The right kind of jihadist: Israel’s support for anti-Hamas Islamists in Gaza

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Not holy enough

“When they think no one is watching or listening, they smoke, curse, and even talk about women,” said a Gaza resident I stayed with during one of my trips to the Middle East, listing what he considered the worst traits of Hamas fighters.

Such behavior — smoking, swearing, and speaking openly about sex — violates the strict Islamic rules Hamas members are supposedly committed to following. The group’s name, after all, is an acronym in Arabic for “Islamic Resistance Movement.”

But since at least the mid-2000s, when Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip, it has been criticized for lacking religious fervor. In fact, its participation in Palestinian parliamentary elections — which in 2006 marked the group’s first step toward seizing power — was condemned by religious hardliners as un-Islamic and contrary to a strict reading of the Quran and Sunnah.

Radicals also opposed Hamas’s reluctance to keep up a state of constant war with Israel. They criticized the group for holding talks with the Israelis, for refusing to immediately impose Sharia law in Gaza, and for what they saw as excessive attention to women’s rights in its founding documents.

The radicals accurately identified the source of Hamas’s popularity among Gaza’s population — its aggressive anti-Israel rhetoric and frequent appeals to religious values — and simply co-opted those issues, taking the hostility of their slogans and the visibility of their piety to the extreme.

By comparison, Hamas began to appear less anti-Israeli and less committed to defending Muslim interests. In statements by leaders of more radical Salafi groups such as Jaysh al-Ummah, Hamas is still portrayed as a Muslim organization, but as one that has lost its way and strayed from true Islamic principles.

Opposition radical groups and organizations might have had a chance to become serious rivals to Hamas in Gaza, but their ideological leaders failed to find common ground with one another, meaning that the region’s countless scattered cells remained disunited. The problem was not necessarily religious in nature.

Instead, a major obstacle was the simple fact that a significant number of these groups were using radical Islam merely as a cover for criminal enterprises. For example, entire Bedouin clans, who had for generations earned substantial money smuggling weapons and other less-than-legal goods, declared themselves jihadists shortly after Hamas began cracking down on smuggling in Gaza.

This sudden “jihadization” of mafia structures was primarily aimed at legitimizing them in the eyes of the Palestinian public — giving yesterday’s criminals the aura of religious warriors. After all, serving as a soldier of Islam who has been called by Allah to clandestinely deliver weapons through underground tunnels in support of a sacred jihad sounds far more noble than simply acting as a member of a gang of smugglers.

Of course, not all jihadists in Gaza were mafia-style impostors. There were — and still are — plenty of genuine radicals. One need only recall the 2011 murder of Italian activist Vittorio Arrigoni, who lived in Gaza and was killed by Salafis outraged by his openly un-Islamic behavior (which included drinking alcohol in public). But there are also plenty of mafia-style structures that only pretend to be religiously motivated.

Hamas in reverse

One such group is the faction led by a young Bedouin, Yasser Abu Shabab, who became internationally known just last month after former Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman publicly named him as the head of a pro-Israeli militia in Gaza — one funded by the Jewish state.

Little is known about Abu Shabab himself. Arab sources describe him as a textbook example of a bandit turned jihadist. Media reports suggest he once led a criminal network involved in smuggling weapons and drugs — and that later rebranded itself as a jihadist group.

This faction operated in the Gaza Strip and in Egypt’s neighboring Sinai Peninsula, including during the period when large swaths of Sinai were under ISIS control. This led to accusations that Abu Shabab was either a member of ISIS or at least closely tied to the radical movement.

According to Muhammad Shehada, a Gaza-born expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, Abu Shabab was serving a prison sentence in Gaza for drug smuggling at the time of the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack. Today, Shehada says, the young Bedouin leads a militia at least 300 strong and carries out delicate tasks for Israel, including reconnaissance behind Hamas lines, organizing refugee camps, and supplying those camps with humanitarian aid stolen from international aid warehouses.

It is possible that Shehada, who holds openly anti-Israeli views, may simply be trying to demonize the Jewish state by accusing it of collaborating with a criminal tied to ISIS. However, earlier this month Abu Shabab himself seemed to partly confirm Shehada’s claims. In an interview with an Israeli Arabic-language radio station (the mere fact that a Gaza militant spoke with Israeli journalists says a lot), Abu Shabab admitted to coordinating his group’s activities with the Israeli military.

At the same time, Abu Shabab denies having any ties to ISIS or receiving weapons and money from Israel. He sees Israel — as he puts it — as a situational ally in the war against Hamas and declares that he is ready to fight to liberate Gaza from Hamas “with the Israelis or without them.”

It’s worth noting that Abu Shabab had previously insisted he had no connection to Israel and no contact with representatives of the Jewish state. As recently as early June, he claimed he had never cooperated with the Israelis — though he did add the caveat that, in the future, he might act alongside them.

Israel’s selection of Abu Shabab’s group as its proxy is unlikely to be coincidental. If reports that the young Bedouin commands around 300 fighters are accurate, that would make his faction one of the largest anti-Hamas forces in Gaza.

For comparison, the aforementioned Salafi group Jaysh al-Ummah consists of just a few dozen members — yet even they have remained beyond Hamas’s control, resisting both force and persuasion. Moreover, Abu Shabab’s men operate in the border city of Rafah, at the very southern edge of the Gaza Strip, which now represents the primary theater of the war.

The Revolutionary Court in Gaza, which is under Hamas control, has issued an arrest warrant for Abu Shabab, charging him with treason, collaboration with hostile entities, forming an illegal armed group, and rebellion. The judges gave him until July 12 to surrender to Hamas, and it appears his case will be tried in absentia.

It’s almost unthinkable that Yasser Abu Shabab would be intimidated by the court’s ultimatum and voluntarily place himself in Hamas’s custody. Hamas is clearly no longer in a position to dictate terms. It has failed — and is unlikely to succeed — in turning the tide of the war in the Gaza Strip, much of which is already under Israeli military control.

In recent days, the IDF has intensified its shelling and bombing of Gaza, worsening an already catastrophic humanitarian situation in the region. And Israel has no intention of letting up. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to insist that the fighting will go on until Hamas is completely eliminated.

As for the region’s administrative future after that goal is achieved, Israeli authorities appear not to have made a final decision. Plans to forcibly deport Palestinians to neighboring Arab countries have so far failed to gain any adherents from among Middle Eastern governments, even if the idea has not been entirely abandoned. In any case, the strip is likely to remain predominantly Arab and staunchly anti-Israeli — which is where someone like Abu Shabab might prove useful. In theory, Israel could entrust him or someone from his circle with establishing a new, post-Hamas administration for the Gaza Strip.

After all, the Israelis have significant experience in building governments — and even armies — led by their Arab partners. The most illustrative example is the long occupation of southern Lebanon, where functioning government institutions and security forces operated successfully on Israeli-controlled territory.

Fellow traveler, not ally

Still, the risks in Abu Shabab’s case are considerable, with reputational concerns chief among them. His involvement in looting humanitarian aid has led even his own family to disown him, calling the theft of food and medicine an “unforgivable crime.”

Moreover, despite all of Abu Shabab’s denials, many still view him as being affiliated with both ISIS and Israel. In much of the Arab world, this isn’t seen as a contradiction — thanks to widely believed conspiracy theories that portray ISIS as part of a Jewish anti-Arab plot. Some even go so far as to claim that the English acronym ISIS stands for Israel Secret Intelligence Service.

In other words, it’s unlikely that Yasser Abu Shabab will be offered any serious position, even if a new administration for Gaza is formed. He and Israel appear to be merely situational allies, united by nothing more than a common enemy: Hamas.

Incidentally, Hamas’s predecessor — the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood — was viewed by Israel in the 1970s as just such a situational ally in its fight against the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which at the time was Israel’s main enemy. Back then, the PLO was staunchly secular and sought to mobilize Palestinians not for a holy war, but for the creation of an independent national state. The Muslim Brotherhood, for its part, stayed out of politics and focused on building mosques and libraries. Israeli officials thought it would be a great idea to divert Palestinian attention away from nationalism and toward religion, and for years they therefore refrained from imposing any restrictions on the Brotherhood’s activities.

A little later, after the PLO had seen many of its most active members either arrested or forced into exile, the Muslim Brotherhood changed its stance on politics and became the main anti-Israeli force in the Palestinian territories. Netanyahu is almost certainly well aware of this history, which is why he is unlikely to let Abu Shabab’s group get too comfortable. That is, of course, if his plans for the complete destruction of Hamas are carried out.