Head of Trump’s Gaza committee admits attacking IDF soldiers

The Israel Defense Forces classifies stone throwing as a form of “popular terror.”

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

Gali Shaath, the head of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, said in a past interview that he participated in organized stone-throwing attacks against Israeli soldiers when he was younger — comments that have resurfaced and prompted Israeli criticism of his role in the governing body.

In a nearly two-hour interview conducted in April 2025 with Ahmad Biqawi, Shaath described his involvement in demonstrations alongside Palestinian youth near Israeli military positions.

About seven minutes into the recording, he said he worked with students to confront Israeli forces stationed at checkpoints. “I worked with the youth at school in demonstrations against the Israeli occupation. We would stand in areas where there were occupation checkpoints and their posts, and we would throw stones at them so they would leave our town,” Shaath said.

Shaath said he played a central role in organizing the activity in the Gaza Strip. “I actually was the organizer of this activity or this national act in the city of Khan Yunis,” he said.

“I succeeded in awakening all the opinions and feelings of the people, and they set out to the occupation’s positions.”

He did not state his age at the time of the incidents, saying only that he was “still young.”

Shaath told his interviewer that he was sentenced for the stone-throwing attacks and later imprisoned again, which he said forced him to repeat his university degree. He did not explain the reason for the later detention.

The Israel Defense Forces classifies stone throwing as a form of “popular terror.”

The resurfaced interview has raised questions about Shaath’s leadership of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza. Itamar Marcus, director of Palestinian Media Watch, told the Jerusalem Post that the video could undermine the committee’s legitimacy if Shaath remains in his post.

“If the United States wants this experiment for Gaza’s future to have any chance of success, it must immediately remove Shaath from his position and appoint a replacement who is honest enough to condemn violence and recognize Israel’s history and its right to exist,” Marcus said, adding that such a figure would need to be “brave enough to say it publicly.”

Marcus said Shaath’s comments reflected an ideology that denies Israel’s legitimacy, noting that he referred to Israel exclusively as “the occupation.”