Israeli forces retrieve body of Thai hostage from Gaza as Netanyahu admits supporting militants in Gaza

The Journal

9 hours ago

ISRAELI FORCES HAVE retrieved from the Gaza Strip the body of Natthapong Pinta, a Thai taken hostage during Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack, officials said Saturday.
A military statement said the army and the Shin Bet security agency carried out an operation on Friday and 'recovered the body of Natthapong Pinta from the Rafah area' of southern Gaza.
'Nattaphong Pinta was abducted alive by terrorists… from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, 2023, and was murdered while in captivity,' the statement alleged, blaming the Mujahideen Brigades, an armed group close to Hamas ally Islamic Jihad.
Defence Minister Israel Katz said in a statement that the hostage's body was 'returned to Israel' in 'a special operation' in the Rafah area.
'Natthapong came to Israel from Thailand to work in agriculture, out of a desire to build a better future for himself and his family,' Katz said.
He was 'brutally murdered in captivity by the terrorist organisation Mujahideen Brigades', the minister charged.
The military statement alleged that the militant group which stormed Nir Oz during Hamas's 2023 attack was to blame for the deaths of several other hostages.
'The murderous Mujahideen terrorist organisation abducted, held and murdered Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas, whose bodies were returned as part of the last hostage deal, as well as the bodies of Gad Haggai and Judi Lynn Weinstein, which were returned earlier this week,' the statement said.
'The Mujahideen terrorist organisation has also murdered and is holding the body of another foreign national,' it added.
The statement said Natthapong's family and Thai officials had been notified of the operation to recover his body.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum campaign group urged Israeli authorities in a statement to 'do what is needed to reach an agreement' to free the remaining captives.
Of the 251 hostages taken during Hamas's attack that triggered the Gaza war, 55 remain in captivity, including 31 the Israeli military says are dead.
According to the Nir Oz community, 117 residents were killed and more than 60 percent of its houses destroyed during the Hamas attack.
The 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures.
According to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, at least 54,677 people have been killed in the territory since 7 October 2023, also mostly civilians.
Israel arming militant anti-Hamas group
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted that Israel is supporting an armed group in Gaza that opposes the militant group Hamas, following comments by a former minister that Israel had transferred weapons to it.
Israeli and Palestinian media have reported that the group Israel has been working with is part of a local Bedouin tribe led by Yasser Abu Shabab.
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The European Council on Foreign Relations (EFCR) think tank describes Abu Shabab as the leader of a 'criminal gang operating in the Rafah area that is widely accused of looting aid trucks'.
Knesset member and ex-defence minister Avigdor Lieberman had told the Kan public broadcaster that the government, at Netanyahu's direction, was 'giving weapons to a group of criminals and felons'.
'What did Lieberman leak? … That on the advice of security officials, we activated clans in Gaza that oppose Hamas. What is bad about that?' Netanyahu said in a video posted to social media on Thursday.
'It is only good, it is saving lives of Israeli soldiers.'
Michael Milshtein, an expert on Palestinian affairs at the Moshe Dayan Center in Tel Aviv, told news organisation AFP that the Abu Shabab clan was part of a Bedouin tribe that spans across the border between Gaza and Egypt's Sinai peninsula.
Some of the tribe's members, he said, were involved in 'all kinds of criminal activities, drug smuggling, and things like that'.
Army spokesman Brigadier General Effie Defrin on Friday confirmed the military supported arming local militias in Gaza but remained tight-lipped on the details.
'I can say that we are operating in various ways against Hamas governance,' Defrin said during a televised press conference when questioned on the subject, without elaborating further.
Milshtein said that Abu Shabab had spent time in prison in Gaza and that his clan chiefs had recently denounced him as an Israeli 'collaborator and a gangster'.
'It seems that actually the Shabak (Israeli security agency) or the (military) thought it was a wonderful idea to turn this militia, gang actually, into a proxy, to give them weapons and money and shelter' from army operations, Milshtein said.
He added that Hamas killed four members of the gang days ago.
The ECFR said Abu Shabab was 'reported to have been previously jailed by Hamas for drug smuggling. His brother is said to have been killed by Hamas during a crackdown against the group's attacks on UN aid convoys.'
Israel regularly accuses Hamas, with which it has been at war for nearly 20 months, of looting aid convoys in Gaza.
Hamas said the group had 'chosen betrayal and theft as their path' and called on civilians to oppose them.
Hamas, which has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades, said it had evidence of 'clear coordination between these looting gangs, collaborators with the occupation (Israel), and the enemy army itself in the looting of aid and the fabrication of humanitarian crises that deepen the suffering of' Palestinians.
The Popular Forces, as Abu Shabab's group calls itself, said on Facebook it had 'never been, and will never be, a tool of the occupation'.
'Our weapons are simple, outdated and came through the support of our own people,' it added.
Milshtein called Israel's decision to arm a group such as Abu Shabab 'a fantasy, not something that you can really describe as a strategy'.
'I really hope it will not end with catastrophe,' he said.