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On October 17th, two Palestinians were sentenced to death and two to 15 years in prison by Hamas.
The two executed individuals were found guilty of collaborating with Israel.
Two Palestinian men from Khan Yunis and Rafah sentenced to death by hanging by a Hamas court on charges of collaboration with Israel.
— Khaled Abu Toameh (@KhaledAbuToameh) October 17, 2021
A Hamas court ordered that the two men, from Khan Younis and Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, be hanged.
Reports did not say when the sentence will be carried out. Two other men were sentenced to hard labor, also for collaborating with Israel.
The sentences came as a Palestinian Authority court in the West Bank city of Bethlehem sentenced a man to 15 years in prison for attempting to sell land to Jewish Israelis.
Palestinian sentenced by a Palestinian court in Bethlehem to 15 years in prison for attempting to sell land to Israeli Jews.
— Khaled Abu Toameh (@KhaledAbuToameh) October 17, 2021
Hamas authorities have held public executions in the past of those it accuses of collaborating with Israel.
The PA, based in the West Bank, has long criticized rivals Hamas for carrying out executions without the approval of PA President Mahmoud Abbas.
According to Palestinian law, the PA president must approve the enforcement of any death sentence. Since 2006, Abbas has not given his official blessing for the implementation of a single execution.
According to B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, Hamas has sentenced 130 people to death since 2007 and has executed 25 people. With the two fresh sentences, Hamas has sentenced seven people to death this year.
The PA has not executed anyone since 2005, when five people were put to death.
Meanwhile, Israeli settlers have committed violent, daily attacks against Palestinian villages and residents harvesting their olive trees over the past week.
The attacks, which include beatings of farmers and destruction of trees, preceded the formal start of the olive harvest season on October 12 in the occupied West Bank, but intensified in number over the past week.
While settler attacks are a frequent, near-daily reality for Palestinian villages, the number and intensity of attacks increase during the olive harvest season which runs until November, as settlers target families working on their lands.
On October 12, settlers uprooted 900 olive and apricot saplings, and stole olive crops in the village of Sebastia, north of Nablus. A further 70 olive trees were destroyed in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron.
In Awarta, east of Nablus, settlers chopped down dozens of olive trees on October 13 and sprayed them with chemicals. They also destroyed some 70 olive, fruit and vegetable trees in al-Tuwani south of Hebron, and slashed tyres, and vandalised cars and walls in the village of Marda near Salfit.
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