After the killing of Yasser Abu Shabab, the Israeli-backed gang leader in Gaza who led the largest anti-Hamas militia in Gaza, his deputy, Ghassan al-Duhaini, has taken over as head of the group, officially known as the “Popular Forces.”
According to Al Jazeera, al-Duhaini’s history includes working for the Palestinian Authority and later joining the Army of Islam, or Jaysh al-Islam (not to be confused with a Syrian group with the same name), a Gaza-based Salafi jihadist group with a similar ideology to al-Qaeda that declared its allegiance to ISIS in 2015.
Israeli media has also reported on al-Duhaini’s jihadist past, with The Jerusalem Post saying he was once a “commander in a terrorist group in Gaza that was associated with al-Qaeda.”
In 2011, the Egyptian government accused the Army of Islam of being responsible for a New Year’s Eve bombing of a Coptic Orthodox church in Alexandria, which killed 24 Christians. According to reports at the time, the group denied responsibility but also expressed support for the attack.
Over the years, the Army of Islam has clashed with both Israel and Hamas, which it considers an “apostate” group. “The Jaysh al-Islam group believes that all who rule by man-made laws are apostate disbelievers,” a member of the Army of Islam said in a 2019 interview when asked about Hamas. “The Hamas government has arrested a number of members of Jaysh al-Islam, and that deed has been repeated.”
It’s unclear when exactly al-Duhaini joined the Army of Islam or what he did for the group. Other members of the Popular Forces have ties to ISIS, including Issam Nabahin, who was previously identified by Hamas and Egyptian intelligence as an ISIS militant. Israeli media reported that Nabahin had fought for ISIS against the Egyptian army in Sinai.
Abu Shabab himself was also accused of maintaining arms smuggling ties with ISIS-Sinai, and was previously imprisoned for drug trafficking. He broke out of jail following Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel amid Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza, and formed a gang that was later armed by Israel and became the Popular Forces, which is based in Israeli-occupied southern Gaza.
Last year, an internal UN memo identified Abu Shabab’s gang as “the main and most influential stakeholder behind systematic and massive looting” of aid trucks in southern Gaza. Abu Shabab once admitted to looting aid trucks in an interview with The Washington Post, saying that he “takes from the trucks” but claimed he didn’t touch “food, tents, or supplies for children.”
Abu Shabab’s death, which, according to Israeli media, was the result of an internal dispute, was seen as a blow to Israel’s efforts to use the group against Hamas, but al-Duhaini made clear in an interview with Israeli media that he’s ready to carry on the mission. “Why would I be afraid of Hamas when I am fighting Hamas?” he told Israel’s N12 News on Friday. “I fight them, arrest their people, confiscate their equipment, fight them, and push them away. I do what they deserve in the name of the people and the free individuals.”
According to a report from Israel Hayom, the US-led task force monitoring Gaza, which is working out of a base in southern Israel, has been in contact with the Israeli-backed militias in Gaza and has considered using them to “enforce order” in the Strip.
