«THEPopular Forces, an independent Palestinian group under my leadership, have secured several square kilometers of land… We are not an ideological movement, but a pragmatic one.
Our primary goal is to separate the Palestinians who have nothing to do with it from the maelstrom of war.” wrote in the “Wall Street Journal” last July o Yasser Abu Shabab.
Last Thursday, the leader of the Popular Forces was killed, with many Media attributing the assassination to Hamas, primarily due to personal – family differences. However, the two organizations have clashed several times in the last year.
Abu Shabab was the leader of the most powerful of the many armed groups backed by the IS as a counterweight to Hamas and appeared to be slowly expanding its reach into southern Gaza as it purportedly sought to create an area free of Hamas.
He had started by recruiting about 100 criminals (he himself had been convicted of drug trafficking). All had been cut off from their families, while some had escaped from prison during Israeli raids. Last October, Abu Shabab claimed to have 3,000 soldiers.
Israel planned to use the Popular Forces as a local auxiliary militia, while it hoped they would help in the reconstruction projects of Gaza, as part of the next phases of the cease-fire agreement. However, in the last year this organization has looted, at least three confirmed times, loads of the already limited humanitarian aid entering Gaza, in order to use the proceeds, according to the French “Monde”, to recruit other fighters.
In the absence of a post-war plan for the governance of Gaza and because of the refusal of the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to support a credible Palestinian alternative to Hamas – as this would reignite the two-state solution – Israel has turned to supporting paramilitary groups, which hold sway over scattered, small patches of land in the Gaza Strip.
Netanyahu has characterized them as “something good”despite the fact that his political opponents have accused him of arming “the equivalent of ISIS in Gaza”. The ongoing operation to equip related groups, including the Popular Forces, was approved without the green light of Israel’s security cabinet, CNN reported in June.
“This particular peace agreement, given its vagueness and lack of a precise plan, is a fertile ground for the activity and competition of armed groups that want power – whether they are called Hamas or something else.” Palestine explained to “Vima”. Zaha Hasana senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment.
Indeed, two months after the start of the ceasefire, in addition to continuing small-scale hostilities, not a single Hamas terrorist has been disarmed, and no International Stabilization Force has been deployed.
At the same time, internal conflicts between armed groups are a frequent phenomenon, with Hamas continuing to dominate. “Working with Israel is something that many Palestinians obviously don’t like” argues Al Jazeera regarding the reduced popular support of the other groups.
