A recent clash in which the Israel Defense Forces provided air support for a local Gazan militia against Hamas terrorists has brought into sharp focus a new and controversial Israeli tactic aimed at boosting the goal of dismantling the terror group’s rule from within.
On June 9, after Hamas terrorists reportedly opened fire on forces belonging to the Abu Shabab clan, an Israeli Air Force aircraft intervened, striking and killing five Hamas terrorists.
The incident occurred as Yasser Abu Shabab, the head of the militia, announced a recruitment drive for his armed group to establish “administrative and community committees” to serve as a governance alternative to Hamas in eastern Rafah.
The approach of empowering local armed groups is seen by some former Israeli defense officials as a pragmatic and effective tool for a transitional phase, while others warn it is a “dangerous and dirty game” fraught with long-term risks, though it could still deliver short-term benefits.
Yagur explains the approach
Lt. Col. (res.) Amit Yagur, former deputy head of the Palestinian arena at the IDF Planning Branch and a former naval intelligence officer, told JNS on Tuesday that this approach is rooted in a strategic imperative to prioritize civilian steps, alongside the military effort to achieve an irreversible defeat of Hamas.
Yagur argued for moving beyond the debate of “what not to do”—such as reinstalling the Palestinian Authority in Gaza or imposing a full-scale Israeli military administration.
“Our eyes need to be on the ball. The ball is the dismantling of Hamas militarily and governmentally,” Yagur stated. “The civilian effort against Hamas, in my opinion, is much more important than the military effort. Not that the military effort should be trivialized, it’s not black or white, we need both, but our backbone needs to be the civilian one, because the civilian aspect is what bothers Hamas the most, for the simple reason that the military damage is [from Hamas’s viewpoint] recoverable.”
Hamas took into account that its capabilities would be hit and it plans on rearming after the war, Yagur said.
“It can smuggle or manufacture weapons after the war. What is not recoverable is the civilian issue. The moment you take away from a terror organization the population that is very important to it, because it lives within it, is embedded in it, and that is its source of legitimacy; the moment you take away its population and its essential rule over the population, then you have won the campaign. This is essentially irreversible, and this, we have not implemented over the past year and a half.”
In Yagur’s view, the use of local militias is key to making this civilian effort effective. “The ‘what should we do’ is the use of local militias that will help make this entire process of taking sovereignty away from Hamas more effective,” he said.
The militia’s role, he explained, is primarily to provide order and security for the Gaza civilian population, particularly around the new Israeli-backed humanitarian aid distribution centers.
“We saw that the population rushes the distribution centers, not because they want to wreck them, but simply because each one wants to get food, and they are used to the looting under Hamas where whoever gets there first and takes the most is the winner,” he said. “They need to be organized and policed, and this is what the militia knows how to do well. This saves us the price of our soldiers having to confront this issue, because security control remains in the hands of the IDF.”
Yagur described this as the golden middle path that can lead to a transitional phase between active warfare and a”day after” solution in Gaza, which he envisioned as a civilian committee led by the United States and moderate Arab states.
Arbel outlines risks
Shalom Arbel, a former senior member of the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) who served from 1988 to 2013 in roles involving human intelligence recruitment and operations and before that as a major in the IDF reserves in Lebanon, Gaza and Judea and Samaria, outlined the risks on Tuesday.
“Of course, this has its pluses and minuses. The negatives,” he told JNS, “some of which we can already see in the public criticism, are really a public image issue, such as: ‘What, the IDF can’t do it? We’re giving what the IDF should be doing to a group of Gazan criminals? We’re letting a gang of criminals do our work for us?’ This is the general point, that it doesn’t look good—the image of shaking hands with gangsters, with militias, with criminals,” Arbel stated.
Beyond the image, Arbel raised concerns about a loss of control over the militia. “Who supervises this? According to what law does this operate? What are the rules? Who is the operator and within what legal and moral boundaries?”
He also pointed to the “day after” dilemma, describing the militias as a “double-edged sword.” “You are giving weapons to people who might one day fight you. And you are adding more weapons to a Strip that is already armed and needs to be disarmed of weapons, not have more weapons added. What do you do with them [militia members] afterwards? Will they be part of the Palestinian Authority? Will they be part of the next government? If so, then what is the next government? So what have you done for the ‘day after’ plan?”
Arbel stated that while the militias can help achieve the immediate goal of collapsing Hamas, it is a “ bit of a dangerous game, a dirty game” and likely a short-term stopgap, not a long-term plan. He expressed a personal preference for direct Israeli military action, viewing the militia strategy as highly risky.
Yagur acknowledged these risks but framed them as a necessary part of a pragmatic, temporary solution. He also addressed concerns voiced by some of creating a “Somalia” in Gaza, stating that this is not where Gaza will be doing.
“The militias are good for exactly this bridge phase; they are not the end solution. The end solution as it is designated for Gaza, as far as I understand, is a solution of a civilian committee… led by the United States in partnership with several Arab states,” Yagur said. He asserted that managing risk is essential: “There are those who say, ‘it will turn against us.’ True, it could turn against us, but for that, we manage risks. All our lives, by the way… are risk management… We don’t live in a bubble and we need to descend to the realms of reality and also say what we can do. And therefore, at the current timing, in my view, this is a good solution.”
He noted the plan has the recommendation of the Shin Bet, and that Israel should strengthen its own “proxy muscle” in a world where its enemies use proxies against it.
Yagur added that the Abu Shabab militia is “closer to Fatah and opposes Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. Had they been ideologically affiliated with Hamas, they could not be trusted.”
Arbel, for his part, expressed deep skepticism about the significance of previous affiliations for groups like the Abu Shabab militia. He argued that while operatives might have past links to various organizations, as well as the Palestinian Authority or its General Intelligence, these formal labels are less important than the underlying social structure.
According to Arbel, such armed groups are based on families, origins, and intimate personal acquaintances rather than through formal party mechanisms.
“It’s a brother who takes his brother and takes his cousin,” citing Hamas itself and the Sinwar family as a prime example of this dynamic, he said. Their actions and allegiances, Arbel assessed, are driven by specific, localized interests rather than a rigid, top-down organizational or ideological commitment.