Alwaght- The latest Israeli tactic in Gaza war is setting up alliance with criminal and looting gangs in Gaza. It seems that the Israelis are intentionally trying to deploy organized groups to Gaza to sink this war-ravaged enclave into looting and instability.
Arming ISIS terrorists by Israel
A former senior Palestinian Authority official told New Arab news in detail how the looting gangs are recruited into Gaza. According to the Palestinian official, when Israeli forces attack an area, they deliberately leave weapons on the bodies of Palestinians so that the looters can come and loot the area after the army has withdrawn. Local Palestinian reporters confirmed this, saying that the looting groups have obtained their weapons in this way.
The Israeli regime is also suspected of directly arming gang leaders. In March, the Israeli army announced that it was considering arming Hamas’s rival tribes in Gaza. Some of these clans, including the Doghmush, have close ties to the terrorist groups of ISIS and Al-Qaeda.
The Israeli army is also considering making these clans responsible for distributing daily aid in Gaza and administering zones not run by Hamas.
Recently, videos emerged of teenagers and young men from a tribe in Deir Al Balah in Gaza, parading in broad daylight with new American-made M16 assault rifles and firing in the air. This is despite the fact that the Israeli regime constantly monitors Gaza from the air and attacks those who are armed very quickly. On the other hand, M16 rifles are very rare in Gaza, and these rifles are mostly in the possession of the Israeli military forces, and now holding these weapons in the hands of the looting groups promotes the theory that the Israeli army has probably provided these weapons to the anti-Hamas groups.
Joe Saba, the head of a relief group in Gaza, said that if the Gazans resist the looters, the Israeli drones attack them, not the armed gangmen.
Looting in broad daylight under Israeli cover
Before the war, at least 500 trucks of food aid were entering Gaza daily, but even then it was insufficient. The aid now barely reaches 100 trucks a day, and many of these trucks are also looted. Last week, 98 trucks were looted by armed gangs and looters at entries of Gaza by armed tribesmen. A UN official told New Arab that two trucks, after obtaining the necessary permits, were trying to reach the northern half of Gaza, but were stopped by the Israeli army for five hours in the Netzarim Corridor in central Gaza and were eventually looted.
There are many reports that members of the criminal gangs in Gaza are operating and moving around with AK-47 rifles and other weapons within 100 meters of Israeli soldiers and tanks without being harmed, but if civilians and ordinary citizens approach the Israeli soldiers, they soon become target for Israeli shootings.
Two Palestinian sources have also confirmed that the Israeli army never shoots at members of the armed gangs who loot trucks.
What's behind Israeli alliance with ISIS looters?
It seems that emergence of the organized armed criminal gangs is the latest Israeli plan to block aid entry to Gaza.
Another issue that can be taken into account in connection with Israel’s support for criminal groups in Gaza is Israel’s attempt to cause social collapse in Gaza. In fact, social collapse in Gaza is the Israeli goal of making the Gaza Strip uninhabitable.
Israel also uses the state of disorder in Gaza as an excuse to issue licenses to foreign private security companies to open the way for foreign security companies to enter Gaza under the pretext of providing security.
Most notorious Gaza criminals
Palestinian sources have said that two of the most vicious criminals are probably behind the main looting gangs in Gaza. They have formed their gangs with 200 criminal individuals. These groups also extort humanitarian aid convoys, charging more than $4,000 per truck to allow it to pass. Some of the most important individuals in these groups are:
Yasser Abu Shabab: He is a drug dealer who before the war was convicted and imprisoned several times. He broke from the prison amid the war. Last week, police and Hamas forces attempted to eliminate Abu Shabab in an ambush, killing 11 of his gang members, including his brother and partner, Fathi, and the group's accountant, and wounding 30 others, but Abu Shabab escaped. A day later, he resumed his criminal campaign by stealing a fuel truck, burning another truck, and preventing other trucks from reaching the Kerem Abu Salem crossing.
Shadi al-Sufi: He is a murder and son of a man under charges of collaborating with Israel. Al-Sufi was sentenced to death in 2020 for murdering Jabr al-Ghayegh, a senior official of the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Al-Sufi was arrested later in 2020 by Gaza police. His tribe in the same year said that he fled to Sinai Desert, but he emerged in the middle of war.
Police sources maintain that both of these gangsters hold links to ISIS and Al-Qaeda in Sinai. However, the important point is that now there are close bonds between the looting groups and criminals and Israeli army, serving each other's interests in the middle of war.
