Guns, cash and American aid: Investigation reveals Israel's support for Gaza militia

A Sky News investigation has uncovered new details about Israel’s support for a Palestinian rebel group with extremist ties and a history of looting aid trucks.

As negotiators debate who will run Gaza after the war is over, Israel is already shaping a new reality on the ground. In recent weeks, several tribal militias have declared allegiance to Yasser Abu Shabab, the head of a former looting gang which is positioning itself as Gaza's future government.

Sky's Data and Forensics Unit has been following Yasser Abu Shabab and his men for months, tracking their movements, vehicles, weapons and identities. Our investigation has found that his militia is receiving food from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, despite the US-funded aid organisation's declared impartiality.

And in exclusive interviews with Sky News, one of Yasser Abu Shabab's senior commanders and an IDF soldier serving on the Gaza border detailed how Israel is allowing them to smuggle cash, guns and cars into Gaza. Experts say that Israel's support for such groups is intended to "divide and conquer" and to ensure that it maintains a level of control in Gaza, whatever its future.

Cash, cars and cigarettes Deep within the rubble fields of southern Gaza lie 50 hectares of pastoral lanes and elaborate villas. Unlike in other parts of Gaza, residents here have ample supplies of food.

Medical facilities, a school, and even a mosque have been set up in recent months. On social media, residents show off stacks of cash, brand new smartphones and imported dirt bikes.

This small neighbourhood is the headquarters of the Popular Forces, Yasser Abu Shabab's former looting gang which now, with Israel's backing, hopes to wrest control of the Gaza Strip from Hamas. Speaking exclusively to Sky News, a senior commander in the Popular Forces says that around 1,500 people are now living in the base, including 500-700 fighters.

Hassan Abu Shabab, a relative and childhood friend of Yasser's, says that the recruitment of new militias in recent weeks has swelled the group's forces across Gaza to around 3,000. The base's location is strategically important - it sits along the route by which aid trucks must travel when entering Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing, a route that aid officials have named "Looters' Alley".

An internal UN report, dated November 2024, identified Yasser Abu Shabab and his gang as "the most influential stakeholders behind the systematic and massive looting of convoys". The video below shows members of the group unloading World Food Programme flour sacks from a truck at their camp.

The UN document identified their primary source of income as smuggling cigarettes - one of the many goods which Israel has officially banned from entering Gaza. The price of individual cigarettes has at some points reached $20.

In the videos below, one active member of the Popular Forces shows off stacks of cash and cartons of cigarettes. A senior aid worker, who was working in Gaza until early this year, says he personally witnessed his staff negotiating the safe passage of trucks with Yasser Abu Shabab.

"Abu Shabab was empowered by cigarette smuggling," he says. "In that kind of curtailed environment, you're going to get Abu Shababs." Hassan Abu Shabab admits that the group was involved in looting trucks and smuggling cigarettes, though he says they only ever targeted commercial trucks they believed to be supplying Hamas.

"Hamas accused us of stealing the shipments, while in reality, we were bringing them for our families and distributing them," he says. "Yes, there were some breaches, with a few people who sold things off - fine.

But things escalated. Hamas's men came in and they killed my cousins.

[...] Fifty-four people were lost in that massacre." Sky News could not independently verify this claim, but there have been numerous reports of deadly clashes between Abu Shabab's men and Hamas, which has declared him a wanted man. It was after these clashes began, Hassan says, that Israel began coordinating with Yasser Abu Shabab to smuggle in cash, food, guns and vehicles for use in his battles against Hamas.

He says that these supplies are donated by members of the bedouin Tarabin tribe, to which Yasser Abu Shabab and his lieutenants belong, in Israel, Egypt and Jordan. In order for these supplies to enter Gaza, Hassan says, requests must be made to a "coordination office" run by the Palestinian Authority, which then liaises with Israel and various Arab states to ensure the supplies' entry into Gaza.

"This office is basically a communications room [...] with Egyptian security, with Israeli national security, with Jordanian national security," Hassan says, adding that this mechanism was created specifically for use by the Popular Forces. "It provides us with weapons and money and with everything our people and forces need." The governments of Palestine, Egypt and Jordan did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Yasser Abu Shabab and the Popular Forces also did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication. 'A complete breach of humanitarian principles' Food, Hassan says, is provided free of charge by a number of "donors.