In June, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted to having armed and supported the Militia of the Popular Forces in Gaza to oppose Hamas.
“What’s wrong with that?” He said in a short video that he had tweeted. “It only saves the lives of Israeli soldiers.”
He did not clarify what the popular forces would do exactly, but the experts believe that Israel supports the militia and its leader, Yasser Abu Shabab, to put a Palestinian face on the ethnic cleaning of Gaza.
Abu Shabab, 31, a member previously unknown to the Tarabin Bédouin tribe of Gaza, escaped prison around October 7, after being imprisoned since 2015 for drug -related charges.
The drugs were allegedly introduced as a smuggling in Gaza through the Sinai of Egypt and, according to analysts, are managed by groups affiliated with ISIL. This led to a widespread belief that Abu Shabab has Isil (ISIS) links.
But the alleged affiliation of Abu Shabab with ISIL was not a problem for Israel; Analysts say he uses it to advance his ethnic cleaning plans in Gaza.
Abu Shabab emerges
Abu Shabab, who heads the Militia of the Popular Forces of 100 men, is a dropout from primary school, according to Muhammad Shehada, a scholarship holder in the European Council for Foreign Relations.
Despite this, he has a sophisticated and multilingual presence on social networks, and recently wrote an editorial in the Wall Street Journal claiming that the Palestinians in Gaza had been made with Hamas.
Analysts believe that his refined media presence is probably perfected outside of Gaza.
“He has not been in contact with the company for the past decade,” said Shehada. “He’s nobody. He is fundamentally a guy before.”
His own tribe, the tarabin, does not approve of its role in Gaza today, making a rare public declaration disavowing him to have allegedly collaborated with Israel.
Abu Shabab began to gain importance in late May 2024 after Israel invaded Rafah, southern Gaza.
“His gang emerges a month later and became the main gang that destroys the overwhelming majority of food and aid which takes place systematically under protection (Israeli military),” said Shehada.
According to United Nations statistics, about nine out of 10 trucks were looted. Israel initially blamed Hamas for looting, but humanitarian groups refuted this assertion, and even the Israeli army could not find evidence that this was the case.
Instead, international workers say it was Abu Shabab who systematically looted aid.
An internal United Nations memo obtained by the post Washington Post specifically named Abu Shabab “the main stakeholder and the most influential behind the systematic and massive looting” in Gaza.
During the brief ceasefire that Israel has unilaterally broke in March, Abu Shabab disappeared, only to reappear in mid-May when Israel, under immense international pressure, began to allow a net of Gaza.
“Literally that day, he emerges from nowhere,” said Shehada.
“It was the face of Israel’s hunger campaign,” said Shehada, “while giving Israel full denial and outsourcing the thing.”
A Palestinian face with ethnic cleaning
Beyond the theft of aid for hungry Palestinians, analysts said that Abu Shabab and his militia contribute to a wider Israeli plan to clean ethnically Gaza, which has intensified this year.
“Israel is trying to build the militias associated with Abu Shabab in the hope that they will be able to extend the concentration camp zones to which these militias can operate / control so that Israel can reduce the burden of the occupation while facilitating ethnic cleaning,” Tariq Kenney Shawa, U-Shabaka Jazea, told Al-Shabaka.
In early July, the Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz announced a plan to push 600,000 Palestinians in the cities of tents in the south of Gaza and described it as “voluntary migration”. When Katz revealed the plan, he was widely turned by the Israeli media and the humanitarian workers.
ABU Shabab’s militia has built what analysts call concentration camps in the south of Gaza, in order to drive more than half a million Palestinians before being moved to third countries.
“The intention is to hold them there until an opportunity arises to send them elsewhere outside Gaza, that Egypt or a certain number of third countries,” said Omar Rahman, member of the Middle East council on world affairs.
Forcing the Palestinians in an unbearably small area and then force them on the border in Egypt could trigger serious international repercussions, because the Egyptians have rejected the displacement of the Palestinians.
“Israel understands that if the army (Israeli army) exploits a concentration camp in Rafah, it would not seem very good,” said Shehada in Tel Aviv Tribune, adding that Israel would prefer “a Palestinian face that is dressed in Palestinian uniforms with a Palestinian flag and speak in Arabic” as the face of such an operation.
In addition, he said, Abu Shabab has “two very well oiled Facebook propaganda machines” who could convince desperate people to look for a shelter in his camps, “especially if Israel (starts) to force people there.”
“Abu Shabab’s militia leads smaller concentration camps in the regions that Israel control and announced them as” security shelters “so that people come to get help and create tents and others,” Kenney Shawa said.
Take advantage of despair
This process has been reinforced by the United States and the GHF supported by the United States, which Israel is trying to impose as the only distributor of Gaza aid.
But the GHF has been largely castigated by the help groups and the UN to politicize the aid, and the Israeli soldiers shoot hungry Palestinians every day while they are trying to obtain aid to their families. More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in GHF distribution centers since May.
The worsening of the situation is that instead of some 400 aid distribution points that UNRWA used in Gaza, the GHF has only four sites throughout the Gaza Strip.
A revealing, three of them are in the south, with only one in the center of Gaza, which led analysts to believe that the sites were intentionally selected by the Israeli authorities.
“Survival depends on food access,” said Rahman. “The entire GHF is to force the population to move.”