Israel Has Admitted to Funding Gangs in Gaza. Why Is Anyone Surprised?

On 5 June, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged that his administration had been working with “clans in Gaza”. What exactly does this mean? Well, two Israeli officials elaborated on this to the New York Times, telling the paper that Israel had been providing weapons to Yasser Abu Shabab, a militia leader in southern Gaza. Abu Shabab presents his group as an opposing force to Hamas, and says it is protecting aid trucks. Within Gaza, however, it is widely known that the gang does quite the opposite, looting trucks and intimidating locals (Abu Shabab told interviewers that he took only enough aid to feed himself and his family).

One cannot analyse the phenomenon of Abu Shabab without considering Israel’s stated goals in its current war: dismantle the capabilities of the Palestinian resistance, end Hamas’s rule, and recover the hostages. Achieving these goals necessarily involves thinking about the day after the war. Netanyahu has made clear that postwar Gaza would not be “Fatahistan” or “Hamastan”, as well assignalling his absolute rejection of returning the Palestinian Authority to govern the strip. Israel did not wage this war to unify Palestinian territories under one authority. On the contrary, for more than 18 years, political division within Palestine has been cultivated by Israel, which has always adopted a hardline stance against any form of Palestinian political rapprochement.

Partners in crime.

Netanyahu has repeatedly expressed that maintaining Palestinian political division serves Israel’s interests. During his terms, he even used Mossad to transfer funds from Qatar into Gaza to support Hamas’s rule and sustain the split between Hamas and other Palestinian political groups. This division served as Israel’s main excuse for avoiding peace commitments since the start of the second intifada in 2000, as Israeli society shifted sharply to the right.

From the outset, Israel’s approach during this war has been aimed at dismantling Palestinian social and political structures, turning Gazan society into fragmented groups fighting for survival. Consequently, Israeli strikes have focused heavily on government buildings, especially those of the Palestinian security forces, judicial buildings and the Palestinian civil police.

Israel’s actions have driven Gaza into a humanitarian crisis, using starvation weapons and siege, restricting aid entry to further its goal of breaking Palestinian society and destroying its internal social peace. By stripping Palestinian victims of their humanity, Israel forced Gazans into survivalist factions vying for aid distribution – leading, inevitably, to societal collapse.

Early in the war, Israel sought alternative bodies with which to interact in Gaza and the West Bank separate from Hamas in Gaza City or the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. In Gaza, Israel has turned to clans and community elders (mukhtars) to receive and distribute aid. But this has failed: families across Gaza have largely rejected Israel’s overtures, seeing them as a ploy to shape a postwar Gaza under Israeli-aligned local leadership.

Israel found a solution as looting of aid grew, especially after the occupation of Rafah in May 2024 and the closing of the Rafah border crossing. With Israel controlling all aid, goods and individuals entering Gaza through opaque mechanisms, aid theft spiked along the Kerem Shalom corridor. This made it necessary to hire private companies to secure shipments. As Israel targeted the Palestinian civil police, private groups emerged to secure aid and deliveries for hefty sums.

A troubled leader.

In the initial months after 7 October, Yasser Abu Shabab emerged as a non-Hamas intermediary for Israel, taking responsibility for securing aid and controlling its path from the border to storage sites. Many humanitarian and relief agencies began cooperating with his group to transport aid safely and protect it from looting.

Then things took a political turn: Abu Shabab and his group began defining themselves more nobly as a local anti-Hamas movement, claiming they aimed to “liberate the people” from Hamas rule. They announced the creation of the Public Service Force for Combating Terrorism, or simply Popular Forces.

From the start, Abu Shabab claimed he represented a legitimate Palestinian authority. But the PA’s security spokesperson denied any link between Abu Shabab and the PA – removing any legitimacy he might claim. His own tribe, the Tarabin, also publicly disowned him, removing the family protection he initially relied on.

All the information we have indicates that Abu Shabab and his group have roots in drug smuggling, and most – including Abu Shabab himself – were imprisoned by Hamas before the war. They operate in areas east of Rafah – border zones under Israeli oversight – and it later became clear they enjoy Israeli support. And now, Netanyahu has admitted to providing “support” to this group as part of Israel’s strategy to bolster anti-Hamas Palestinian entities, preparing Israel to openly confront Hamas, end its rule, and present itself as the saviour of Gazans.

Partners in crime.

This strategy is not new in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but an extension of Israel’s long-held divide-and-rule strategy. Early on, Israel funded and otherwise encouraged Palestinian local groups aligned with its colonial policies: in the late 1970s, it established and funded “village leagues” to counter the influence of the Palestine Liberation Organisation in Palestinian society, supporting mukhtars and families that cooperated. The experiment failed.

Also in the 1970s, Israel created Al-Dahiniya village, a Bedouin village protected by the Israeli administration and dismantled only in 2005. Another example is the South Lebanon Army, led by Antoine Lahad after the 1982 invasion, which cooperated with Israel to create a buffer between Lebanese and Palestinian resistance and Israeli forces – until Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000.

Israel’s long history of supporting and even creating Palestinian bodies it recognises – entities assisting in democratic representation, civil policing or intelligence cooperation – is the backdrop to Netanyahu’s latest admission about Abu Shabab. The aim is, and has always been, to weaken Palestinian civil society.

Specifically, Netanhu’s goals in supporting militias such as Abu Shabab’s are clear: to reduce Israeli military casualties by using local proxies to challenge Hamas; to drag the strip into prolonged intra-Gazan violence; to reshape Gaza’s political-security landscape; and to produce local leaders Israel can leverage later.

Israeli support for Abu Shabab’s group continues a century-old history of building locally-sanctioned Palestinian bodies under humanitarian or rights pretexts while serving immediate tactical ends. The difference now is the dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza that make resistance to Israel’s manipulation harder – unlike in previous periods, when Palestinians more actively opposed Israeli-engineered local bodies.

The day after the war.

Nor can this move be isolated from the regional conflict with Iran, fought through proxy wars. Since Israel views Hamas as an arm of Iran, creating local entities that break Hamas’s monopoly and gain community legitimacy through aid distribution also weakens Iran’s influence in Gaza. In Israel’s eyes, this is a local tactical-strategic method to pressure Iran and its proxies – building local influence while targeting the Iranian network regionally.

The Abu Shabab militia cannot be understood separately from Israel’s plan for the day after the war. Israel is rushing to establish new facts on the ground, turning food and medicine from humanitarian rescue tools into political levers to reshape Gaza to its own specifications. Israel seeks to exploit Palestinian internal failures and political fragmentation to advance its policies, presenting Abu Shabab’s militia as local heroes in an environment where humanitarian action has become politicised and exploited. Aid distribution through this group is not only a military tactic but a political investment cloaked as humanitarianism – a relief system based on loyalty and strength, rather than need.