File Photo: Yasser Abu Shabab lead of Popular Forces militia in Palestinian custody. Photo courtesy of Invictapalestina Facebook page.
On Friday, 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.
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"Our weapons are simple, outdated, and came through the support of our own people," it added.
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-defence 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.
"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".
'Gangster'
Milshtein said that Abu Shabab had spent time in prison in Gaza and that his clan chiefs had recently denounced him as an Israeli "collaborator and a gangster".
"It seems that actually the Shabak (Israeli security agency) or the (military) thought it was a wonderful idea to turn this militia, gang actually, into a proxy, to give them weapons and money and shelter" from army operations, Milshtein said.
He added that Hamas killed four members of the gang days ago.
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, without providing evidence.
Milshtein called Israel's decision to arm a group such as Abu Shabab "a fantasy, not something that you can really describe as a strategy".
"I really hope it will not end with catastrophe," he said.
The Israeli blockade on the entry of food, water, and medicine to Gaza since 2 March - denounced by regional and international powers - has left two million Palestinians in the strip on the verge of starvation.
In tandem, the Israeli army has killed tens of hungry Palestinians who were seeking some food and water at Israeli-US-backed aid centres in the strip.
*This story was edited by Ahram Online.
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