PA slams Hamas executions of alleged collaborators

[oberliner]

RAMALLAH (Ma'an) -- The Palestinian Authority on Saturday blasted Hamas officials for executing more than 20 alleged collaborators with Israel on Thursday and Friday, stressing the lack of judicial oversight and transparency.

Secretary-General of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' office al-Tayyib Abd al-Rahim said that the executions had been conducted illegally outside of the Palestinian court system and could thus not be considered to have gone through fair process.

"The executions were done in cold blood and according to Hamas law, which is: who is not with Hamas is against it," he added.

Abd al-Rahim called the killings "random executions of those who Hamas called collaborators," adding that some of those killed had been detained for more than three years before their recent executions.

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=722656

[Jefferson23]

1. Executions in Gaza Are a Warning to Spies

GAZA CITY — One day after an intelligence coup enabled Israel to kill three top commanders of Hamas’s armed wing, as many as 18 Palestinians suspected of collaboration with Israel were summarily executed in public on Friday, in what was seen as a warning to the people of the Gaza Strip.

Masked gunmen in matching black T-shirts and pants paraded seven of the suspected collaborators, handcuffed and hooded, to their deaths before a boisterous crowd outside a downtown mosque after the Friday Prayer, in a highly theatrical presentation. Photographs showed a pair of militants leaning over a doomed man on his knees against a wall, and masses of men and boys cheering and clamoring for a better view.


The Palestinians killed on Friday were not identified, but they were reported to have been arrested on or convicted of charges of collaboration, a crime punishable by death under Palestinian law, before this summer’s bloody battles between Israel and Hamas, the militant Islamist movement that dominates Gaza.

Still, the style and timing indicated an intensified Hamas crackdown on those who inform on leaders’ locations. The executions followed Thursday’s Israeli airstrikes that killed the three Hamas commanders and the attempted assassination on Tuesday night of their boss, Mohammed Deif, whose fate remains unknown.

“I think this has provoked, and let’s say triggered, this process,” said Hamdi Shaqqura, deputy director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, a Gaza group that has long monitored and condemned such extrajudicial killings. “If you speak to any regular citizen in Gaza, nobody is looking with mercy on these people. Why? Because people are being bombarded. A lot of the blame for bombardment of specific places is being put on collaborators.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/23/world/middleeast/israel-gaza.html

[Jefferson23]

2. Extra-Judicial Executions as Israeli Government Policy ( history )

Introduction:

Israel’s policy of extra-judicially executing Palestinians allegedly involved in armed
resistance against the Israeli occupation of Palestine has been meticulously documented
by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR). The continuing silence of the
international community, including High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva
Convention, has actively encouraged Israel to act as though it is above the law and to
continue committing gross human rights violations against the Palestinian people,
including hundreds of extra-judicial executions.

IOF have carried out these extra-judicial executions of Palestinian activists whom they
accuse of carrying out, or planning, armed attacks against the Israeli Occupation Forces
(IOF) in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and/or inside the State of Israel. IOF
have also targeted the political leaders of Palestinian organizations. By failing to produce
any evidence linking the targeted individual to attacks allegedly committed by members
of the Palestinian resistance, as well as failing to utilize peaceful means in order to arrest
and detain suspects, IOF has assumed the role of both judge and executioner.

Since the beginning of the Second Intifada in September 2000, PCHR has consistently
investigated and documented extra-judicial executions committed by IOF in the OPT, as
well as demanding the international community intervene effectively in order to
pressurize Israel to stop all extra-judicial executions. The Centre has established a
database that keeps statistics on all extra-judicial executions, and attempted executions,
carried out by IOF in the OPT.

in full: http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/Reports/English/pdf_killing/killing%20report9.pdf

[oberliner]

3. IOF? What's that?

Is that an acronym they made up?

[King_David]

4. When I see "IOF" I always know it's not a serious article and not worth reading,

It's some immature way of writing IDF.

[oberliner]

9. Certainly tells you it's not a neutral organization

Expected from sources like Mondoweiss, but sort of a childish move for a human rights group.

[Jefferson23]

5. They identify it for you, oberliner. I am sure Israel's leaders and their supporters don't

appreciate the term.

[oberliner]

7. No they don't (appreciate the term)

It would be like making up a fake acronym for Hamas or the PA instead of calling them what they are called.

[Jefferson23]

10. If you prefer to keep the focus on that versus Israel's crimes..I understand. n/t

[azurnoir]

6. Feels like deja vu it does

a couple of times over in fact

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=124x367639#367641

http://sync.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1134&pid=10149

[oberliner]

8. Do you know what a rhetorical question is?

Wait - don't answer that.

[Jefferson23]

11. Thank you, azurnoir. n/t