Gaza tribal leaders support Hamas crackdown on Israeli-backed gangs

The head of the Higher Commission for Palestinian Tribes, the largest tribal assembly in Gaza, says the resistance movement Hamas has only been targeting Israeli-backed "gangs", refuting Western media claims of a crackdown on innocent civilians.

“I challenge anyone, on your channel right now, to name a single innocent person who was attacked. Just one name,” Mukhtar Abu Salman al-Mughni said in an interview.

In response to claims from Western media that Hamas is executing innocent Palestinians, he stressed that the Gazan security forces didn’t harm innocents, “they went after the gangs.”

Al-Mughni noted that those gangs had armed posts in several areas across Gaza, including Rafah, Khan Younis, Shuja‘iyya, and the north, and refused to surrender to the authorities, killing a number of security forces.

“When the police moved to clean out those posts, the gangs fought back and killed police officers too.”

The official emphasized that the security campaign launched by Hamas after the halt of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza prevented the eruption of civil war.

“Had the police not intervened, people themselves would have taken revenge — and that would have become a civil war. The security forces prevented that.”

On Tuesday, the Deterrent Force, affiliated with the security forces in the strip, announced in a brief statement that its members had “seized bastions of armed militiamen, mopped up terrorists of various neighborhoods, and carried out operations aimed at hunting down elements involved in the shooting and killing of displaced persons.”

Gaza resistance forces arrest Israeli-backed gang members, seize militant positions

Gaza resistance forces have captured a large number of Israeli-backed militants during a series of mop-up operations in various neighborhoods across the besieged coastal sliver.

That came a day after Gaza’s security forces purportedly neutralized a leading member of an Israeli-backed gang associated with the Daesh (ISIS) terrorist group, which has been responsible for contributing to Tel Aviv’s genocide in the coastal strip.

An unnamed security source speaking to Quds News Network on Monday identified the targeted individual as “A.T.,” whom the strip’s Resistance Security Apparatus successfully confronted as part of “a precise security ambush.”

A.T. had been recruiting militants for the gang run by Yasser Abu Shabab, the source said, adding that the Israeli regime began providing Abu Shabab's clan with weapons and equipment earlier this year amid Tel Aviv’s war of genocide on Gaza, which had begun in October 2023.

The support further enabled the gang to wage deadly violence across Gaza, especially in the southern city of Rafah.

In June, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted that the regime had been arming and supporting the Daesh-associated gang to "counter the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas."

Prior to his headship of the gang, Abu Shabab had spent time in prison in Gaza. He began running the gang in 2024, prompting the elders and leaders of the prominent Abu Shabab family to distance themselves from his clan.

Hamas’ mop-up operations come as a fragile ceasefire has taken effect in Gaza, after nearly 70,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed in Israel’s genocide.

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