A Sky News investigation has uncovered new details about Israel’s support for a Palestinian rebel group with extremist ties and a history of looting aid trucks.
As negotiators debate who will run Gaza after the war is over, Israel is already shaping a new reality on the ground.
In recent weeks, several tribal militias have declared allegiance to Yasser Abu Shabab, the head of a former looting gang which is positioning itself as Gaza’s future government.
Sky’s Data and Forensics Unit has been following Yasser Abu Shabab and his men for months, tracking their movements, vehicles, weapons and identities.
Our investigation has found that his militia is receiving food from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, despite the US-funded aid organisation’s declared impartiality.
And in exclusive interviews with Sky News, one of Yasser Abu Shabab’s senior commanders and an IDF soldier serving on the Gaza border detailed how Israel is allowing them to smuggle cash, guns and cars into Gaza.
Experts say that Israel’s support for such groups is intended to “divide and conquer” and to ensure that it maintains a level of control in Gaza, whatever its future.
Cash, cars and cigarettes
Deep within the rubble fields of southern Gaza lie 50 hectares of pastoral lanes and elaborate villas.
Unlike in other parts of Gaza, residents here have ample supplies of food.
Medical facilities, a school, and even a mosque have been set up in recent months.
On social media, residents show off stacks of cash, brand new smartphones and imported dirt bikes.
This small neighborhood is the headquarters of the Popular Forces, Yasser Abu Shabab’s former looting gang which now, with Israel’s backing, hopes to wrest control of the Gaza Strip from Hamas.
Speaking exclusively to Sky News, a senior commander in the Popular Forces says that around 1,500 people are now living in the base, including 500-700 fighters.
Hassan Abu Shabab, a relative and childhood friend of Yasser’s, says that the recruitment of new militias in recent weeks has swelled the group’s forces across Gaza to around 3,000.
The base’s location is strategically important – it sits along the route by which aid trucks must travel when entering Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing, a route that aid officials have named “Looters’ Alley”.
An internal UN report, dated November 2024, identified Yasser Abu Shabab and his gang as “the most influential stakeholders behind the systematic and massive looting of convoys”.
The video below shows members of the group unloading World Food Programme flour sacks from a truck at their camp.
The UN document identified their primary source of income as smuggling cigarettes – one of the many goods which Israel has officially banned from entering Gaza. The price of individual cigarettes has at some points reached $20.
In the videos below, one active member of the Popular Forces shows off stacks of cash and cartons of cigarettes.
A senior aid worker, who was working in Gaza until early this year, says he personally witnessed his staff negotiating the safe passage of trucks with Yasser Abu Shabab.
“Abu Shabab was empowered by cigarette smuggling,” he says. “In that kind of curtailed environment, you’re going to get Abu Shababs.”
Hassan Abu Shabab admits that the group was involved in looting trucks and smuggling cigarettes, though he says they only ever targeted commercial trucks they believed to be supplying Hamas.
“Hamas accused us of stealing the shipments, while in reality, we were bringing them for our families and distributing them,” he says.
“Yes, there were some breaches, with a few people who sold things off – fine. But things escalated. Hamas’s men came in and they killed my cousins. […] Fifty-four people were lost in that massacre.”
Sky News could not independently verify this claim, but there have been numerous reports of deadly clashes between Abu Shabab’s men and Hamas, which has declared him a wanted man.
It was after these clashes began, Hassan says, that Israel began coordinating with Yasser Abu Shabab to smuggle in cash, food, guns and vehicles for use in his battles against Hamas.
He says that these supplies are donated by members of the bedouin Tarabin tribe, to which Yasser Abu Shabab and his lieutenants belong, in Israel, Egypt and Jordan.
In order for these supplies to enter Gaza, Hassan says, requests must be made to a “coordination office” run by the Palestinian Authority, which then liaises with Israel and various Arab states to ensure the supplies’ entry into Gaza.
“This office is basically a communications room […] with Egyptian security, with Israeli national security, with Jordanian national security,” Hassan says, adding that this mechanism was created specifically for use by the Popular Forces.
“It provides us with weapons and money and with everything our people and forces need.”
The governments of Palestine, Egypt and Jordan did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Yasser Abu Shabab and the Popular Forces also did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication.
‘A complete breach of humanitarian principles’
Food, Hassan says, is provided free of charge by a number of “donors”, including the controversial US-backed aid group Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), and is delivered to their camp by merchants.
He says the Popular Forces then keep some food for themselves, and distribute the rest within Rafah.
UNRWA’s Gaza director Sam Rose says that giving aid directly to an armed faction is a “complete breach of humanitarian principles”, which dictate that aid should be provided based on need and should not favour any side in a conflict.
Sky News found video evidence of numerous pallets of GHF food at Yasser Abu Shabab’s camp, including some with their wrapping intact.
In one video, a GHF pallet can be seen next to a forklift truck and a lorry.
Presented with our findings, a spokesperson for the GHF said that “every Gazan deserves to be fed with dignity – including those in areas controlled by the Popular Forces” and that “this is what true neutrality means”.
The Norwegian Refugee Council told Sky News that, under the Geneva Conventions, relief “must be humanitarian and impartial”.
“Once channelled through an armed group, aid no longer meets that definition,” the aid group said.
“It becomes indistinguishable from support to one side in the fighting and may expose agencies to accusations of complicity or liability under counter-terrorism and sanctions frameworks.”
The Desert Reconnaissance Battalion
A serving IDF soldier, speaking to Sky News from his base near Kerem Shalom, confirmed that Israel facilitates the supply of food, weapons and cash to the Popular Forces.
“The cooperation [with Yasser Abu Shabab] mainly goes through [Israel’s security service] Shin Bet, or some official state mechanism,” says Sami*.
“We just bring in the food, make sure it arrives in Gaza.”
The camp is “just a few minutes’ drive” from Kerem Shalom, Sami says.
“It reaches him directly there [at the Popular Forces’ camp], and then he divides up the food to Khan Younis and to Rafah and other places,” he adds.
Sky News contacted Sami after observing numerous interactions on TikTok between Popular Forces members and his unit, the Desert Reconnaissance Battalion.
Better known as Unit 585, this battalion is usually stationed at the Kerem Shalom border crossing – the same crossing through which Yasser Abu Shabab’s supplies are smuggled.
“Greetings to Abu Shabab from 585,” read one comment left by a soldier, alongside a hearts emoji.
Like the majority of soldiers in Unit 585, Sami is a Muslim bedouin. His family have served in the IDF for generations, and he says he is proud to serve Israel.
He is equally proud of the support that Israel is providing to Yasser Abu Shabab and his followers, who are also largely bedouins.
“Israel helps him, it gives him grenades, it gives him money, it gives him vehicles, it gives him food, it gives him all types of things,” he says.
The IDF declined to comment on Sky’s findings. Shin Bet did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Sky News has been tracking the vehicles obtained by Yasser Abu Shabab over recent months, which include multiple high-end SUVs and motorbikes.
One TikTok account, which maintains close ties to both Popular Forces members and soldiers in Unit 585, has repeatedly posted footage of vehicles with Israeli license plates that later end up at the Popular Forces’ camp in Gaza.
The video below, uploaded on 31 July, shows a 2025 Toyota Land Cruiser driving along an Israeli road and sporting an Israeli license plate. Information linked to the license plate confirms that the car was last tested on 27 July, and was sold that same month.
By 5 August, the car had made its way to Gaza – appearing in a posed photograph with Yasser Abu Shabab and nine other Popular Forces fighters. Its license plate had been removed.
Hassan Abu Shabab, the Popular Forces commander, confirmed that the two cars are the same. He told us that this TikTok account belongs to an Israeli bedouin car dealer who smuggles vehicles into the Gaza Strip for the group and other buyers.
“I notify the coordination office, and they arrange the coordination and send the car to us,” he explains. “When it reaches Kerem Shalom, the plate can be taken off.”
Not all foreign license plates are removed upon vehicles’ arrival in Gaza, however.
On at least two occasions, senior commander Ghassan Al Duhine has been photographed at the camp next to a white Isuzu with a UAE-registered license plate.
Ghassan is the commander of the Popular Forces’ military wing, the Counter Terrorism Service (CTS).
The CTS logo is almost identical to that used by a UAE-backed Yemeni group of the same name, founded in early 2024.
Logos for militias called Counter Terrorism Service in Gaza (left) and Yemen (right) (Sky News)
We asked the UAE whether it had any involvement in supplying Yasser Abu Shabab and his group, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
‘Divide and conquer’
Amjad Iraqi, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, says that Israel’s use of the Popular Forces against Hamas mirrors the way in which it previously supported Hamas against its secular rival Fatah.
“The idea is that the more you can remove the hegemony of any particular [faction], the more difficult you make it for society to resist the occupation,” he says.
Neve Gordon, Professor of International Law at Queen Mary’s, describes it as a strategy to “divide and conquer”.
“The idea […] is to try and turn Gaza into a land controlled by warlords in different parts, so there is no unity among the Palestinians,” he says.
“We can see what happens to countries that are divided by warlords, and the kind of internal struggles that emerge and often last years or decades,” Prof Gordon says.
It’s not exactly clear when Yasser Abu Shabab turned against Hamas. Sky News obtained evidence that he had attempted to join the organization’s feared security services in 2010.
One of his senior commanders, Issam Nabahin, has a longer history of militancy.
In 2015, Hamas identified him as an Islamic State militant and a suspect in the bombing of their vehicles. The following year, Egyptian intelligence also identified him as an Islamic State fighter.
“After he broke from terrorism, he joined the Popular Forces,” says Hassan. “We only came to know him when the Popular Forces were formed.”
On 9 June, local media reported that Issam had been arrested by Hamas. Two days later, however, a Hamas-linked outlet reported that his detention cell had been bombed by an Israeli drone. Issam’s fate, the outlet reported, remained unclear.
“Here I am, alive and well and heading south,” he announced defiantly, in a video posted to Facebook on 18 June.
Two months later, he began posting again – this time from the Popular Forces’ camp in east Rafah.
