Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has admitted that his government provides arms, money and support to a Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip that opposes Hamas, which rules the Palestinian enclave.

Netanyahu’s admission comes after MP and former defense minister Avigdor Lieberman said Israel transferred weapons to the group.

According to Israeli and Palestinian media, this group includes members of a Bedouin tribe and is led by Yasser Abu Shabab. The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) describes Abu Shabbab as the leader of a “criminal gang operating in the Rafah area (in the southern Gaza Strip, which also stretches into Egypt) and accused of looting aid trucks” in Gaza.

“What’s wrong with that?”

Lieberman said in an interview with Israeli public television station Kan that the Netanyahu government is “giving weapons to a group of criminals and thugs.”

“What did Lieberman reveal? That security sources activated a Gaza tribe opposed to Hamas? What’s wrong with that?” said Netanyahu in a video posted yesterday on his X account.

“There is only good in this, it saves the lives of Israeli soldiers” in the Gaza Strip, where Israel is fighting Hamas after its unprecedented attack on Israeli territory on October 7, 2023, which sparked the war.

Michael Milstein, an expert on Palestinian affairs at the Moshe Dayan Center in Tel Aviv, told Agence France-Presse that the Abu Shabab tribe was part of a Bedouin tribe living in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

“It seems that the Shabak (the Hebrew acronym for the Internal Security Service, also known as the Shin Bet) or the army thought it was an excellent idea to turn this militia into a proxy, give it weapons and money and protect it from the army’s operations,” Milstein added.

Hamas killed four members of the gang just days ago, according to him.

Hamas calls on citizens to oppose this group

ECFR notes that Abu Shabab “was reportedly previously imprisoned by Hamas for drug trafficking. His brother was reportedly killed by Hamas during the group’s crackdown on attacks on UN humanitarian aid convoys.”

Before imposing an absolute two-month blockade on the Gaza Strip in early March, which was eased only to a degree in the second half of May, Israel regularly accused Hamas of looting or exploiting humanitarian aid entering the war-torn Palestinian enclave of more than 2 million people on the brink of starvation.