https://arab.news/pd3rc
- 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
JERUSALEM: 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 鈥渃riminal gang operating in the Rafah area that is widely accused of looting aid trucks.鈥�
Knesset member and ex-defense minister Avigdor Liberman had told the Kan public broadcaster that the government, at Netanyahu鈥檚 direction, was 鈥済iving weapons to a group of criminals and felons.鈥�
鈥淲hat did Liberman leak? That security sources activated a clan in Gaza that opposes Hamas? What is bad about that?鈥� Netanyahu said in a video posted to social media on Thursday.
鈥淚t is only good, it is saving lives of Israeli soldiers.鈥�
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鈥檚 Sinai peninsula.
Some of the tribe鈥檚 members, he said, were involved in 鈥渁ll kinds of criminal activities, drug smuggling, and things like that.鈥�
Milshtein said that Abu Shabab had spent time in prison in Gaza and that his clan chiefs had recently denounced him as an Israeli 鈥渃ollaborator and a gangster.鈥�
鈥淚t 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鈥� from army operations, Milshtein said.
He added that Hamas killed four members of the gang days ago.
The ECFR said Abu Shabab was 鈥渞eported 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鈥檚 attacks on UN aid convoys.鈥�
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 鈥渃hosen betrayal and theft as their path鈥� and called on civilians to oppose them.
Hamas, which has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades, said it had evidence of 鈥渃lear 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鈥� Palestinians.
The Popular Forces, as Abu Shabab鈥檚 group calls itself, said on Facebook it had 鈥渘ever been, and will never be, a tool of the occupation.鈥�
鈥淥ur weapons are simple, outdated, and came through the support of our own people,鈥� it added.
Milshtein called Israel鈥檚 decision to arm a group such as Abu Shabab 鈥渁 fantasy, not something that you can really describe as a strategy.鈥�
鈥淚 really hope it will not end with catastrophe,鈥� he said.