by Seth J. Frantzman
While small, these groups may be able to aid Israel in removing Hamas from positions of power.
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Small armed anti-Hamas resistance groups are emerging in Gaza, recent reports indicate.
Regional media is taking notice of the groups, including in the Gulf, where the official line is that Hamas should not play a role in Gaza. In the UAE, Al-Ain media has a report on September 20 noting “Small armed groups are emerging in Gaza, but the crisis is much bigger: There is a local, regional, and international consensus in the Gaza Strip that Hamas cannot be part of any future solution for the Strip.”
This builds on previous reports that at least one armed group is backed by Israel and has a foothold against Hamas in Gaza.
Combating Hamas with opposing groups
The concept of using clans and tribes against Hamas goes back to the early days after the October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre. However, this strategy has not been extremely successful as the groups remain small. Hamas continues to control the lives of around 2 million people in Gaza. Around 500,000 of those people were recently forced to evacuate Gaza City due to the recent IDF offensive there.
Shabab was said to be part of a large Bedouin tribe, and reports at The New Arab accused him of setting up “collaborator villages” in southern Gaza. This is part of the terminology that one must wade through in discussing these armed groups. Are they “collaborators” with Israel, or tribesmen, or anti-Hamas groups with wide appeal?
The Al-Ain report is important because it provides some context for how the region may greet these groups. Tribal and clan groups usually cannot control much territory. The US tried empowering Sunni tribes during the “awakening” in Iraq against the insurgency in the first decade of the 2000s. It only succeeded for a short time.
What does the Al-Ain report say? “Israel's refusal to allow the Palestinian Authority to return to the Gaza Strip or the Arab proposal to have an independent Palestinian committee assume responsibility for administering the Strip for a transitional period after the war makes the chances of a solution increasingly difficult.”
The report notes that small armed groups are emerging, “presenting themselves as an alternative to Hamas, but they have not received support locally or regionally.” However, it says these groups cannot operate “without direct or indirect support from Israel, which is likely to alienate the local population, especially given Israel's actions against the population of Gaza for nearly two years.”
The report says that Israel has backed the Abu Shabab group.
Now there is a new group emerging as well. “Recently, another group emerged in Khan Yunis, south of the Gaza Strip, led by Husam al-Astal, a former Palestinian security official sentenced to death by Hamas for his alleged involvement in Israel's assassination of a Hamas official.”
Counterterrorism Strike Force
Joe Truzman first noted this emerging group in a piece at Long War Journal on September 19. “On August 21, an armed group in the Gaza Strip calling itself the Counterterrorism Strike Force (CSF) declared its formation.The group is among a handful of anti-Hamas militias that are reportedly managed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Israel Security Agency, also known as the Shin Bet,” he writes. “In response to the catastrophic conditions endured by our people in the Gaza Strip, and in light of the ongoing rule of repression and terrorism practiced by Hamas, we announce the formation of the Counterterrorism Strike Force,” the group stated in a Facebook post, he added.
Truzman notes, “despite the growing number of anti-Hamas militias in Gaza, there is no clear evidence showing how effective they have been in countering the rule of the Islamist group, which, by current estimates, maintains 2,500 armed fighters in Gaza City alone.”
Asharq al-Awsat also reported on Astal’s alleged group.
Al-Ain noted that Astal was also profiled by the Times of Israel. That report said that the group “has established itself around the village of Kizan al-Najjar, just south of Khan Younis.” However, the report makes it seem this group has only a few hundred men. It is also based one kilometer outside of the humanitarian area of Mawasi. "I am responsible for the (new) humanitarian zone in Khan Yunis," Astal said. According to Al-Ain, the Astal group and the Shabab group are in contact but work independently of each other.
Both men are linked to Bedouin tribes
Astal, who is fifty years old, according to the Al-Ain report, comes from a “Bedouin family in the Khan Yunis area and says he worked in Israel for many years, later working with the Palestinian Authority's security forces when they still controlled Gaza.” He was imprisoned and given a death sentence by Hamas for his involvement with Israel. "I am 50 years old. I remember when the army and Israel were in Gaza, and we lived in peace,” he says. Hamas accused him of involvement in an assassination attempt on a Hamas-associated engineer, Fadl al-Batsh, in Malaysia in 2018.As of 2022, Hamas claimed to have detained a different individual linked to the killing.
The question now regarding the militias is whether the rise of these groups will be significant or if they will remain a small drop in the bucket.
The IDF has been fighting Hamas for 714 days since the October 7 attack. The IDF has used up to five divisions at a time to fight around 20-30,000 Hamas fighters. After 23 months, the IDF has not been able to replace or remove Hamas completely from Gaza. Will a few hundred or 2,000 armed gunmen be able to fill the void where Hamas has been weakened?
So far, evidence does not show that they can. The IDF also seems reticent to let civilians leave areas controlled by Hamas. As such, the small groups are only enabled to do certain things. They seem to be empowered as a result of needing to outsource the securing of areas to locals. This is because of the US-backed GHF efforts and the IDF’s renewed focus on Gaza City.
There has been talk of Gazans moving into non-Hamas-run areas in Rafah. However, no infrastructure at present appears to exist for this initiative. Similarly, there seems to be no clear day after plan that would enable the non-Hamas forces to build up capabilities and take care of civilians.
Seth J. Frantzman
Source: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-868167
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