This
got very prominent attention in the western media earlier in the day.
In times of war retribution is likely to be quick and violent.
Hamas
Kills 6 Suspected Israel Collaborators: Witnesses
Masked
gunmen publicly shot dead six suspected collaborators with Israel at
a large Gaza City intersection Tuesday, witnesses said. An Associated
Press reporter saw a mob surrounding five of the bloodied corpses
shortly after the killing.
26
April, 2012
Some
in the crowd stomped and spit on the bodies. A sixth corpse was tied
to a motorcycle and dragged through the streets as people screamed,
"Spy! Spy!"
The
Hamas military wing, Izzedine al-Qassam, claimed responsibility in a
large handwritten note attached to a nearby electricity pole. Hamas
said the six were killed because they gave Israel information about
fighters and rocket launching sites. Hamas did not provide any proof
of the alleged collaboration.
The
killing came on the seventh day of an Israeli military offensive that
has killed more than 130 Palestinians, both militants and civilians,
as well as five Israelis. Israel has launched hundreds of airstrikes,
targeting rocket-launching sites, weapons caches and homes of Hamas
activists, in response to repeated Hamas rocket attacks on Israeli
cities. Hundreds of Palestinian rockets have rained down on Israel in
the past week.
In
selecting its targets for airstrikes, Israel relies on unmanned spy
planes, or drones, but also on a network of Palestinian collaborators
who feed information to their handlers from Israel's domestic Shin
Bet security service.
Israeli
defense officials say Palestinian informers have been recruited ever
since it captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem in the
1967 Mideast War. Some are recruited with promises of work permits or
money, while others are blackmailed into collaborating.
There
is broad consensus among Palestinians that informers for Israel
deserve harsh punishment, and it is rare to hear someone speak out
against killings of alleged collaborators. Such public killings have
been carried out in the West Bank and Gaza since the first intifada –
or uprising – against Israeli occupation in the late 1980s.
Human
Rights Watch and other international rights groups have condemned
such extrajudicial killings, as has the Palestinian Center for Human
Rights, a Gaza City-based group. Human Rights Watch says Hamas has
also tortured suspected collaborators.
Tuesday's
killings took place in Gaza City's Sheik Radwan neighborhood.
Witnesses
said a van stopped at the intersection, where four masked men pushed
the six accused informers out of the vehicle. Salim Mahmoud, 18, said
the gunmen ordered the six to lie face down in the street and then
shot them dead.
Another
witness, 13-year-old Mokhmen al-Gazhali, said the informers were
killed one by one, as he mimicked the sound of gunfire.
They
said only a few people were in the street at first – most Gazans
have been staying indoors because of the Israeli airstrikes – but
the crowd quickly grew after the killings. Eventually several hundred
men pushed and shoved to get a close look at the bodies, lying in a
jumble on the ground. One man spit at the corpses, another kicked the
head of one of the dead men.
"They
should have been killed in a more brutal fashion so others don't even
think about working with the occupation (Israel)," said one of
the bystanders, 24-year-old Ashraf Maher.
One
body was then tied by a cable to the back of a motorcycle and dragged
through the streets. A number of gunmen on motorcycles rode along as
the body was pulled past a house of mourning for victims of an
Israeli airstrike.
In
Israel's last major Gaza offensive four years ago, 17 suspected
collaborators who fled after their prisons were hit in airstrikes
were later shot dead in extra-judicial killings.
During
the current offensive, Tuesday's killings brought to eight the number
of suspected informers being shot dead in public. On Friday, the body
of one alleged informer was found in a garbage bin, and another was
shot dead in the street. Hamas claimed responsibility for both
killings.
Since
seizing Gaza in 2007, Hamas has executed four informers by firing
squad, and about a dozen more are on death row in Gaza.
During
Israel's direct occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, some informers
openly cooperated with Israeli forces. For example, one informer in
the West Bank town of Jericho displayed a photograph of Israel's army
chief at the time on the wall of his office, in a defiant display of
his allegiance.
After
Israel pulled back troops from parts of the West Bank, he and others
were given refuge in Israel. Other informers were evacuated from Gaza
after Israel withdrew in 2005, but Israel is believed to have
maintained a network there.
Human
rights groups have alleged, for example, that Gaza medical patients
seeking treatment in Israel are sometimes approached by the Shin Bet
at the crossing into Israel.
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