Who Is Yasser Abu Shabab?

In the context of the Israel-Hamas War and the Gaza Strip, Yasser Abu Shabab is the leader of a Palestinian militia based in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip whose core members belong to a clan within the Tarabin Bedouin tribe, primarily known for its prominent trade network in the Sinai Peninsula and neighboring desert areas. In media reports from 2024 and into 2025, his militia has been described as a criminal gang or a large clan that both rivals Hamas and loots humanitarian aid. The militia calls itself the Popular Forces (PF), although it numbered only about 300 fighters in May 2025. That same month the PF drew attention when it attempted to secure aid delivered by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a controversial organization set up to centralize aid-distribution efforts under the supervision of the United States and Israel. On June 5, 2025, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed suspicions that the Israeli government, through the efforts of its Shin Bet intelligence agency, had been arming and bolstering Abu Shabab’s militia as an alternative Palestinian force to Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Some of the militia’s Kalashnikov rifles were given to the group after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) seized the weapons from Hamas.

Abu Shabab, who was born in Rafah in the early 1990s, was previously imprisoned by Hamas on allegations that included theft and drug trafficking. He escaped during the Israel-Hamas War, and his network expanded in the power vacuum left by Hamas’s retreat from southern Gaza. In addition to having Israeli backing, Abu Shabab is believed by some sources to have received help from the Palestinian Authority (PA) to recruit the majority of his militia’s members, although he has been critical of the PA (as well as Hamas) on social media. Some Israelis who oppose their government aiding the group, most notably former defense minister Avigdor Lieberman (2016–18), have expressed worry that the militia is aligned with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Although some members of the Tarabin tribe have cooperated with ISIS in smuggling operations, Abu Shabab and his militia are not believed to have any ideological affiliation with the jihadist organization. The critique, however, highlights the security risk to Israel posed by arming the new Palestinian group: Under Netanyahu, the Israeli government employed a similar strategy toward Hamas—as a rival to the PA—before Hamas launched its attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.