A Palestinian family in the Gaza Strip said yesterday it had killed a relative they said had helped Israel track down and kill three senior Hamas fighters, including one of the man’s own kinsmen.
In a statement, the family of Ahmed Barhoum said it had shot him in the city of Rafah after they were told by a militant group that he had provided information to Israel.
This, the statement said, guided an Israeli air strike during the 2014 Gaza war that targeted the Hamas fighters.
“In light of our religious and moral commitment we have executed the collaborator Ahmed Barhoum after he was handed over by the resistance factions,” the statement said, without giving the name of the group that had caught him.
The family said they had listened to their relative’s confession and saw the evidence against him.
The Barhoums are one of Rafah’s largest families and well known for their closeness to Palestinian fighter groups at odds with Israel.
Hamas, the movement that dominates the small enclave, issued a statement praising the Barhoum family’s action as illustrating “its nobleness and deep affiliation with the (anti-Israel) resistance”.
The Israeli military declined to comment.
Over the years, Israel has established a network of contacts in the Palestinian territories, using a combination of pressure and sweeteners to entice Palestinians to divulge intelligence.
Hamas has sentenced 109 people to death and executed at least 25 in Gaza since 2007.
Palestinian and international human rights groups have repeatedly condemned such use of the death penalty, and urged Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, to abolish it.
Israel withdrew soldiers and settlers from Gaza in 2005, leading to a Hamas takeover two years later, but continues to expand settlements in the occupied West Bank.
A Palestinian rides a motorcycle past a billboard bearing the portraits of the commanders of Hamas’ armed wing Al-Qassam Brigades, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, yesterday. A family has said it had killed one of its members, after he was accused of aiding Israel in the killings of three Qassam commanders.
