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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
•
7 min read
Champion of the people or a traitor? A new force emerges in southern
Gaza
By Tim Lister, Ibrahim Dahman, Oren Liebermann and Eyad Kourdi, CNN
Updated:
12:00 PM EDT, Sun June 8, 2025
Source: CNN
The photo shows a lean, tanned man in a dark helmet. He’s grasping a
rifle and UN vehicles move behind him as he waves through traffic.
The man is Yasser Abu Shabab, who says he commands hundreds of armed
men known as the Popular Forces to offer protection to international
organizations working in southern Gaza.
In his early thirties, Abu Shabab is from a prominent Bedouin family in
southern Gaza. On October 7, 2023, he was languishing in a Hamas-run
jail in Gaza, accused of drug trafficking, before being released after
the conflict started.
Now he is an emerging presence in southern Gaza, controlling near the
crucial Kerem Shalom crossing and providing men to guard convoys
against looting, which has only worsened since limited aid started
entering Gaza in mid-May following an
As Hamas’ grip on Gaza has weakened and the territory’s police
force has been hollowed out, gangs have emerged to steal humanitarian
aid from convoys and re-sell it. But many convoys are also stopped and
ransacked by desperate civilians.
Abu Shabab told CNN that he leads “a group of citizens from this
community who have volunteered to protect humanitarian aid from looting
and corruption.”
The reality is more complicated.
Israeli officials have to Abu Shabab’s militia, as part of an
operation to arm local groups to counter Hamas. Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu defended the covert enterprise earlier this week,
saying the security forces had “activated clans in Gaza which oppose
Hamas.” He did not name Abu Shabab, but Israeli officials told CNN
that Abu Shabab is part of the program.
Abu Shabab insisted to CNN that his men had not received weapons from
the Israelis. “Our equipment is extremely basic, passed down by
volunteers from their forefathers or assembled from limited local
resources.”
For its part, Hamas says Abu Shabab is a traitor and a gangster. Last
week, the group said: “We pledge before God to continue confronting
the dens of that criminal and his gang, no matter the cost of the
sacrifices we make.”
Hamas killed his brother last year and has tried to kill Abu Shabab at
least twice, according to Muhammad Shehada, a Gaza analyst at the
European Council on Foreign Relations.
In response to written questions from CNN, Abu Shabab repeatedly denied
any connection with the Israeli military, saying: “Our forces do not
engage in any form of communication with the Israeli army, neither
directly nor indirectly.”
Analysts find that difficult to believe, based on evidence of his
movements in Israeli-controlled areas of Gaza. One video from late May
shows Abu Shabab stopping a Red Cross vehicle and talking with an
official. CNN geolocated the encounter to an Israeli-controlled buffer
zone close to the crossing point at Kerem Shalom. Other videos show
encounters with United Nations’ convoys in the same area.
Israel – and in particular Netanyahu – has never laid out clear
plans for what governance and security in Gaza might look like if or
when Hamas is defeated. Israel has been trying to find groups or clans
opposed to Hamas who might play a role, but more recently Netanyahu and
other ministers endorsed a plan put forward by US President Donald
Trump for and redeveloping the territory.
A growing role
Abu Shabab has had a presence near the ruins of Gaza’s long defunct
airport in Rafah since late last year. Shehada at the ECFR said that
while the ceasefire held earlier this year, his group appeared to
vanish.
But his significance has grown in recent weeks, since Israeli
authorities began to allow a trickle of aid to reach Gaza through Kerem
Shalom in mid-May. Abu Shabab’s social media presence, along with
slick videos and fluent English commentary, has expanded.
“It’s nearly impossible this is being done inside Gaza,” Shehada
said. “It’s probably someone outside that is running this entire
psy-op.”
A diplomatic official told CNN that the UN had to deal with local
elements as it tried to distribute aid, whether they are backed by
Hamas or not.
Abu Shabab “has a few square kilometers of an area under his control,
and then it’s on to the next guy,” the official said. “The fact
that he is not targeted by the Israelis is a clear indication of how
they see him.”
The official also asserted that the – the controversial new US-backed
organization tasked with distributing aid in Gaza – had contact with
Abu Shabab, whether directly or indirectly.
Abu Shabab responded to CNN that “with regard to the Gaza
Humanitarian Foundation, we stress the need for its work to operate
within a unified national framework and to maintain continuous
coordination with all legitimate parties.”
GHF told CNN on Sunday that it had no collaboration at all with Abu
Shabab’s group. “We do have local Palestinian workers we are very
proud of but none is armed and they do not belong to Abu Shabab’s
organization,” GHF said.
Convoys and more
Last month, soon after limited aid began entering Gaza, Abu Shabab
posted that his group had secured 101 trucks of aid, mostly flour,
brought in by the World Food Programme, and praised “my loyal
brothers who sacrificed their lives, and everyone who volunteered their
primitive weapons or a drop of sweat to feed the bereaved and
displaced.”
Truck drivers told CNN that Shabab had provided 200 armed men to
protect the convoys.
“Our forces regularly accompany aid convoys, and protecting
vulnerable civilians is one of our top priorities,” Abu Shabab told
CNN.
His group’s role has expanded beyond protecting convoys.
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.”
The encampment is in an area known as the Morag Corridor, to which the
Israeli military wants Gazans to move as it orders evacuation orders
for much of the strip.
Early in May, the far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich
said the population of Gaza, would be “concentrated” in a narrow
strip of land between the Egyptian border and the corridor.
A senior Israeli security official said at the same time that the goal
was to separate humanitarian aid from Hamas “by involving civilian
companies and creating a secured zone patrolled by the IDF.”
This would include a “sterile area in the Rafah region beyond the
Morag route, where IDF will screen all entrants to prevent Hamas
infiltrators.”
Palestinian branding
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.
Nor does his family want anything to do with him.
“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.”
He said his group had endured “false accusations and systematic smear
campaigns, and we have paid a heavy price,” also alleging that Hamas
had killed several of the group’s volunteers “and members of my own
family while we were guarding aid convoys for international
organizations.”
Muhammad Shehada at ECFR said there is evidence that Abu Shabab’s
presence is expanding with Israeli support into Khan Younis, to the
north of his stronghold.
Even so, his reach is still limited. The Popular Forces speaks of
“hundreds of daily requests we receive on our Facebook page from
individuals seeking to join us,” but analysts believe Abu Shabab
probably has only about 300 men under his command.
Most people in Gaza would never think of joining him for fear of being
branded collaborators, said Shehada.
Even so, he added, Abu Shabab’s militia now serve multiple functions
for the Israelis, helping control where aid goes, or does not go;
trying to entice desperate and hungry people to the so-called ‘safe
zone’ in eastern Rafah; and carrying out high-risk missions to detect
the presence of Hamas fighters.
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