The assassination last week of Yasser Abu Shabab — the 32-year-old leader of the Israeli-backed “Popular Forces,” a militia operating in the Rafah area of the southern Gaza Strip — is more than a lurid gangland hit. His killing at the hands of his own disgruntled militiamen is a clear representation of a policy coming undone.
For months, Israel stitched together a sordid alliance of convicted felons, former ISIS affiliates, and opportunistic collaborators, presenting them as the embryo of a local governance alternative to Hamas in Gaza, while using them to orchestrate starvation and carry out attacks on Israel’s behalf. Now, this attempt to cultivate a network of criminal proxy gangs as subcontractors of its occupation is collapsing into paranoid infighting and bloody chaos.
Abu Shabab himself was a convicted drug trafficker with documented links to ISIS in Sinai. Sentenced by a Gazan court in 2015 to 25 years in prison, he served eight before fleeing amid the chaos following October 7. He then emerged in Gaza under the protection of the Israeli army to lead a gang of 120 fighters, part of what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted was an explicit strategy to arm powerful clans in Gaza to counter Hamas.
According to the Gazan investigative journalist Mohammed Othman, Abu Shabab’s death was set in motion when the Israeli army discovered food it had supplied to his gang inside a Hamas tunnel last month. Israel quickly imposed restrictions on the group’s members, limiting their movements in Rafah, reducing their food rations, and blocking their most trusted leaders from traveling in and out of Israel.
Tensions inside the gang boiled over. Within days, after an internal investigation, the gang’s deputy and de facto ruler Ghassan Duhaini detained Jum’aa Abu Sunaima, whose brother Mahmoud oversaw the distribution of food to Abu Shabab’s gang and other families in the area, under suspicion that Jum’aa was diverting food to Hamas militants.
Mahmoud went to Abu Shabab’s home to demand the release of his brother, but was told Jum’aa faced three options: remain detained, be handed over to the Israeli army, or execution. The confrontation escalated until Mahmoud pulled out an automatic rifle and opened fire; Abu Shabab was gravely injured and succumbed to his wounds after reportedly being evacuated to the Soroka Hospital in the Israeli city of Be’er Sheva, and both Mahmoud and Jum’aa were killed in the clashes.
Members of the Popular Forces. (Yasser Abu Shabab/Facebook; used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)
What followed Abu Shabab’s killing was a cascade of retaliatory violence. According to Othman and other local sources, Duhaini, wounded in his left leg during the confrontation, was treated in Israel and returned to carry out a number of executions — killing Abu Shabab’s bodyguards for failing to intervene, as well as the gunman, his detained brother, and several others. He also launched attacks on the Abu Sunaima clan’s homes, wounding several residents, confiscating phones, assaulting women, and placing families under lockdown. The clan later issued a public statement confirming the deaths of Jum’aa and Mahmoud and implicitly suggesting that the two were responsible for Abu Shabab’s death.
This implosion captures a profound truth about Israel’s proxy experiment in Gaza: by outsourcing its occupation of a besieged population to the most violent and opportunistic collaborators, Israel will not produce a stable alternative to Hamas’ governance. Rather, such a strategy only fosters a miniature warlord economy, setting the stage for endless cycles of retributive violence.
Deepening collaboration
Israel’s relationship with Gaza’s criminal gangs began almost immediately after the army’s May 2024 invasion of Rafah. Gang members were soon looting and extorting humanitarian aid convoys with what witnesses described as passive, and at times active Israeli protection: the theft could occur as close as within 100 meters of Israeli tanks, with troops firing only when local police or volunteers attempted to intervene.
The arrangement served Israel’s strategic aims, deepening Gaza’s starvation while shifting blame onto local groups and preserving plausible deniability. At the peak of the crisis this past summer, nearly 90 percent of UN aid convoys were intercepted before reaching distribution centers.
In November 2024, an internal UN memo identified Abu Shabab’s Popular Forces as the primary culprit. The group had constructed a fortified military complex with warehouses and forklifts to stockpile stolen aid, which they resold on the black market at exorbitant prices.
Armed and masked Palestinians secure trucks loaded with Humanitarian Aid entering Gaza through the Israeli Kerem Shalom Crossing, on Salah al-Din Road east of Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, January 19, 2025. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)
Later that month, Hamas militants ambushed an Abu Shabab unit at the European Hospital in Khan Younis, killing around 20 of their fighters, including the gang leader’s brother and bookkeeper, Fathi. After the attack, the Israeli army expanded its collaboration with Abu Shabab, who now had highly personal reasons to take revenge on Hamas.
Israel subsequently deployed the Popular Forces and other gangs for espionage, intelligence gathering, kidnappings, assassinations, and clearing hazardous areas ahead of Israeli forces. A senior Hamas leader in Doha told me recently that when Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades clashed with the Dogmoush clan in October, militants recovered Israeli lists of people to kidnap, interrogate, and assassinate, along with large sums of cash, weapons, and vehicles.
By May 2025, Israel had further formalized its collaboration. The army provided gang members with uniforms bearing the Palestinian flag to create the impression of a legitimate security force, and tasked them with building a large tent camp in eastern Rafah near the Egyptian border. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz defense minister spoke two months later of his plan to concentrate 600,000 Gazans there, preventing their return to central and western Gaza — and Abu Shabab echoed the same population targets in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published under his name.
A Facebook page soon appeared promoting the gang’s “safe” area in both Arabic and English, even offering monthly salaries between $1,000 and $1,500 for new recruits. According to a former gang member who spoke to Mohammed Othman, civilians who relocated there were effectively held hostage, barred from returning west or contacting their families.
The UAE also started to support Abu Shabab, seeking to create local rivals to Hamas. An Arab diplomat told me that Abu Dhabi preferred “Sudan-like chaos” to any scenario in which Hamas survived the war. In June, Duhaini appeared in a video beside a vehicle with UAE license plates, holding a brand-new Serbian rifle that — according to a source at the WSJ —can only be found in two countries in the Middle East: Israel and the UAE.
🚨Important: Ghassan Duhine, 38, was a commander in Jaysh al-Islam (the extremist group that pledged allegiance to ISIS in 2015 & kidnapped BBC journalist Alan Johnston in 2007), according to local sourcesDuhine is the de facto leader of the Abu Shabab gangHis brother,… pic.twitter.com/tl57ULDk0Q
— Muhammad Shehada (@muhammadshehad2) June 9, 2025
By the summer, however, Israel was experiencing buyer’s remorse. Abu Shabab’s ranks didn’t grow, and few civilians moved into their camp. The situation deteriorated further after Israeli opposition lawmaker and former Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman inadvertently violated military censorship by criticizing Netanyahu for arming “the equivalent of ISIS in Gaza.” Netanyahu later confirmed elements of this account, prompting the Abu Shabab family and the Tarabin clan to publicly disown Abu Shabab and brand him a collaborator.
Even the gang’s recruitment of well-known Hamas critic Momen Al-Natour backfired. After they published photos with him, his family denounced him and soon fled Gaza to escape the gang’s orbit.
The gangs of eastern Gaza
Since the October ceasefire, Israel has retained control of depopulated areas beyond the so-called “Yellow Line,” which now account for more than half of Gaza territory. Here, according to multiple local sources, Israel has quickly found another use for Abu Shabab’s group and five other proxy gangs, who take part in hit-and-run operations and tunnel hunting missions to root out Hamas militants in Rafah. Before he was killed, Abu Shabab was also involved in Israel’s plans to build “New Rafah,” a Potemkin village meant to mask Israel’s refusal to allow reconstruction in western Gaza.
According to a veteran European journalist, shortly before his death, Abu Shabab was discussing a plan with Duhaini to form a “transitional government of East Gaza,” modeled loosely on Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces. The gang also released footage at the end of November marketing itself as an arm of Trump’s Board of Peace and International Stabilization Force. Israel has been persistently promoting the gang to American decisionmakers, and Israeli media even reported that Abu Shabab met with Jared Kushner at the U.S. Military’s Civil-Military Coordination Center in southern Israel, which the U.S. State Department denied.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio visits the U.S. Military’s Civil-Military Coordination Center, in Kiryat Gat, southern Israel, October 24, 2025. (Olivier Fitoussi/POOL)
Leadership of the Popular Forces has since passed to Duhaini, formerly the commander of Jaysh Al-Islam in Rafah, a radical faction that pledged allegiance to ISIS in 2015 and was responsible for the 2007 kidnapping of BBC journalist Alan Johnston. Gaza sources say Duhaini was detained twice by Hamas before the war and previously served in the PA’s security sector. His brother, a militant with Palestinian Islamic Jihad, died in a Hamas prison.
Another key commander in Abu Shabab’s gang is Essam Nabahin, an ISIS operative who fought the Egyptian military in Sinai in the late 2010s. After resurfacing in Gaza in 2022, he was arrested for killing a police officer but escaped prison on October 7. Other members of the Popular Forces have similarly violent or criminal histories, including drug trafficking, murder, and sexual assault.
The second-largest gang is led by Ashraf Al-Mansi, who operates out of an abandoned school in Beit Lahia in northern Gaza. A Gaza-based source said Al-Mansi came from a Hamas-aligned family: his uncle, a Hamas mosque imam, was killed by Fatah in 2007, and his father was once detained by Israel. Al-Mansi later turned to drug dealing and distanced himself from Hamas. One of his best-known lieutenants, Abu Anas Ziedan, is a former Salafi jihadist who was part of ISIS before joining Al-Mansi’s group.
Another prominent figure is Hussam Al-Astal, a former member of the Palestinian Authority security forces and perhaps the most visible gang leader after Abu Shabab, owing to his appearances in Israeli and international media. Hamas previously imprisoned him for allegedly participating in the Mossad-sanctioned assassination of Palestinian engineer Fadi al-Batsh in Malaysia in 2018. Like several others, he escaped prison after October 7, and now leads a 100-man militia between Khan Younis and Rafah known as the Counter-Terrorism Strike Force.
Counter-Terrorism Strike Force (anti-Hamas militia in Gaza) leader Husam al-Astal sends a message to Hamas, saying that the next shots are aimed at the Islamist group. pic.twitter.com/254UZda1JG
— Joe Truzman (@JoeTruzman) November 21, 2025
Despite his media prominence, Al-Astal is estranged from his family. His brother Nidal is a senior commander in the Al-Qassam Brigades commander leader, and he is also related to prominent Hamas leader Yunis Al-Astal. A former neighbor of Al-Astal informed me that Israel killed his daughter in a tent strike during the war, and that his son-in-law was killed while seeking aid from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Al-Astal’s wife and surviving children refused to join him in Khan Younis, and the extended Al-Astal family formally disowned him.
In eastern Gaza City, Rami Heles, another former PA security officer, leads a smaller group — while in eastern Khan Younis, a fifth gang is headed by Shawqi Abu Nusaira, a retired PA official who spent over a decade in Israeli prisons and was reportedly responsible for a recent execution of an alleged Hamas member. Although Abu Nusaira formed the militia in late November, security sources in Gaza say they expect him to dissolve his group and seek clemency in the wake of Abu Shabab’s death, given the absence of any personal vendetta against Hamas.
A sixth, much smaller faction emerged in eastern Rafah after Abu Shabab’s death. Calling itself the “Popular Defense Force,” the group has released a single video threatening Hamas, but its leadership remains unknown.
A failed bargain
Abu Shabab’s killing has dealt a serious blow to Israel’s strategy of proxy rule in Gaza, for at least three reasons. First, Abu Shabab was the face of Israel’s propaganda campaign to claim success in deradicalizing some Gazans and creating “safe alternative communities” for them in eastern Gaza, a narrative Israel uses to justify caging and continuing to target an estimated two million people in the ruins of the enclave’s western half.
Second, in addition to promising power, money, and food, Israel has appealed to these gangs by offering protection from Hamas, intervening militarily on multiple occasions to defend them from attacks. But that pledge is meaningless now that the threat of violence has emerged from within the gangs’ own ranks.
There is no ideology or cause binding the gang members together other than immediate material gain, which means any dispute between gang members can end fatally. Indeed, in the chaotic aftermath of Abu Shabab’s death, multiple gang members fled to western Gaza and surrendered to Hamas’ security forces in return for clemency, with more expected to join soon.
Third, Abu Shabab’s death has triggered a power struggle between Duhaini, who leads the gang’s military wing, and Humaid Al-Sufi, head of its civil wing. The latter’s faction has been spreading rumors that Duhaini is behind the death of Abu Shabab. The Al-Duhaini family is the smallest in the Tarabin tribe, largely outnumbered by the Al-Sufi family, which makes Duhaini’s ascendance to the throne difficult for others to swallow.
The paranoid flight of gang members back to Hamas for clemency, the budding succession wars, the visceral betrayal within Abu Shabab’s ranks: these signal not merely the collapse of a proxy force, but the bankruptcy of the entire cynical premise.
Rejecting both Hamas’ rule and the PA’s return, Israel was reduced to bargaining with Gaza’s outcasts, men whose only common cause with Israel (and Netanyahu in particular) was a shared desperation to escape a day of reckoning. With Abu Shabab’s death, the gang model stands exposed as a strategy devoid of vision or principle — a damning testament to the failure of Israel’s vision for Gaza’s future.
Muhammad Shehada is a Gazan writer and political analyst, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
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