Inside his heavily fortified compound, the head of Gaza's most notorious clan offers insight into his sprawling family that until recently was little known outside the unruly territory.
"We have all the factions in our ranks," Salah Doghmush says of his clan, which shot to international notoriety recently when a group founded by one of its own kidnapped BBC journalist Alan Johnston.
"Fatah, Hamas, Popular Resistance Committees, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Army of Islam," he says, listing some of the main Palestinian factions. "We have them all." "But to remain united, not talking politics has become law within the family," says the head of a clan with an estimated 3,500 members inside Gaza and 1,500 abroad. Boosted by their numbers, money and arms, the Doghmushes have become one of the most powerful of Gaza's clans over the past several years.
The clan compound lies in the Sabra district of Gaza City, with each entrance featuring a checkpoint guarded by heavily armed men. "No armed stranger can enter here," says Salah, dressed in the traditional white jalabiya robe.
"Those who don't know Doghmush criticise us. But those who know us say that we are the best family" in the Gaza Strip, he says smiling. One of the people to know the family is Kamel, the 70-year-old head of the Badawi clan linked to the Doghmushes by marriage.
"It's a family that instills fear because there are so many of them and they have a lot of money," says the wrinkled Badawi, reclining in his luxurious garden. "They have managed to establish a monopoly on the import of rubber into Gaza, and they also own a number of garages and work in construction," he says. The Doghmushes are also suspected to have earned a large part of their fortune in arms smuggling, and Palestinian security services say their pockets have been lined with ransoms paid to free foreigners kidnapped by clan members.
The most infamous kidnapping was that of BBC's Alan Johnston. The veteran newsman was held for nearly four months -- by far the longest a kidnapped Westerner was held in Gaza -- before being freed unharmed on July 4. The group that took responsibility for his abduction, the Army of Islam, was founded in 2005 by Mumtaz Doghmush, a high school dropout who has been associated at various times with Fatah, Hamas and the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC).
Army of Islam is the latest addition to the myriad factions represented among the Doghmushes, and uses language and symbolism usually associated with al Qaeda. Prior to the Johnston kidnapping, the Army of Islam was mainly known for participating, along with Hamas and the PRC, in the cross-border raid last June in which militants killed two Israeli soldiers and seized a third who remains in captivity.
Salah Doghmush has little to say them. "Whatever Mumtaz is up to has nothing to do with the family. It's not something we know about," he says brusquely. "I don't want to ask. It's none of my business."
Indeed, for several months now, Salah Doghmush has had other business on his mind, amid ongoing tensions with Gaza's new masters, the Islamist movement Hamas. The strains began in December, when two Doghmushes loyal to the secular Fatah movement -- Mahmud and Ashraf -- were killed by the Islamists during factional clashes in Gaza. The family has vowed to avenge the deaths.
"We know that there were 18 people who participated in the attack," Salah Doghmush says. "We have killed three. The others will have to pay. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." The tensions with Hamas further increased during the Johnston kidnapping. Hamas, eager to show to the outside world that it would introduce a measure of law and order to chaotic Gaza, surrounded the Doghmush compound to put pressure on Mumtaz to free the journalist.
"There is no more confidence between us and Hamas," says a senior Army of Islam official, declining to give his name. "We could never believe that Hamas could kill Mahmud and Ashraf, after all that Mumtaz had done for them. There will be no forgiveness," he warns.
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