How journalist Saleh Aljafarawi murder & Hamas’s crackdown on Israel-backed militias connected
Masked police stop motorists at intersections in Gaza as they patrol the area following the ceasefire, October 2025
Tareq S. Hajjaj reports in Mondoweiss on 14 October 2025:
The killing of prominent Palestinian journalist Saleh Aljafarawi on Sunday night, just a few days after the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was announced, was a shock to many across Gaza. But the timing of the beloved journalist’s death raised many questions around the state of chaos and lawlessness spreading across the Strip after the end of the war.
According to local sources, contact was lost with Aljafarawi during the day on Sunday. In the evening, news broke that he had been killed in the Sina’a area west of Gaza City. When his body arrived at the al-Ahli Arab Hospital, local sources said that signs of torture were apparent on his body and that seven bullets had pierced him. His wrists also displayed signs that he had been restrained.
Aljafarawi had gathered a significant following on social media during the past two years of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, documenting numerous massacres and airstrikes in the Strip’s northern half throughout the war.
Local sources indicate that Aljafarawi was killed by an armed group from the Doghmush clan, one of the largest Palestinian families in Gaza with a long history of enmity with Hamas that spans decades. The Doghmush clan has been accused by Hamas of collaborating with Israel. According to local reports and close friends of Aljafarawi, he was killed while covering the clashes between the Doghmush clan and the Arrow Force, a Hamas unit formed during the war to fight Israeli-armed gangs that looted aid.
Mondoweiss attempted to contact members of the Arrow Force for comment on Aljafarawi’s death, but its ongoing fighting with Israel-backed armed gangs across Gaza has made establishing contact difficult. An official from the Ministry of Interior, which oversees the Arrow Force, told Mondoweiss that Aljafarawi was “deliberately targeted” by a group “outside the law.” The official added that members of the group were “dealt with in the framework of revolutionary law.”
On Monday, a viral video circulated online, allegedly depicting members of the Arrow Force lining up and executing a group of men accused of treason and of collaborating with the Israeli army via firing squad.
Hamas launches security campaign against Israel-backed gangs and militias
When Israel broke its previous ceasefire with Hamas in March earlier this year, one of the chief targets of Israeli forces was civil servants in the Ministry of Interior, which included the police and internal security forces. The systematic targeting of these bodies aimed to create a power vacuum and sow chaos in the Strip. During the war, the Israeli intelligence funded and armed criminal gangs and local clans to attack Hamas and loot humanitarian aid, deepening social polarization. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu openly acknowledged this policy last June.