[Salon] Israel’s Counter-Hamas Proxies - ArabDigest.org

Israel’s Counter-Hamas Proxies Summary: Israel has historically utilised a strategy of politicide in the Gaza Strip by backing proxy collaborator militias to fragment Palestinian society and attempt to establish a postwar governing alternative to Hamas. Despite receiving Israeli arms and salaries and international validation these criminal gangs while serving Israel have betrayed Gazans trapped in a shrinking enclave. Recent intelligence developments have cast a spotlight on the behind-the-scenes engineering of postwar Palestinian governance in the Gaza Strip. Shin Bet chief David Zini recently met with exiled former Gaza security chief Mohammed Dahlan in the United Arab Emirates, highlighting secret discussions regarding the enclave’s future leadership. Dahlan, a former head of the PA’s Preventive Security Force and a fierce critic of both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, lives in Abu Dhabi and is frequently floated by Israeli and international officials as a prime candidate to oversee a transitional technocratic government in postwar Gaza. He is described as a close confidante of UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed. The meeting aptly illustrates a structural paradigm of conflict management deeply embedded in Israeli handling of Palestine. Since its early political formation, Israel has consistently sought to deprive Palestinians of national legitimacy and erode their identity through a policy of politicide. In order to infiltrate Palestinian society and distort its collective will, a central Israeli strategy has been the recruitment of rogue groups operating outside the national consensus. These client actors are tasked with carrying out destabilising activities to undermine Palestinian liberation from within, a recurring pattern which reflects the long-standing Zionist doctrine of fragmenting the population, neutralising resistance capabilities and obstructing national unity. The charge of collaboration has long functioned as a potent political weapon between rival Palestinian factions. The modern “collaborator” charge first emerged textually during the May 1983 campus clashes at the Islamic University of Gaza between the Islamist Islamic Block and pro-PLO Fatah students. Following a violent brawl, the PLO’s newspaper of record, Al-Fajr, explicitly accused the rising Islamic movement of acting as a “collaborating force” with occupation authorities. This accusation transitioned into the popular sphere during university courtyard debates in 1985. Then, Yahya Sinwar representing the Islamic Block and Mohammed Dahlan representing Fatah routinely squared off. Dahlan famously popularised the collaborator accusation against the Islamists during these debates, cementing a bitter personal, political and ideological rivalry that would continuously shape Palestinian internal security discourse for the next four decades. Yahya Sinwar who went on to become a senior Hamas leader and was killed by the IDF in 2024 had a deep preoccupation with informants which found expression in his 2004 semi-autobiographical novel, The Thorn and the Carnation, written while serving multiple life sentences in an Israeli prison. The text closely mirrors his real-life role co-founding Hamas' internal security wing, al-Majd, established explicitly to hunt down traitors. Through the character Ibrahim, a literary alter-ego for Sinwar himself, the novel outlines exactly how collaborators are perceived, entrapped and systematically punished. In the novel, collaboration is portrayed as profound moral, religious, and social rot that destroys society from within. Sinwar stresses that Shin Bet relies heavily on internal treason to conduct successful Israeli assassinations, sudden raids and arrests. The narrative shows how occupation forces systematically exploit human vulnerabilities such as financial desperation, drug addiction, blackmail or the need for medical permits to coerce individuals into espionage. The novel positions the tracking and liquidation of traitors as a sanctified duty required for collective survival. The narrative outlines a strict process: meticulous surveillance to gather undeniable proof, followed by abduction and intense interrogation to extract detailed confessions regarding handlers and compromised information. Public execution of traitors by Hamas in the Gaza Strip At the outset of the Gaza genocide in 2023, the old Israeli doctrine of recruiting surrogate internal actors re-emerged as a formal military strategy. The then defence minister Yoav Gallant proposed utilising local militias and clans as a governing alternative to Hamas. Following initial difficulties, the plan moved through the Knesset’s secret committees until Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar reformulated it into an operational plan. Approved by Netanyahu and top military officials, it launched as a pilot model with a small cell in Rafah designed for gradual expansion. To foster these client groups, the colonising state engineered supportive conditions by launching incitement campaigns against the resistance and exploiting wartime starvation to encourage public unrest. This manifested in protests in Deir al-Balah and Khan Yunis calling for an end to the war, the release of captives and the removal of Hamas. Zionist agents quickly mobilised these spontaneous actions into socio-economic protests under the banner “We want to live,” peaking in northern Gaza in March 2025 before spreading widely. Out of this manufactured landscape, four primary collaborator militias emerged under direct Israeli patronage: First, “The Popular Forces,” initially led by Yasir Abu Shabab and later by Ghassan al-Dahini. Abu Shabab, a Tarabin clan member previously jailed for theft and drug offences, was released following an Israeli attack on a Hamas prison at the outset of the conflict. Despite being illiterate, he “authored” an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal that claimed his group had secured territory free from Hamas and called for international recognition. UN and Sky News reports exposed his group for coordinating with the Israeli military, extorting protection fees and systematically looting aid convoys along “Looters’ Alley”. Following an expanded circle of support, Trump’s senior advisor Jared Kushner even held direct discussions with Abu Shabab to evaluate using his forces to clear Hamas operatives out of the Rafah tunnels. Abu Shabab was killed on December 4, 2025, in a targeted Al-Qassam Brigades ambush, sparking public celebrations before al-Dahini assumed command under ongoing Israeli protection. Second, the Counterterrorism Strike Force (CSF), led by 51-year-old Husam al-Astal, a former officer under Mohammed Dahlan. After assisting Mossad with a 2018 assassination in Malaysia, he was sentenced to death upon returning to Gaza but escaped prison during a 2024 airstrike. Operating 150 to 500 fighters just 700 metres from an Israeli outpost near Kizan al-Najjar, al-Astal coordinates directly with the occupation forces, pitches his “The New Gaza” project as a postwar alternative to Hamas, and coordinates with al-Dahini's Rafah militia. Third, the Popular Defence Forces, formed in summer 2025 by Rami Hillis, a former Presidential Security Force employee. His 500-strong militia of Ramallah-paid PA employees operates in Shuja’iyyah and Tal al-Hawa under Israeli operational cover. Coordinating via the District Coordination Office and collaborating with Shin Bet, they conduct surveillance, target front-line resistance fighters, and abduct pro-resistance citizens to hand over to Israel. Fourth, “The Popular Army,” launched in northern Gaza in September 2025 by Ashraf al-Mansi. Comprising several dozen armed individuals with criminal records, they claim control over Jabalia and Beit Hanoun. Al-Mansi faces active charges of running an espionage network for Israel and his militia has engaged in multiple post-ceasefire clashes with Hamas. The operational tactics of these modern collaborator gangs rely heavily on exploitation and psychological leverage. A primary mechanism is the “luxury” marketing strategy, where gang leaders like Husam al-Astal explicitly flaunt prohibited foreign consumer goods such as chocolates, coffee and Seven-Up in propaganda videos to entice starving, desperate youth into joining their ranks, a tactic which earned al-Astal the popular public nickname “Abu Seven” or “Abu Sab'in”. Alongside this branding, these groups engage in massive aid theft to build localised power, drawing immense hatred from the general populace. Furthermore, security factions note that these gangs use civilians as human shields, distributing sweets and cigarettes east of the “yellow line” to scout Hamas positions, knowing the resistance will hesitate to shoot back into civilian crowds. Official admissions confirm that Israel treats these criminal groups as a security asset. In May 2025, Netanyahu formally instructed the Civil Administration to distribute weapons to these gangs in southern Gaza, characterising the arming of the militias as a good step that saved soldiers’ lives. Haaretz documented that the military provides them with salaries and logistical support and integrates them into command-and-control software as if they were Israeli forces. This coordination expanded under a US-backed plan managed out of a Civil-Military Coordination Center in Kiryat Gat. Despite heavy institutional backing, numerous Israeli experts have criticised Israel’s reliance on client militias, calling it a doomed experiment that ignores bitter historical precedents such as the South Lebanon Army. Analysts like Michael Milshtein, Eitan Dangot, and various military officials argue these criminal gangs can never achieve ground superiority or substitute for a strategic, regionally coordinated governance framework. Haaretz commentator Jack Khoury underscored that leadership cannot be engineered from above, noting that Abu Shabab’s death exposed the vast gap between Zionist narratives and Gaza’s actual reality. Channel 14’s Omri Haim similarly stated that relying on local mercenaries is destined to fail against a deeply embedded resistance project. Nevertheless, Israel continues this strategy with Kan reporting that the military is actively preparing further protection and withdrawal paths for these groups. The UN Security Council’s adoption of Resolution 2803 on November 18, 2025, introduced a new dynamic, though it remains unclear if its mandate to dismantle armed groups will be applied to these collaborator militias, given that US and Israeli officials continue to engage them to secure localised reconstruction efforts. Ultimately, the failure to establish these militias as a legitimate governing alternative only serves to highlight the resistance’s popularity, steadfastness and ongoing capacity to systematically dismantle Israel’s surrogate networks.