Members of a Palestinian armed group executed two men in the West Bank city of Tulkarem Friday night accused of collaborating with Israel, as a mob cheered them on, according to Palestinian reports.
A Palestinian journalist in the camp, speaking on condition of anonymity, said residents of the camp beat and stomped on the corpses after the two were shot and killed in the streets. Videos show hundreds of Palestinians flocking to the entrance of the camp, gawking and filming with their phones as men try to hang the mutilated corpses from an electrical tower.
It apparently proved too difficult and residents ended up tossing the bodies over the walls of a UN school in the camp, tying their feet to a chain link fence, the journalist said. They were not taken to the hospital, she said.
Videos from the scene showed crowds chanting “traitors” at the men and “Allahu Akbar” (“God is greatest”). It is not clear where Palestinian Authority security forces were during the events.
The two were identified as Hamza Mubarak, 31, and Azam Juabra, 29. They were accused of providing Israel with information that led to a recent counter-terror raid that killed six as Israel clashed with local terror operatives.
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.
A Palestinian official, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, said 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 local terror group — affiliated with the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an armed offshoot of the secular nationalist Fatah party — posted a cryptic statement just after the two men were reported killed. “We did not wrong them, but they wronged themselves,” it said.
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.”
Tensions in the West Bank have been escalating since October 7, when some 3,000 Hamas terrorists stormed into Israel from Gaza, killing some 1,200 people and taking at least 240 hostages, making it the deadliest day in Israel’s history.
In response, the country has vowed to eradicate Hamas from Gaza, where the group has ruled since 2007, and launched an operation, attacking Hamas both from the air and on the ground.
While the IDF operates inside Gaza, the West Bank has continued to simmer, and since October 7, some 1,570 wanted Palestinians have been arrested across the West Bank, including more than 950 affiliated with Hamas.
The PA health ministry has said that more than 183 West Bank Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces and in some cases, by settlers, since October 7. The Yesh Din rights group said last week that there had been over 172 incidents of settler violence and harassment against Palestinians in at least 84 Palestinian towns and communities.
At the same time, there has been a noted uptick in terror attacks or attempted terror attacks by Palestinians against Israelis across the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Source:
Times of Israel, Staff, The Associated Press, November 25, 2023
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