Israel's support for clans in Gaza puts tribal strongman in spotlight

Washington Post

10 hours ago

JERUSALEM — Yasser Abu Shabab is all over Israeli news and Palestinian social media.
He describes himself as a humanitarian and a liberator. International aid workers allege he was behind the systematic looting of aid entering the Gaza Strip last fall. Israeli media is pitching him as an alternative to Hamas.
In the past few months, Abu Shabab has come to represent an Israeli initiative to empower Palestinian clans, weaken Hamas and, critics of the effort say, divide Palestinian society.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the beginning of June that Israel was arming members of clans — large, influential extended families — in Gaza as counterweights to Hamas. 'Based on advice from security officials, we supported clans in Gaza that oppose Hamas,' Netanyahu said in a video posted to his X account. 'What's wrong with that? It's a good thing. It saves the lives of [Israel Defense Forces] soldiers.' Netanyahu didn't name Abu Shabab or his militia.
In an interview last month with The Washington Post, Abu Shabab denied he is backed by or obtained weapons from Israel.
'These are merely allegations spread by Hamas on social media and its terrorist TV channels to make people fear us,' he said. 'They want people to believe that we are carrying out an external agenda. On the contrary, we are the owners of the land; we are the owners of these areas. We are the Palestinian presence.'
But the base that the militia leader said he has set up is in a part of southeastern Gaza under the control of the Israel Defense Forces. And in recent months, Israeli forces have refrained from interfering when Abu Shabab and his men, armed with AK-47s, patrolled a central artery in the area and stopped U.N. and Red Cross vehicles at makeshift checkpoints, according to several aid workers in Gaza.
Abu Shabab's group is one of several that are now openly brandishing arms and challenging Hamas, in the security vacuum left by Israel's targeting of Hamas police and other institutions in Gaza, according to analysts, aid workers and interviews with members of the armed groups.
The IDF and the Israeli prime minister's office did not respond to requests for comment.
Analysts and historians say that backing for the clans is a page out of an old playbook for Israel, which has at several points in its history provided weapons, money and other support to local groups to divide Palestinians and undermine their national aspirations.
'It's the oldest colonial strategy in the book,' which Israel learned from the British, said Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said professor emeritus of modern Arab studies at Columbia University. He said the latest initiative has succeeded in 'sowing utter chaos,' which could complicate efforts to position the Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza. He said Israel wants 'a state of chaos, because if the Palestinians are unified, then they might have to actually negotiate or deal with them.'
Netanyahu began to publicly float the idea of bolstering Palestinian clans to replace Hamas rule last year, saying the IDF had brought him this proposal and he had agreed.
Israel's support for Abu Shabab and other Hamas rivals in Gaza echoes an effort to establish 'Village Leagues' in the West Bank to counter the Palestine Liberation Organization in the 1970s and early '80s, analysts said. Israel gave money, administrative privileges and the right to carry weapons to selected representatives of clans in villages throughout the West Bank in a bid to establish fiefdoms under overall Israeli control and undermine the prospect of a Palestinian state.
That effort failed, and so far the proposal to empower Gaza's clans has gained little traction with the Palestinian population.
Abu Shabab, 35, hails from a large Bedouin tribe called the Tarabin, which extends across southern Gaza, Israel's Negev desert and Egypt's northern Sinai region.
Israeli and Palestinian analysts say Abu Shabab was involved in drugs and weapons smuggling before the war and that he and some of his associates did business with the Islamic State branch in Sinai. After the interview with The Post, Abu Shabab was sent follow-up requests for comment on these allegations but did not respond.
Abu Shabab also became known inside Gaza in fall 2024 for allegedly being the ringleader of a criminal gang behind the looting of aid trucks, The Post reported in November. At the time, he said he was driven by desperation to 'take from the trucks,' though he denied that his men attacked drivers.
Almost as soon as Abu Shabab appeared on the scene, he was in Hamas's crosshairs. In the late fall, members of a new Hamas-linked force called the 'Piercing Arrow' unit began to target his relatives and associates, according to aid workers, medical personnel and the unit's own Telegram account. The unit killed Abu Shabab's brother in December, said an employee at the morgue of the European Hospital in Gaza, where his body was taken.
Then, when a two-month ceasefire took effect in January and Hamas security forces could operate without fear of Israeli attack, they kneecapped nearly two dozen members of Abu Shabab's group in a wave of retribution, according to videos of the punishments posted to social media and a witness.
Abu Shabab and his men largely disappeared until late May, by which point Israel had resumed the war. His group rebranded under the name 'Popular Forces,' and members began to paint themselves as liberators who could free Gazans from Hamas's Islamist rule.
Abu Shabab's group has now positioned itself as the de facto authority in southeastern Gaza. The group set up checkpoints to screen convoys of international aid workers entering Gaza — according to a video taken by Abu Shabab's group, shared with The Post and confirmed by officials with the United Nations and International Committee of the Red Cross — and claimed to be providing security to aid trucks. U.N. agencies and other international organizations say they do not cooperate with the group.
'He has a full-glide militia up and running, fully backed by Israel,' a U.N. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.
In early June, Abu Shabab declared he had set up a protected zone in the eastern section of Rafah city to which civilians displaced by the Israeli offensive could return. He soon launched a recruitment drive to staff 'administrative and community committees,' including doctors and nurses, engineers, primary schoolteachers and public relations experts.
Abu Shabab told The Post last month that more than 2,000 civilians live on his turf, which he said spans a little more than two miles along the border with Egypt. He said that while his militia includes just 100 members, it has built schools, health centers and other civilian infrastructure there.
'We are seeking support from the U.S., the European Union and Arab states,' he told The Post. 'We hope they support our vision and empower us to make all people in the Gaza Strip live like we do, taking control of our own areas in dignity and humanity.'
Influential families have long played a role in Palestinian society. In Gaza, the landscape is a mix of extended-family networks, known as hamulas, and Bedouin tribes. When Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, the group quickly co-opted and subdued these clans, according to Azmi Keshawi, Gaza researcher for the International Crisis Group.
Since the start of the Gaza war, launched in response to the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel has targeted Hamas police and internal security forces, which used to keep other armed actors in Gaza in check. The breakdown of law and order has been accompanied by Israel's repeated displacement of civilians, limits on desperately needed humanitarian aid and attacks on government institutions, analysts say. 'The result is basically a societal collapse,' said Muhammad Shehada, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
In addition to Abu Shabab's militia, other clans in Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah have also emerged in this vacuum, openly carrying guns and threatening, or directly clashing with, Hamas-affiliated forces, according to analysts, aid workers and interviews with members of the armed groups.
Many Palestinians see Abu Shabab as a traitor and a thief, according to Gazan analysts, civilians, clan leaders and businessmen. He has been roundly condemned by a variety of tribes in Gaza, including his own.
'Yasser Abu Shabab doesn't represent us. He only represents himself,' said Adel al-Tarabin, a leader in the Tarabin tribe.
He's a marked man — unable to venture out of his territory under Israeli military protection without fear of imprisonment or assassination by Hamas or affiliated units. Hamas and allied militant groups in Gaza have put out wanted notices for Abu Shabab and his comrades.
Abu Shabab dismissed the significance of these notices, saying, 'We don't recognize terrorists or their legitimacy.'
Former members of the Israeli security establishment have argued that clans in Gaza cannot substitute for the Palestinian Authority, which is seen by most Western and Arab countries as the only viable alternative to Hamas in the enclave.
Israel's support for tribal militias comes with significant risks, including that Israel could lose its control over the groups, said Michael Milshtein, a former adviser on Palestinian affairs to the Israeli military. He sees potential parallels with the United States' arming of fighters in Afghanistan against the Soviet-aligned regime in the 1980s. Those fighters later formed the Taliban.
'After the war ended, the Taliban started to attack the Americans with their own weapons,' Milshtein said. 'It can be also exactly the same experience here in Gaza — it's very likely.'
Heba Farouk Mahfouz in Cairo, Alon Rom and Lior Soroka in Tel Aviv, Hazem Balousha in Toronto and Evan Hill in New York contributed to this report.