Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted that Israel is supporting an armed group in Gaza that opposes the militant group Hamas, following comments by a former minister that Israel had transferred weapons to it. Israeli and Palestinian media have reported that the group Israel has been working with is part of a local Bedouin tribe led by Yasser Abu Shabab.
The European Council on Foreign Relations (EFCR) think tank describes Abu Shabab as the leader of a "criminal gang operating in the Rafah area that is widely accused of looting aid trucks."
Knesset member and ex-defense minister Avigdor Lieberman had told the Kan public broadcaster that the government, at Netanyahu's direction, was "giving weapons to a group of criminals and felons."
"What did Lieberman leak? ...That on the advice of security officials, we activated clans in Gaza that oppose Hamas. What is bad about that?" Netanyahu said in a video posted to social media on Thursday, June 5. "It is only good, it is saving lives of Israeli soldiers."
Michael Milshtein, an expert on Palestinian affairs at the Moshe Dayan Center in Tel Aviv, told AFP that the Abu Shabab clan was part of a Bedouin tribe that spans across the border between Gaza and Egypt's Sinai peninsula. Some of the tribe's members, he said, were involved in "all kinds of criminal activities, drug smuggling, and things like that."
Army spokesperson Brigadier General Effie Defrin on Friday confirmed the military supported arming local militias in Gaza but remained tight-lipped on the details. "I can say that we are operating in various ways against Hamas governance," Defrin said during a televised press conference when questioned on the subject, without elaborating further.
The ECFR said Abu Shabab was "reported to have been previously jailed by Hamas for drug smuggling. His brother is said to have been killed by Hamas during a crackdown against the group's attacks on UN aid convoys."
Israel regularly accuses Hamas, with which it has been at war for nearly 20 months, of looting aid convoys in Gaza. Hamas said the group had "chosen betrayal and theft as their path" and called on civilians to oppose them.
Hamas, which has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades, said it had evidence of "clear coordination between these looting gangs, collaborators with the occupation (Israel), and the enemy army itself in the looting of aid and the fabrication of humanitarian crises that deepen the suffering of" Palestinians.
The Popular Forces, as Abu Shabab's group calls itself, said on Facebook it had "never been, and will never be, a tool of the occupation". "Our weapons are simple, outdated and came through the support of our own people," it added.