Israel continues to provide financial and military support to criminal gangs, drug dealers, and other mercenaries in Gaza to commit war crimes in the strip on behalf of the occupying regime’s army, a report says.
According to an investigation published by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, five prominent armed groups currently operate in Gaza under Israeli military control.
The groups are deployed in Beit Hanoun, Shujaiyeh, Deir al-Balah, Khan Yunis, and Rafah.
The report found that the armed groups now function as an “operational arm” of the Israeli army and Israel's internal spy agency, known as Shin Bet, inside Gaza.
The key figures in these groups are not political leaders or credible alternatives to Hamas. Instead, they are former gang bosses and drug dealers who exploited Gaza’s disorder for their own benefit, senior Israeli military officials said.
“You see Israel, the IDF [Israeli military] and Shin Bet sending armed, trained militias to commit war crimes, and I’m the one who has to protect them during their operations so they don’t get hurt,” Haaretz quoted an Israeli air force officer, who tracked the gunmen by drone alongside a Shin Bet operative, as saying.
The investigation, based on the Israeli officer’s account and UN data, found that the armed groups opened fire on civilians, looted and torched homes, and forcibly displaced families from shelters.
According to the report, the scheme creates the conditions for killings reminiscent of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, in which Israel-backed militia slaughtered as many as 3,500 Palestinian and Lebanese civilians in the two Beirut refugee camps in 1982.
Israeli forces sealed off the area and watched the killing unfold, firing illumination flares to help the militants spot their targets.
Gazan sources confirmed that the Israeli military provided the militias with artillery and drone cover during their attacks.
The militant groups use Israeli army call signs, appear on briefing maps, are marked in command systems, and have bases near Israeli outposts.
The tactic is built on Israel's earlier backing of now-deceased Daesh-linked leader Yasser Abu Shabab, known for participating in looting aid and targeting Palestinian civilians.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had previously acknowledged that Abu Shabab’s gang was armed by Israel.
A Palestinian source told Kan News last November that associates of Abu Shabab had even participated in meetings with senior US officials.
Abu Shabab emerged during the two-year genocidal war as the head of the so-called Popular Forces, looting aid and killing or kidnapping Palestinian civilians and Hamas fighters as well as collaborating with Israeli forces.
He was reportedly armed and provided with operational freedom under Israeli military protection.
Abu Shabab’s Popular Forces has faced widespread condemnation from Palestinian factions, who slammed the group as “traitorous” and linked it to both Israel and Daesh.
A 2024 internal UN report identified the group as a key actor behind “systematic and massive looting” of humanitarian aid convoys in Gaza.
According to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza, Israel’s genocidal war has resulted in the deaths of over 73,417 Palestinians and left more than 174,360 injured.
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