‘Informers’ Executed in Tulkaram amid Hamas’ Growing Influence in West Bank

Prisoners are released in Beitunia near Ramallah on Friday. (AF)
Prisoners are released in Beitunia near Ramallah on Friday. (AF)
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‘Informers’ Executed in Tulkaram amid Hamas’ Growing Influence in West Bank

Prisoners are released in Beitunia near Ramallah on Friday. (AF)
Prisoners are released in Beitunia near Ramallah on Friday. (AF)

Palestinian militants in the West Bank said they had killed two men accused of collaborating with Israeli authorities and hung their bodies up as a warning. 

A statement from the Tulkaram Brigades, a group based in the West Bank city of Tulkaram that is associated with the Fatah faction, said there was "no immunity for any informant or traitor". 

"We are on the lookout for him and we will hold him accountable," it said, referring to any such person. 

Footage shared on the Tulkaram Brigades Telegram channel showed a man apparently confessing to working with Israeli security services and providing details of his activities. 

Other footage, which could not be verified by Reuters, showed two dead bodies and bodies hung from a wall and an electricity pylon in front of angry crowds. 

The Tulkaram Brigades statement said anyone who had been working with Israeli security services had until Dec. 5 to come forward and repent. 

The Independent Commission for Human Rights, a Palestinian rights group, issued a statement criticizing extrajudicial killings but said Israeli authorities were responsible for recruiting Palestinian agents. 

There was no comment from the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited governance in the West Bank, and no immediate comment from the Israeli security services. 

A Palestinian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that Palestinian security forces were aware of the incident. The public prosecutor’s office said it would have details in the coming days about a police investigation into the killings. 

The family of one of the accused informers sought to distance itself in a statement Saturday, calling its disgraced relative a "malicious finger that we have cut off without regret." 

"We affirm our complete innocence," the family added, "and we won’t allow anyone to blame us for his guilt." 

Purported confession videos surfaced online showing the two men, worn out, their eyes downcast, describing their recent interactions with Israeli intelligence officials who they said paid them thousands of dollars for information. 

Israel's Shin Bet security service has a long history of pressuring Palestinians to become informers, including by blackmail or by promising work or entry permits for Israel. The Shin Bet did not respond to a request for comment on the killings. 

Israeli media claimed the executioners were Hamas gunmen. 

The latest incident provided further signs of the growing tension in the occupied West Bank, which has seen a surge in violence since the start of the Gaza war as Israeli military raids have intensified. 

Public execution-style killings of Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israel have been rare in recent years, but they were more common during the years of the Second Intifada uprising two decades ago. 

The West Bank had already been experiencing the highest levels of unrest in decades during the 18 months preceding the attack, but the assault on Israel by Hamas gunmen on Oct. 7 and the subsequent bombardment of Gaza by Israeli forces has lifted the pressure to new levels. 

Over 230 Palestinian have been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank in the past seven weeks alone, most of them during Israeli army raids targeting militants.  

On Saturday, Israeli forces raided the northern Palestinian town of Qabatiya seeking to arrest militants, sparking a firefight and killing a locally prominent doctor, 25-year-old Shamekh Abu al-Rub, Palestinian health officials said. Abu al-Rub was the son of Kamal Abu al-Rub, governor of the Palestinian city of Jenin. 

Meanwhile, Israel’s war on Gaza appears to have increased Hamas’s popularity in the West Bank. 

As hostages were released in a swap between the armed group and Israel, relatives of the freed detainees chanted slogans in support of Hamas. 

Hamas on Saturday released 17 hostages, including 13 Israelis, from captivity in the Gaza Strip, while Israel freed 39 Palestinian prisoners in the latest stage of a four-day ceasefire in the conflict. 

Hamas has been semi-banned on the West Bank in recent years. Its members have often feared Israeli prosecution and they also feared clashing with the PA, which had banned public Hamas activities. 

Effectively, Hamas’ October 7 operation against Israel has given the movement a boost in the West Bank. That was even before the hostage swap took place. 

A Hamas source told Asharq Al-Awsat that the current war against it in Gaza and the West Bank, as well as all past wars, have failed in "breaking Hamas. Rather the opposite has happened."  

"Hamas is rooted" in the Palestinian people, he stressed. 

Moreover, he stated that Hamas had never abandoned its role in the West Bank in spite of the open war against it. 

"It will never abandon it, but it will only consolidate its presence," he added. 



Israel Orders Evacuation of Area Designated as Humanitarian Zone in Gaza

 A picture taken in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip shows smoke billowing during Israeli army operations in areas east of Khan Younis city on July 26, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AFP)
A picture taken in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip shows smoke billowing during Israeli army operations in areas east of Khan Younis city on July 26, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AFP)
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Israel Orders Evacuation of Area Designated as Humanitarian Zone in Gaza

 A picture taken in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip shows smoke billowing during Israeli army operations in areas east of Khan Younis city on July 26, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AFP)
A picture taken in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip shows smoke billowing during Israeli army operations in areas east of Khan Younis city on July 26, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AFP)

Israel’s military ordered the evacuation Saturday of a crowded part of Gaza designated as a humanitarian zone, saying it is planning an operation against Hamas militants in Khan Younis, including parts of Muwasi, a makeshift tent camp where thousands are seeking refuge.

The order comes in response to rocket fire that Israel says originates from the area. It's the second evacuation issued in a week in an area designated for Palestinians fleeing other parts of Gaza. Many Palestinians have been uprooted multiple times in search of safety during Israel's punishing air and ground campaign.

On Monday, after the evacuation order, multiple Israeli airstrikes hit around Khan Younis, killing at least 70 people, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, citing figures from Nasser Hospital.

The area is part of a 60-square-kilometer (roughly 20-square-mile) “humanitarian zone” to which Israel has been telling Palestinians to flee to throughout the war. Much of the area is blanketed with tent camps that lack sanitation and medical facilities and have limited access to aid, United Nations and humanitarian groups say. About 1.8 million Palestinians are sheltering there, according to Israel's estimates. That's more than half Gaza’s pre-war population of 2.3 million.

The war in Gaza has killed more than 39,100 Palestinians, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count. The UN estimated in February that some 17,000 children in the territory are now unaccompanied, and the number is likely to have grown since.

The war began with an assault by Hamas fighters on southern Israel on Oct. 7 that killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took about 250 hostages. About 115 are still in Gaza, about a third of them believed to be dead, according to Israeli authorities.