By empowering criminal gangs and weaponizing aid provision, Netanyahu seeks to fracture the Strip into rival fiefdoms, allowing only chaos to reign.
Since late 2024, Gaza has undergone a transformation that defies traditional frameworks of war or occupation. What is unfolding is not mere military conquest but engineered disintegration — one in which Israel actively cultivates Gaza’s collapse by empowering criminal militias, fragmenting authority, and dismantling every pillar of Palestinian social infrastructure.
At the center of this unraveling stands Yasser Abu Shabab, a 32-year-old Rafah native of Bedouin descent. Once imprisoned by Hamas on charges of narcotics trafficking, Abu Shabab now leads the “Popular Forces” (al-Quwat al-Shaabiya), a militia operating with open Israeli backing in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Publicly, he postures as a provider of order and protector of humanitarian aid; in reality, he is the linchpin of a proxy war to replace governance with warlordism and clan-based coercion.
Abu Shabab’s rise is no accident. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has admitted to “activating powerful clans in Gaza” to counter Hamas, as corroborated by former right-wing Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, as well as media investigations showing his militia operating in Israeli-controlled zones, armed with AK-47s seized from Hamas and redistributed with the approval of Israel’s security cabinet.
On the ground, GHF’s aid distribution sites have resembled concentration camps: gaunt civilians penned behind barricades in the baking sun, watched by armed contractors in American tactical gear. At the center of it all stood Abu Shabab, clad in fresh fatigues and flanked by propaganda banners proclaiming his new “anti-terror force.” His social media channels, now in Arabic and English, proclaim the group a “voice of truth against terrorism for a safe homeland.”
The lesson of Abu Shabab’s role in the GHF is clear: Israel’s goal is not to govern Gaza, or even to eliminate Hamas, but simply to ensure no one else takes over. By fracturing the territory into rival fiefdoms controlled by power-hungry clans and criminal gangs, Israel dismantles the possibility of a unified political resistance to its genocide. And just as importantly, the result of Gaza’s social disintegration would be to further inhibit any possibility of a Palestinian future in the enclave — and to drive more Gazans to leave.
‘We’re handing weapons to criminals and felons’
Israel’s attempts to leverage local collaborators are not new. For over a century, Zionist and later Israeli authorities have cultivated alliances with peripheral groups, from Druze communities and Bedouin tribes to the West Bank’s “Village Leagues” in the 1980s. From the outset, the target was paralysis, rather than long-term stability, and that remains the case today: a fragmented, warlord-controlled Gaza cannot resist, rebuild, or demand justice.
Now, the brutality of this strategy in Gaza is compounded by siege and famine. “In November 2024, the average daily food intake for Gazans had already dropped to between 187 and 454 grams per person,” a humanitarian worker with the IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation, a Turkish aid organization, told +972. “That was already catastrophic. Now, the crisis is even worse: Bakeries are closing due to a lack of flour, which now sells for 1,500 shekels [$425] for a 25-kilogram [55 lbs] sack.”
Israeli authorities claim they allow “a basic amount of food” to prevent starvation. The IHH worker rejected this outright: “This is not about preventing starvation,” he said. “It’s about keeping people just alive enough [without being able] to resist.”
Gazans’ suffering, he continued, is being compounded by deliberate attacks on humanitarian infrastructure. Since October 2023, over 1,513 aid workers have been killed by Israel, according to a statement by Gaza’s Government Media Office issued in April 2025. On May 25, a joint IHH-World Food Programme distribution site was bombed, and five staff were killed. “We had shared the location in advance with the proper channels,” he said. “It made no difference.”
Aerial bombardment isn’t the only tool used by Israel to exacerbate Gaza’s humanitarian catastrophe. Extortion is now an integral part of the system. “We have aid trucks waiting at the border that Israel has technically approved for entry. But when we try to move them, they’re being blocked,” the IHH worker explained. “Smugglers from Abu Shabab’s gang demand NIS 45,000 [$12,000] per truck to let them pass.”
A source in the “Arrow Unit,” a security force operating under Hamas’ Ministry of Interior in Gaza tasked with protecting humanitarian convoys, also claimed that “aid theft happens under Israeli protection,” and is not the work of rogue criminals. “We’ve seen gangs operate openly in Israeli-patrolled areas, intercepting aid to sell at astronomical black-market prices,” he said.
The officer, who identified himself as K.H., added that “Northern Gaza hasn’t received aid since March 18. And even the supplies reaching the south are insufficient to meet the needs of the population.”
The Arrow Unit, formed in March 2024 to coordinate with local humanitarian organizations and respected families to ensure safe aid delivery, has alleged that they face attacks by Israeli forces when attempting to intervene in gang-led looting operations. More generally, according to the Government Media Office in Gaza, 754 Palestinian police officers and aid security personnel have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war.
Despite repeated Israeli claims of Hamas diverting or stealing aid, no credible evidence has been presented to humanitarian aid agencies or donor states. However, some Hamas critics in Gaza have voiced concerns that certain elements within Hamas may be benefiting from or interfering with aid distribution. These claims remain anecdotal and have not been independently verified.
Meanwhile, UN agencies and investigations by The Washington Post and Haaretz have documented theft by criminal gangs under Israeli watch. Indeed, reports in Israeli media based on internal army documents detail 110 cases of aid looting — none of which were carried out by Hamas, but rather by “armed gangs and organized clans.” These are the very groups shown to be operating under the protection of the Israeli military in so-called “kill zones,” areas where even unarmed Palestinian civilians are shot on sight.
In order to fully understand the chaos that has taken hold in Gaza over the last few weeks, including the repeated massacres of Palestinian civilians at GHF aid sites, it’s important to see the widespread looting of humanitarian aid for what it is: an outcome of deliberate Israeli policy. “We are handing weapons to criminals and felons,” as MK Lieberman recently put it.
A state-sanctioned proxy war
Even more disturbingly, a network has emerged linking the United Arab Emirates, Israeli intelligence, and some of Gaza’s most notorious gang leaders, including Abu Shabab and his close associates Ghassan al-Duhine, Bakr al-Wakeely, and Essam Soliman Nabahin — a former ISIS affiliate who resurfaced in Rafah under Israeli protection.
Nabahin was implicated in a 2015 Hamas investigation into bombings targeting Qassam Brigades commanders before fleeing to Sinai, where he joined ISIS-affiliated militants in attacks against Egyptian forces and civilians. His name resurfaced in a 2017 report on Palestinian ISIS recruits in North Sinai. Though many collaborators were killed in joint Hamas-Egyptian operations, Nabahin evaded capture, only to reappear in Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp in mid-2023, where he killed a police officer during an arrest attempt. Sentenced to death, he escaped during Israel’s post-October 7 assault and reemerged in Rafah as an armed operative in Abu Shabab’s militia, openly coordinating with Israeli forces.
The UAE’s role grows clearer through Ghassan al-Duhine, Abu Shabab’s deputy, seen in a video posing with a looted Isuzu pickup truck bearing Sharjah license plates. The use of these UAE-registered vehicles in aid looting raises urgent questions about Emirati complicity in weaponizing humanitarian access in Gaza.
In 2019, Hamas reportedly arrested an alleged collaborator with Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency who confessed to being ordered by Israel to infiltrate Sinai jihadist groups. If true, these reports now carry renewed significance: these actors are not rogue criminals but components of a state-sanctioned proxy war, where Israel repurposes ISIS affiliates, murderers, and drug traffickers to dismantle Palestinian society.
Despite the backlash, Israeli protection for Abu Shabab’s ISIS-linked militia remains unwavering. After the scandal was exposed, Netanyahu doubled down, defending the policy by asking, “What’s wrong with that? It only saves the lives of IDF soldiers.” But Abu Shabab’s manufactured legitimacy has begun to unravel, even within his own community. His Bedouin clan in Rafah released a rare public statement denouncing him, with some relatives even calling for his death. Gaza’s de facto authorities have branded his forces as traitors, and fighting has escalated. Since January 2025, at least 50 of his fighters have died in inter-factional clashes — often over looted aid shipments.
Caught in the crossfire
A recent case has further exposed the breakdown of social disintegration in Gaza. On June 11, the GHF reported that a bus transporting its local staff was ambushed, killing at least five aid workers and leaving others wounded or potentially taken hostage. The Foundation attributed the attack to Hamas, which in turn denied its involvement and accused the victims of being part of an Israeli-backed militia.
That same day, Abu Shabab’s militia reportedly killed six Arrow Unit officers, while Israeli forces killed at least 60 Palestinians across Gaza, according to local health authorities — nearly two-thirds of them reportedly while they were attempting to reach GHF food distribution points. The scale and timing of the violence highlighted the increasingly lethal conditions under which civilians must navigate basic survival.
These incidents, like other deadly shootings at food distribution points, reflect a disturbing pattern: the accelerating erosion of law and order, where humanitarian efforts are increasingly entangled in violence. Tragically, many of these confrontations now pit Palestinians against one another — neighbors, relatives, and former allies divided by fear, scarcity, and political manipulation. Aid corridors have become battlegrounds, not only symbolizing the collapse of humanitarian systems, but also the deeper disintegration of Gaza’s social fabric.
With both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority substantially weakened, and civil society in ruins, Palestinian self-governance seems more distant than ever. As Gaza is being reshaped into a failed state, its people are being forced to confront this perilous moment, starving, shattered, and utterly alone. In this vacuum of solidarity and aid, they are left to face annihilation with nothing but their will to survive.
Mahmoud Mushtaha is a journalist and human rights activist from Gaza.
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