How Israel Used Daesh-Linked Gangs and GHF To Weaponize Aid Against Palestinians
By Robert Inlakesh – Jul 27, 2025
Following the bombshell admission that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was backing a Daesh-linked criminal network to fight the Hamas resistance movement in Gaza, the issue finally received the widespread attention it deserved.
Yet, the scandal goes much deeper than simply backing gangsters.
Since the beginning of the Gaza genocide more than 600 days ago, Israel has worked to systematically target Gaza’s police and security officers in a bid to plunge the territory into chaos and lawlessness.
This was also done in conjunction with bombing, invading and disabling the besieged territory’s hospitals, killing local community leaders and emergency workers.
In fact, during the initial months of Israel’s ground offensive in 2023, where the efforts were focused almost entirely in northern Gaza, each significant incursion ended up culminating in the takeover of a major medical complex.
Perhaps the most well-known case was that of the invasion of al-Shifa Hospital, which Israel erroneously claimed to be a command and control center for the Qassam Brigades of Hamas.
This was later thoroughly debunked.
Having inflicted the maximum damage in northern Gaza, a number of schemes were then attempted in order to overturn law and order, including using local criminal elements and even forces loyal to the Palestinian Authority, to begin taking over the north of the territory.
However, what remained of the Palestinian police and intelligence services crushed these conspiracies at an early stage. Most of those involved were executed or fled.
Yet, as the months went on, Israel refused to give up on this strategy of recruiting a collaborator force that would be capable of doing its dirty work. By early 2024, most of Gaza’s civilian population had fled to the southern Rafah border area and were forced to live in tent cities there.
During this period, although the Hamas-led government-aligned police forces were targeted and killed in the event that they attempted to provide security to the limited number of aid trucks that were permitted to enter the territory, they were still able to maintain a presence there.
At the time, an informed source, who works for the Palestinian Authority (PA), told me that the occupied West Bank-based PA was communicating with their Israeli counterparts about potential plans to stifle Hamas funding and security networks, believing that Rafah was the key.
A security source in Gaza informed me that during the months the Israeli military threatened to invade Rafah, the calculation to seize the Gaza-Egypt border area was based upon joint PA-Israeli assessments regarding the economic impacts on Hamas in the event of the move.
The assumption was that the Rafah invasion would eliminate Hamas’s financing operations and cripple their security services, allowing for other forces to eventually take over.
Looting aid and starving the people
Upon Israel’s seizure of the Rafah border, all aid transfers into the territory came to a periodic halt, which began to exacerbate the already unprecedented humanitarian crisis.
When the aid trucks were eventually permitted entry, they were then forced to take designated routes through south-east Rafah, where Israel had been forming gangs that would go on to loot aid from non-governmental organizations that were meant for the starving civilian population.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, two senior figures at NGOs working in the Gaza Strip stated that it was begrudgingly accepted that, in order to bring in humanitarian assistance, all organisations were going to be forced to pay bribes to Israel’s collaborator militia forces.
Once their trucks would enter, even if the bribe was paid, the gangsters would still routinely seize entire trucks or loot part of the aid.
The reason why NGO staff have been unable to speak on record about the issue is that their decisions to pay the bribes had contributed to price hikes in Gaza’s markets.
One prominent figure at a major humanitarian organisation admitted that it was “unfortunate and even saddens me, because technically we were part of this, but if we didn’t pay the bribes, then no food would enter, so many organisations decided that some aid was better than none.”
The system in place was one where the aid was looted, before being transported to secured warehouse locations under the watchful eyes of Israeli drones, in a territory considered a kill-zone for any Palestinian civilian or emergency worker that dared to enter.
Once the hoarding process was complete, the gangsters would slowly drip-feed the aid onto the black market, where it was sold at a massive profit. For Palestinians who still have savings left, such as those receiving salaries from the PA, they could afford to eat, yet the criminals made attaining food impossible for those without sufficient funds.
According to a Haaretz report from late last year, the “protection fee” charged by the gangs was around $4,000 per truck. This was also the amount Press TV was informed to be the case, yet a comment was added that sometimes the price was arbitrarily altered.
The most prominent gang leader, whose name has now become infamous, is Yasser Abu Shabab. He had been imprisoned by the Gaza security forces and found guilty of drug trafficking, only to escape when Israel bombed Gaza’s prison facilities at the start of the war, which appeared to have happened in a systematic way that allowed for hardened criminals to roam free.
For some time, Abu Shabab and his gang were out of the public eye, known only as a group of criminals who were using their Israeli protection as a cover for running what could only be described as a criminal enterprise.
Yet, over time, the criminal cadres evolved and would begin painting themselves as some kind of “grassroots” resistance to Hamas. In November of 2024, Yasser Abu Shabab gave an interview to the Washington Post, claiming to be a victim and stating that “Hamas has left us with nothing”.
Much like his Israeli handlers, Abu Shabab blames all his own war crimes on Hamas, even admitting to stealing aid but positing that he was forced to do it in order to survive.
Abu Shabab’s ramblings about how he is misunderstood, a drug trafficker who looted aid out of the goodness of his own heart, according to his framing, culminated in him claiming not to have seized baby formula in his WP interview.
That same month, the Financial Times published information from an internal UN memo that stated the gang leader had been looting aid with “the passive, if not active benevolence” of Israel.
Abu Shabab, along with many other militants belonging to his militia, has long maintained ties to the Daesh terrorist group in the Sinai and a slew of Takfiri groups linked with Al-Qaeda.
The notorious criminal, despite never appearing on any Palestinian media outlet for an interview, has been granted access to the US and UK mainstream media outlets in recent months to espouse his terrorist propaganda.
He is now selling his militia force as the “popular forces”, who carry Israeli-supplied weapons, sport Israeli tactical vests and helmets, while claiming to be an alternative to Hamas in Gaza.
Shockingly, the Daesh-linked Gaza was even given a full opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal.
Published on July 24, the article purportedly written by Yasser Abu Shabab was entitled “Gazans Are Finished With Hamas”. It is more than likely that one of his Israeli handlers actually wrote the article, according to knowledgeable sources.
Aside from being promoted in Western corporate media, Abu Shabab is granted airtime on Israeli media, including its Army Radio, where he once claimed it was Hamas propaganda to say Israel controls him.
Although Abu Shabab claims to be some grassroots resistance to Hamas, even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has admitted to backing his criminal network.
This group of gangsters and terrorist outlaws is tasked with securing aid transfers to the Israeli-US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
This means that the privatised aid scheme, which employs Private Military Contractors (PMCs) to manage its sites and has been accused by whistleblowers of committing war crimes, is actively working with Daesh-linked gangsters.
Humanitarian Aid from Hell: The Extermination of Palestinians is Being Disguised as Help
GHF and a web of Palestinian collaborators
One of the most prominent gang leaders was a Salafist man named Issam al-Nabahin, who had previously murdered a police officer in 2023.
He also fought the Egyptian army after joining Daesh in the Sinai, before being smuggled back to the Gaza Strip. Despite the defeat of Daesh in the Sinai and Gaza, he continued to belong to underground Salafist groups.
An Israeli collaborator by the name of Ghassan al-Dahini has been identified as Abu Shabab’s right-hand man and is tasked with recruiting new militants into the so-called “popular forces”, along with another shady figure known as Saddam Zakkar.
Al-Dahini was reportedly a militant with the Daesh-linked Jaish al-Islam group.
Meanwhile, Israel’s GHF aid scheme not only coordinates with Abu Shabab’s militants, but also with three wealthy brothers from Gaza City who own the Al-Khazindar Company.
According to sources, one of the brothers, Mohammed al-Khazindar, has direct contact with a man named Baha Balousha, who provided an inroad to the Israeli intelligence.
Balousha is a Palestinian Authority-aligned figure whose son was infamously killed by unidentified militants during the Hamas-Fatah conflict, which began in 2006. He blamed Hamas, which denied involvement in the brutal murder.
The Khazindar brothers were known for their involvement in Gaza’s oil and gas sector, but ran into a corruption scandal only months before the outbreak of genocidal war on Gaza in 2023, allegedly setting them back 10 million dollars in debt. All three left Gaza and reside in Egypt.
Rafaat al-Khazindar, who is the company director out of the three, made statements to CNN, accusing Hamas of killing 8 people who were widely described as “humanitarian workers” of the GHF. Yet, the GHF does not employ professional humanitarian aid workers.
A Palestinian researcher from Gaza, Muhammad Shehada, who has conducted some of the most extensive research in exposing Abu Shabab and his associates, recently published an exclusive list identifying key members of the gang.
The second deputy to gang leader Abu Shabab has been identified as Saleh Abu Shabab, who is “responsible for coordinating the gang’s movements” with the Israeli military.
Then there are notorious militants such as Samir Sabbah, Fadi al-Dubari, Jamal Fatayir, Abdel-Rahman Al-Dubari, Bakir al-Waqili and Ali Zuhair abu Harb, all of whom are drug dealers.
There is also Nassir and Bakir Hisham Abu Bakra, both of whom are teenagers – under the age of 18 – who were previously convicted of murder.
Another militant is Ashraf Sawalha, previously detained on charges of collaboration with Israel.
Then there is escaped prisoner Hassan Ashour and Tamer Abu Obaid, who became a fugitive after the killing of a policeman in Deir al-Balah, along with Raed Abu Samra, who is also a murderer.
The gangsters calling themselves the “popular forces” and the GHF go hand in hand as part of an Israeli strategy to ethnically cleanse Palestinians through the tight restriction and control of so-called “humanitarian aid.”
As famine now grips the population of Gaza, threatening thousands of children’s lives, the GHF aid system itself has resulted in the mass murder of over 1,000 starving civilians
(Press TV)
