islamist group as the de facto authority".

This careful euphemism for Hamas, which violently seized power in 2007, captured an important truth. Though the group was a less obvious presence in the last months of the conflict, in the absence of any alternative, it remained the closest the increasingly devastated territory had to a ruler.