Israeli-backed Palestinian militias step up operations against Hamas in Gaza

Pro-Israel Palestinian militia have launched repeated raids, clandestine assassination and abduction operations deep inside parts of Gaza controlled by Hamas in recent months, operating from eastern parts of Gaza that are under Israeli control after a ceasefire came into effect in October.

“Pro-Israel Palestinian militia have launched repeated raids, clandestine assassination and abduction operations deep inside parts of Gaza controlled by Hamas in recent months, with new operations launched recently despite the outbreak of conflict with Iran”

The Guardian

The militia have received significant logistic support from Israel since last year and appear to have increased their firepower, allowing new and more aggressive attacks in recent weeks.

The Guardian

The most powerful among the Israeli-backed militia are the Popular Forces, based around the ruins of Rafah, and the Strike Force Against Terror, which operates east of Khan Younis, while a third group, the Ashraf al-Mansi group, and small units such as the Popular Army have also conducted cross-line operations.

Israel has tasked the militias with security duties within the zone it controls and deployed armed men from the Popular Forces at the Rafah crossing after it partially opened last month, and the UN human rights office (OHCHR) warned of “a pattern of ill-treatment, abuse and humiliation of returnees by Israeli forces and armed Palestinians allegedly backed by the Israeli military”.

Israeli strikes in Gaza, which had averaged around 10 a day across the devastated territory over the last five months, have continued even as Israeli jets carry out bombing campaigns in Iran and Lebanon.

On Sunday, an Israeli airstrike and tank shelling killed six Palestinians, including two women and a girl, in separate attacks in Gaza City, the deadliest incidents in Gaza since the US-Israeli offensive on Iran began, health officials said.

The Guardian

At least 16 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza by airstrikes since the outbreak of war with Iran on 28 February, health officials say, and more than 600 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the ceasefire, bringing the overall total for the war to more than 72,000, mostly civilians.

The militias have conducted notable and brutal incidents on camera and in operations inside Hamas-controlled areas, including footage posted in January by the Popular Forces of Ghassan al-Duhaini with a captured semi-naked, injured Hamas commander whom Duhaini slapped while addressing Hamas and later threatened to execute.

“Pro-Israel Palestinian militia have launched repeated raids, clandestine assassination and abduction operations deep inside parts of Gaza controlled by Hamas in recent months, with new operations launched recently despite the outbreak of conflict with Iran”

The Guardian

The Popular Army, which has around 30 fighters, recently assassinated the senior officer of a Hamas police unit that targets collaborators, and members of a pro-Israeli militia shot and killed two Palestinian men collecting wood near the yellow line on 24 February.

In early February Hamas said it had thwarted a new attack by the Strike Force inside Khan Younis that killed 11, while the militia denied losses and said it had launched a raid that killed six Hamas militants; there was no independent confirmation of either claim, and Hamas police also ambushed a group of Israeli-supported armed men in Gaza City, possibly killing three and confiscating their weapons.

The enhanced role of the militias complicates plans for an international stabilisation force and comes amid a stalled US-brokered Gaza ceasefire, which formally entered its second phase in January but had progress stall before the joint US-Israeli offensive against Iran.

Statistics from Acled show 265 attacks launched by Israel in the month after the October ceasefire, rising to about 350 each month since, to reach a total of 1,664 in mid-March, and Israeli officials say the strikes are retaliation after attacks by Hamas and infiltration attempts across the yellow line but many target individuals far from alleged breaches, suggesting broader strategic aims.

The Guardian

Hamas controls most of the coastal strip where almost all the 2.3 million population of Gaza now live, is reluctant to fully disarm, and Israel appears unwilling to relinquish its control over more than half of the territory, and Tahani Mustafa of King’s College London warned that the pro-Israeli gangs “have not only been implicated in criminality but also are operating with an occupying force that is responsible for mass devastation and starvation” and that they have given Hamas “an inadvertent popularity boost”.

Hamas has issued a statement promising to eliminate the pro-Israeli militias and claiming arrests of “collaborators”, while otherwise staying on the sidelines of the new regional conflict and limiting its involvement to a statement welcoming the appointment of Mojtaba Khamenei as Iran’s supreme leader and condemning “Israeli-US aggression”.