Ameer Makhoul – Progress Center for Policies
Executive Summary of a Policy Brief
Introduction:
Israeli media outlets have recently spotlighted and praised Yasser Abu Shabab and the armed group he formed—reportedly with direct Israeli support, including training, weapons, and protection. In turn, much of the Arab media—TV channels, newspapers, and news sites—have echoed this attention, making Abu Shabab’s group a central topic of coverage.
This raises the critical question: why is Israel so actively promoting Abu Shabab’s group, and how has it succeeded in shifting this fringe issue into the broader Palestinian and Arab discourse? This is happening while the war against the Palestinian people—in both Gaza and the West Bank—intensifies and becomes more existential in nature.
Key Context and Findings:
Since October 2023, Prime Minister Netanyahu has repeatedly declared that Gaza’s future will be “neither Fatahstan nor Hamastan.” This stance has been adopted by his cabinet and large parts of the political opposition. The underlying message: Israel seeks open-ended war in Gaza under the pretext of eliminating Hamas, with the true goal being to block any form of Palestinian statehood and to sever Gaza’s fate from the West Bank. Ultimately, the slogan implies that Gaza is to be left in ruin and uncertainty, with its entire social fabric dismantled.
Notably, Israeli public opinion, media, and political circles show no concern for the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza. The ongoing deaths—about 120 Palestinians daily—along with thousands of injuries, famine, dehydration, medical shortages, and mass displacement, barely register in the mainstream discourse. Only a handful of Israeli voices challenge this narrative, and they’ve gained more traction largely due to the shift in international media and public opinion.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich recently remarked that the world would grow accustomed to the killing of 200 Palestinians daily. Such a figure amounts to nearly 1,000 deaths per week and over 4,000 per month.
The emergence of “Abu Shabab” coincided with the deliberate failure of the so-called “Humanitarian Gaza Foundation”—an Israeli effort to sideline UN agencies and prolong the war. This reflects the implementation of a broader strategy Israel has been developing since the 2021 “Guardian of the Walls” (Operation Al-Quds Sword) conflict: the hybrid war model. This approach blends military, economic, social, and psychological warfare to fragment Palestinian society, sow chaos, provoke internal conflict, and erode the population’s will to resist—all aiming to collapse the adversary from within.
The political and security establishment’s core belief is that maximum military escalation against civilians will cause the population in Gaza to turn against Hamas. Simultaneously, such an approach would cripple Hamas’s governance capacity. Yet, the Netanyahu government appears uninterested in completely eliminating Hamas, as doing so would undermine the very justification for ongoing war. Instead, the government seeks to maintain a deteriorating Palestinian status quo, fostering acceptance of displacement and destruction.
Netanyahu’s government rejected the outcome of the Cairo emergency summit, which proposed Gaza reconstruction while preventing displacement and called for a technocratic Palestinian administration under international and Arab sponsorship. The plan included a later transfer of power to the Palestinian Authority and international security oversight—elements Israel has completely opposed.
With Trump’s departure and the shelving of the “deal of the century,” Netanyahu’s government has pinned its hopes on cultivating non-political Palestinian proxies—tribal or familial leaders who could function as Israel’s local agents for distributing humanitarian aid, thereby sidelining Hamas and international organizations like UNRWA. This effort, too, has failed.
The Tarabin tribe—spread across Gaza, the Negev, Sinai, and Jordan—publicly disavowed Yasser Abu Shabab, branding him a traitor and rejecting any cooperation with Israel’s occupation of Gaza. They affirmed their deep connection to the Palestinian people. Yet, this disavowal has not deterred the Netanyahu government from openly supporting Abu Shabab’s group, which most Palestinian sources characterize as criminal.
The Israeli security establishment is aware that its overt support—military, financial, and protective—for the Abu Shabab gang dooms the group within Palestinian society. This indicates that Israel is unconcerned with their long-term survival; rather, the group is a disposable tool to deepen the fragmentation and collapse of the Palestinian social fabric amid a genocidal war.
Even Hebrew-language media analyses acknowledge that Abu Shabab’s group is unlikely to endure and that its support reflects an embarrassing scandal for Netanyahu’s government. Still, the war atmosphere and prevailing Israeli mindset make this tolerable within public opinion.
According to Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), the country has adopted a one-dimensional military strategy—eschewing political solutions not only regarding Palestinians, but also in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and even Iran. This undermines any military gains, which remain unused politically and could, according to INSS, result in strategic self-destruction for Israel over the long term.
The use of actors like Abu Shabab is not new in colonial and occupation contexts. It reflects a consistent Israeli policy under Netanyahu: maintaining open-ended warfare, even against the assessment of the Israeli military leadership and a portion of internal public opinion. The goal is to portray Palestinians as fragmented and failed, undeserving of statehood or self-determination. This redirects Palestinian energy toward mere survival, instead of national rights—effectively erasing the Palestinian cause altogether.
Conclusion:
One of the key pillars of the war on Gaza—and now increasingly on the West Bank—is the deliberate fragmentation of the Palestinian people and the erasure of their cause and rights.
The purpose of promoting the Abu Shabab phenomenon is to incite internal Palestinian conflict and erode the community from within. This is an integral component of Israel’s broader war strategy.
In light of international shifts, Arab initiatives, and outcomes of the Cairo emergency summit, the upcoming international conference in New York (June 17), and emerging global strategies for intervention and statehood, there is a growing urgency for an effective international response to end the war, deliver aid to Gaza, and revive a political resolution.
The current situation underscores the necessity of Palestinian consensus within an Arab framework to prevent displacement and further existential harm to the Palestinian people.
