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Photos:
Palestinians attend a rally in Gaza City on Friday 17 December, 2021, marking the 34th anniversary of the Hamas movement's founding. © Khalil Hamra, AP (illustration) Published by Agence France Press (AFP

Palestinians watching as Hamas militants execute Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel, in Gaza City, 2014. Credit: Reuters Published by Haaretz
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via Twitter

Omar Shakir
@OmarSShakir
Israel and Palestine Director, Human Rights Watch (@hrw)

Today’s executions of five men by Hamas authorities in Gaza are abhorrent. Judicial rulings mean little amid systematic torture, coercion & due process violations. Death as government-sanctioned punishment is a barbaric practice that has no place in the modern world.
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Gaza's Hamas executes five Palestinians, including two for 'collaboration' with Israel

The Hamas Islamist movement ruling the Gaza Strip announced on Sunday that it executed five Palestinians, including two for "collaboration" with Israel.

The executions for collaboration are the first carried out in the coastal Palestinian enclave for more than five years.

"On Sunday morning, the death sentence was carried out against two condemned over collaboration with the occupation (Israel), and three others in criminal cases," Hamas said in a statement.

It added that the defendants had previously been given "their full rights to defend themselves".

Hamas's interior ministry provided the initials and years of birth of the five executed Palestinians, but did not give their full names.

The two executed over "collaboration" with Israel were two men born in 1978 and 1968.

The older of the two was a resident of Khan Yunis in the south of the blockaded Gaza Strip. He was convicted of supplying Israel in 1991 with "information on men of the resistance, their residence... and the location of rocket launchpads", Hamas said.

The second was condemned for supplying Israel in 2001 with intelligence "that led to the targeting and martyrdom of citizens" by Israeli forces, the statement added.

The three others executed had been convicted of murder, the statement said.

First executions in years
Hamas has sentenced numerous people to death in recent years for "collaboration" with Israel, but the executions announced Sunday are the first carried out since May 2017.

Three Palestinians -- Ashraf Abu Leila, Hisham al-Aloul and Abdallah al-Nashar -- were executed then over their involvement in assassinating a Hamas military leader.

The men were publicly executed, with hundreds of people allowed to watch the sentences being carried out.

They had been arrested just weeks earlier over the killing of Mazen Faqha, who was allegedly shot dead on behalf of Israel.

While Hamas keeps the death penalty on the statute books, Palestinian officials in the occupied West Bank have not carried out such a sentence in recent years.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, seated in the West Bank city of Ramallah, has signed up to the United Nations' treaty opposing the death penalty.

Abbas's Fatah movement and Hamas have been divided since 2007, following the outbreak of fighting between the Palestinian factions.

The Palestinian Authority operates in the West Bank, home to nearly three million Palestinians who live alongside 475,000 Israeli settlers.

Hamas, meanwhile, rules over 2.3 million Palestinians who have lived under a crippling Israeli-led blockade for 15 years.

(AFP)
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Two Palestinians Executed in Gaza Over Espionage on Behalf of Israel

by Jack Khoury for Haaretz
Sep 4, 2022

Two Palestinians in the Gaza Strip accused of spying for Israel have been executed, the Palestinian Interior Ministry in the Gaza Strip announced on Sunday.

The ministry said that one of the convicted, a 44-year-old resident of Gaza City, was arrested in 2009 on charges of espionage. According to the announcement, he maintained contacts with Israeli authorities since 2001 and provided information that led to the assassination or injury of Palestinian civilians.

Another 54-year-old from Khan Yunis, who had been detained since 2015, was executed by hanging. He was convicted of spying for Israel and passing on information about Palestinian militants to intelligence agencies since 1991.

The Interior Ministry said the executions meant “to achieve public deterrence and security,” but rights groups in the past have questioned fair-trial standards in Hamas' military and civilian courts,

Three others were executed on murder charges, including one man who allegedly took part in a shootout that killed a man and a teenage girl during a family dispute in July.

Of the five men killed, two were reportedly members of the Palestinian security forces.

According to the Gaza-based Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, 15 death sentences have been issued by authorities in the Strip since the start of 2022.

Sunday's dawn executions were the first in the Palestinian territories since 2017. Past cases of capital punishment being carried out in Gaza have drawn criticism from human rights groups.

The Israeli Prime Minister's Office, which oversees the country's intelligence services, declined comment.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.