Netanyahu’s Militia Game: How Israel Arms Gaza’s Criminal Gangs and Lies About Food

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has admitted, in his own words, that his government has “activated” armed clans inside Gaza. These are not disciplined security forces. They are militias—some with records of smuggling, banditry, and even alleged ISIS links.

To understand the recklessness of this policy, one only needs to recall Netanyahu’s boast to his cabinet last month: arming gangs opposed to Hamas is cheaper than risking Israeli soldiers. “What’s wrong with this?” Netanyahu says in a short video he’s tweeted. “It only saves the lives of Israeli solders”, he continues – “and publicising it only helps Hamas”.

In practice, this means unleashing terror on Gaza’s already devastated civilian population. The “Popular Forces,” led by Yasser Abu Shabab, have been accused of looting aid convoys, intimidating families, and settling clan disputes with gunfire. Yasser Abu Shabab is a gang leader and head of the Popular Forces, an Israeli-backed armed group and criminal gang operating in the Rafah area.

These are the people Netanyahu now calls “partners.” It is an extraordinary admission: the self-proclaimed “only democracy in the Middle East” is outsourcing its dirty work to groups with criminal and extremist pedigrees.

Netanyahu knows Israel’s campaign in Gaza has failed to destroy Hamas. Instead, his government has turned to militias, gambling with civilians’ lives and creating chaos that can later be blamed on Palestinians themselves.

The Lie About Hamas “Stealing Aid”

For months, Israeli spokespeople have circulated the same line: Hamas steals humanitarian aid. Western media often repeat this without scrutiny. But UN agencies, NGOs, and even U.S. officials have consistently found no credible evidence of systematic Hamas diversion.

The reality is simpler and uglier: Israel blocks aid trucks, bombards bakeries, destroys farmland, and starves civilians. Then, when food finally enters Gaza, gangs armed with Israeli weapons are accused of looting convoys. Blaming Hamas for hunger is propaganda designed to deflect responsibility from the very state that controls Gaza’s borders and skies.

To repeat the accusation is to participate in a lie that hides the crime of collective punishment.

In an interview in November 2024 with the New York Times, Abu Shabab admitted that his men had raided half a dozen aid trucks since the start of the war. “We are taking trucks so we can eat, not so we can sell,” he told the paper, saying he was feeding his family.

A Pattern of Weaponizing Extremists

There is a disturbing precedent here. During the 1980s, Israel quietly tolerated and at times encouraged Islamist charities in Gaza to weaken the secular Palestinian movement led by the PLO. Hamas itself grew in that shadow. Now, decades later, Netanyahu plays the same cynical game: empowering unaccountable militias today, knowing they may become tomorrow’s warlords.

The claim that these groups will “counterbalance” Hamas is not only naïve, it is grotesque. Militias do not deliver stability. They deliver anarchy—and in anarchy, civilians suffer most. Gaza’s families are not pawns to be shifted on Netanyahu’s chessboard of power. They are human beings, already enduring hunger, displacement, and relentless bombardment. To unleash armed gangs into this reality is not strategy—it is cruelty dressed as policy.

History shows what happens when states outsource violence to criminals and zealots: short-term gains collapse into long-term chaos, and the innocent pay the highest price. By admitting he has armed militias, Netanyahu has confessed not only to desperation but to moral bankruptcy. Israel may believe it can control the fire it has lit, but fire consumes everything—including the hand that strikes the match.

And here lies the unavoidable truth: no fortress, no wall, no militia will shield Israel from the consequences of building its future on oppression—mistaking brutality for strength and lies for legitimacy.

©TNPP