Israeli officials have acknowledged supporting an armed group opposed to Hamas in Gaza after opposition lawmaker Avigdor Lieberman said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government was arming “criminals and felons”. International humanitarian officials have accused the group, led by Bedouin tribesman Yasser Abu Shabab, of looting aid trucks in the war-torn territory.

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.

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 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.