The Management of Anarchy
Israel has no plan. But the byproduct of destroying Hamas' governance with nothing to replace it is the return of Gaza to its pre-Hamas Mogadishu days.
Days after Yisrael Beiteinu party leader and former deputy prime minister Avigdor Lieberman claimed that “Israel has provided assault rifles and light weapons to crime families in Gaza, on Netanyahu's orders… We're talking about the equivalent of [Islamic State] in Gaza,” Netanyahu confirmed that this was indeed what he was doing. “In consultation with security officials, we made use of clans in Gaza that are opposed to Hamas. What’s wrong with that? It’s only good. It saves the lives of IDF soldiers.”
The accusation follows months of reporting since November 2024, including by the Washington Post, Financial Times, New York Times, and The New Arab that this is what’s been happening. The Washington Post cited an internal UN memo from October:
An internal United Nations memo obtained by The Washington Post concluded last month that the gangs “may be benefiting from a passive if not active benevolence” or “protection” from the Israel Defense Forces. One gang leader, the memo said, established a “military like compound” in an area “restricted, controlled and patrolled by the IDF.
The gang leader, described by the Financial Times as “Gaza’s most notorious gangster” in November, is none other than Yasser Abu Shabab, the ringleader of aid looting and one of several criminals that escaped Hamas jails now in Israel’s employ. These also include salafi-jihadists like Issam Nabahin, who allegedly fought in the ranks of Islamic State in Sinai and was involved in firing rockets at Israel outside of Hamas’ auspices as well as Ghassan Duhine, a brother of an Islamic State operative killed by Hamas who was himself involved in the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit.
Abu Shabab’s “Popular Forces” militia, or “Anti-Terror Service”, is said to number about 100-300 individuals, although one report says it’s only “a few dozen”. An Israeli involved in the operation told Kan News:
This is a military unit that receives instructions from high-level officials and arms gangs inside Gaza. The unit transports, unloads, secures, and takes directions from Shin Bet officers who accompany the forces on the ground. I assume there are many such operations in various parts of the Gaza Strip. They are carried out at the request of the Intelligence Directorate and the Shin Bet, so I don’t know exactly how many… We brought in light weapons, a lot of equipment, and I think there was also money.
The weapons are reportedly captured from Hamas and Hezbollah and handed over.
The precise involvement of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the UAEgypt is unclear. Abu Shabab said that his forces “conduct [security checks] through the Palestinian intelligence service,” but claims to be unaffiliated.
PA sources told Ynet that the militia’s salaries are paid by the PA via one of its intelligence officers in Gaza, Baha al-Balusha, although overall PA intelligence chief Majed Faraj is unhappy with the arrangement. The same sources also said UAE agent, former Fatah man, and Mahmoud Abbas’ bête noire Mohammad Dahlan is involved, and that two more armed gangs, one in Beit Lahiya in the north and the other in central Gaza, are slated to begin operating soon.1
A senior PA official told i24NEWS that “everything is coordinated with Mahmoud Abbas,” with the news organisation citing Arabic media reports saying that “an unnamed Arab country is involved in training the militia. Mahmoud al-Habash, advisor to Mahmoud Abbas, maintains direct contact with Abu Shabab.”
Meanwhile, CNN reported:
Abu Shabab’s force uses Palestinian insignia and flags prominently on its uniforms, but he told CNN that his “grassroots forces are not an official authority, nor are we operating under a direct mandate from the Palestinian Authority.”
The office of the spokesperson for the Palestinian Security Forces, Major General Anwar Rajab, told CNN there was no connection between the Palestinian security apparatus and Abu Shabab’s group.
Rajab told the New York Times, “I will issue a statement clarifying everything soon, as the matter is complex and involves overlapping security, political, and — most importantly — humanitarian factors.”
None of this really matters, except that Netanyahu wants this operation to be as indirect and [implausibly] deniable as possible, and therefore may be working through the PA/UAEgypt in terms of funding. Abu Shabab’s progressively more sophisticated social media campaign, and UAE license plates, indicates UAE involvement.
CNN also reported:
“Leaders and elders of the Abu Shabab family” said in a statement that they had confronted him about videos showing “Yasser’s groups involved in dangerous security engagements, even working within undercover units and supporting the Zionist occupation forces that brutally kill our people.”
The family declared its “complete disassociation from Yasser Abu Shabab” and urged anyone who had joined his security groups to do the same.
“We have no objection to those around him eliminating him immediately; we state clearly that his blood is wasted,” the family statement said.
Abu Shabab told CNN that the statement was “fabricated and false” and accompanied by “a media campaign targeting me and my colleagues.”
Abu Shabab himself has been at pains to repeatedly deny any affiliation with Israel since the news first broke, including this Facebook post on June 6:
To the masses of our Palestinian people,
The Israeli media has circulated false claims alleging that our popular forces received weapons from the occupation.
We completely reject these accusations and consider them an obvious attempt to tarnish the image of a grassroots force that was born from suffering and stood against injustice, looting, and corruption.
Our weapons are simple and modest, provided through the support of our people—from the meagre resources of our children, through donations from families, and from young men who found no choice but to protect humanitarian aid from theft and to defend families in eastern Rafah. Suspicious pages have deliberately avoided showing images of our weapons because they know our arms are primitive and old, which contradicts their lies and the occupation’s narrative.
We have not been and will never be a tool in the hands of the occupation, and we will not allow our name to be dragged into dubious schemes.
If the occupation has evidence, let it present it to our people and to the global media.
We call on everyone to visit our areas and investigate the facts before spreading lies that serve the occupation’s narrative by sowing division and deepening internal strife.
The occupation’s attempt to claim us as its own is nothing more than an indirect admission that we are a powerful and influential force.
We will remain committed to our principles, reject treason, and remain loyal to this proud people, who know their own and can distinguish the sincere from the impostors.
You will not succeed in demonising our liberation project from terrorism, and falsehood will not silence the voice of truth.
It does not bode well for the future of this plan, whatever it is, that everyone is still terrified of being associated with Israel, or of being associated with those associated with Israel.
At first glance, this appears to be the piloting of an “ink-spot strategy”, with Abu Shabab acting as a nominally independent Israeli proxy controlling territory while Israel controls aid distribution via the nominally independent Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
Further, as CNN reported:
On May 17, the day before the Kerem Shalom crossing reopened, work started on a tent encampment in eastern Rafah, according to satellite imagery reviewed by CNN. That work appears to have concluded on May 30.
The camp is less than 500 meters from where Abu Shabab runs checkpoints.
Four days later the so-called Popular Forces issued a statement saying that Abu Shabab “invites the residents of these areas to return, where food, drink, shelter, security and safety have been provided, shelter camps have been set up, and humanitarian relief routes have been opened.”
Abu Shabab is now calling on Gazans to volunteer for “administrative committees” to run these areas under his ostensible control. In an ideal world, the plan would be to start reconstruction there and allow in more aid, not just food aid, to stabilise them. There is no sign of this happening, however.
An ink-spot strategy is impossible to reconcile with Netanyahu’s recent declaration that one of the new goals of the war is to evict Gaza’s population, which comes after his statements about destroying as much infrastructure as possible to force Gazans to leave.
These gang proxies are not part of some coherent war or even postwar plan, but on the contrary, the result of Netanyahu refusing to have one.2
Some, including Hamas, have accused Israel of deliberately fomenting anarchy and facilitating looting to undermine Hamas and the UN aid delivery and distribution system,3 partially in order to present its GHF in a better light as an alternative. This gives Israel far too much credit.4
While those outcomes might be serendipitous byproducts for Israel, Hanlon’s Razor remains the correct prism. Israel simply has no plan to replace Hamas’ governance and security functions, but the IDF has been ordered to destroy Hamas’ political and military control. Hence, anarchy.
There is no long-term vision here beyond the negatives: ensuring that no Palestinian entity can govern both Gaza and the West Bank and that Israel doesn’t have to directly involve itself in any way with managing aid distribution, security or municipal functions.
Because the quintessentially indecisive Bibi declines to come up with any plan, the Israeli security establishment is just on auto-pilot, as it has been throughout the war.
One security source told Maariv:
We’re not building castles in the air around this group as if it’s going to replace Hamas. We’re talking about a few dozen to maybe a couple hundred members. The point is to test whether local actors can fill governance roles in specific, geographically-defined areas in place of Hamas… Right now, this is a very small and limited move. It’s an initial pilot, and it’s unclear how or where it will develop.
Maariv reports scepticism in the IDF, with a military source saying:
As long as this is a local tactical move that helps us in a few areas, we’re fine with it. But these gangs cannot be a substitute for a long-term strategic plan. If you want to replace Hamas, you need to build a governance mechanism with regional states that can take over Hamas’s role.
One thing Israel and Hamas both understand is that control of humanitarian aid lies at the heart of political power in Gaza. Which is how this Abu Shabab caper began.
Israel Has and Eats Its Humanitarian Aid Cake
Israel’s response to October 7 was always predicated on a paradox: Israel would destroy Hamas’ military and political governance of Gaza, but would emphatically refuse to take any responsibility for the lawlessness and looting that would inevitably result and would draw a red line around the IDF even temporarily managing aid distribution5 or security functions. This is the beginning and end of the humanitarian aid issue in Gaza.6
Haaretz reported on March 4, 2024:
Until recently, armed Hamas policemen guarded the aid trucks entering Gaza. Though these police saw to the needs of Hamas first and only then distributed aid to Gaza's residents, the U.S. demanded that Israel not harm these police, to prevent looting and chaos. For several months, Israel allowed these Hamas police to guard the convoys.
This arrangement ended after Israel assassinated senior Hamas police officer Majdi Abd al-Aal on February 7, who had been in charge of Gaza's Rafah border crossing with Egypt. Several other policemen were also killed in the strike.
Immediately after Israel began systematically targeting the police in early February, aid delivery completely broke down as desperate civilians and then organised criminal gangs began attacking trucks and looting aid across Gaza. Turns out getting rid of law enforcement leads to law and order breakdowns. Who would’ve thought.7
Ambassador David Satterfield, at the time the State Department special envoy for Middle East humanitarian issues, said on February 17, 2024:
This is a dangerous area. The UN had been attacked, first by desperate mobs, then by criminal elements. They required security. With those attacks on police escorts… it has been virtually impossible for the UN or anyone else, Jordan, the UAE, any other implementer, to safely move assistance in Gaza because of criminal gangs.
The Washington Post reported several days later:
After a string of Israeli attacks on members of Gaza’s Hamas-run civilian police force, officers withdrew earlier this month from the Palestinian side of the Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel. Since they left, trucks have been attacked in the crossing’s holding area, according to U.N. humanitarian coordinator James McGoldrick. Drivers have been shot at, attacked with axes and box cutters, and had their windows smashed, he said.
Humanitarian officials said police have also stopped serving as security guards for aid convoys, paralyzing deliveries in the enclave, where… profiteers are selling stolen food at astronomical rates on the black market.
…
“Many of these trucks, before they even get 200 meters, are stopped by cars and then attacked and looted,” McGoldrick said. “We’re lucky to get some of the material to warehouses.” Getting the food from there to the north is even more difficult.
Convoys run the risk of being overrun on the journey, he added, describing one driver he met on a trip to Gaza this month who had lost his voice from screaming at looters: “This is for the people of Gaza. This is for Gaza City, it’s not for here,” he recounted telling them.
“It made no difference,” McGoldrick said.
…
Haya Marwan, 23, said her family in the northern Jabalya refugee camp has also been subsisting on khoubiza and other edible plants. Theft is rampant, she said, with empty homes stripped bare.
“The situation has descended into severe chaos,” Marwan said, adding that armed men threaten anyone carrying food. “I’ve heard of shootings by bandits,” she said. A bag of flour that used to cost $8 now goes for about $275.
“People are left to fend for themselves,” she said.
Despite the occasional snarky and obnoxious tweets and statements by Israel’s Coordinator of the Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) about the UN not collecting aid on the Gaza side of Kerem Shalom, it was Israel ensuring that aid organisations could neither safely reach it nor distribute it. This while cynically making irrelevant claims about the numbers of trucks it allowed in or could theoretically screen.
In the north, no aid was coming in due to Israeli restrictions and the looting of whatever was allowed through by criminal gangs and desperate civilians in the absence of Hamas police. In late February 2024, therefore, the IDF organised at least four aid convoys as part of a partnership with “local Palestinian businessmen”, the last one of which ended in the so-called “flour massacre”, where more than 100 civilians were reportedly killed and countless others wounded. Thus ended that experiment.8
By October 2024, it had become clear that Israel was actively facilitating the systematic looting of aid.
First, in early July 2024, the Washington Post reported on the lucrative cigarette smuggling business in Gaza, which Israel refused to comprehensively crack down on, exacerbating the looting crisis as aid trucks and aid was ripped apart to find the smuggled cigarettes. As the Post reported in November:
By the summer, a lucrative black-market trade in smuggled cigarettes — banned by Israel from entering Gaza during the war — was booming, with organized gangs attacking trucks to search for them.
…
[Georgios Petropoulos, head of the Gaza office for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs] said cigarettes, originally hidden in produce, were now being found inside cans of food, showing that smuggling begins in factories, with much of the contraband believed to originate in Egypt. The smuggling route runs through the Sinai Peninsula and is linked to the Egyptian branches of the Bedouin tribes in Gaza, aid organizations and transport company executives said.
…
U.N. officials say they have repeatedly asked Israel to clamp down on cigarette smuggling — or let cigarettes in legally — to ease the looting epidemic, but discussions have been fruitless.
…
While traveling in a humanitarian convoy during a visit to Gaza this month, Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said he saw a group of men carrying sticks less than half a mile from the aid pickup point. Mattresses intended for displaced people were strewn along the road, cut to pieces by thieves searching for cigarettes.
Haaretz also reported on the cigarette smuggling issue, as did the BBC.
But far worse than that was Yasser Abu Shabab. As the November Post article reported:
The internal U.N. memo obtained by The Post identified Yasser Abu Shabab — a member of the Tarabin tribe, which spans southern Gaza, the Negev Desert in Israel and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula — as “the main and most influential stakeholder behind systematic and massive looting” of aid convoys.
Operating from the eastern part of Rafah, Abu Shabab leads an outfit of about “100 thugs” who attack trucks bringing food and other supplies into Gaza, Nahed Shuhaibar said. He described how the gang sets up berms to waylay convoys along the Israeli-controlled route from Kerem Shalom, where they wait with Kalashnikovs and other weapons.
In one incident in early October, about 80 of Shuhaibar’s 100 aid trucks were attacked and the goods inside stolen by Abu Shabab’s men, he said. The gang has killed four of his drivers since May, he added, most recently in an attack on Oct. 15. Another driver who was attacked last month remains in the hospital with broken arms and legs, Shuhaibar said.
…
Israel did not respond to questions from The Post about Abu Shabab and his alleged criminal activities.
The IDF was also shooting or bombing anyone, whether Hamas-affiliated police or private escorts, trying to protect the trucks from his gang:
For months, Israel approved only one route for all aid entering through the Kerem Shalom crossing: a rough road running from the cargo pickup point through a desolate patch of southeastern Gaza.
One humanitarian worker who regularly travels the route said looters typically station themselves a little over a mile and a half from the crossing. Others recounted seeing men and boys even closer to the entry point, some armed with sticks, rods and guns.
…
While the gangs carry out their work openly, local escorts employed by logistics companies were “shot at repeatedly” by Israeli forces in early October, the U.N. memo said, describing one incident involving a quadcopter drone.
…
Humanitarian groups have repeatedly asked Israeli authorities to approve other crossings and routes that would allow them to bypass the gangs. For months, they recounted, those entreaties were ignored: “The only route they give us is directly through the looters,” one aid worker said.
When the World Food Program tried to clear another road for humanitarian use in recent months, its team came under fire on several occasions, according to Alia Zaki, a spokeswoman for the agency.
The new route was finally approved by Israel last month, and some aid trucks have begun using it. But looters have already adapted, targeting convoys there as well, Zaki said.
Haaretz reported in November:
Trucks entering from Kerem Shalom pass through the area along the Egyptian border, which the IDF controls, and then turn north toward Rafah, where the gangs attack them. Sources familiar with the aid distribution process say the gangs stop the trucks through improvised barricades or by shooting at the tires. They then demand a "transit fee" of 15,000 shekels ($4,000). Any driver who refuses risks being abducted or having the contents of his truck stolen.
Sources working in Gaza say the armed attacks take place just a few hundred meters away from Israeli troops. Some aid groups say attacked truck drivers have even sought help from the IDF, but the army has refused to intervene. Moreover, they say, the army bars them from taking alternate roads that are considered safer.
…
To prevent this, some groups do agree to pay. Payments are generally made through a Palestinian company that serves as an intermediary. Several sources say that officers from [COGAT], the army unit responsible for aid to Gaza, even recommended that they work through that particular company.
"I tried everything," the senior aid official says. "We wanted to travel by other roads, but the IDF forbade that. We tried coming at 5 A.M. in hopes that the thieves wouldn't be there, but it didn't help. We even tried negotiating with the armed men and explaining that this was food for people, but that also didn't help."
…
Around a kilometer from Kerem Shalom, shortly before the eastern neighborhoods of Rafah, there's an area that the army calls "the looting zone." This is where most of the looting of aid trucks takes place. Yet the area is under full control of the IDF, with troops stationed just hundreds of meters, and sometimes less, from the roadblocks the armed men erect on the road.
The Israel Air Force monitors the area using drones while IDF lookouts monitor what is happening from the ground. Soldiers operating in Gaza say they're very familiar with the looting, which they say has become routine.
During a tour for journalists with IDF forces in northern Gaza, reporters saw an aid convoy heading south. One officer told them, "In another 500 meters, they'll be looted." None of the soldiers looked surprised.
The IDF lookouts, both on the ground and in the air, operate 24 hours a day along the logistical routes the army has paved throughout Gaza. These are the roads the aid convoys use. Truck drivers and officials from international aid organizations charge that the soldiers can see the attacks on the convoys, yet do nothing.
The IDF says another road was recently opened in southern Gaza that will enable truck drivers to bypass the looting zone. Yet several incidents have already occurred along this road as well. Palestinians say the gangs are still collecting protection money for letting aid convoys into both "safe areas" and combat zones.
A more in-depth Financial Times report the same month said:
Led by escaped convicts and formed along family lines, the heavily-armed gangs defy Gazan authorities and operate freely along the border, a restricted Israeli military zone.
They stockpile the looted goods in open-air headquarters — seemingly overlooked by Israeli surveillance drones — and resell the supplies via middlemen to destitute Palestinians at prohibitive prices.
…
While some theft occurs on the road itself, in other cases trucks are forced into the gangs’ bases. In such instances, one transport broker said, “the driver is led under the threat of weapons to the eastern border areas within the eye line and earshot of the Israeli military”.
…
Unarmed UN escorts and volunteer protection teams carrying sticks have, meanwhile, been hit by Israeli attacks, officials and locals said.
Mohammad recalled being taken to a gang’s base where his truck was robbed. Vast amounts of looted goods surrounded him, including flour, canned food, blankets and medicine.
“Everything you can imagine, it was just piled up there. Out in the open: there were no walls, there was no building,” he said, adding that the base was less than 2km from the Kerem Shalom crossing.
Trucks carrying commercial goods are held hostage until the trader pays a ransom to have his goods released, according to local business people.
“They take the truck with the driver. They have forklifts, and storage places. These are also known to the Israelis,” said Ayed Abu Ramadan, head of Gaza’s Chamber of Commerce.9 “They ask for a massive ransom for the commercial goods to be released. Whereas for the aid [from the UN and NGOs] they just take it and sell it in the markets.”
…
Abu Shabab’s gang, which is believed to control territory just 1.5km from the border crossing, is the most powerful group, according to truck drivers, transport brokers and aid and humanitarian officials.
His men are heavily armed with new weapons, and profit chiefly from smuggled cigarettes, according to the internal UN memo, which was first reported by The Washington Post. One crate of cigarettes sells for $400,000, according to Gaza’s Chamber of Commerce, up from a couple of thousand dollars before the war.
The BBC reported that it “was told that thefts often happen in clear sight of Israeli soldiers or surveillance drones - but that the army fails to intervene. Stolen goods are apparently being stored outside or in warehouses in areas under Israeli military control.”
However, the New York Times reported on December 23 that Israel might have begun to take at least some action:
Until recently, Israeli forces largely did not target the looters unless they were affiliated with Hamas or other militant groups, according to U.N. officials. But that appears to have changed in recent weeks.
In Israeli military drone footage viewed by The Times, looters can be seen confiscating white sacks of aid from cars in southern Gaza in November. Minutes later, an Israeli airstrike killed them, the footage appears to show.
Shani Sasson, a spokeswoman for the Israeli military agency that regulates aid to Gaza, said Israeli forces were targeting armed looters who attacked convoys, not just those affiliated with Hamas. She denied that Israel was providing any immunity to criminal gangs stealing aid.
In late November, Israeli forces opened fire on looters waiting to waylay trucks in Rafah, forcing them to retreat, according to an internal U.N. memo. With the path cleared, U.N. aid trucks rushed toward central Gaza.
But the gangs were far from deterred.
The looters soon regrouped and hijacked them on the road, the U.N. memo said. The trucks were stripped bare.
Hamas’ Law and Order vs. Israel’s (Mis)Managed Anarchy
In response to the rampant aid theft and price-gouging by organised criminals and looters, Hamas re-established the Saham (Arrow) strike force and counter-profiteering squad, alternatively referred to in one report as the “The Popular and Revolutionary Committees”, ambushing and executing looters and war profiteers, including from Abu Shabab’s gang and family.
The Financial Times reported on November 19:
The remnants of Gaza’s Hamas-run security forces have begun a violent crackdown on aid theft and spiralling black market prices in the enclave, including shooting suspects in the legs as they struggle to appease a starving population.
Armed men in plain clothes, who Palestinians say are policemen driven underground by Israeli targeting, have started to reconstitute in the enclave to act as a shadow force against wartime profiteering.
Traders dealing in looted aid have been threatened with hefty fines and with being shot in the knees, several Palestinians with knowledge of the matter told the Financial Times. More than a dozen suspected aid thieves were reportedly killed in a single operation on Monday as the clampdown intensified.
Nahed Shohaybr, head of Gaza’s private transport association, said he had seen multiple suspected profiteers shot in the legs from the window of his car as he was driving through the southern city of Khan Younis, where he lives. He estimated that about 100 suspected profiteers or thieves had been shot.
…
Attempts by members of the prewar Hamas-led authorities, who have retained some measure of power within the strip, to keep the profiteering in check have ranged from the violent punishments to price caps introduced by the Ministry of National Economy in Gaza.
…
“The Ministry of Economy and supply investigators are attempting to impose control, but they lack the necessary numbers, capacity and protection given the rampant lawlessness and spread of weapons,” said Mohammad Barbakh, a researcher at the economy ministry.
An “emergency committee” formed during the war by [Hamas] has published price lists and warned traders to adhere to them in messages that circulate on Gazan news sites and social media groups.
As early as March 2024, the OCCRP reported on Hamas’ failed attempts to impose price controls, describing “a broken and exploited system where money is skimmed at every point in the commercial supply chain, from transport to procurement and sale.”
Traders, authorised importers and Hamas officials all blamed one another for the profiteering and sky-rocketing prices, although the accusations against Hamas seem to be more about ineffective enforcement and corruption:
In a bid to control prices, a committee from the ministry of economy now buys the majority of each shipment from Palestinian importers, the senior economy ministry official said. Those products are taken to sales points run by the ministry in the three governorates of Rafah, Khan Yunis, and Central Gaza where prices are controlled, he added. The official blamed “traders, middlemen and thugs” for going around the system, trying to commandeer goods and hike prices.
However, traders who spoke with OCCRP said the Hamas-run authorities do not pay a fair price for their shipments and do not properly control prices at the sales points, fuelling a black market that puts basic goods beyond the reach of ordinary Gazans.
“The [economy ministry] takes the goods to selling points where goods are sold for unbelievable prices and no one adheres to the prices set by the ministry,” one trader told OCCRP.
“Imagine the ministry distributes to the selling points 10,000 trays of eggs. Traders who buy it, sell 2,000 or 3,000 trays, hide the rest and later sell them on the black market. The ministry of economy cannot control them by staying there until all goods are distributed and sold,” he added.
The official and traders described how, since the war started, Israel has imposed a new restriction whereby it authorizes only five Palestinian importers to transport goods into Gaza from Egypt.
The senior economy ministry official accused the authorized importers of taking up to a 30 percent cut from the Palestinian businesses receiving the goods.
Of the seven traders who spoke with OCCRP, three are among those now authorized by Israel to bring in commercial goods from Egypt to Gaza. They denied profiting from a monopoly, instead blaming Hamas-run authorities for seizing their goods and undercutting them.
One of the authorized traders told OCCRP he no longer felt able to operate in the Hamas-run system. “I am not willing to take the risk so that they make profits,” he said.
Nahed Shohaybr told the Washington Post in November 2024 that “Things are under control” in terms of prices and distribution in the areas still fully controlled by Hamas.
A Gazan reporter, writing under a pseudonym, explained on June 5, 2025:
In response to the looting, Hamas’ Interior Ministry announced the formation of a new police force called Sahem. This force has 5,000 officers tasked with fighting against looters. They have claimed that the thieves are collaborators with Israel who act according to Israeli military instruction.
Hamas has threatened that all thieves have a target on their back and has said that they will punish all law breakers, as well as merchants who have inflated their prices.
Israel has now escalated its support for the Popular Forces against Hamas’ crackdown, providing air support to Abu Shabab’s gang in fights with Saham. Hamas claims to have successfully targeted the “Popular Forces” in recent days, inflicting at least a dozen casualties. Abu Shabab’s forces themselves say Hamas has killed at least 50 members of the group.
The Moot and Irrelevant Question: Did Hamas Systematically “Steal” Aid?
According to the Shin Bet, as of May 2024, Hamas had been diverting at least 60% of humanitarian aid entering Gaza since the war began, with journalist Ehud Yaari claiming contemporaneously that Hamas had made US $500 million from this control. In April 2024, Fatah’s Awdah TV also claimed:
Hamas’ persecution of any party who is a source for distributing the aid or securing it began from the start of the war, as Hamas persecuted well-known figures and teams of volunteers on the ground in mid-October. It attacked them and killed some of them for two reasons: Firstly, preventing any activity by any party in the Gaza Strip; and secondly, ensuring Hamas control over the aid and its storage, which of course leads to these crazy and unreal prices that no one can pay in the shadow of this destruction. After the occupation bombed storehouses controlled by Hamas, the accumulation of tons of various food and aid products that Hamas had taken exclusivity over became clear, at a time when the Gaza Strip is suffering from hunger.
In May 2025, the Palestinian Authority directly condemned “the looting and theft carried out by criminal gangs targeting warehouses and storage facilities of humanitarian aid designated for the people of Gaza” and “held Hamas-affiliated gangs primarily responsible.”10
Unfortunately, Israel has refused to show evidence, publicly or privately, for its allegations of Hamas systematically looting or stealing aid,11 and until very recently all it did was release several clips of gunmen on trucks and alleged communications intercepts that by no means proved anything.
In February 2024, Satterfield said:
No Israeli official has come to me, come to the Administration, with specific evidence of diversion or theft of assistance delivered by the UN in the centre and the south of Gaza – the north’s a different story12 – Since October 21, when assistance resumed. Is there Hamas presence among UN staff? Absolutely. Without question. Does Hamas have its own interests in using other channels of assistance, [like the] Palestinian Red Crescent Society, to shape where and to whom assistance goes? Without question. But the issue of formal diversion or theft directly from UN-delivered assistance? No such allegations… It includes fuel, as well... No allegations.
On March 25, 2024, Shimon Freedman, a COGAT spokesman, said Israel had no “specific evidence” he could share that Hamas was stealing aid.
In early April 2024, Satterfield said, “Gaza’s population of 2.2 million are not… starving today because the bulk of the assistance delivered has gone to them, not to Hamas; and that’s the fundamental fact.”
On May 2, 2024, then State Department spokesman Matthew Miller asserted aid diversion by Hamas was not a widespread issue, and that the first major case of Hamas aid diversion had just occurred and ended with them returning the aid:
QUESTION: Has this been a widespread issue, Matt?
MR MILLER: No, it has not.
QUESTION: No —
MR MILLER: This is the first widespread case of diversion that we have seen. Hamas had diverted these trucks for some time after – not the original, just to be clear, because that could be misleading. The original trucks came in, unloaded the aid; they were then picked up on different trucks for distribution inside Gaza. They did divert those trucks; they were held for some time. To my understanding, the aid has now been released. It’s been returned to the humanitarian implementer that was responsible for it in the first place. And we have made clear – and we think the United Nations relief organizations involved will also make clear – it’s an unacceptable act that Hamas should not repeat in the future —
QUESTION: But —
MR MILLER: — because it jeopardizes the delivery of aid to the Palestinian people.
QUESTION: But in terms of the number of occurrences that Hamas has diverted aid, is this – how many times would you say this has happened?
MR MILLER: There may have been minor ones in the past. I can’t speak to – this is the first major diversion of aid.
On July 8, 2024, COGAT’s Elad Goren said, “The looting [of trucks coming through Kerem Shalom] is happening by criminal families,” not Hamas.
In November 2024, the Washington Post relayed:
Israeli officials, who have often accused Hamas of hijacking aid and commercial deliveries to enrich itself, acknowledged last week that crime families were behind some of the looting.
“Some looters have connections to Hamas,13 and some do not,” an Israeli official told journalists at a briefing on Nov. 11, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.
Satterfield said in early November 2024, referring to the reentry of trucks through Rafah towards the end of October, that those involved with aid distribution “do not report to us in this 10 day, 12 day period of assistance delivery, interdiction of or seizure of goods by Hamas.”
In a more recent interview with Satterfield on CNN, he said of the claim Hamas was stealing aid:
No such allegation, or evidence in support of allegations like that, were ever provided privately by informed Israeli security or political officials. It is a claim which, on the face of it, is not reflected in any of the experience that those involved in the humanitarian effort have seen. Did Hamas benefit politically from its presence at distribution sites, to reinforce to the population of Gaza that they remained effective and in place? Certainly, they did. Did Hamas take some assistance? Quite likely. But from the UN and INGO channels, which were highly accountable, whatever aid was ultimately diverted in any fashion by Hamas was minimal compared to the aid that was received by the general population. Now, the same can’t be said about aid that came in outside UN or international NGO channels. That’s a different matter, and Israel understands that. But we’re speaking now of the UN. The allegations that the majority, I’ve heard some claims all of the assistance, was seized by Hamas, that has never been made privately to officials involved in this process nor demonstrated through evidence.
Asked in May 2025 whether she’d seen any evidence that it is Hamas stealing the food, World Food Programme (WFP) head Cindy McCain said, “No. Not at all. Not in this round,” presumably, though not unambiguously, referring to the period after Israel’s full siege, when it began letting aid trucks back into Gaza.
The IDF itself assessed that, of the more than 100 looting incidents since aid began to reenter Gaza in May, none were attributable to Hamas, but to desperate civilians, criminal gangs and several of Gaza’s clans.
On May 24, 2025,14 the Washington Post reported:
Citing intelligence assessments, Israeli officials say that Hamas has generated hundreds of millions of dollars by seizing convoys and reselling goods. But Israel has never presented evidence publicly or privately to humanitarian organizations or Western government officials to back up claims that Hamas had systematically stolen aid brought into Gaza, at least under the United Nations’ system, according to interviews with more than a dozen aid officials and several current and former Western officials.
The previously-mentioned Gaza reporter, writing under a pseudonym in June 2025, wrote, “The second party responsible [for the hunger in Gaza] is Hamas, which confiscates part of the food meant to feed civilians to feed its own forces.”
An April 16 Wall Street Journal article reported claims by various officials and an activist:
Hamas used the flow of humanitarian and commercial goods to build new income streams, according to Arab, Israeli and Western officials. This has included charging taxes on merchants, collecting customs on trucks at checkpoints, and commandeering goods for resale. Hamas also has used overseas cash to buy humanitarian goods that are then sold in Gaza and turned back into cash, the officials said.
Even with these workarounds, Hamas was nearing a liquidity crisis before the January cease-fire brought an influx of aid into Gaza, giving the group a chance to refill its coffers, the Israeli and Western officials said. Those pathways closed when Israel sealed Gaza’s borders to humanitarian supplies in March.
…
“There is a big crisis in Hamas in terms of getting the money,” said Moumen Al-Natour, a Palestinian lawyer from the Al-Shati refugee camp, in central Gaza. Natour, who has been part of a burgeoning opposition movement to Hamas’s rule, said the group was struggling to pay Hamas-affiliated government employees. “They were mainly dependent on humanitarian aid sold in black markets for cash.”
…
During the cease-fire, Hamas set up distribution points for salary collection, paying people in cash or at times with goods, the Arab intelligence officials said.
On May 28, Jonathan Whitehall, the chief of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Gaza, said in a briefing:
Israel has publicly claimed that the UN and NGO aid is being diverted by Hamas. But this doesn't hold up to scrutiny. We do not have evidence that aid coordinated through credible humanitarian channels has been diverted. Aid coordinated through the UN system made up for 35 per cent of what entered during the ceasefire. We have no oversight on those supplies which were facilitated to enter by Israel through other channels.
The real theft of aid since the beginning of the war has been carried out by criminal gangs, under the watch of Israeli forces, and they were allowed to operate in proximity to the Kerem Shalom crossing point into Gaza.
On June 12, UNICEF spokesman James Elder said:
Just show us the proof. At no point, at no point in these 20 months, have we had any precise claims from [Israeli] authorities, let alone evidence presented. So we face statements without evidence designed to discredit tried and tested aid systems… even without the evidence, just take UNICEF, because it's not the first time we've worked in a war zone with a lack of governance. Our aid is tracked from point of registration to point of delivery.
The first actual evidence of systematic Hamas diversion somewhat suspiciously only emerged this month in the form of a single alleged Hamas document cited in a Wall Street Journal report on June 11, which “appeared to be genuine” according to “Arab intelligence officials and a former senior Israeli intelligence official”:
The group gave up to 25% of the aid under its control to members of its military wing until around April 2024, according to one Hamas document found by the Israeli military inside Gaza. Later, for a reason Hamas didn’t explain, the group lowered the total amount given to its military wing to 7%, with another 8% going to political and administrative parts of the organization, according to the document.
Also in June, the IDF gave a briefing recapitulating its accusations, allegedly based on intercepts and a few documents, that Hamas’ control of aid allowed them to make hundreds of millions through various mechanisms and protection rackets as well as divert a portion of aid to their members.15
The Times of Israel summarised the briefing:
Internal Hamas documents show the group has been “systematically exploiting” the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza throughout the ongoing war in order to fund its terror activities, the Israel Defense Forces said on Thursday, citing captured papers.
The military said the group has done so by confiscating the aid itself; then giving some of it to fighters and selling some to civilians at exorbitant prices; by smuggling forbidden products such as cigarettes into the Strip and selling them at great cost; by demanding protection payments from Gazans living in areas under the group’s effective governing control; and through informal banking transfers, in coordination with Hamas representatives in Turkey.
The IDF released a document Thursday it said was drawn up by Hamas, indicating that the group has maintained a policy of confiscating 15%-25% of aid entering Gaza during the war in order to finance its operations and pay operatives.
“In the past Al Qassam [the Hamas military wing] took 25% of the aid that arrived,” according to the document. “It has been agreed with the brothers in Al Qassam that the percentages will be changed as such: 7% to Qassam, 4% to government entities, 4% to elements of the [Hamas] movement.”
Other intelligence indicated that Hamas acted to smuggle goods — in particular tobacco products — that are not allowed by Israel to enter the Strip and then sold them at exorbitant prices. The military added that Hamas forbids local, independent vendors access to the products.
“In light of this, as part of the entry of humanitarian aid, cigarettes are not allowed to enter the Gaza Strip through the crossings,” the IDF said, adding that inspectors at border crossings “have thwarted dozens of attempts to smuggle tobacco products” since the start of the war.
The military also said that Hamas — which has ruled the enclave for almost two decades — has demanded protection fees from Gazans, providing another source of income.
Finally, the IDF said that Hamas in Gaza has received “hundreds of millions of shekels from Iran and other sources” in payments facilitated by the group’s members in Turkey, through a Muslim hawala network, in which individuals, rather than banks, broker money transfers.
“Hamas exploited the humanitarian aid process and international aid organizations, whether knowingly or through manipulation, by pushing for the entry of ‘excess’ aid items, purchased using Hamas’s external funds, into Gaza. Hamas then sold the aid at inflated prices to residents and collected the cash proceeds,” the IDF said.
The evidence presented is extremely thin, and mostly extends only up to March 2024. For instance:
A March 2024 letter by a random Gazan complaining to a senior Hamas official of a single minor incident where Hamas members had taken 17 bags of flour and 15 aid coupons from his brother’s truck. It’s quite possible the senior Hamas official ensured the aid was returned, assuming the letter is even genuine.
An alleged intercept of two random Gazans complaining about Hamas selling flour for 120 shekel instead of 60 and accusing them of raiding UNRWA warehouses, among other things. Date unknown.
A single alleged Hamas document, cited by the Wall Street Journal, which apparently says, “In the past Al Qassam took 25% of the aid that arrived. It has been agreed with the brothers in Al Qassam that the percentages will be changed as such: 7% to Qassam, 4% to government entities, 4% to elements of the movement.”16
It’s also notable that the IDF is cynically blaming Hamas for the tobacco smuggling and profiteering, to which the IDF themselves turned an occasional blind eye or actively facilitated and which they caused by banning tobacco products from legally entering. Hamas has historically either banned tobacco products or heavily fined those selling them.
The reality is closer to what the Washington Post reported in July 2024:
Who profits from the illicit trade in cigarettes… is often murky…
For much of the war, cigarettes were smuggled in through trucks at the Rafah crossing and sold at an inflated price, according to an Egyptian truck driver who moved aid along the border.
…
In Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza, a 26-year-old unemployed restaurant waiter watched his profits rise, along with the risks. He joined the trade early in the war to feed his pregnant wife, he said.
His current route begins in West Bank fruit and vegetable markets, where people working with him pay a driver to conceal cigarettes in commercial items destined for Gaza.
“We arrange the cigarette packs at the bottom of the boxes that are supposed to hold the vegetables,” he said in a phone interview. “Every time we invent a specific method.”
One technique, he said, involves creating a small opening in watermelons and emptying out the pulp to make room for the packs.
“Every pack of [twenty] cigarettes costs us three shekels [$0.80] from the West Bank, and we sell them here for 2,000 shekels [$530]” — about $27 dollars apiece, he said.
The cigarettes are then loaded onto a prearranged truck and driven out of the occupied West Bank through the Israeli-controlled Tarqumiya checkpoint and dropped off at Kerem Shalom, the last remaining crossing into southern Gaza.
At Kerem Shalom, Israel says all goods are inspected to prevent Hamas from smuggling in weapons. Goren said COGAT finds and confiscates “90 to 95 percent” of hidden cigarettes, but did not respond to further questions.
Adel Amr, head of the Ramallah-based Palestinian transport syndicate, said that “90 percent” of trucks coming from the West Bank are not involved in smuggling efforts. Goren said cigarettes have also been found in aid coming from Egypt.
As recently as Wednesday, an Israeli-owned truck was found with 220 packages, typically each with 10 packs of cigarettes, at Kerem Shalom, according to a charge sheet Amr provided to The Washington Post.
COGAT has worked to cultivate business ties with traders and companies unaffiliated with Hamas. In doing so, Amr said, it has allowed a small group of merchants, some with cigarette smuggling ties, to monopolize much of the trade with Gaza.
The article continues:
When trucks make it to their destination, the smuggler in Deir al-Balah described separating the packs from the produce they were hidden in and selling them to another merchant.
The cigarettes are then hawked in the open, in makeshift tent camps and bombed-out cities, at astronomical rates.
With the lucrative black market largely out of Hamas’s control, officials try to co-opt the trade by targeting merchants and their connections, the smuggler said.
“If the merchants refuse to report us,” some plainclothes Hamas agents levy “huge fines,” he said, or “threaten them with death.” Others, he said, simply ask for a cut [emphasis added].
According to the Los Angeles Times, also in July 2024:
Nearly all of the tobacco now entering Gaza comes from smugglers who manage to slip it among truckloads of food at the commercial crossing still open. Or the few travelers from outside bring it in.
Hamas, whose government used to tax cigarettes that arrived in legal shipments, demands an unofficial tariff of half of any cigarettes it intercepts, Gazans said. Bandits, too, have ransacked humanitarian supplies looking for smuggled cigarettes.
Discussing the IDF facilitation of the Abu Shabab gang in November, the Washington Post reported:
The thieves, who have run cigarette-smuggling operations throughout this year [emphasis added] but are now also stealing food and other supplies, are tied to local crime families, residents say. The gangs are described by observers as rivals of Hamas and, in some cases, they have been targeted by remnants of Hamas’s security forces in other parts of the enclave.
Going back to the previously mentioned Israeli accusations, a Makor Rishon investigation in February 2025, based on Israeli sources, said:
According to estimates, the organization seizes 25-30 percent of the humanitarian aid entering the Strip – 150 trucks per day.
…
Sometimes Hamas takes on the role of the generous uncle passing out aid packages to residents. In one such case, Hamas took over a distribution line operating at a school and clinic, and began distributing food vouchers to residents, including baby food, creating absolute resident dependence on the organization. In other cases, two columns could be seen at distribution centers – one for Hamas members and one for Gaza residents. Those in the first line received twice the amount of supplies as their neighbors in the parallel line.
Some of the aid Hamas steals, it immediately resells to residents, the victims of the theft. Its revenue from this channel is estimated at $50 to $100 million per month, totaling nearly a billion dollars since the war began. For comparison, the Qatari cash suitcases that entered the Strip contained $30 million each month.
Then there's fuel. Fuel entry into the Strip before the ceasefire was done sparingly and only according to precise needs definition, such as operating generators in hospitals and humanitarian facilities. Even from this small amount, Hamas stole and used for its purposes.
…
Even when Hamas doesn't take goods by force, it ensures it profits from them. It collects protection money on every truck entering or moving within the Strip, even for essential aid to hungry residents. This week, Kan 11 reported that under the ceasefire agreement, Hamas set up checkpoints at various locations in the Strip to stop aid trucks and collect taxes on goods. Due to IDF forces' withdrawal from the Strip, there's no one to prevent Hamas from doing this.
"The average payment per truck is about 30,000 shekels, and it can reach 50,000," Eyal Ofer, a Hamas economy expert, tells us. "If you multiply that by 70,000 trucks that have entered since the war began, you reach about 2 billion shekels. Add to that the goods that reached them, and those they sold at high prices – and we're talking about 4 billion shekels accumulated in the past year."
Based on all the above contradictory information and claims, I think a few preliminary conclusions are possible:
There is no evidence Hamas ever systematically “stole” UN aid, though there have been desultory and small-scale incidents by local Hamas members or “Hamas-connected” looters, whatever that means.
Hamas diverted some aid for its own members and loyalists, but never anywhere near 60%, even according to the single unverified Hamas document the IDF now cites, which says 15% was the agreed total Hamas cut since early 2024. Even then, assuming the document is genuine or operative, there’s no evidence 15% actually was diverted.
Hamas may have stolen more aid from commercial or private trucks Israel was allowing in outside of United Nations auspices.
Hamas has been attempting, with varying degrees of success, to enforce price controls and order against looting in areas under its control, including through heavy fines and execution of looters and price-gougers, though some corrupt Hamas operatives are on the take.
Hamas, like all entities, organisations and countries in the region, is extremely corrupt. Welcome to the Middle East.
Some version of what Israel and other anonymous Western and Arab officials claim about the ways in which Hamas profits from its control of aid is almost certainly true, because it’s exactly what happens in every war zone.
Hamas is genuinely trying to tackle gang and desperation-related anarchy, even if this is also a cynical attempt to ensure it controls aid distribution and sends a signal to anyone collaborating with Israel.
Some of Israel’s claims are projections based on their own facilitation of such activities by gangs, from tobacco smuggling to protection rackets to price-gouging in the markets. Some or all of the accusations against Hamas may have been true at the start of the war but are out of date more than 20 months in after Israel systematically targeted the police and “criminal justice institutions”.
Ultimately, the question of whether Hamas systematically stole aid is moot. While it’s important for Israel to cut off sources of Hamas funds,17 the primary reason for Israel’s aid obsession is about Hamas controlling, not stealing, aid, as humanitarian aid is the fulcrum of political and social control in Gaza. The GHF is not primarily about bypassing Hamas’ ability to profit from aid, but to destroy Hamas’ control over aid distribution, and thereby undermine its political power in the eyes of Palestinians.
Israel’s target when it completely blockades Gaza or areas of Gaza is technically Hamas, but via the civilian population. The IDF wants the situation to become as difficult as possible for Palestinian civilians, and thus for Hamas. Hamas, on the other hand, wants, needs, aid to reach civilians to maintain control and alleviate unrest, and is attempting to restore the law and order and mitigate the anarchy that Israel has fomented.
This logic was laid out by the IDF itself in a March 4, 2024 article in Haaretz:
Many [Israeli] ministers, however, also oppose Hamas' involvement in the distribution of aid, on the grounds that it would enable the organization to control the population in Gaza.
…
The army says Hamas' leaders are concerned about the issue of aid, because they recognize that prolonged hunger and distress in Gaza could turn the public's anger against Hamas, and give rise to independent power centers beyond its control.
However, Israel’s security establishment has been given no orders as to what should replace Hamas, even as it was ordered to undermine and destroy its governance and internal security capabilities. In the absence of any plan by Bibi, the IDF and Shin Bet have been attempting, and failing, to implement their preferred stop-gap policy to manage the anarchy: the [pre-Hamas regime] status quo ante.
The Failure to Return Gaza to Clan and Family Control
Before Hamas seized power in 2007, Gaza looked like Somalia, a failed state consisting of a chaotic melange of clans, tribes and families under nominally central Palestinian Authority control.18 Part of Hamas’ initial popularity was that it could enforce law and order, however brutal, and any order is always preferable by the bulk of humans to disorder. The Israeli security establishment, however, lacking any plan or orders for a post-Hamas Gaza, simply went with the only thing they knew.
It was reported in early January 2024 that:
Israeli security chiefs are reportedly set to propose a plan by which Palestinian clans in the Gaza Strip will temporarily administer the coastal enclave after the ongoing war to remove Hamas ends, with each clan handling humanitarian aid and resources for their local regions.
The Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet security service want to divide Gaza into regions and sub-regions, with civil administration and the distribution of humanitarian aid in each area entrusted to a local clan, the Kan public broadcaster reported Monday. Only clans that are familiar to Israeli security officials will be entrusted to manage the aid that will enter the war-torn Strip from Egypt and Israel, the report said.
The plan, formulated by the IDF as a stopgap until a more permanent arrangement for Gaza is found, was to be presented to the security cabinet on Tuesday, the report said.
Needless to say, this was never going to work while Hamas still had the power to hunt down and kill collaborators. Hence, in mid-March 2024, the “coalition of families and clans of the southern districts of the Gaza Strip” released the following announcement:
Families and clans in Gaza deny reports claiming that they have met with international agencies. We emphasize that we are willing to meet with international institutions that are not connected to governments that are subordinate to Palestinian factions and only with those that are acting under Palestinian authority, namely the Palestine Liberation Organization, which is the only representative of the Palestinian people.
The occupation has contacted several members of the larger families by phone and its requests were rejected. We praise the al-Najjar, al-Madhoun, al-Shawa, al-Araa, al-Astal and Hilles families, whose position is that the PLO is the sole representative of the Palestinian people and that Gaza is an inseparable part of Palestine. We warn anyone who cooperates with the occupation in order to evoke internecine war and confusion, with the aim of creating a geographic rift that cuts the Gaza Strip off from Palestine. We demand that Hamas stops accusing us of treason and apostasy. Our nation can no longer bear the foreign concepts Hamas is trying to disseminate through its toxic media.
This happened shortly after reports emerged that Hamas had murdered the leader of the Doghmush clan, Haj Saleh Ashur, as a signal to anyone else cooperating with the Israelis.19 The clan itself vehemently denied the reports and released the following statement on March 15 accusing Israel of having killed the leader:
To our steadfast Palestinian people,
To our brothers in the Fatah and Hamas movements and all national and Islamic factions...A malicious and false statement, falsely attributed to the Central Council of the Doghmush family, has been circulated. It accuses the Hamas movement of killing the family’s leader. We firmly refute and clarify the following:
The family’s leader, Saleh Ashour Doghmush, along with a group of family elders and sons, were martyred at the start of the war by Israeli shelling in central Gaza (on November 16, 2023). This includes our heroic martyr who gave his life for our cause. These individuals fell victim to the criminal Israeli assault on our family and all of Gaza.
The Doghmush family and its central council reiterate our absolute commitment to the unity of the Palestinian people and their national and Islamic cause. We emphasize that we have not issued any such statement, and none of our members or representatives have made any contacts or statements outside the national consensus.
We warn anyone who tries to falsely use our family's name in misleading statements or actions that distort our legacy of struggle, sacrifice, and the honorable memory of our sons.
In conclusion:
We affirm that our family has a proud history and continues to offer its sons, with deep experience, on the path of national liberation, resistance, and jihad.
In this war alone, our family has sacrificed a group of martyrs—our sons—for the sake of God and the homeland.“And Allah is predominant over His affair, but most of the people do not know.”
In June 2024, the Telegraph reported, based on an “Israeli intelligence source with knowledge of the plan”:
A secret Israeli plan to persuade a powerful Gazan clan to take power from Hamas was derailed when the terror group executed its leader, The Telegraph can reveal.
…
The plan to install Gaza’s Doghmush clan – the most powerful in the enclave – failed after the group’s leader and several of its allies were assassinated, an Israeli intelligence source with knowledge of the plan said.
…
The intelligence source said an attempt was made two months ago to encourage the notorious Doghmush family to take control when the fighting ends.
“We offered the Doghmush control over Gaza,” the source said. “It ended disastrously.”
“The short attempt ended with Hamas entering the clan’s compound, beheading its people, and the next day all the clans jointly announced support for Hamas.”
…
The plan gave Israel “a potential avenue for alliances based on the age-old adage the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, said the intelligence source.
“This plan was like asking Tony Soprano to govern New Jersey,” the source added.
…
Several Israeli officials, unaware of the clan’s activities beyond its militancy, with a network of weapons and drug-smuggling operations, recognised the strategic potential and initiated contact with the clan’s leaders who agreed to discuss the proposals.
Muntez Doghmush, the head of the clan, which is known for its connections to al-Qaeda, is also listed among the US’s most wanted terrorists. Its notoriety has also made it unpopular with Gazans.
Mumtaz Doghmush, the leader off the infamous salafi-jihadist and Islamic State affiliated Jaysh al-Islam, involved in kidnapping Gilad Shalit in 2006 and BBC journalist Alan Johnston in 2007, is indeed sanctioned by the US as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. A 2007 International Crisis Group report on clans and families in Gaza (p. 11) had this to say about him:
Among the best-known for switching allegiances is Mumtaz Dughmush. During the 1990s, while still in his twenties, he had worked as an officer in the Preventive Security Organisation (PSO). After the 2000 uprising began, he left the PSO to help found the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) established by a former Fatah leader, Jamal Abu Samhadana, and became their deputy commander, drawing on financial and logistical support from both Fatah and Hamas. As Mumtaz and his followers grew increasingly autonomous and eventually left the PRC, their ties with Hamas developed accordingly. In June 2006 Dughmush’s group, operating for the first time under the name Army of Islam, participated alongside Hamas’s military wing and the PRC in a cross-border raid to avenge Samhadana’s assassination, which resulted in the capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
For reasons that have never been entirely clarified, however, Mumtaz subsequently fell out with Hamas and apparently relinquished his role in holding Shalit. Within weeks the Army of Islam – its very name a pointed challenge – was flouting the Hamas government’s project to restore public order, capturing two journalists working for the U.S. Fox television network. In late 2006 Mumtaz switched allegiance yet again, reportedly approving deployment of several hundred of his fighters to boost Fatah.
In April, both the Abu Samra and the Hassanain clans accused Hamas of killing a member in the midst of desperate crowds trying to storm aid warehouses. The former took revenge only on the individual alleged Hamas operative they said was responsible in a publicised execution by firing squad, a mere act of tribal score-settling rather than a political act against Hamas, of which they are still terrified.
The latter demanded justice and threatened revenge, but clarified, “We hold no hostility toward any governmental or organizational entity in general,” worried Hamas might mistake their call for insubordination rather than the usual blood money or personal revenge under the traditional law.
None of this deterred Israel. On July 2, 2024, Reuters and the Times of Israel reported:
The plan for postwar Gaza that Israel has pitched to US allies is to run the Strip in cooperation with powerful local families. But there’s a problem: In a place where Hamas still wields ruthless influence, none want to be seen talking to the enemy.
…
A major pillar of the plan, according to public statements from leading Israeli officials, was to shape an alternative civil administration involving local Palestinian actors who are not part of the existing structures of power, don’t have ties to any terror organizations, and are willing to work alongside Israel.
However, the only plausible candidates in Gaza for this role – the heads of powerful local families – are unwilling to get involved, according to Reuters’ conversations with five members of major families in Gaza, including the head of one grouping.
…
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged the challenges last week, saying in an interview with the right-wing Channel 14 network that the Defense Ministry had already made attempts to reach out to Gaza clans but “Hamas eliminated” them.
…
The approaches from Israel described by members of the Gaza clans were modest in scope but different: they were about practical issues inside Gaza itself and focused on the north of the Strip, where Israel says it is concentrating its civil governance efforts.
One of Gaza’s clan leaders, who asked not to be named, told Reuters Israeli officials had contacted other mukhtars – though not him — in the past few weeks. He said he knew about it because the recipients of the calls told him about the calls.
He said the Israeli officials wanted “some respected and influential people” to help with aid deliveries in northern Gaza. “I expect that mukhtars will not cooperate with these games,” he said, citing anger with Israel over its offensive, which has killed clan members and destroyed property.
The person, whose clan is a major player in agriculture and the Gaza import business, has no formal connection to Hamas.
In another contact between Israel and influential Gazans, officials from the Defense Ministry have in the past two weeks contacted two major Gaza business owners in the food sector, according to a Palestinian briefed on the contacts.
It was unclear what the Israeli side wanted to talk about, and the business owners, who are from the north of Gaza, refused to engage with the Israelis, according to the person.
A senior member of a different clan said Israeli officials had not contacted his clan but would be given short shrift if they did.
“We are not collaborators. Israel should stop these games,” the clan member, who also has no formal connection to Hamas, told Reuters.
It seems the security establishment then turned to forming its own gangs of criminals instead of relying on cohesive clans or families. But even in June 2025, Yasser Abu Shabab’s family has disavowed him and said, “We have no objection to those around him eliminating him immediately; we state clearly that his blood is wasted.”
More than 20 months in, Hamas is still perceived by Gazan clans and families as the primary and once-and-future power in the Strip,20 while Israel’s staying power, despite its firepower, is too dubious to risk Hamas’ wrath.21
The potential collapse of the Islamic Revolution’s headquarters in Iran could change everything, but for now, the IDF and Shin Bet are creating a failed state on Israel’s borders out of bureaucratic inertia, having destroyed most or all of Gaza’s infrastructure, displaced its population, and facilitated total anarchy.
Israel is now legally and morally responsible for taking care of much of Gaza’s civilian population, a responsibility it refuses to accept or acknowledge, but has neither destroyed Hamas nor gotten any hostages released. In the absence of a plan, it has achieved the worst of all worlds.
This inertia, and the consequent and bloody mismanagement of anarchy by the IDF, will continue unless and until Bibi is willing to make a real decision to either end the war “permanently” in a deal and get the hostages back or pursue a coherent strategy, any strategy, in Gaza.
[Post-publication: On July 1, Or Fialkov broke the news on Twitter that two other IDF proxies were operating in Gaza. Ynet followed this up by reporting on the two Fatah-affiliated and salaried militias run by Fatah operatives Rami Khalas and Yasser Khanidek, reportedly receiving salaries from the Palestinian Authority and weapons, logistical support and humanitarian aid from the IDF and operating in Shuja'iyya in Gaza City and Khan Yunis, respectively.
Khanidek’s militia, according to the Ynet report, “claims to act in revenge for the 2007 assassination of Salameh Barbakh, a senior officer in the PA’s Preventive Security Forces, who was killed by Hamas fighters while trying to flee toward the Egyptian border. Sources say Barbakh had himself been involved in killings of Hamas members and was a known anti-Hamas figure within Fatah.”]
One Israeli official told the Times of Israel “that such schemes were only proposed by the Shin Bet because Netanyahu has barred the security establishment from advancing Gaza security initiatives that involve the [Palestinian Authority].”
Israel has absolutely been trying to discredit the UN aid delivery and distribution system with its messaging and accusations, of course, but that’s quite different to intentionally attacking their aid convoys by proxy to do so.
Well, on top of the countless bureaucratic and political obstacles Israel has thrown up to obstruct aid delivery and distribution, and the fact that it refuses to establish a working deconfliction mechanism, leading to multiple incidents where it fired on aid convoys and killed aid workers. It was the perfectly reasonable fear of desperate civilians, criminal gangs, and coming under Israeli fire that led to the shortage of truck drivers and trucks that drastically compounded the aid issue.
According to the Biden State Department’s May 2024 National Security Memorandum 20 (pp. 29-30):
There were numerous instances during the period of Israeli actions that delayed or had a negative effect on the delivery of aid to Gaza. Specific examples include:
• Some senior Israeli government officials have been actively involved in encouraging protests against and attacks on aid convoys that delayed their entry into Gaza. Israeli civilian protestors periodically blocked entry points into Gaza during a multi-week period in January and February, resulting in reduced aid flows.
• As noted above, there have been strikes on coordinated humanitarian movements and deconflicted humanitarian sites that created an exceptionally difficult environment for distributing and delivering aid.
• There have been denials or delays of specific movements of humanitarian actors.
• Extensive bureaucratic delays with regard to implementation of political commitments made by Israeli leaders have further slowed the delivery of assistance to civilians in Gaza.
• Inconsistent rejections of humanitarian relief supplies and a lack of standardized processes significantly reduced aid workers’ ability to transport humanitarian items into Gaza. In particular, Israel has failed to provide a clear, definitive list of items allowed into or prohibited from entering Gaza because of dual-use concerns. It also has, on occasion, stretched dual-use issues to a concerning degree.
• Humanitarian organizations continue to report a lack of clarity around how cargo is validated at checkpoints along supply routes and there is no standardized practice dictated by COGAT to prevent approved commodities from being rejected at various inspection points.
• Delays in visa issuance for humanitarian staff by Israel’s Ministry of Welfare and Social Affairs have exacerbated the shortage of relief personnel and made the delivery of aid into Gaza more difficult. In late April, as a result of transfer of the authority over visa issuance to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and U.S. intervention, all but a small number of pending visa requests were approved for periods of at least six months.
The attacks on police also meant the end of prison security, enabling the escape of Gaza’s worst convicts, many of whom, like Yasser Abu Shabab, went on to become the major looters and have now been recruited by the Shin Bet.
Israeli claims that few were killed directly by Israeli gunfire are irrelevant, as all available information points to gunfire starting the stampede and truck driver panic that Israel blamed for most of the deaths. See this CNN report and this New York Times report, for example. As of May 2024, three months later, the IDF’s “independent” fact-finding assessment mechanism (FFAM) was still investigating the incident (see the National Security Memorandum-20, p. 23), and the IDF refused to cooperate with journalists asking for information. No new information in its defence has been produced to date.
Similar incidents have occurred several times since then, especially since the GHF began operations and as a direct result thereof, making it pretty clear that the IDF has taken no action to prevent such occurrences and they are, at best, part of a systemic issue relating to, inter alia, rules of engagement, training, and discipline.
That is, Hamas-affiliated.
Of course, nobody should believe a single thing the Palestinian Authority says about Hamas. Or anything, really.
[Post-publication: Israel halted aid to the north again in late June after a video emerged of armed gunmen atop aid trucks, which the Government accused of being Hamas. Gaza’s clans rejected the accusation, asserting it was them on the trucks and that they were guarding the aid from looters. Hamas also denied involvement. The Times of Israel reported on June 26:
The Higher Commission for Tribal Affairs, which represents influential clans in Gaza, denied that the masked men in the images were Hamas operatives, and said the trucks had been protected as part of an aid security process, managed “solely through tribal efforts.”
The commission said that no Palestinian faction, a reference to Hamas, had been involved in the process. The Palestinian terror group, which has ruled Gaza for almost two decades but now controls only part of the territory, also denied any involvement.
…
Amjad al-Shawa, director of an umbrella body for Palestinian non-governmental organizations, said the aid protected by clans on Wednesday was being distributed to vulnerable families.
…
“The clans came … to form a stance to prevent the aggressors and the thieves from stealing the food that belongs to our people,” Abu Salman Al Moghani, a representative of Gazan clans, said, referring to Wednesday’s operation.
].
This is an important detail, as the north was isolated from the rest of Gaza and nobody had any visibility. As a [presumably Fatah-linked] Palestinian activist claimed on Awdah TV in early April 2024:
The aid trucks enter after they are checked carefully by the Israelis, at the Rafah crossing of the Kerem Shalom crossing. Then they go to northern Gaza Strip, and what happens there? There is the armed militia of Hamas, there are armed families… it is being stolen. Even the international organizations admit this. Most of the aid is being stolen – over 60% or 70% of the aid goes to the warehouses of some movements, some factions, some tribes… [Hamas own the warehouses and] re-sell the products to the people at exorbitant prices.
What “connections to Hamas” means is anybody’s guess, but even this isn’t an accusation of a systemic Hamas-related issue.
It’s unclear why the IDF waited until now to do this, but it seems to be little more than a propaganda campaign in defence of the shitshow that is the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
In other words, even according to the worst IDF accusation, only 15% of aid was being diverted in 2024.
The April 16 WSJ article, entitled “A Depleted Hamas Is So Low on Cash That It Can’t Pay Its Fighters”, said the aid blockade was severely undermining Hamas financially. Two months later, there is absolutely no evidence that this happened, or, if it did, that it unduly hampered or undermined Hamas either politically or militarily.
[Post-publication: I had missed this, but on April 25, the National Gathering of Palestinian Tribes, Clans, and Families condemned Mahmoud Abbas for criticising Hamas, stating, inter alia, that “the resistance represents the clearest path toward our just goals of liberation” and “Abbas's speech was consistent with the occupation's narrative and the Zionist narrative, as if he were a partner in protecting Israel's security.”]
[Post-publication: Saham operatives had a firefight with the generally Fatah-affiliated Barbakh clan (see note 1) after killing a member and shooting at others for allegedly stealing aid. Ynet reports the victim was Mohammed Barbakh, a Fatah operative who organised anti-Hamas protests across Gaza and seemingly served in Yasser Abu Shabab’s gang.
However, the Barbakh clan is not monolithic. German media reported in October 2024 and February 2025 that hundreds of their diaspora members in Berlin were behind organising anti-Israel protests and attacking police, and that they openly support Hamas.]