Netanyahu admits to arming criminal gangs in Gaza

"What did Lieberman leak? ... That on the advice of security officials, we activated clans in Gaza that oppose Hamas. What is bad about that?" Netanyahu said in a video posted to social media. "It is only good, it is saving lives of Israeli soldiers."

Israeli and Palestinian media have reported that the criminal group is part of a local Bedouin tribe led by Yasser Abu Shabab. The European Council on Foreign Relations (EFCR) think tank describes Abu Shabab as the leader of a "criminal gang operating in the Rafah area that is widely accused of looting aid trucks".

Michael Milshtein, an expert on Palestinian affairs at the Moshe Dayan Center in Tel Aviv, told AFP that the Abu Shabab clan was part of a Bedouin tribe that spans across the border between Gaza and Egypt's Sinai peninsula.

Some of the tribe's members, he said, were involved in "all kinds of criminal activities, drug smuggling, and things like that".

Army spokesman Brigadier General Effie Defrin on Friday confirmed the military supported arming local militias in Gaza but remained tight-lipped on the details.

"I can say that we are operating in various ways against Hamas governance," Defrin said during a televised press conference when questioned on the subject, without elaborating further.

Milshtein said that Abu Shabab had spent time in prison in Gaza and that his clan chiefs had recently denounced him as an Israeli "collaborator and a gangster".

"It seems that actually the Shabak (Israeli security agency) or the (military) thought it was a wonderful idea to turn this militia, gang actually, into a proxy, to give them weapons and money and shelter" from army operations, Milshtein said. He added that Hamas killed four members of the gang days ago.

The ECFR said Abu Shabab was "reported to have been previously jailed by Hamas for drug smuggling. His brother is said to have been killed by Hamas during a crackdown against the group's attacks on UN aid convoys."

Hamas said the group had "chosen betrayal and theft as their path" and called on civilians to oppose them. Hamas, which has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades, said it had evidence of "clear coordination between these looting gangs, collaborators with the occupation, and the enemy army itself in the looting of aid and the fabrication of humanitarian crises that deepen the suffering of" Palestinians.

Milshtein called Israel's decision to arm a group such as Abu Shabab "a fantasy, not something that you can really describe as a strategy". "I really hope it will not end with catastrophe," he said. - AFP