October 16, 2025
Looting Gaza: HOW US-FUNDED, ISRAEL-BACKED GANGS DESTABILIZE GAZA’S SOCIETY
Guns, cash, and American aid: so named is the investigation by Sky News into the so-called Popular Forces network run by Yasser Abu Shabab. The organization’s membership, which has recently grown from 1500 to about 3000 members, includes several tribes who have declared allegiance to the Forces in a bid to secure wealth, resources, and protection not offered anywhere else in Gaza.
Who is funding the Popular Forces, and what are the factors underlying the sudden appearance and growth of this collaborator network in Gaza?
The access gained by the Popular Forces to money and material goods that are nearly impossible to find in Gaza has been revealed to be the result of direct coordination and supervision with Israeli occupation forces.
Under the IOF’s watchful eye, Abu Shabab’s gangs have transported cash, guns, food, and cars into Gaza, with the political objective of dividing Gaza’s population and turning them away from their tradition of resistance to Israel.
Located in a small, village-style base in southern Gaza, the Popular Forces’ headquarters is supplied with food, a medical facility, a school, and a mosque, all recently built unlike other areas of Gaza. The base is situated along the route used by aid trucks to enter Gaza from the Kerem Shalom crossing, giving them exclusive access to intercept aid that is entering, including loads of flour coming in from the UN World Food Programme.
Over the course of the genocide, Abu Shabab’s gangs have intercepted a large percentage of the small amount of aid that was able to enter Gaza, and have done so with the approval and financial Backing of Israel and the U.S. government.
The primary source of revenue for the Popular Forces is price gouging: after intercepting goods that are directly needed and scarcely available throughout Gaza, Abu Shabab’s gangs resell the intercepted goods at ten to a hundred times their normal price. Among the most lucrative non-essential goods they have intercepted are cigarettes: the report finds that the network charged up to $20 for a single cigarette throughout the genocide.
As their share of prized goods increased within Gaza’s extremely scarce wartime economy, the Popular Forces came to hold an almost monopoly power over Gaza’s population who depended on specific foodstuffs, medications, and other goods to survive.
One example: painkiller medications that were smuggled in flour. Drugs like OxyContin used to treat severe pain, with a high potential for misuse and dependency, were smuggled by Popular Forces gangs into Gaza through sacks of flour, then sold at exorbitantly high prices to Palestinians in desperate need of these specific medications.
The Popular Forces have more recently used their weapons against Hamas, allowing Israel to push a narrative of social instability and anarchy as justification for Israeli control over Gaza. These weapons were smuggled into Gaza from origin points in Egypt and Jordan, with coordination through an office run by the Palestinian Authority.
"[The office] provides us with weapons and money and with everything our people and forces need,” Hassan Abu Shabab told Sky News reporters. According to Abu Shabab, a kind of central command room in the office managed communications between Egyptian, Jordanian, and Israeli national security, with the specific purpose of aiding Abu Shabab’s gangs and network operations in the Strip.
The so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) was described in the report as one major “donor” to the Popular Forces, who keep some for themselves before reselling it at gouged prices within the Strip. There is evidence of GHF pallets at Abu Shabab’s camp, which UNRWA’s Gaza director Sam Rose has described as a “complete breach of humanitarian principles”.
An active IOF soldier from Unit 585 confirmed to Sky News reporters that Israel is facilitating the supply of food reaching the Popular Forces first, before it reaches the rest of Gaza’s population. "Israel helps (Abu Shabab), it gives him grenades, it gives him money, it gives him vehicles, it gives him food, it gives him all types of things,” the soldier said.
Israel’s role in creating, sustaining, and supporting the Popular Forces gang networks headed by Yasser Abu Shabab is a classic case of divide and conquer.
According to Amjad Iraqi, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group: “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.”
“The idea [...] is to try and turn Gaza into a land controlled by warlords in different parts,” says Israeli political scientist Neve Gordon, “so there is no unity among the Palestinians.” These efforts mirror other projects across the wider Arab region aimed at creating permanent instability, including the Islamic State (ISIS), whose membership included Issam Nabahin, now a senior commander of the Popular Forces in Gaza.
For Israel, the goal behind supporting these illicit networks is a straightforward one: to empower a group of people in Gaza who can serve their interests, and to undermine Palestinian resistance and governance in the Gaza Strip, at the expense of the Palestinian people.