Frightening images have emerged from Gaza in the week since a fragile ceasefire took hold between Israel and Hamas. In one widely circulated video, seven blindfolded men kneel in line with militants arrayed behind them. Gunshots ring out in unison, and the row of men collapse in a heap as dozens of spectators look on.
The gruesome scenes appear to be part of a Hamas effort to reestablish control over Gaza through a crackdown on gangs and criminal groups that it says have proliferated during the past two years of war and chaos. In the minds of Israel and its backers, the killings reveal Hamas’ true colors — and represent a preview of what the group may do if it’s allowed to maintain some degree of power.
Indeed, some are already arguing that these attacks should spark a return to war. “Hamas continues to show that their barbaric and irresponsible actions are the biggest threat to the Israeli and Palestinian people,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement, adding that Israel will “respond forcefully” to Hamas’ “brutal rule.”
The U.S. seemed to back Netanyahu up with a statement warning of a planned Hamas attack on Palestinian civilians. “Should Hamas proceed with this attack, measures will be taken to protect the people of Gaza and preserve the integrity of the ceasefire,” the State Department said. The Washington Post editorial board, in an editorial blaming Hamas for a potential collapse of the ceasefire, argued that “Terrorist brutality risks igniting a Palestinian civil war.”
But this emerging narrative omits crucial context: many of the groups now clashing with Hamas receive weapons, supplies and protection from Israel. And that support has continued despite Israel’s decision to sign onto a ceasefire. As Israeli troops have withdrawn from parts of Gaza, the leadership of many of these groups have retreated with them, giving the militants space to build up their forces and issue public calls to fight Hamas.
Experts who spoke with RS described the support for anti-Hamas militants as part of a long-standing Israeli policy of stoking division in Palestinian politics. In order to prevent the rise of a unified, nationalist Palestinian leadership, Israel has often offered assistance to smaller, less politically engaged factions. In Gaza, this approach has expanded to include highly controversial groups, including ones led by criminals and people with links to ISIS.
Now, it looks like the strategy could pay off for an Israeli leadership that remains skeptical of a lasting ceasefire. “We are starting to see these groups trying to sow the seeds of civil strife in order to try and destabilize things in Gaza,” said Tahani Mustafa, an expert on Palestinian affairs and a visiting scholar at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “That can be incredibly dangerous because it doesn't take much for Israel to use [it] as a pretext to revert back to war.”
Preventing Palestinian unity ‘at all costs’
Israel’s divide-and-rule strategy dates back to the early days of the occupation, when Israeli leaders attempted to govern the West Bank and Gaza in coordination with “village leagues” made up of apolitical Palestinian leaders. At that time, the goal was to find an alternative to dealing with the Palestine Liberation Organization, or PLO, which sought to free Palestine through force of arms.
In the late 1980s, Israel also began to lend a certain degree of support to Islamists in Gaza, whom Israeli leaders viewed as less politically dangerous than the PLO radicals. But that equation flipped when Hamas, which Israel had initially supported, began to carry out attacks on Israeli civilians. Meanwhile, the PLO morphed into the Palestinian Authority, which now works closely with Israel on security.
Following a Palestinian civil war in 2007, Israel has primarily focused on ensuring that the PA and Hamas remain at loggerheads. At times, this has meant tacit acceptance of Hamas rule in Gaza, including through Netanyahu’s controversial policy of allowing Qatar to make payments to the Hamas-run government in Gaza.
Since the beginning of the current war, Israel has pitched a plan for post-war Gaza in which prominent clan leaders could manage the affairs of the enclave. As part of this policy, Israeli officials, with assent from the U.S., have attempted to cultivate relationships with influential families. Sometimes this just meant leaving behind weapons or supplies when Israeli forces evacuated an area. But other times, it was more direct.
“Shin Bet officers would actively reach out to people on their phones or send them [middlemen] with a clear message of ‘here are weapons, here is money, your job is to challenge Hamas,’” said Muhammad Shehada, a close watcher of the Gaza war and a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Not a single clan agreed to cooperate as a clan, but members within the clan agreed.”
One family that Israel attempted to court is the Doghmush clan, several members of which have been publicly executed in recent weeks. The clan has a complicated history with Hamas, in part due to one influential Doghmush leader’s time running an ISIS affiliate opposed to Hamas in Gaza.
Further inflaming tensions is the fact that a handful of Doghmush members, at Israel’s request, recently began launching attacks against Hamas, according to family leader Nizar Doghmush, who condemned those members of his clan. So far, this condemnation has not been enough to spare the Doghmush clan from retribution. At least 27 people have been killed in Hamas-Doghmush clashes since the ceasefire.
As the war in Gaza dragged on, and Israel struggled to recruit from the major clans, it resorted to working with less savory characters, according to Shehada. Emerging evidence suggests that Israel is backing at least four different Palestinian armed groups across Gaza, which are now engaged in a low-level conflict with Hamas.
One such organization is led by Yasser Abu Shabab, known in Gaza as a “notorious criminal” due to his involvement in drug and weapons smuggling and apparent ties to ISIS in the Sinai, according to Mustafa. Abu Shabab’s “Popular Forces” have become infamous in Gaza for allegedly looting aid trucks in order to sell the supplies on the black market. (Israeli officials are now seeking to rebrand Abu Shabab as a “grassroots, deradicalized civil society activist,” according to Shehada.)
Husam al-Astal, who once served time in a Gaza prison alongside Abu Shabab, initially fought for the Popular Forces but has since split off and formed his own group, known as the “Counter-Terrorism Strike Force.” Astal has publicly said that he is working with Israeli forces, which on at least one occasion involved Israel bombing Hamas militants in order to preempt an attack on Astal’s fighters.
Hamas has also recently found itself fighting with a group known as the “Popular Army,” led by a previously unknown figure named Ashraf al-Mansi. Like the Popular Forces, the Popular Army has staged its operations in areas that remain under Israeli control. Video evidence strongly suggests that Mansi’s men are receiving supplies directly from Israeli forces, according to Sky News.
The crackdown on these groups, while brutal and extrajudicial, enjoys fairly wide support among Palestinians in Gaza. “Hamas has basically regrouped with other forces like Fatah, the [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine], the [Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine] and others in order to try and reinstate a sense of law and order,” Mustafa said, noting that much of the demand for this sort of action has come from Gazans fed up with “lawlessness.”
The precise extent of these groups’ collaboration with Israel is hard to determine, but Shehada says some of them work closely with the Israel Defense Forces and carry out military operations on their behalf. Adding to the confusion — and suspicion — is the fact that Netanyahu has publicly admitted to working with some of these groups without naming any of them in particular, leaving Hamas wide latitude to crack down on alleged collaborators.
For Israel, alliances with Palestinian collaborators in Gaza are valuable for two main reasons. One is that these groups have little interest in Palestinian nationalism. “They have their own narrow self-interests, and that works very well for Israel,” said Khaled Elgindy, a visiting scholar at Georgetown and a former adviser to PA leaders.
Another is that, by subcontracting the fighting to Palestinians, Israel can distance itself from any resulting violence. “There's quite a lot of potential there for these groups to be disruptive,” Elgindy told RS. “And to the outside world, it will look like intra-Palestinian violence.”
Israel’s security establishment once sought to maintain stability at all costs, but now it appears to view chaos as an upside, Elgindy said. In the near-term, instability will provide plenty of opportunities for Israel to return to full-scale war in Gaza. And in the long-term, it will strengthen Israel’s argument that Palestinians are simply too divided — and militarized — to negotiate with in good faith.
Harder to understand is why the U.S. continues to support these policies. Mike Casey, who served as a foreign service officer in the Palestinian section of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem from 2020 to 2024, argued that Washington’s backing for Israeli efforts to divide the Palestinians has left everyone worse off. “There's just this constant cycle of violence that [the U.S. is] not taking steps to stop because the Israeli government is pushing to prevent a Palestinian state and Palestinian unity at all costs,” Casey told RS.
When Casey resigned from the State Department, one major factor was his frustration with the Biden administration for lining up behind Israel’s plan for a clan-based government in post-war Gaza. “We were just taking Israeli directives on what to do and not thinking through what's best for the United States, for our interests, for Palestinian interests and for Israeli interests,” Casey said. “We just did whatever Netanyahu and others would tell us to do.”
