Palestinian Family Kills Relative Suspected Of Spying For Israel
Fighters from the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian Hamas movement, take part in a military show ahead of the 30th anniversary of the movement’s founding in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Yunis on December 5, 2017. Image by SAID KHATIB/AFP/Getty Images
GAZA (Reuters) – A Palestinian family in the Gaza Strip said on Friday it had killed a relative they said had helped Israel track down and kill three senior Hamas militants, 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 militants.
“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 militant 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 militant groups at odds with Israel.
Hamas, the Islamist movement that dominates the small, impoverished 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 its Western-backed rival based in the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority, to abolish it.
Israel withdrew soldiers and settlers from Gaza in 2005, leading to a Hamas takeover two years later.
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