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Strategies & Market Trends : World Outlook -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Les H who wrote (49459)	12/15/2025 9:21:01 AM
From: Les H	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 49687

The killing of gang leader Yasser Abu Shabab, a known felon and druglord, by one of his own men has exposed the bankruptcy of Israel’s vision for the Strip. By Muhammad Shehada December 12, 2025 The assassination last week of Yasser Abu Shabab — the 32-year-old leader of the Israeli-backed “Popular Forces,” a militia operating in the Rafah area of the southern Gaza Strip — is more than a lurid gangland hit. His killing at the hands of his own disgruntled militiamen is a clear representation of a policy coming undone. For months, Israel stitched together a sordid alliance of convicted felons, former ISIS affiliates, and opportunistic collaborators, presenting them as the embryo of a local governance alternative to Hamas in Gaza, while using them to orchestrate starvation and carry out attacks on Israel’s behalf. Now, this attempt to cultivate a network of criminal proxy gangs as subcontractors of its occupation is collapsing into paranoid infighting and bloody chaos. Abu Shabab himself was a convicted drug trafficker with documented links to ISIS in Sinai. Sentenced by a Gazan court in 2015 to 25 years in prison, he served eight before fleeing amid the chaos following October 7. He then emerged in Gaza under the protection of the Israeli army to lead a gang of 120 fighters, part of what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted was an explicit strategy to arm powerful clans in Gaza to counter Hamas. According to the Gazan investigative journalist Mohammed Othman, Abu Shabab’s death was set in motion when the Israeli army discovered food it had supplied to his gang inside a Hamas tunnel last month. Israel quickly imposed restrictions on the group’s members, limiting their movements in Rafah, reducing their food rations, and blocking their most trusted leaders from traveling in and out of Israel. Tensions inside the gang boiled over. Within days, after an internal investigation, the gang’s deputy and de facto ruler Ghassan Duhaini detained Jum’aa Abu Sunaima, whose brother Mahmoud oversaw the distribution of food to Abu Shabab’s gang and other families in the area, under suspicion that Jum’aa was diverting food to Hamas militants. Mahmoud went to Abu Shabab’s home to demand the release of his brother, but was told Jum’aa faced three options: remain detained, be handed over to the Israeli army, or execution. The confrontation escalated until Mahmoud pulled out an automatic rifle and opened fire; Abu Shabab was gravely injured and succumbed to his wounds after reportedly being evacuated to the Soroka Hospital in the Israeli city of Be’er Sheva, and both Mahmoud and Jum’aa were killed in the clashes. What followed Abu Shabab’s killing was a cascade of retaliatory violence. According to Othman and other local sources, Duhaini, wounded in his left leg during the confrontation, was treated in Israel and returned to carry out a number of executions — killing Abu Shabab’s bodyguards for failing to intervene, as well as the gunman, his detained brother, and several others. He also launched attacks on the Abu Sunaima clan’s homes, wounding several residents, confiscating phones, assaulting women, and placing families under lockdown. The clan later issued a public statement confirming the deaths of Jum’aa and Mahmoud and implicitly suggesting that the two were responsible for Abu Shabab’s death. This implosion captures a profound truth about Israel’s proxy experiment in Gaza: by outsourcing its occupation of a besieged population to the most violent and opportunistic collaborators, Israel will not produce a stable alternative to Hamas’ governance. Rather, such a strategy only fosters a miniature warlord economy, setting the stage for endless cycles of retributive violence. Israel’s Gaza proxy strategy is collapsing The point missed is that Israel intended the gangs introduction into Gaza to prevent the formation of a governance by the Palestinians. It's not unlike what was done in the West Bank by Israel's support for Hamas to undercut the PLO/PA role as a security guarantor.