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| | The Walrus Magazine >> Field Notes >> The Sopranos of Gaza City |
 | | And the Daghmash family—among Gaza City’s largest, claiming about 12,000 members, a quarter of them armed—supplies militants to every army: Hamas, Fatah, and a host of smaller groups, including the notorious Popular Resistance Committee. |
 | | They are notorious throughout the Gaza Strip for gun-running, smuggling, and, when provoked, pursuing blood feuds with medieval vengeance. |
 | | They are widely suspected to have spent much of last year abducting foreign journalists—a common ploy lesser-known groups use to extort favours from those with a profile in the West—as part of an argument with Fatah and Hamas over the allocation of security-service jobs. |
| www.walrusmagazine.com /articles/2007.05-field-notes-the-sopranos-of-gaza-city (1225 words) |
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