(Photo credit: Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)The Cradle
AUG 27, 2026
The criminals are given artillery and drone cover by the Israeli military during their operations
Israel is expanding its use of criminal gangs, drug dealers, and other mercenaries recruited from within Gaza to commit war crimes in the enclave, creating the conditions for local massacres “reminiscent of Sabra and Shatila,” Haaretz reported on 26 August.
The investigation found that the armed groups now function as an “operational arm” of the Israeli army and the Shin Bet inside the enclave.
Five prominent armed groups currently operate in Gaza, deployed in Beit Hanoun, Shujaiyeh, Deir al-Balah, Khan Yunis, and Rafah, with each assigned a defined area under Israeli military control.
An Israeli Air Force officer who tracked the gunmen by drone alongside a Shin Bet operative told Haaretz: “You see the State of Israel, the IDF and Shin Bet sending armed, trained militias to commit war crimes, and I’m the one who has to protect them during their operations so they don’t get hurt.”
The armed groups have turned on Palestinians trying to survive the genocide, opening fire on civilians, looting and torching homes, and forcibly displacing families from shelters, according to the officer’s account and information gathered by the UN.
Soldiers who spoke to the newspaper early in the scheme warned that it could lead to killings comparable to the Sabra and Shatila massacre, in which Phalangist forces allied with Israel slaughtered as many as 3,500 Palestinian and Lebanese civilians in the two Beirut refugee camps in 1982.
Israeli troops sealed off the area and watched the killing unfold, firing illumination flares to help the militants spot their targets.
Senior Israeli military officials told the newspaper that these groups’ key figures are not political leaders or credible alternatives to Hamas. Instead, they are former gang bosses and drug dealers who exploited Gaza’s disorder for their own benefit.
Sources in Gaza confirmed the Israeli military supplied the gunmen with artillery and drone cover during their operations.
The report states armed groups use Israeli army call signs, appear on briefing maps, are marked in command systems, and have bases near Israeli outposts.
The tactic is built on Israel’s earlier backing of now-deceased smuggler Yasser Abu Shabab, the Rafah warlord whose gang spent months looting UN aid convoys under Israeli protection while Tel Aviv publicly blamed Hamas for the theft.
Israeli Prime Minister and war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu admitted in June 2025 that Israel had deployed Gaza clans against Hamas “on the advice of security officials,” in response to accusations that his government had armed “criminals affiliated with the Islamic State,” referring to Abu Shabab’s gang members.
A senior UN official based in Rafah said the aid theft was systematic, tactical, armed, crime-syndicate looting, and said the Israeli army had allowed it to go unchecked in areas under its own military control.
Israel opened the space these gangs moved into by repeatedly killing members of Gaza’s police force as they escorted aid convoys, leaving the trucks unguarded and the crossings exposed.
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