[News] Israel is creating a power vacuum in Gaza by backing armed looters — and killing anyone who tries to stop them

[Anti-Imperialist News]

mondoweiss.net
<https://mondoweiss.net/2025/05/israel-is-creating-a-power-vacuum-in-gaza-by-backing-armed-looters-and-killing-anyone-who-tries-to-stop-them/?ml_recipient=153741492291110280&ml_link=153741423337801582&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2025-05-07&utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines+RSS+Automation>
Israel is creating a power vacuum in Gaza by backing armed looters — and
killing anyone who tries to stop them
Faris Giacaman
May 6, 2025
------------------------------
[image: 200125_Gaza_HD_003-1536x1121.jpg]
Bahjat Abu Sultan, head of Gaza’s Security Service, flanked by police
officers on a field visit in Gaza City during the ceasefire between Israel
and Hamas, January 20, 2025. Abu Sultan was assassinated alongside several
Gaza government leaders on March 18. (Photo: Hadi Daoud/APA Images)

Israel has been waging a war on Gaza’s ability to govern itself and
maintain law and order as a part of its 18-month-long genocidal campaign.
The broad objective of this strategy has been to create a civil and
humanitarian vacuum in Gaza that would lead to chaos and lawlessness. The
intended effect, in Israel’s eyes, is either total social collapse, the
spread of criminality, or the emergence of an alternative “clan”-based
leadership in Gaza instead of Hamas. Israel stands to gain from any of
those scenarios.

To make sure this administrative vacuum is maintained, Israel has launched
periodic assassination campaigns targeting members of Gaza’s civil
government — the police force, the security forces, the Civil Defense, and
the healthcare system.

Israel has instrumentalized the fact that all these civil branches of
government in Gaza, by definition, fall under Hamas control, given that it
is the ruling faction in the strip. Consequently, it labels any Gaza civil
servant as a “Hamas operative,” an association that has allowed Israel to
legitimize the targeting of an entire category of civilian workers. They
have included firefighters, medics, nurses, doctors, first responders,
police officers, and other civil servants who were killed in the line of
duty.

Over the past several months, *Mondoweiss *has collected testimonies from
officials and field operatives in the Gaza government’s civil branches,
documenting Israel’s targeting campaign and its sanctioning of looting and
lawlessness to exacerbate famine conditions in Gaza. On one occasion,
*Mondoweiss
*was also able to obtain testimony from a young man who joined a group that
looted aid convoys in December 2024.

Our reporting shows that dismantling these components of Gaza’s civil
services has been a key objective of Israel’s genocide. On the other side
of that process, the Israeli army has either encouraged or turned a blind
eye to armed gangs that have intermittently looted aid trucks,
marketplaces, and warehouses in Gaza throughout the past 18 months of war.

But today, growing evidence from local reports shows that Israel is
actively fomenting and possibly arming them as they loot scarce food
resources — and then targets and kills those who attempt to stop the
robberies. Some of those killed by Israel are community volunteers,
according to local sources, while many others are police officers and
security personnel in the civilian branch of Gaza’s government.

The most recent of these attacks came just last week when Israeli
airstrikes killed a number of police officers and civilians who were
protecting markets and food warehouses in Gaza City. One police officer,
killed on May 2 while on duty in the al-Nasr area of Gaza City, was
identified as As’ad Yahya Kafarneh. According to one family member
<https://x.com/mohammed_awed12/status/1918395115967791513?s=46&t=kWr9Cxh8rnTkK4lRyrYujw>,
Kafarneh was in charge of a police patrol leading efforts to “confront
gangs collaborating with the Israeli occupation, which work to rob food
storage facilities.”

According to several reports from eyewitnesses and local journalists,
compiled in a thread <https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/1918462642164814125>
by Drop Site News, many of these gangs seem to be doing the looting with
Israeli air support from quadcopter drones, with some eyewitnesses saying
that it is part of a “coordinated effort to spread insecurity” in Gaza.
Drop Site contributor Abubaker Abed also cited local reports
<https://x.com/abubakerabedw/status/1918671205231476819?s=46&t=kWr9Cxh8rnTkK4lRyrYujw>
indicating the existence of undercover Israeli operatives posing as Gazans
who supply weapons and arm local gangs to carry out robberies. “The timing
of their crimes is exactly in line with the appearance of warplanes in the
sky,” Abed added.

“These acts are not spontaneous,” Ismail Thawabta, the head of the
Government Media Office in Gaza, told *Mondoweiss *in a statement on
Sunday. “They are not the result of hunger or necessity, as is being said,
but are backed by malicious intentions aiming to sow chaos and damage the
social fabric.”

Thawabta added that some of the looting groups are “directly acting on the
directives of Israeli forces.” They are armed and “semi-organized,” he
said, and “some of the known names have been brought before the law and
neutralized.”

Thawabta asserted that security forces in Gaza are working to uncover these
networks “with decisiveness and responsibility,” vowing to prevent “any
security vacuum that could be exploited.”

This security vacuum was directly created by Israel’s concerted campaign of
targeting members of the Gaza government’s civilian branches and
assassinating its leaders. The killings have led the Hamas government’s
civil servants to go underground.

“The occupation wants to destroy Gaza’s entire civil infrastructure,” Abu
Udai, the head of the Information Security Department of a government
security agency in Gaza City, told *Mondoweiss *in a statement in March
following the breakdown of the short-lived ceasefire
<https://mondoweiss.net/2025/03/israel-resumes-its-war-on-gaza-killing-over-350-people-in-one-night/>
between Israel and Hamas. “Everyone who holds government positions, even
low-level positions, feels in constant danger…especially for their
families, because the majority of those assassinated were killed with their
families.”

When Israel broke the ceasefire on March 18, it killed 400 people in one
night, including 130 children. Among the civil service leaders targeted
were the coordinator of government action in Gaza, Isam Da’alis, the Deputy
Minister of Justice, Mahmoud Hatteh, the Deputy Minister of Interior, Ahmad
Abu Watfeh, and the head of the Security Service, Bahjat Abu Sultan.
[image: Bahjat Abu Sultan, head of Gaza's Security Service, on a field
visit in Gaza City during the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, January
20, 2025. Abu Sultan was assassinated alongside several Gaza government
leaders on March 18. (Photo: Hadi Daoud/APA Images)]Bahjat Abu Sultan, head
of Gaza’s Security Service, on a field visit in Gaza City during the
ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, January 20, 2025. Abu Sultan was
assassinated alongside several Gaza government leaders on March 18. (Photo:
Hadi Daoud/APA Images)

At the time, *Haaretz *published a report
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-03-18/ty-article/.premium/idf-targeting-hamas-civil-leadership-to-undermine-its-ability-to-control-gaza/00000195-a900-dbcf-a5f7-af083c2d0000?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_content=author-alert&utm_campaign=Yaniv+Kubovich&utm_term=20250318-15:39>
giving the impression that the targeting of civil leaders was new. A source
“familiar with cabinet discussions” told the Israeli newspaper that
Netanyahu “believes the mode of fighting in Gaza needs to change, and
Israel should target not only the military leadership of Hamas, but also
its civil leadership.” According to *Haaretz*, “the government hopes that
armed gangs not loyal to the organization, so-called ‘clans,’ will take
over if Hamas’s domestic control weakens.”

But none of these strategies of targeting civil government personnel are
new. Israel has deliberately targeted leaders and low-level civil servants
over the past 18 months, especially the police force and security units
assigned to protect aid convoys from looting. The most recent wave of
assassinations, coupled with the spread of anarchy in Gaza, is just the
latest escalation.
[image: Security guards sit atop trucks carrying humanitarian aid coming in
from the Karam Abu Salem border crossing in al-Shoka, east of Rafah, during
the ceasefire January 21, 2025. (Photo: Doaa el-Baz/APA Images)]Security
guards sit atop trucks carrying humanitarian aid coming in from the Karam
Abu Salem border crossing in al-Shoka, east of Rafah, during the ceasefire
January 21, 2025. (Photo: Doaa el-Baz/APA Images) *Creating a security
vacuum*

During the first six months of Israel’s war on Gaza, one of Israel’s main
field objectives was to displace Palestinians from northern Gaza to the
south, which it aimed to achieve through outright starvation and the
blocking of aid convoys from reaching the north. For months during early
2024, food convoys were assailed by both looters and Israeli army attacks
<https://mondoweiss.net/2024/03/operation-al-aqsa-flood-day-148-un-reports-at-least-14-cases-of-israel-firing-on-palestinians-waiting-for-aid-in-gaza/>.
The latter incidents often resulted in several high-profile massacres near
the Nabulsi roundabout and the Kuwaiti roundabout in northern Gaza, where
the Israeli army had set up checkpoints and designated the roads going
through them for the passage of aid convoys.

Prolonged starvation also pushed crowds of people to rush aid convoys at
these roundabouts when trucks did arrive, adding to the chaos. The most
infamous incident was the “flour massacre
<https://mondoweiss.net/2024/03/flour-soaked-in-blood/>” on February 29,
when the Israeli army mowed down over 100 desperate aid-seekers at the
Nabulsi roundabout on al-Rashid Street, west of Gaza City.

In many cases where convoys were attacked, the Israeli army was targeting
police members who were providing protection to the convoys from looters.
In fact, according to *Axios
<https://www.axios.com/2024/02/24/gaza-humanitarian-aid-israel-hamas-police-biden>*,
the Biden administration had asked Israel back in February 2024 to “stop
targeting members of the Hamas-run civilian police force who escort aid
trucks in Gaza, warning that a ‘total breakdown of law and order’ is
significantly exacerbating the humanitarian crisis.”
[image: Faiq Mabhouh, Director of Operations of the Gaza police force, was
assassinated by Israel at al-Shifa Hospital for his role in combating
looting gangs and facilitating the safe delivery of aid to northern Gaza.
(Photo: Social Media)]Faiq Mabhouh, Director of Operations of the Gaza
police force, was assassinated by Israel at al-Shifa Hospital on March 18,
2024, for his role in combating looting gangs and facilitating the safe
delivery of aid to northern Gaza. (Photo: Social Media)

This Israeli policy hindered the ability of the police to directly
guarantee the safety of the aid convoys, so aid officials from the UN’s
OCHA and the World Food Programme started working with the local community
to try to protect aid convoys. Locals organized popular committees composed
of tribal leaders, local clan members, and community volunteers. But the
police force was not uninvolved: the popular committees were coordinated by
a central figure in Gaza’s police force, Director of Operations Faiq
Mabhouh, who was based in al-Shifa Hospital alongside the leadership of
other branches of the civil government.

The popular committees’ efforts were successful for a few days in
mid-March, with aid convoys arriving in places like the besieged Jabalia
refugee camp. On March 17, 13 aid trucks arrived in the north Gaza refugee
camp without incident, and to much popular fanfare. Another flour massacre
had been averted.

The very next day, the Israeli army laid siege to al-Shifa Hospital, with
the express purpose of assassinating Faiq Mabhouh and razing the hospital
to the ground. At the time, *Mondoweiss *reported on the chain of events
<https://mondoweiss.net/2024/03/the-real-reason-israel-stormed-al-shifa-hospital-yet-again/>
that led to the invasion of the al-Shifa medical compound, which served as
a base of operations for the police force, the Civil Defense, and other
civilian branches of government.

Israeli propaganda about a fictional Hamas “command-and-control center” in
al-Shifa contained a kernel of truth: al-Shifa was a nexus for northern
Gaza’s social order and allowed a safe haven for the coordination of
humanitarian and rescue efforts in times of war. For that same reason,
al-Shifa became a crucial target of Israel’s campaign in northern Gaza,
because the fall of al-Shifa would accelerate social collapse
<https://mondoweiss.net/2024/04/israel-destroyed-al-shifa-hospital-to-accelerate-social-collapse-in-gaza/>
in the north.

Simultaneously, Israel launched a series of targeted killings of over 100
members of the popular committees
<https://mondoweiss.net/2024/12/targeted-aid-killings-how-israel-starved-a-population-and-sowed-chaos-in-northern-gaza/>
that had assisted in the aid deliveries. After those attacks, the
committees disbanded, unable to guarantee the safety of their members.
Hamas-run civilian police force in Gaza City begins working to maintain
security and order during the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, January
20, 2025. (Photo: Hadi Daoud/APA Images)

At around that same time, Israel had already floated the idea of using
local clans and known crime families, who had been suppressed by Hamas
during its period of rule over the Strip before the war, to assume the
mantle of control over Gaza. Mabhouh was rumored to have executed the head
of one of those families, the Doghmosh clan.

As Israel escalated its attacks to foil the civil government’s attempts to
counteract Israel’s starvation policy, criminal gangs began to take hold in
different pockets throughout Gaza, usually in areas that had been cleared
by the Israeli army and set up as “kill zones,” where any civilians that
wandered through were shot on sight.

After Israel invaded Rafah in May 2024 and closed down the Rafah crossing,
the only avenue for the entry of aid into Gaza was through the
Israeli-controlled Karam Abu Salem crossing. Rafah was systematically
demolished and cleared of inhabitants between May 2024 and the end of the
year. In those latter months, looting and banditry under the watch of the
Israeli army became endemic.

Gangs of hundreds of armed men were mostly concentrated in the Rafah area.
The most prominent and notorious gang was led by a man named Yasser Abu
Shabab, who became the object of interest in international media reports
after the UN named him in an internal memo shared with the New York Times
<https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/23/world/middleeast/gaza-looting.html>, The
Washington Post
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/11/18/gaza-looting-aid-convoys-israel-famine/>,
The Guardian
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/29/aid-officials-recount-violent-looting-in-gaza-as-criminal-gangs-thrive-amid-israeli-bombardment>,
and the Financial Times
<https://www.ft.com/content/6a039600-d4f3-4aaa-ae0f-e4ca72cf2268>. Another
man, Shadi Soufi, was also identified as another prominent gang leader
wreaking havoc on aid convoys.

According to the UN memo, Abu Shabab and other gangs were likely
“benefiting from a passive if not active benevolence,” or “protection,” by
the Israeli army. The continuous thefts led to a plummeting in aid delivery
and skyrocketing prices as a result of looted aid being sold on the black
market.

Aid delivery became so dangerous that it got to the point that UNRWA
suspended deliveries
<https://mondoweiss.net/2024/12/unrwa-suspends-aid-delivery-through-main-gaza-crossing-after-looting-goes-unfettered-under-israeli-watch/>
through the Karam Abu Salem crossing in December 2024.

“The biggest problem is not only the theft of goods but the fact that
whoever shoots at the truck or the driver means to destroy and vandalize
the truck,” said Merenda Barakat at the time, UNRWA’s Deputy Chief Area
Officer, explaining the organization’s decision to suspend aid delivery.
“He not only wants to steal; he doesn’t want the truck to return to work at
the Karam Abu Salem crossing.”
[image: Humanitarian aid trucks continue to enter Gaza Strip and proceeded
towards the distribution center following the ceasefire between Israel and
Hamas in Gaza City, February 16, 2025. (Photo: Omar Ashtawy/APA
Images)]Humanitarian
aid trucks continue to enter Gaza Strip and proceeded towards the
distribution center following the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in
Gaza City, February 16, 2025. (Photo: Omar Ashtawy/APA Images)

In December, *Mondoweiss *obtained testimony from a man who briefly worked
with a smaller group that waylaid aid convoys passing through its area in
Rafah.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, Khuza’a (not his real name), 23,
once joined members of a group that stole aid “from places that are
difficult to reach without security [coordination] with the Israeli army,”
he said, clarifying that they were “areas near the Karam Abu Salem
crossing.”

According to Khuza’a, the group he was with was unarmed save for the
leader, who carried a pistol. Khuza’a recounted that the leader was
“constantly talking to someone on the phone” during the mission, “who
directed him where to go to reach the aid trucks.” Khuza’a indicated that
the leader of the group was in contact with other groups “doing the same
work,” and that all those groups “went to areas under the direction of the
Israeli army.”

Khuza’a says that after a single expedition with the group, he decided to
stop joining them. “I went once on a reconnaissance mission,” he said. “But
I couldn’t bear to go back a second time. It wasn’t just about the missing
food supplies that we all needed to secure, it was more than that: it was
the fact that we were working under orders from the Israeli army.”

In light of these raids, the Gaza security forces, which are part of the
government’s civil apparatus, formed a special unit in November 2024
consisting of members of the Intervention and Public Order Service and the
police force, called the “Arrow Unit.”

After its formation, the Arrow Unit announced that it had ambushed several
thieves at the entrance to the Maghazi area in central Gaza. It also
organized an ambush of members of Abu Shabab’s group, announcing on
November 19 that it had killed at least 20 members of the group, and
initially claimed that Abu Shabab was among the slain, alongside his
brother, Fathi. Later reports revealed that Abu Shabab had survived the
assassination attempt.
[image: Palestinian Hamas police officers begin working to maintain
security and order during the ceasefire with Israel, Gaza City, January 20,
2025. (Photo: Hadi Daoud/APA Images)]Palestinian Hamas police officers
begin working to maintain security and order during the ceasefire with
Israel, Gaza City, January 20, 2025. (Photo: Hadi Daoud/APA Images)

“We tried from the first moment to address this problem with this group
that operated outside the law for many months,” Ismail Thawabta, the Gaza
Media Office head, told *Mondoweiss *in December 2024. “We succeeded to a
certain extent in this matter.”

The crackdown of the security forces, and particularly the Arrow Unit, was
swift and often draconian, especially since the accused were considered
collaborators with Israel. Mainstream Western media outlets were
predictably quick to cover
<https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/13/us/politics/hamas-power-gaza-violence-israel.html>
the repressive measures, highlighting how Hamas “uses brutality to maintain
power.”

Thawabta explained that since these groups operated in the zone under
exclusive control of the Israeli army, and where Gaza security forces could
not go, they effectively worked “under the eyes of the occupation, which
facilitates these behaviors.” In other words, Thawabta said, they were
treated as outright collaborators who played a role in exacerbating famine
and furthering the genocide.

A few months into the Hamas crackdown, Israel agreed to a ceasefire with
the organization, putting an end to hostilities between mid-January and
mid-March 2025. During this period, Gaza’s civil government and police
force recuperated, spreading throughout Gaza and attempting to restore
order to areas that had been dominated by anarchy.

“The security services entered into a confrontation [with these groups],
losing many of their personnel to regain control,” Abu Malek, the director
of a police station in Gaza City, told *Mondoweiss *in March after the
ceasefire had fallen apart. “They regained control in many areas, such as
Khan Younis, Rafah, and Gaza.”

Abu Malek explained that the government was able to reassert civil and
administrative control over Gaza during the truce period, but that the
resumption of war “brought chaos back to the forefront.”
[image: Bahjat Abu Sultan (center), head of Gaza's Security Service, on a
field visit in Gaza City during the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas,
January 20, 2025. Abu Sultan was assassinated alongside several Gaza
government leaders on March 18. (Photo: Hadi Daoud/APA Images)]Bahjat Abu
Sultan (center), head of Gaza’s Security Service, on a field visit in Gaza
City during the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, January 20, 2025. Abu
Sultan was assassinated alongside several Gaza government leaders on March
18. (Photo: Hadi Daoud/APA Images) *Emerging chaos*

It has been nearly two months since the ceasefire fell apart and Israel
restarted its campaign of targeting the civil government and its leaders.

In that period, the police force has tried to organize popular emergency
committees to provide services, Abu Malek said, including coordinating
efforts to deliver water, remove rubble from the streets in coordination
with municipalities, enforce price controls at marketplaces, and “combat
families, clans, bandits, and thieves who seize aid.”

Much of the recent surge in banditry in Gaza City can be seen as a
continuation of previous looting activity, but there are aspects of it that
are new. Some of these looting efforts are growing bolder and more
organized, according to local reports, in part due to Israel’s suspected
assistance of these groups. In addition, since the majority of the Gaza
police force and security forces have either gone underground or now
operate clandestinely, it has become far more challenging to deal with
these gangs. A security vacuum has been created that the civil government
is struggling to fill.

As a result, calls are growing among families in Gaza for the clans to take
matters into their own hands to put a stop to the epidemic of theft and
criminality. These calls propose the formation of a new “united leadership”
in Gaza to confront the phenomenon. Several clans have already put out
statements.

In a statement on May 1, the head of the Madhoun clan in Gaza called for
“the formation of a unified national leadership led by mayors, *mukhtars*
[clan leaders], reformers, neighborhood committees, national institutions
and personalities, and popular and youth committees” to confront
lawlessness. The statement is couched in the language of “securing the
internal front” and fighting the occupation’s policies.

Another statement put out by the head of the al-Ghoul clan on the same day
limited itself to condemnations of the looting, which it said was designed
to “sow chaos and mutiny” that was in line with “the occupation’s policy of
persecuting and destroying our people.”

While practical steps are yet to materialize from these clan statements,
they form a possible precedent in opening the way for bodies other than
Hamas to assume control in some parts of Gaza. Notably, it appears that the
calls for forming such committees are proposed as an alternative to the
committees that the government has been trying to form in recent months.
Government officials could not immediately be reached for comment regarding
the circulating statements or the government’s position on them.

In a statement to *Mondoweiss *on May 4, Ismail Thawabta claimed that “the
security situation is generally under control, despite limited attempts
from some lawless groups to exploit the humanitarian conditions.” The Gaza
Media Office head said that criminal gangs are “being dealt with in the
field.”

Videos <https://x.com/Houssem081989/status/1919086113362194851> have
circulated on social media purporting to show members of the Arrow Unit
beating suspected collaborators. One widely circulated video
<https://x.com/SHIQAQII/status/1919093411803471945> on May 3 showed a man
supposedly “confessing” to being a thief and “repenting” on camera. Other
circulating statements, also purporting to be issued by the Arrow Unit,
claimed that videos would be released “in the coming days” showing the
field execution of three collaborators with Israel alongside their taped
confessions.

Amid these circulating videos, Gaza’s Interior Ministry stated on May 3
that it would continue to pursue the outlaws “at any cost,” and Reuters has
reported
<https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hamas-executes-looters-gaza-food-crisis-worsens-under-israeli-blockade-2025-05-04/>
that Hamas has already executed several looters it accuses of collaborating
with Israel.

Abu Malek, the police station director in Gaza City, contended that even
though the Gaza government has been dealt a heavy blow since the ceasefire
fell apart, it can rebuild itself quickly “if the human cadres and the
capabilities are available,” adding that “any destroyed entity can rebuild
itself.”

But this task is made increasingly harder, since even civil government
employees are now wanted by Israel.

Abu Udai, the head of the Information Security Department of a Gaza City
government agency, conceded in testimony for *Mondoweiss *that “the
occupation took advantage of the ceasefire to gather information about the
relationships between wanted individuals, their families, their
connections, and their friends.”

“This made the strike that violated the ceasefire agreement [on March 18]
successful,” Abu Udai added. “A large number of leaders and their families
were targeted, and multiple figures were assassinated simultaneously.”

Abu Udai was himself the target of two different assassination attempts,
which killed his wife and two sons. Other than himself, his 9-year-old
daughter was the sole survivor. As of the time of Abu Udai’s testimony,
obtained in late March, he was still trying to covertly visit his daughter,
who was staying with an aunt.

“We cling to those who survive more than anything else,” Abu Udai
explained. “We cannot abandon our families forever, so [Israel’s] circle of
targeting becomes easier. Despite taking all precautions, the occupation
often manages to reach us.”
------------------------------


*Faris Giacaman *Faris Giacaman is Mondoweiss’ Palestine Editorial Director.


*Tareq S. Hajjaj *Tareq S. Hajjaj is a journalist and a member of the
Palestinian Writers Union. He studied English Literature at Al-Azhar
University in Gaza. He started his career in journalism in 2015, working as
a news writer and translator for the local newspaper, Donia al-Watan. He
has reported for *Elbadi*, *Middle East Eye*, and *Al Monitor*. Follow him
on Twitter at @Tareqshajjaj <https://twitter.com/Tareqshajjaj>.
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