LONDON: New details have emerged about Israel’s controversial support for the anti-Hamas Popular Forces militia in Gaza, including providing the group with weapons and assisting its combat operations with airstrikes.
The militia, led by Yasser Abu Shabab, the head of a former looting gang, is positioning itself to play a significant role in the future governance of Gaza.
An investigation by the Data and Forensics Unit at Sky News found that the militia is receiving aid from the US-funded Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and being allowed to smuggle cash, guns and vehicles into the Palestinian enclave by the Israel Defense Forces.
Experts warned that Israel’s support for the group is part of a divide and conquer strategy, in the same vein as Tel Aviv’s previous support for Hamas as a counterweight to Fatah.
The Sky team followed the movements and activities of Abu Shabab and his men for months. The militia operates from a largely intact area of southern Gaza where there are “ample supplies of food, medical facilities, a school and even a mosque,” Sky reported.
About 1,500 people are now living in the Popular Forces base, including 500-700 fighters, many of whom have joined in recent weeks as part of a recruitment drive. In total, the militia and its allies have about 3,000 fighters across Gaza.
The base is located on the route that aid trucks follow when entering the enclave through the Kerem Shalom crossing, giving the Popular Forces free access to loot supplies.
A UN report from last November found that Abu Shabab and his gang operate as “the most influential stakeholders behind the systematic and massive looting of convoys.”
The group’s primary source of cash flow was cigarette smuggling, the report added, highlighting that Israel had banned the entry of tobacco into Gaza, spiking the price of individual cigarettes to as high as $20 in some cases.
One aid worker told Sky: “Abu Shabab was empowered by cigarette smuggling. In that kind of curtailed environment, you’re going to get Abu Shababs.”
Militia member Hassan Abu Shabab told Sky that after Hamas killed dozens of his fellow fighters, Israel began allowing the controversial GHF to supply the Popular Forces base with food aid.
Officials from the UN Relief and Works Agency and the Norwegian Refugee Council told Sky that the supply of aid to an armed group contravenes humanitarian laws and the principle of impartiality.
An IDF soldier, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Sky that the Israeli military is providing armaments to Yasser Abu Shabab and his men.
“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,” the soldier said.
Videos published by Popular Forces members on TikTok show the militia’s fleet of vehicles, many of which display Israeli license plates.
Sky found evidence that suggested close coordination between the militia and the Israeli Air Force in anti-Hamas operations.
A Popular Forces unit was ambushed by Hamas fighters on April 13, south of the militia’s base in Rafah, resulting in four deaths. A day later, the house where the ambush took place was flattened by an Israeli airstrike.
Amjad Iraqi, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, said Israel’s support of the militia is designed to make Palestinian resistance to occupation more difficult.
“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 told Sky.
Neve Gordon, a professor of international law at London’s Queen Mary University, told the channel: “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.
“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.”
