How Israel is engineering Gaza’s social collapse
Armed and masked Palestinians secure trucks loaded with humanitarian aid entering Gaza through the Israeli Kerem Shalom Crossing, on Salah al-Din Road east of Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, 19 January 2025
Mahmoud Mushtaha writes in +972 on 12 June 2025:
Since late 2024, Gaza has undergone a transformation that defies traditional frameworks of war or occupation. What is unfolding is not mere military conquest but engineered disintegration — one in which Israel actively cultivates Gaza’s collapse by empowering criminal militias, fragmenting authority, and dismantling every pillar of Palestinian social infrastructure.
At the center of this unraveling stands Yasser Abu Shabab, a 32-year-old Rafah native of Bedouin descent. Once imprisoned by Hamas on charges of narcotics trafficking, Abu Shabab now leads the “Popular Forces” (al-Quwat al-Shaabiya), a militia operating with open Israeli backing in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Publicly, he postures as a provider of order and protector of humanitarian aid; in reality, he is the linchpin of a proxy war to replace governance with warlordism and clan-based coercion.
Abu Shabab’s rise is no accident. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has admitted to “activating powerful clans in Gaza” to counter Hamas, as corroborated by former right-wing Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, as well as media investigations showing his militia operating in Israeli-controlled zones, armed with AK-47s seized from Hamas and redistributed with the approval of Israel’s security cabinet.
Another critical piece of this strategy emerged in March with the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a privatized aid consortium ostensibly designed to bypass Hamas in aid provision. Instead, it has become an instrument of control, routing humanitarian supplies through militias like Abu Shabab’s, with access ultimately contingent on biometric registration and political vetting.
GHF’s credibility collapsed quickly. Within days of beginning operations, its CEO resigned, citing violations of humanitarian principles, while a Swiss NGO asked authorities to investigate the organization. Critics within the Israeli government accused GHF of being a Mossad front, with Lieberman condemning what he called “the waste of hundreds of millions of dollars [in Israeli taxpayers’ money].”