https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/first-person/2025/06/25/israel-arming-gangs-fracture-gazas-society-inside...Armed criminal gangs have been unleashed on the Gaza Strip by Israeli policy. On 5 June, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly confirmed that Israel is arming these criminal factions and clans, admitting something us in Gaza already knew to be true. The goal? To reduce the number of casualties among Israeli soldiers – and to further fracture Palestinian society from the inside.
The results have been catastrophic. The presence of these gangs, many of whose members were imprisoned before this war for crimes against their own people, has added a new and terrifying layer to our suffering. We are no longer only afraid of the sky – but also of our neighbours, of the people walking among us. We don’t just fear hunger or bombs anymore. We fear betrayal.
A lot of attention has focused on Yasser Abu Shabab and his men, who Israel has armed to control territory in Rafah, in southern Gaza. But there are armed gangs everywhere now, controlling access to aid, even inside Gaza City.
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This is not an accident
Meanwhile, here in Gaza, children are dying not only from bullets, but from hunger-related complications, infections, dehydration, and malnutrition. The UN says we are descending into famine. But if this isn’t famine already, what is?
A mother from Jabalia told me she feeds her children once every two days. When she has nothing, she just gives them water and salt. The water, of course, is contaminated, because that is all we have. Her children “sleep and wake up hungry”, she said. On the rare occasions she can afford a kilo of flour to make some bread, her kids can’t help but eat all of it in the same day – or even in an hour. They are too hungry to ration.
The so-called aid hubs of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation that are supposed to feed us are death traps. More than 400 people have been killed and 1,000 wounded since they opened on 27 May while trying to get assistance. The most desperate civilians – displaced from their homes, living in tents, starving – risk their lives walking hours to reach them. When they arrive, they are often met by sniper fire, armed looters, or stampedes triggered by chaos and fear.
These are not accidents. They are deliberate killings. In Rafah, and other areas in the Strip, dozens of people – unarmed civilians, fathers, teenagers, children – have been shot in the back, head, or chest while trying to grab a sack of flour. Their corpses are often left in the street for hours, unreachable, because those who try to help risk being shot too.
What is happening is not a humanitarian failure. This is humanitarian theatre, staged for the international press, whose attention has now been diverted, while the reality is death – sanctioned, subsidised, and systematic.
How is it that in 2025 a father can be executed for trying to bring home bread to his family? How do we live in a world where the richest nations send “help” that kills – and then wash their hands clean of responsibility? How do you sleep knowing your taxes pay for the bullets that are killing my neighbours as they wait in line for rice? And what do we call this – if not genocide?
For us in Gaza, this is not just a war. It is annihilation.
