Palestinian officials must work fast to ensure that Gaza's anarchic birth is rapidly brought under control, says Stephen Farrell, Middle East Correspondent for The Times.

"From the very early hours of this morning, there was a flood of Palestinians from nearby towns coming into the settlements. They ransacked and looted every building, not just the synagogues.

"They stripped them of anything they can sell. It was clearly motivated partly by revenge for what they see as 38 years of oppressive military rule, but additionally for financial reasons.

"As they were stripping the metal, the roof tiles, the wood, even the iron rods that ran through the reinforced concrete they were telling you how many shekels they would get for their booty.

"The Palestinian Authority (PA) knew that this was going to happen and for the past 48 hours they have been preparing for it. I think they realised that there was no chance of keeping the people back, with the current state of their security forces and the determination of ordinary Palestinians to destroy the synagogues.

"They are saying that once they have been stripped of books and the religious artefacts removed, these are just buildings like any others on Gaza. No doubt the television and newspaper pictures of this will prove to be extremely damaging and they will want to get it over with as quickly as possible.

"They have been promising for months that they would be able to prevent this happening and they have failed to deliver on the promise. They are determined to get it all over with today.

"I was in the settlement of Morag earlier today where I watched people swarm in and retrieve everything. They were quite open about it, saying 'these people [the Jewish settlers] made our lives a misery'.

"The PA concluded that they were not going to be able to stop the tens of thousands of angry Palestinians from descending on the hated symbols of occupation and military rule so they didn't even try. Rightly or wrongly, their approach was to let it happen rather than provoke a confrontation.

"Hamas and Fatah and Islamic Jihad, the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) - just about everybody - has now slapped flags all over the place. There were convoys of vehicles everywhere and it was inevitable that the various militant factions were going to claim a military victory and make maximum political capital in the build-up to the elections in January."

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