Two of those executed were accused of collaborating with Israel
For the first time in five years, Hamas, in power in the Gaza Strip, executed five Palestinians this Sunday, two of them for “collaboration” with Israel and three others for criminal cases, Hamas announced in a statement the armed Islamist movement . The note also assures that all “had had in advance the full right to defend themselves” before the local Justice.
The Interior Ministry of the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian territory of 2.3 million people under Hamas control since 2007, revealed the year of birth and other details of each case, but not the identity of those executed.
The two sentenced for collaboration with Israel are two men born in 1968 and 1978. The oldest of them is a resident of Khan Younis (south) who was hanged. He was punished by local justice for providing Israel, since 1991, with “information about members of the resistance, their places of residence” and “the location of rocket manufacturing and launch sites,” Hamas said.
The second was shot for providing Israel with information since 2001 that led to “the attack and martyrdom of citizens” by Israeli forces, he added. The other three people executed had previous convictions for murder, the Hamas Interior Ministry said in the statement.
five year moratorium
In recent years, the Gaza authorities have sentenced several people to death for various crimes or for collaborating with the State of Israel, although these death sentences have not been applied. The last known executions date back to 2017. Three Palestinians -Ashraf Abú Leila, Hisham al-Alul and Abdalá al-Nashar- were executed in public after being sentenced in a quick process before the local military justice, for having participated in the murder. of a Hamas commander, Mazen Faqha, “on behalf of Israel.”
As this Sunday in the case of the two executed for collaboration with Israel, Hamas justified the 2017 executions by relying on the revolutionary code of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Hamas, however, is not part of the PLO, whose revolutionary code is outdated on the issue of capital punishment with respect to the Palestinian Basic Law of 2003. The Palestinian Authority, led by Mahmud Abas, also adhered in 2019 to the treaty of the UN that seeks to abolish the death penalty.
Since Hamas Islamists seized power in the Gaza Strip in 2007 by force of arms, to the detriment of supporters of Mahmoud Abbas’s predominantly secular Fatah party, the Palestinian territories have been deeply divided politically.
Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, based in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has no control over the Gaza Strip, a meager Palestinian territory dominated by Hamas and under strict Israeli blockade for fifteen years.
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