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The ranks of a shadowy, Israeli-backed gang in southern Gaza are swelling, with its armed members attacking Hamas operatives and their families, as well as gathering intelligence on behalf of Israel's military.
Sources told The National on Monday that Hamas has hit back at the gang, known as the Yasser Abu Shabab Popular Forces, by quietly eliminating its members and supporters.
"Hamas is assassinating them in the range of five to seven a day," a source said. "It's the latest chapter in a history of enmity between Hamas and armed gangs and families opposed to its rule in Gaza."
The Yasser Abu Shabab gang now has up to 150 members, up from about 75 a little more than a week ago, who are equipped with assault rifles, walkie-talkies and night vision goggles, the sources said.
They added that members of the gang are paid, which explains its rapid growth at a time when job opportunities are extremely scarce in an enclave devastated by war since October 2023.
Drugs and murder
The leader of the gang is Yasser Abu Shabab, 31, the sources said. He has long been viewed with suspicion by residents of Gaza and many of his men have criminal records for drug trafficking and murder.
But the gang has been operating in full view of the Israeli military since emerging in Gaza last month, the sources said. The group operates outside the framework of any recognised Palestinian authority and is accused of trying to create an alternative government model amid the leadership vacuum created by the war.
Israel has not yet publicly shared its plan for Gaza after the conflict, which it says will not end until Hamas has been eliminated and all hostages held by the group are freed.
Israel said on Thursday that it has "activated" Palestinian clans in Gaza as part of its war, confirming long-held suspicions that it is working with anti-Hamas groups. The announcement followed claims by a former Israeli minister, Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the opposition Yisrael Beiteinu party, that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved the transfer of large quantities of arms to organised crime families in Gaza.
In a video posted online late on Thursday, Mr Netanyahu offered an explanation for his actions, saying the government was acting on the advice of “security officials" to save the lives of Israeli soldiers.
But the sources said supporting anti-Hamas groups raised the spectre of civil strife in Gaza, pitting Hamas fighters against the groups at a time when the majority of the enclave's 2.3 million population are facing severe shortages of food, water, medicine and other essentials.
Targeting Hamas tunnels
Israel last month eased a nearly two-month blockade on aid, but only a fraction of the supplies needed has since found its way to Palestinians.
The sources said the Yasser Abu Shabab gang, which has a track record of trafficking in drugs and arms, as well as black market profiteering, was also carrying out tasks on behalf of the Israeli military, including blowing up structures suspected of concealing the entrances of Hamas tunnels. The gang has also besieged suspected tunnel entrances, hoping to prevent supplies from reaching Hamas fighters inside, the sources added.
The sources could not ascertain the effectiveness of that anti-Hamas activity, but noted the militant group's weakness, estimating that it may have lost more than half of its fighters and a significant amount of its arsenal since the war began.
Israel has a record of empowering groups potentially dangerous to its security to weaken major enemies. Taking advantage of Gaza's woeful economy, it is also known to be running an elaborate network of paid spies in the enclave, providing real-time intelligence on the whereabouts of senior Hamas officials and the group's military wing.
Hamas dedicates a significant part of its policing capabilities to counter-espionage, hunting down informants and subjecting them to secret trials. It is known to have executed dozens of suspected spies since it took power in Gaza in 2007.
The sudden rise of the Yasser Abu Shabab gang is widely seen as an Israeli experiment in government by proxy. Gazan civilians told The National last week that they view such groups not as a protective force, but as collaborators offering people false promises in exchange for political and social submission.
The gang claims to be guarding Israeli and US-backed food distribution centres in southern Gaza, but aid workers say it has a long history of looting UN lorries.
Gaza's armed groups have ties to powerful clans or extended families and often operate as criminal gangs. Aid workers have said Israel's backing of such groups is part of a wider effort to control all humanitarian operations in the enclave. Israel denies allowing looters to operate in areas it controls.
Step up from cigarette smuggling
But with Hamas weakened after 20 months of war, gangs have regained the freedom to act. The leadership of several clans – including the one from which the Yasser Abu Shabab group’s members hail – have issued statements denouncing looting and co-operation with Israel.
The group went public in early May, declaring itself a "nationalist force". It said it was protecting aid, including around food distribution sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a mainly American private contractor that Israel intends to replace the UN-led aid network.
Before the war, Yasser Abu Shabab was involved in smuggling cigarettes and drugs from Egypt and Israel into Gaza, according to two members of his extended family, one of whom was once part of his group, according to an AP report. Hamas arrested him, but freed him from prison when the war began in October 2023, they said.
The conflict began when Hamas-led fighters attacked Israel in October 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking about 240 hostage. Israel's relentless military campaign has so far killed nearly 55,000 Palestinians, Gaza's health authorities have said.
The conflict has displaced the majority of its population and laid to waste much of the enclave's built-up areas.
