Champion of the people or a traitor? A new force emerges in southern Gaza
The photo shows a lean, tanned man in a dark helmet. He's grasping a rifle and UN vehicles move behind him as he waves through traffic.
The man is Yasser Abu Shabab, who says he commands hundreds of armed men known as the Popular Forces to offer protection to international organizations working in southern Gaza.
In his early thirties, Abu Shabab is from a prominent Bedouin family in southern Gaza. On October 7, 2023, he was languishing in a Hamas-run jail in Gaza, accused of drug trafficking, before being released after the conflict started.
Now he is an emerging presence in southern Gaza, controlling aid routes near the crucial Kerem Shalom crossing and providing men to guard convoys against looting, which has only worsened since limited aid started entering Gaza in mid-May following an Israeli blockade.
As Hamas' grip on Gaza has weakened and the territory's police force has been hollowed out, gangs have emerged to steal humanitarian aid from convoys and re-sell it. But many convoys are also stopped and ransacked by desperate civilians.
Abu Shabab told CNN that he leads 'a group of citizens from this community who have volunteered to protect humanitarian aid from looting and corruption.'
The reality is more complicated.
Israeli officials have acknowledged providing weapons to Abu Shabab's militia, as part of an operation to arm local groups to counter Hamas. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended the covert enterprise earlier this week, saying the security forces had 'activated clans in Gaza which oppose Hamas.' He did not name Abu Shabab, but Israeli officials told CNN that Abu Shabab is part of the program.
Abu Shabab insisted to CNN that his men had not received weapons from the Israelis. 'Our equipment is extremely basic, passed down by volunteers from their forefathers or assembled from limited local resources.'
For its part, Hamas says Abu Shabab is a traitor and a gangster. Last week, the group said: 'We pledge before God to continue confronting the dens of that criminal and his gang, no matter the cost of the sacrifices we make.'
Hamas killed his brother last year and has tried to kill Abu Shabab at least twice, according to Muhammad Shehada, a Gaza analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
In response to written questions from CNN, Abu Shabab repeatedly denied any connection with the Israeli military, saying: 'Our forces do not engage in any form of communication with the Israeli army, neither directly nor indirectly.'
Analysts find that difficult to believe, based on evidence of his movements in Israeli-controlled areas of Gaza. One video from late May shows Abu Shabab stopping a Red Cross vehicle and talking with an official. CNN geolocated the encounter to an Israeli-controlled buffer zone close to the crossing point at Kerem Shalom. Other videos show encounters with United Nations' convoys in the same area.
Israel – and in particular Netanyahu – has never laid out clear plans for what governance and security in Gaza might look like if or when Hamas is defeated. Israel has been trying to find groups or clans opposed to Hamas who might play a role, but more recently Netanyahu and other ministers endorsed a plan put forward by US President Donald Trump for relocating Gaza's residents and redeveloping the territory.
Abu Shabab has had a presence near the ruins of Gaza's long defunct airport in Rafah since late last year. Shehada at the ECFR said that while the ceasefire held earlier this year, his group appeared to vanish.
But his significance has grown in recent weeks, since Israeli authorities began to allow a trickle of aid to reach Gaza through Kerem Shalom in mid-May. Abu Shabab's social media presence, along with slick videos and fluent English commentary, has expanded.
'It's nearly impossible this is being done inside Gaza,' Shehada said. 'It's probably someone outside that is running this entire psy-op.'
A diplomatic official told CNN that the UN had to deal with local elements as it tried to distribute aid, whether they are backed by Hamas or not.
Abu Shabab 'has a few square kilometers of an area under his control, and then it's on to the next guy,' the official said. 'The fact that he is not targeted by the Israelis is a clear indication of how they see him.'
The official also asserted that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation – the controversial new US-backed organization tasked with distributing aid in Gaza – had contact with Abu Shabab, whether directly or indirectly.
Abu Shabab responded to CNN that 'with regard to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, we stress the need for its work to operate within a unified national framework and to maintain continuous coordination with all legitimate parties.'
GHF told CNN on Sunday that it had no collaboration at all with Abu Shabab's group. 'We do have local Palestinian workers we are very proud of but none is armed and they do not belong to Abu Shabab's organization,' GHF said.
Last month, soon after limited aid began entering Gaza, Abu Shabab posted that his group had secured 101 trucks of aid, mostly flour, brought in by the World Food Programme, and praised 'my loyal brothers who sacrificed their lives, and everyone who volunteered their primitive weapons or a drop of sweat to feed the bereaved and displaced.'
Truck drivers told CNN that Shabab had provided 200 armed men to protect the convoys.
'Our forces regularly accompany aid convoys, and protecting vulnerable civilians is one of our top priorities,' Abu Shabab told CNN.
His group's role has expanded beyond protecting convoys.
On May 17, the day before the Kerem Shalom crossing reopened, work started on a tent encampment in eastern Rafah, according to satellite imagery reviewed by CNN. That work appears to have concluded on May 30.
The camp is less than 500 meters from where Abu Shabab runs checkpoints.
Four days later the so-called Popular Forces issued a statement saying that Abu Shabab 'invites the residents of these areas to return, where food, drink, shelter, security and safety have been provided, shelter camps have been set up, and humanitarian relief routes have been opened.'
The encampment is in an area known as the Morag Corridor, to which the Israeli military wants Gazans to move as it orders evacuation orders for much of the strip.
Early in May, the far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said the population of Gaza, would be 'concentrated' in a narrow strip of land between the Egyptian border and the corridor.
A senior Israeli security official said at the same time that the goal was to separate humanitarian aid from Hamas 'by involving civilian companies and creating a secured zone patrolled by the IDF.'
This would include a 'sterile area in the Rafah region beyond the Morag route, where IDF will screen all entrants to prevent Hamas infiltrators.'
Abu Shabab's force uses Palestinian insignia and flags prominently on its uniforms, but he told CNN that his 'grassroots forces are not an official authority, nor are we operating under a direct mandate from the Palestinian Authority.'
The office of the spokesperson for the Palestinian Security Forces, Major General Anwar Rajab, told CNN there was no connection between the Palestinian security apparatus and Abu Shabab's group.
Nor does his family want anything to do with him.
'Leaders and elders of the Abu Shabab family' said in a statement that they had confronted him about videos showing 'Yasser's groups involved in dangerous security engagements, even working within undercover units and supporting the Zionist occupation forces that brutally kill our people.'
The family declared its 'complete disassociation from Yasser Abu Shabab' and urged anyone who had joined his security groups to do the same.
'We have no objection to those around him eliminating him immediately; we state clearly that his blood is wasted,' the family statement said.
Abu Shabab told CNN that the statement was 'fabricated and false' and accompanied by 'a media campaign targeting me and my colleagues.'
He said his group had endured 'false accusations and systematic smear campaigns, and we have paid a heavy price,' also alleging that Hamas had killed several of the group's volunteers 'and members of my own family while we were guarding aid convoys for international organizations.'
Muhammad Shehada at ECFR said there is evidence that Abu Shabab's presence is expanding with Israeli support into Khan Younis, to the north of his stronghold.
Even so, his reach is still limited. The Popular Forces speaks of 'hundreds of daily requests we receive on our Facebook page from individuals seeking to join us,' but analysts believe Abu Shabab probably has only about 300 men under his command.
Most people in Gaza would never think of joining him for fear of being branded collaborators, said Shehada.
Even so, he added, Abu Shabab's militia now serve multiple functions for the Israelis, helping control where aid goes, or does not go; trying to entice desperate and hungry people to the so-called 'safe zone' in eastern Rafah; and carrying out high-risk missions to detect the presence of Hamas fighters.
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Hamilton Spectator
an hour ago
- Hamilton Spectator
‘Pretendian' or ‘victim': Inside this would-be Ontario lawyer's attempt to remake a life built on fraud
Before the headlines, Nadya Gill's life was filled with promise. Originally from the GTA, she played on Canada's youth national soccer team . At 16, she entered university in the U.S. on athletic scholarships, where she excelled on the pitch and in the classroom and earned the first of five post-secondary degrees. A coach told a Connecticut TV station her competitive drive could easily lead her to becoming a lawyer, a doctor, or 'a UN ambassador.' She graduated from law school, where she won awards and worked summers at the Crown law office in Toronto. After passing the bar exam, she landed a dream articling position at a sports law firm. It allowed her to work remotely and play professional soccer in Norway . Then came the rumblings online; her life fell apart — and she had to pick a new name. Two years ago, Nadya Gill and her twin, Amira, now 26, were outed as 'pretendians,' first by online sleuths and then a reporter in Nunavut , for falsely claiming to be Inuit to receive scholarships and grants. In September 2023, the RCMP charged the sisters and their mother, Karima Manji, with fraud. Last year, it was Manji alone who pleaded guilty, admitting she sent enrolment forms to Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated (NTI) with the false information that she'd adopted her own daughters from an Iqaluit woman. The forms were approved and she was provided enrolment cards that entitled the twins access to benefits earmarked for Inuit students. Manji had in fact given birth to her daughters in Mississauga in 1998. In court, it was revealed that the girls had received more than $158,000 for their education from September 2020 to March 2023. To many, Nadya's successes were a slap in the face and a reminder of the harm caused by more famous Canadians who've been exposed for falsely claiming to be Indigenous. In March 2024, Toronto Life magazine published an exposé on the family under the headline, 'The Great Pretenders: How two faux-Inuit sisters cashed in on a life of deception.' It went to press before a judge in Iqaluit sentenced Manji to three years in prison and called the twins 'victims.' On a warm sunny morning this past week in an Etobicoke park not far from where she grew up, the Star spoke with Nadya Gill under her new name, Jordan Archer, about her involvement in Canada's first criminal case of Indigenous identity fraud. It's the first time she has spoken publicly about the scandal that she says has destroyed her life. In the basic facts, Archer's story is this: She's a first-generation Canadian, born to a mother who immigrated from Tanzania and lived for only a brief period in Nunavut. Her father, Gurmail Gill, is British. No member of the family is Inuit, nor of Indigenous background. Still, Archer says, the story the public thinks they know is wrong — not that her version will convince everyone who sees her as a villain. For the first time since the scandal broke in 2023, Jordan Archer speaks about being at the centre of Canada's first criminal case of Indigenous identity fraud. 'How would you have expected me to know,' Archer says, referring to her teenage self while sitting on a park bench in athletic wear after jumping off an old hybrid bike. 'Put yourself in my shoes. If your mom came up to you, gave you the story, with proof.' 'Proof,' Archer says, was the Inuit enrolment card her mother applied for — by outright fraud — in February 2016, when Archer was 17 and already going to school in the U.S. Like many teens, Archer says she was only too happy to let her mother handle all her applications, finances and logistics. Manji was controlling, the kind of 'soccer mom' who would scold her daughter after a match if she hadn't performed up to her standards. She was also someone a judge would call a 'habitual and persistent fraudster.' At the time she filed the false applications, Manji was already facing serious fraud charges. In August 2017, she was sentenced to defrauding the charity March of Dimes, her longtime employer, of $850,000, for which she received a non-custodial sentence after reimbursing $650,000. Karima Manji, seen after her arrest in the March of Dimes fraud case. As unlikely as it may sound — the case was publicized — Archer says she wasn't aware of those charges until much later. At the time, she was living in the U.S. and had distanced herself from her mom, who still controlled many of her life decisions. She returned home from school in the U.S. at 20, which is when Manji told her: 'You're going to Saskatchewan … to a program where you'll do property law in the summer. It's for Indigenous students.' That's when, she says, Manji presented her with 'officially issued proof' — the Inuit enrolment card — and told her 'the story.' Manji had lived in Iqaluit in the '90s and had grown close to an Inuit family. That much was true. As her mother explained, when the father became ill with cancer, Manji took care of a daughter. That connection, Manji lied, had made her eligible for Inuit enrolment and, by extension, so were her daughters. Should Archer have questioned things? Maybe. But she says she believed her mother. In the interview, she likened the logic of her mom's explanation to a marriage — it wasn't a blood tie but 'a connection.' (In retrospect, this explanation is nonsense. To qualify, an applicant must both be Inuk according to Inuit customs and identify as an Inuk .) Still, Archer emphasizes that she accepted and embraced the connection she now thought she had — believing in some way that 'I belonged to the Iqaluit community.' She says she immersed herself in learning about Indigenous culture and participated in ceremonies, activities and educational sessions. She volunteered for the Akwesasne Community Justice Program and facilitated Kairos blanket exercises where participants step into roles of Indigenous groups throughout Canadian history. If she knew about the fraud, why would she do that, she asks. 'I think if you're trying to hide something, you stay under the radar.' As for what the card meant, Archer says she was kept in the dark as her mom secured tens of thousands of dollars for her education. 'I know the card gets you benefits, you have some kind of status with it, but I had no idea what (Manji) was doing with it.' Who questions their parents about things that happened before they were born, she asks? 'I know my dad's from England … I didn't say, 'Show me your birth certificate.'' The Iqaluit RCMP charged both Manji and the twins with defrauding the NTI — the organization tasked with enrolling Inuit children under the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement — in September 2023. As is often the case with fraud, the big lie ended up being trivially easy to disprove. Manji had written on the application forms that Nadya and Amira were the birth daughters of a real Inuk woman named Kitty Noah, and then the application was approved without a shred of proof. (While there's no question her mother 'dug this hole,' Archer asks how the bogus application forms could have been accepted without a birth certificate.) Manji then used the girls' status cards to apply for benefits from Kakivak Association, an organization that, among other things, provides sponsorship funding to help Inuit students from Baffin Island pay for education. By early 2023, while Archer was articling and had already played in Norway, social media users began questioning the story of the successful 'Inuit' sisters from Toronto with the South Asian names. 'Our communities are small, we know each other. We know of each other and our families. There are only around 70,000 of us in Canada,' famed Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq wrote in a tweet asking how the twins could get scholarships meant for Inuit students. 'The resources and supports are limited.' In late March 2023, a reporter with Nunatsiaq News asked Amira to respond to the social media allegations. In a statement, Amira passed on Manji's story, that the twins' 'Inuit family ties' were through a family her mother had lived with. (Amira Gill declined to be interviewed for this story. 'My sister has chosen to keep her life personal, away from the public eye,' Archer said when asked about her twin.) But that's not what Manji put on the form; NTI soon released a statement that Noah was not the twins' birth mother and asked the RCMP to investigate. Kitty Noah has since died. When she found out she'd been listed on the application, she was 'flabbergasted,' her son later told CBC . Today, Archer says she struggles to make ends meet. She's working part-time at a hockey rink as a community service representative, 'directing people to the lost and found.' A Zamboni driver recently asked about her background. 'How much time do you have?' Archer told him, recalling the exchange. 'No matter what career I try to explore, I don't want this to come back.' She lost friends along with her articling job. In the wake of the case, the Law Society of Ontario initiated an investigation into her status as a lawyer. To practise law in Ontario, applicants for a licence must be of 'good character'; Archer feels she has no choice but to abandon a law career, at least at this point. She says she used to be puzzled when people described being debilitated by stress, but 'now, I really, really do understand. There were months when I wouldn't move or go anywhere.' Last fall, Archer thought she'd found a lifeline and signed a contract to play pro soccer. She felt she had been forthright about her past before signing but, ultimately, the league decided to rescind its approval of the contract. She was devastated. But it was also a 'turning point' — the realization she had to do something to try to clear the air and provide a 'fulsome' picture of the story. 'No matter what career I try to explore, I don't want this to come back.' She's since written a memoir, titling it 'When Life Conspired Against Me.' A summary provided to the Star described the book as an examination of the toll of the public backlash that destroyed her professional reputation. She's 'a victim of online bullying and was crucified in the media, despite not being involved in the fraud,' the summary reads. (The book does not have a publisher.) 'I'm serving a life sentence for a crime I didn't commit,' Archer says in a prepared blurb. 'I was the victim, but that means nothing when the court of public opinion plays both judge and executioner. In their story, I'm the villain, and that's all that matters.' Looking back, Archer says she now knows her mom would have pursued any chance at an advantage. 'She saw, you know, a bureaucratic loophole and she just went for it,' she says. 'Whether it was an Indigenous community or any other community, she would have just gone for it.' Confronting her mom was 'one of the hardest things I've ever had to do,' she told the Star in the days after the interview. Their relationship is messy, she adds. 'She didn't just hurt me, she detonated my life … and yet she's my mom.' She feels a 'heavy, inescapable obligation' to still be there for her mother, but 'supporting her didn't mean forgetting the harm. It didn't mean pretending everything was OK.' Soon after Manji pleaded guilty last year, the Crown withdrew the charges against Nadya and Amira. In response, the then-president of NTI called the withdrawal of charges against the twins 'unacceptable.' The twins 'benefitted from their mother's fraud scheme, and yet their role in the scheme will go unanswered,' Aluki Kotierk told Toronto Life. There's little chance Archer's story will convince anyone who believes she should have known. 'How can they say they didn't know they were not Inuit,' one First Nations advocate wrote on X. To those skeptics, Archer says she never claimed to be Inuk by blood; that was her mom's lie. Still, she hopes the doubters read the judge's words. Karima Manji, who is not Indigenous, pleaded guilty to one count of fraud over $5,000, after her twin daughters used fake Inuit status to receive Karima Manji, who is not Indigenous, pleaded guilty to one count of fraud over $5,000, after her twin daughters used fake Inuit status to receive 'The true victims of Ms. Manji's crime are the Inuit of Nunavut,' Iqaluit judge Mia Manocchio wrote . Manji 'defrauded the Inuit of Nunavut by stealing their identity. She has further victimized the Noah family and the memory of Kitty Noah. This is an egregious example of the exploitation of Indigenous Peoples.' 'Finally,' Manocchio continued, 'Ms. Manji has victimized her own children, her two daughters, whose lives and careers have been severely compromised by her fraud.' Manji is now serving a three-year sentence — a term that, the judge wrote, serves as 'a signal to any future Indigenous pretender that the false appropriation of Indigenous identity in a criminal context will draw a significant penalty.' Manji was also ordered to pay back $28,254 — what remained after she had already reimbursed $130,000. (Not that the 'proven fraudster' deserved any credit for paying back the fruits of her crimes, Manocchio wrote — 'if such were the case, then a fraudster with means could essentially buy their way into a reduced prison term, whereas an impecunious fraudster would serve the longer term.') Reached by phone at a halfway house, where she was in the middle of drywalling, Manji, 60, insisted to the Star that Nadya — she doesn't call her Jordan — was unaware of the scheme. 'I never, ever said a word to Nadya,' she said. 'She trusted me 120 per cent, if you can imagine, when this all started, she was in the States … her whole focus was on soccer.' Manji said she is appalled by the hurt she caused not only to Inuit communities, but to her own children, 'especially Nadya.' (The girls have an older brother.) While serving some of her sentence at Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener, Manji said it would take weeks to read her daughter's letters, because 'I just feel so awful.' Unprompted, Manji offers up an explanation for her actions: She was brought up in a strict, conservative family and believed that if you were a doctor, lawyer or engineer, 'you would do fine in life.' She had an unhappy upbringing and marriage and wanted to make sure her kids didn't go through that. 'If I made sure they were successful in terms of their education and career, that they wouldn't have to have gone through what I've gone through,' she says.
The Hill
an hour ago
- The Hill
Tensions rise in Los Angeles as police declare ‘unlawful' assembly
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Boston Globe
2 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Israel vows to stop aid ship from reaching Gaza
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