It is one of those things that should be recorded and replayed for eternity: Israel, in order to guard some misplaced sense of security, happily backs Palestinian groups in order to divide themselves. Hamas, seen now as an existential monster, was tolerated and even supported for lengthy stints in efforts to undermine the various factions in the Palestinian Liberation Organisation represented by Fatah.
In his 2008 work, Hamas vs. Fatah, Jonathan Schanzer, writes how the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the inspirational font for Hamas, was seen as an opportunity by the Israelis when taking root in Gaza. “By the late 1970s, the Israelis believed that they had found Fatah’s Achilles’ heel.” Israeli strategy permitted the Brotherhood to thrive, going so far as to allow the cleric Sheikh Ahmed Yassin to operate a network of welfare, medical and education services. These had been sorely neglected by Fatah in the Gaza Strip. This approach effectively licensed the emergence of fundamentalism, seen, curiously enough, as more manageable than the military adventurism of the PLO.
The First Intifada in 1987 spurred on the creation by Yassin and his followers of Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya (“Islamic Resistance Movement”). The 1988 charter of the organisation we know as Hamas, more youthful, and leaner, and hungrier than their Fatah rivals, made its purpose clear: “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad”.
In 2009, while surveying the ruins of a neighbour’s bungalow in Moshav Tekuma, the retired Israeli officer Avner Cohen, who had served in Gaza for over two decades, was rueful. “Hamas, to my regret,” he told the Wall Street Journal, “is Israel’s creation.” Sustenance and encouragement from the Jewish state had effectively emboldened a mortal enemy.
Such a record should chasten wise legislators and leaders. But the only lesson history teaches is that its grave lessons are left unlearned, with disastrous, inimical mistakes made anew. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is proof of that contention. His various governments proudly backed the policy of division between the Gaza Strip and West Bank, defanging Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the latter while propping up Hamas in the former. Every now and then, the Israeli Defense Forces would keep Hamas in bloody check, a strategy that came to be called “mowing the grass”.
Israel’s support for Hamas has come in the form of work permits (up to 3,000 granted to Gazans in 2021, rising to 10,000 during the Bennett-Lapid government), and suitcases, heavy with Qatari cash, entering the Strip through crossings since 2018. In 2019, Netanyahu was quoted as telling a Likud faction meeting that opponents of a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Hamas. Five years prior, Bezalel Smotrich, the current firebrand, pro-ethnic cleansing Finance Minister, declared with candour that “The Palestinian Authority is a burden, and Hamas is an asset.”
With Hamas now the target and sworn enemy, the PM feels that the same, failed experiment adopted at stages since the 1970s can be replicated: backing and encouraging yet another group of Palestinians to undermine any sovereign cause.
The central figure and beneficiary of this latest folly is the shady Yasser Abu Shabab, a Rafah resident from a Bedouin family known for a spotty criminal record. Calling itself the “Anti-Terror Service” or the Popular Forces, and possessing assault rifles and equipment seized from Hamas, his “clan”, as reports have described it, has a committed record of looting humanitarian aid in Gaza. In Netanyahu’s eyes, these rapacious poachers have turned into opportunistic game keepers, partially guarding the paltry aid that is currently being sent into Gaza under the supervision of the Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
Georgios Petropoulos, a senior United Nations official based in Gaza last year, calls Abu Shabab “the self-styled power broker of east Rafah.” For his part, Abu Shabab admits to looting aid trucks, but only “so we can eat, not so we can sell.” The looting proclivities of such groups is well noted, with the head of the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs in occupied Palestinian territories, Jonathan Whittall, making a damning accusation on May 28: “The real theft of aid since the beginning of the war has been carried out by criminal gangs, under the watch of Israeli forces, and they were allowed to operate in proximity to the Kerem Shalom crossing point in Gaza.”
On May 21, Abu Shabab’s group posted on Facebook that “92 trucks were secured and entered areas under the protection of our popular forces, and exited safely under our supervision.” Details on which organisation was behind hiring the transporting vehicles were not given.
With rumours bubbling that the Israeli government had embarked on this latest course of action, Netanyahu came clean. “On the advice of security officials, we activated clans in Gaza that oppose Hamas,” he announced in a posted video with usual, glowing cynicism. “What’s wrong with that?” The strategy “only saves the lives of Israeli soldiers and publicising this only benefits Hamas.”
The advice purportedly given by Shin Bet to Netanyahu to arm Gaza militias opposed to Hamas was an expedient measure, largely occasioned by the PM’s continued refusal to involve the Palestinian Authority in the strip.
Not all Israeli lawmakers were impressed by Netanyahu’s latest effort at supposed cleverness. Yair Golan, leader of the Democrats in the Knesset, condemned him as a threat to Israeli security. “Instead of bringing about a deal, making arrangements with the moderate Sunni axis, and returning the hostages and security of Israeli citizens, he is creating a new ticking bomb in Gaza.”
The leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, Avigdor Lieberman, is of the view that the transfer of weapons to Abu Shabab’s outfit was done unilaterally. “The Israeli government is giving weapons to a group of criminals and felons, identified with the Islamic State group,” he told the public broadcaster Kan. “To my knowledge, this did not go through approval by the cabinet.”
With humanitarian aid now at the mercy of a group scorned by UN officials, humanitarian workers and certain Israeli politicians – a rare coming together of minds – the next round of errors is playing out with rich, quixotic stupidity. Israel further adds to its own insecurity, while Abu Shabab knows all too well the views of his family, expressed in chilling statement: “We affirm that we will not accept Yasser’s return to the family. We have no objection to those around him liquidating him immediately, and we tell you that his blood is forfeit.”
Comments