If left unchecked, Abu Shabab’s Israel-backed militia promises nothing but disaster for Gaza

The large family of an Israeli agent in Gaza has thrown itself on the mercy of the Palestinian people after it emerged that one of their sons had betrayed them all in an unforgivable act of treachery. Rafah-born gangster Yasser Abu Shabab enjoyed relative anonymity as a drug dealer in Gaza until the Hamas security services were tipped off about his criminal activity. The zero-tolerance approach to drugs by the Islamic Resistance Movement inevitably led to his arrest on drug trafficking charges in 2015 followed by a 25-year sentence in a Khan Yunis prison, where he was subsequently forgotten about by all but his large family in Rafah.

When the cross-border incursion was launched on 7 October 2023, he was still behind bars, but has since somehow managed to escape. The details of his escape are shrouded in the fog of war, and the 32-year-old simply slipped back into the shadows.

It was during this period that he was targeted and recruited by Israel to become a fifth columnist in Gaza and given the resources needed to recruit a few hundred men to impose control over the area in Gaza where the Kerem Shalom Crossing is located. The crossing is used by trucks carrying goods from Israel and Egypt to the Gaza Strip.

Israel has supplied the small arms and vehicles — registered in the UAE, by the way — to make the clandestine venture viable. As a result, last week the unlikely criminal leader emerged as the head of a militia calling itself the “Anti-Terror Service” or the “Popular Forces”. His mission, it has now been revealed, was to work alongside the Israeli military to undermine Hamas while reducing Israeli casualties with the aim of igniting a civil war among the Palestinians. Such a “divide and rule” tactic is typical of colonial settlers and states.

READ: Israeli fire kills 71 more Gazans, including many trying to get food aid

As reported in Memo last week, it was Israel’s internal security service, Shin Bet, that recruited Abu Shabab. Furthermore, it seems that Israel’s leader Benjamin Netanyahu was more than happy to supply the money, power and weapons needed by the gang, although the use of UAE-registered vehicles has also cast the net of suspicion towards Abu Dhabi as the funder of the divisive militia.

The bizarre arrangement was working well until last week, when the furious chairman of the Yisrael Beiteinu Party, Avigdor Lieberman, accused Prime Minister Netanyahu of supplying weapons to armed militias in Gaza which have ties to Daesh/ISIS, the so-called “Islamic State” terrorists. To the amazement of the watching world, former Deputy Prime Minister Lieberman claimed on Israeli television that the government was “transferring weapons to a group of thugs and criminals who identify with ISIS.”

Netanyahu’s office did not deny the charge, saying only that, “Israel is taking various steps to defeat Hamas, based on the recommendations of all security agency heads.” Lieberman responded with a brief post on X, saying: “Don’t give them guns.”

Incredulous Israeli media have since reported that Abu Shabab’s Israel-backed militia is involved in smuggling and extortion and does not show any concern for the Palestinian cause. Under close supervision from Shin Bet, the militia was able to impose itself in Rafah amid the power vacuum left by a war-weakened Hamas. And, just like its Israeli masters, the gang developed a long-distance relationship with the truth by denying that it looted humanitarian aid along the Egypt-Gaza border. The group insisted on social media that it was merely protecting Palestinian civilians from “the terror of the Hamas government.” It also denied through the Israeli media that it was engaged in large-scale looting.

However, this week it has emerged that Yasser Abu Shabab has had an even tougher audience than Shin Bet to convince about his shadowy activities. Staging a serious family intervention, leading members of the Abu Shabab clan held an emergency meeting and summoned him to answer direct questions and respond to the allegations against him and his fellow mobsters.

During the emergency clan gathering in Rafah, he apparently protested that his “Popular Forces” were simply helping to protect aid shipments sent to distribution sites run by the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). However, his militia and the Israel occupation forces (the deceptively-named Israel “Defence” Forces) stand accused of shooting and killing numerous Palestinians desperately seeking food at a designated GHF aid distribution site.

READ: More than 680,000 Palestinians forced to flee again in Gaza: UN

His explanation, though, simply did not stack up, especially when Israeli officials publicly acknowledged sending weapons to the militia as part of a programme of arming and supporting anti-Hamas elements and other clans in the Gaza Strip.

Despite the compelling evidence against him, Yasser Abu Shabab kept denying any collaboration with Israel. Moreover, some of the prominent figures in the “Popular Forces” have been identified as former ISIS militants who attacked Egyptian tourists in Sinai in 2011. Of the 300 men in his control, 50 were personally recruited by Abu Shabab, while — and this is arguably much more controversial — the other 250 men were allegedly recruited through the Palestinian Authority’s intelligence services. Predictably, this has been denied vehemently by the Fatah-led PA which, like Shin Bet, is also heavily invested in seeing Hamas, regardless of the cost to Palestinian unity. If the claim about the PA is accurate, then it confirms what Professor Ilan Pappe has said, that the Palestinian Authority is “under the total control of Israel.”

In a heated meeting, members of the Abu Shabab clan demanded to know from Yasser how his militia came to be armed with assault rifles and equipped with radios and night-vision goggles. He claimed that it is being funded by “individual efforts and donations” and that they are armed with “primitive weapons” which were inherited from local tribes. Despite overwhelming evidence from eyewitnesses and media reports, he also described his group’s operations as a humanitarian project, saying that “hundreds of families” are evacuating to areas under the militia’s control daily to escape “war and famine”.

Abu Shabab tried to present his group as a “grassroots” Robin Hood-style outfit operating independently, and not under the control of Israel or the PA. However, his insistence that his gang had “Palestinian legitimacy” was viewed by family members as a reference to the PA. His efforts to prove his innocence were in vain, as his evidence was adjudged to be contradictory and false. They duly issued a damning statement banishing Yasser Abu Shabab for life from their clan.

“We also affirm that we will not accept the return of Yasser to the family unless he declares his complete and outright repentance to the Palestinian people, and surrenders himself to the elders of the family so that he will be held accountable to the family’s acquaintances and take what is necessary steps that return to the family its dignity instead of the scandal that it has suffered from behind his head and his deeds,” said the elders of the Abu Shabab clan.

They made a special appeal to their neighbours in Gaza to understand the exact situation in which the family was placed against their will, and to realise that what happened does not represent the Abu Shabab family, who were and still are “at the heart of the national stance and resistance.”

In any case, despite their horrendous suffering, the Palestinians in Gaza need to understand that Israel has, since the 1948 Nakba, sought to expand the territory under its control whenever possible — “Greater Israel” is the objective — and that a militia such as Yasser Abu Shabab’s gang controlled by the occupation state is never going to lead to anything positive for the Palestinian cause. Extreme far-right Jewish settlers have made it clear in public statements that they are ready to build illegal settlements across a Gaza Strip emptied of its Palestinian population. If this gangster is allowed to pit Palestinian against Palestinian in the midst of Israel’s brutal genocide, then such settlements may become a reality sooner rather than later.

A translation of the Abu Shabab clan’s full statement is as follows:

Family statement dated 30, May 2025

1. We were initially morally supporting our son called Yasser Abu Shabab, based on what he has been providing us with explanations of the importance of working to secure humanitarian aid to people in the face of war, away from any organizational or security framework.
2. Over time, our suspicions began to intensify, after we received confirmed information from some of the youths close to him that his involvement in suspicious security activities that cannot be kept quiet.
3. Therefore, we held an extensive meeting, we, the elders of the Abu Shabab family, decided unanimously that we strongly refuse to let the reputation of our national family be tarnished with suspicious acts that affect the honour of the family and its militant history.
4. The next day we summoned Yasser and confronted him responsibly, and asked him for a detailed explanation of the nature of his work. He has shown us some of the video clips through which he tried to acquit himself, claiming that what he is doing is confined only in the relief aspects, and he has shown us no other aspects, our Palestinian people.
5. But we were surprised as everyone else was surprised by the footage broadcasted by the resistance showing the involvement of Yasser groups in a dangerous security framework, the extent of working within undercover groups, and the support of the Zionist occupation forces, which are brutally killing the people of our people.
6. Therefore, we declare before God, and before our people, and before our valiant resistance:

• Our total rejection of so-called Yasser Abu Shabab, considering him out of the approach of the national and ethical family, and that neither he nor some of the young family who work with him have any connection with our authentic family, which has served and is still doing so in the way of [the cause of] Palestine.
• We will prosecute and hold him accountable by the best possible means, and we will not allow him to be a cause to discredit the family and its history, especially that he worked to change us during the recent period.
• We call on everyone who coordinated behind him or engaged in his security groups to discharge him immediately, and to separate from him publicly, before they face an irreparable fate, and we don’t mind those around him to filter him immediately and we tell you that his blood is wasted.

7. We also affirm that we will not accept the return of Yasser to the family unless he declares his complete and outright repentance to the Palestinian people, and surrenders himself to the elders of the family so that he will be held accountable to the family’s acquaintances and take what are the necessary steps that return to the family its dignity instead of the scandal that the family has suffered behind his head and his deeds.
8. We urge the Palestinian people to understand the exact situation in which the family was placed without their will, and to realise that what happened does not represent the Abu Shabab family, who were and still at the heart of the national stance and resistance.

May God have mercy on the martyrs, and may God protect the people from every trial and conspiracy.

OPINION: Israel has no right to exist – show me the law that says it does!

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.