Al Jazeera is set to release a new investigation on armed groups in Gaza accused of collaborating with the Israeli military against Palestinians, detailing their names, movements and training locations, as Israel’s genocidal war on the enclave continues unabated.
The investigation, a new episode of the programme What is Hidden is Greater, by Al Jazeera journalist Tamer Almisshal, will be broadcast at 9pm in Doha (18:00 GMT) on Friday. It includes audio and video material that the network says documents how individuals inside Gaza were recruited and operated.
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The investigation reveals how the armed groups have been moving freely from northern to southern Gaza behind the so-called “yellow line” – the self-proclaimed demarcation line, effectively a buffer zone, where the Israeli army is entrenched under the first phase of the Gaza “ceasefire” that came into effect in October.
Israel has repeatedly violated the “ceasefire” on a near-daily basis, killing more than 525 Palestinians.
Israeli military maps indicate the line extends 1.5km and 6.5km (0.9 to 4 miles) inside Gaza from its eastern boundary with Israel and covers roughly 58 percent of the enclave.
According to the investigation, these armed groups face multiple accusations of collaborating with the Israeli occupation, amid growing evidence that they move within areas prohibited to Palestinians under the ceasefire agreement, allegations that some of these groups have publicly denied.
Last June, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly admitted the country was using armed gangs in the devastated coastal enclave to help fight Hamas, the ruling entity in Gaza.
Netanyahu said the government had “activated” powerful local clans in the enclave on the advice of “security officials”.
A Palestinian woman returning to Gaza through the partially opened Rafah crossing this week told the Reuters news agency that she, along with other women, was stopped at a checkpoint manned by Israel-backed Palestinian gunmen who identified themselves as belonging to the Popular Forces, commonly known as the Abu Shabab militia.
The women’s family names were read out over a loudspeaker, and each was led by two men and a woman from Abu Shabab militia to a security point where Israeli forces were waiting. They were then subjected to full body searches, blindfolded and handcuffed, she said, and interrogated about the Hamas-led October 7 attack in southern Israel.
Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has killed at least 71,851 people and wounded 171,626 since October 2023.
Who are these groups?
Among the most prominent is the Popular Forces group founded by Yasser Abu Shabab. He was killed in December and succeeded by Ghassan al-Dahini.
Abu Shabab last year announced that its fighters had helped protect supply shipments to new United States and Israel-backed aid distribution centres run by the shadowy Gaza “Humanitarian” Foundation (GHF).
The GHF had been widely condemned for bypassing the United Nations and other humanitarian aid infrastructure in Gaza and for deadly violence, by Israeli soldiers and its own security contractors, that killed and wounded thousands of Palestinians desperately seeking food for their families, at or near its crowded distribution sites.
While Israel accused Hamas of stealing aid from Gaza’s population, without evidence – a claim aid groups have rejected – the investigation found that it was the Popular Forces that had been looting aid to resell to Gaza’s starving residents. Hamas has reportedly clashed with the Popular Forces on several occasions since September 2024, accusing them of collaborating with Israel.
Israel has also reportedly backed a group calling itself the Strike Force Against Terror, led by Hussam al-Astal, with members of the group, based on video evidence, present in areas off-limits to Palestinians in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.
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