As negotiators debate who will run Gaza after the struggle is over, Israel is already shaping a brand new actuality on the bottom.
In current weeks, a number of tribal militias have declared allegiance to Yasser Abu Shabab, the pinnacle of a former looting gang which is positioning itself as Gaza’s future authorities.
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Yasser Abu Shabab (R), in a photograph uploaded to social media. Pic: TikTok
Sky’s Information and Forensics Unit has been following Yasser Abu Shabab and his males for months, monitoring their actions, automobiles, weapons and identities.
Our investigation has discovered that his militia is receiving meals from the Gaza Humanitarian Basis, regardless of the US-funded help organisation’s declared impartiality.
Consultants say that Israel’s help for such teams is meant to “divide and conquer” and to make sure that it maintains a stage of management in Gaza, no matter its future.
Money, automobiles and cigarettes
Deep inside the rubble fields of southern Gaza lie 50 hectares of pastoral lanes and elaborate villas.
Not like in different elements of Gaza, residents right here have ample provides of meals.
Medical services, a college, and even a mosque have been arrange in current months.
On social media, residents showcase stacks of money, model new smartphones and imported grime bikes.
This small neighbourhood is the headquarters of the Widespread Forces, Yasser Abu Shabab’s former looting gang which now, with Israel’s backing, hopes to wrest management of the Gaza Strip from Hamas.
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Hassan Abu Shabab, 40, spoke to Sky Information from the Widespread Forces’ headquarters in east Rafah. Pic: Fb
Hassan Abu Shabab, a relative and childhood good friend of Yasser’s, says that the recruitment of recent militias in current weeks has swelled the group’s forces throughout Gaza to round 3,000.
The bottom’s location is strategically necessary – it sits alongside the route by which help vehicles should journey when getting into Gaza by the Kerem Shalom crossing, a route that help officers have named “Looters’ Alley”.
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An inside UN report, dated November 2024, recognized Yasser Abu Shabab and his gang as “the most influential stakeholders behind the systematic and massive looting of convoys”.
The video beneath reveals members of the group unloading World Meals Programme flour sacks from a truck at their camp.
The UN doc recognized their main supply of revenue as smuggling cigarettes – one of many many items which Israel has formally banned from getting into Gaza. The value of particular person cigarettes has at some factors reached $20.
Within the movies beneath, one lively member of the Widespread Forces reveals off stacks of money and cartons of cigarettes.
A senior help employee, who was working in Gaza till early this yr, says he personally witnessed his employees negotiating the protected passage of vehicles with Yasser Abu Shabab.
“Abu Shabab was empowered by cigarette smuggling,” he says. “In that kind of curtailed environment, you’re going to get Abu Shababs.”
Hassan Abu Shabab admits that the group was concerned in looting vehicles and smuggling cigarettes, although he says they solely ever focused industrial vehicles they believed to be supplying Hamas.
“Hamas accused us of stealing the shipments, while in reality, we were bringing them for our families and distributing them,” he says.
“Yes, there were some breaches, with a few people who sold things off – fine. But things escalated. Hamas’s men came in and they killed my cousins. […] Fifty-four people were lost in that massacre.”
It was after these clashes started, Hassan says, that Israel started coordinating with Yasser Abu Shabab to smuggle in money, meals, weapons and automobiles to be used in his battles towards Hamas.
He says that these provides are donated by members of the bedouin Tarabin tribe, to which Yasser Abu Shabab and his lieutenants belong, in Israel, Egypt and Jordan.
To ensure that these provides to enter Gaza, Hassan says, requests should be made to a “coordination office” run by the Palestinian Authority, which then liaises with Israel and varied Arab states to make sure the provides’ entry into Gaza.
“This office is basically a communications room […] with Egyptian security, with Israeli national security, with Jordanian national security,” Hassan says, including that this mechanism was created particularly to be used by the Widespread Forces.
“It provides us with weapons and money and with everything our people and forces need.”
The governments of Palestine, Egypt and Jordan didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark. Yasser Abu Shabab and the Widespread Forces additionally didn’t reply to a request for remark on the time of publication.
‘An entire breach of humanitarian ideas’
Meals, Hassan says, is offered freed from cost by numerous “donors”, together with the controversial US-backed help group Gaza Humanitarian Basis (GHF), and is delivered to their camp by retailers.
He says the Widespread Forces then hold some meals for themselves, and distribute the remaining inside Rafah.
UNRWA’s Gaza director Sam Rose says that giving help on to an armed faction is a “complete breach of humanitarian principles”, which dictate that help must be offered primarily based on want and mustn’t favour any aspect in a battle.
In a single video, a GHF pallet could be seen subsequent to a forklift truck and a lorry.
Introduced with our findings, a spokesperson for the GHF mentioned that “every Gazan deserves to be fed with dignity – including those in areas controlled by the Popular Forces” and that “this is what true neutrality means”.
“Once channelled through an armed group, aid no longer meets that definition,” the help group mentioned.
“It becomes indistinguishable from support to one side in the fighting and may expose agencies to accusations of complicity or liability under counter-terrorism and sanctions frameworks.”
The Desert Reconnaissance Battalion
“The cooperation [with Yasser Abu Shabab] mainly goes through [Israel’s security service] Shin Bet, or some official state mechanism,” says Sami*.
“We just bring in the food, make sure it arrives in Gaza.”
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Sami spoke to us from his IDF base close to Kerem Shalom.
The camp is “just a few minutes’ drive” from Kerem Shalom, Sami says.
“It reaches him directly there [at the Popular Forces’ camp], and then he divides up the food to Khan Younis and to Rafah and other places,” he provides.
Higher referred to as Unit 585, this battalion is often stationed on the Kerem Shalom border crossing – the identical crossing by which Yasser Abu Shabab’s provides are smuggled.
“Greetings to Abu Shabab from 585,” learn one remark left by a soldier, alongside a hearts emoji.
Like the vast majority of troopers in Unit 585, Sami is a Muslim bedouin. His household have served within the IDF for generations, and he says he’s proud to serve Israel.
He’s equally happy with the help that Israel is offering to Yasser Abu Shabab and his followers, who’re additionally largely bedouins.
“Israel helps him, it gives him grenades, it gives him money, it gives him vehicles, it gives him food, it gives him all types of things,” he says.
The IDF declined to touch upon Sky’s findings. Shin Guess didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
One TikTok account, which maintains shut ties to each Widespread Forces members and troopers in Unit 585, has repeatedly posted footage of automobiles with Israeli licence plates that later find yourself on the Widespread Forces’ camp in Gaza.
The video beneath, uploaded on 31 July, reveals a 2025 Toyota Land Cruiser driving alongside an Israeli highway and sporting an Israeli licence plate. Data linked to the licence plate confirms that the automotive was final examined on 27 July, and was offered that very same month.
By 5 August, the automotive had made its strategy to Gaza – showing in a posed {photograph} with Yasser Abu Shabab and 9 different Widespread Forces fighters. Its licence plate had been eliminated.
Picture:
A photograph uploaded to TikTok by a member of the Widespread Forces on 5 August 2025. Pic: TikTok
Hassan Abu Shabab, the Widespread Forces commander, confirmed that the 2 automobiles are the identical. He informed us that this TikTok account belongs to an Israeli bedouin automotive vendor who smuggles automobiles into the Gaza Strip for the group and different consumers.
“I notify the coordination office, and they arrange the coordination and send the car to us,” he explains. “When it reaches Kerem Shalom, the plate can be taken off.”
Not all international licence plates are eliminated upon automobiles’ arrival in Gaza, nonetheless.
On not less than two events, senior commander Ghassan Al Duhine has been photographed on the camp subsequent to a white Isuzu with a UAE-registered licence plate.
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Ghassan Al Duhine poses subsequent to a UAE-registered automotive in a photograph shared on 15 June 2025. Pic: TikTok
Ghassan is the commander of the Widespread Forces’ navy wing, the Counter Terrorism Service (CTS).
The CTS emblem is sort of similar to that utilized by a UAE-backed Yemeni group of the identical identify, based in early 2024.
We requested the UAE whether or not it had any involvement in supplying Yasser Abu Shabab and his group, however didn’t obtain a response by the point of publication.
‘Divide and conquer’
Amjad Iraqi, a senior analyst on the Worldwide Disaster Group, says that Israel’s use of the Widespread Forces towards Hamas mirrors the way in which by which it beforehand supported Hamas towards its secular rival Fatah.
“The idea is that the more you can remove the hegemony of any particular [faction], the more difficult you make it for society to resist the occupation,” he says.
Neve Gordon, Professor of Worldwide Regulation at Queen Mary’s, describes it as a method to “divide and conquer”.
“The idea […] is to try and turn Gaza into a land controlled by warlords in different parts, so there is no unity among the Palestinians,” he says.
“We can see what happens to countries that are divided by warlords, and the kind of internal struggles that emerge and often last years or decades,” Prof Gordon says.
One in every of his senior commanders, Issam Nabahin, has an extended historical past of militancy.
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Issam Nabahin poses on high of a UN car in a photograph first shared on 11 March. Pic: TikTok
In 2015, Hamas recognized him as an Islamic State militant and a suspect within the bombing of their automobiles. The next yr, Egyptian intelligence additionally recognized him as an Islamic State fighter.
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Issam Nabahin was named by Hamas’s armed wing as a suspect in a collection of bombings in Gaza Metropolis in 2015.
“After he broke from terrorism, he joined the Popular Forces,” says Hassan. “We only came to know him when the Popular Forces were formed.”
Picture:
Issam Nabahin (R) with Ghassan Al Duhine, commander of the Widespread Forces’ navy wing. Pic: Fb
On 9 June, native media reported that Issam had been arrested by Hamas. Two days later, nonetheless, a Hamas-linked outlet reported that his detention cell had been bombed by an Israeli drone. Issam’s destiny, the outlet reported, remained unclear.
“Here I am, alive and well and heading south,” he introduced defiantly, in a video posted to Fb on 18 June.
Two months later, he started posting once more – this time from the Widespread Forces’ camp in east Rafah.
Picture:
Issam Nabahin introduced his return to the Widespread Forces camp with a selfie on 17 August, 2025. Pic: TikTok
Hassan denies that Issam had been imprisoned once more in June. He additionally denies that the Widespread Forces had ever straight coordinated with the Israeli Air Pressure.
On the afternoon of 13 April 2025, a Widespread Forces unit was ambushed by Hamas whereas looking a property simply south of their camp. 4 of their fighters had been killed.
Satellite tv for pc imagery reveals that by the next morning, an Israeli airstrike had destroyed the home.
An eyewitness to a different battle, on 9 June, additionally informed us that the Widespread Forces had obtained air help.
“The clashes continued for half an hour or a little more before the air force intervened and targeted us,” he says.
‘We might prefer to run every little thing’
As negotiations round Gaza’s post-war governance drag on, Israel is shifting to form the truth on the bottom – and make sure that it retains affect it doesn’t matter what deal is ultimately agreed.
In June, the Widespread Forces denied that Yasser Abu Shabab had any intention of forming a authorities and mentioned he was targeted solely on offering safety to help convoys and Palestinians.
“We’d like to run everything,” he says.
*Not his actual identify.
Further reporting by Celine Alkhaldi and Sophia Massam.
