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Capital punishment in the Gaza Strip has been enforced by multiple governments, militaries, and irregular militias throughout the area's history. A large proportion of the killings have been associated with broader violent conflicts. Many of the executions have be described as extrajudicial killings due to an incomplete or unaccountable court procedures.
The State Security Court in Gaza (Arabic : محكمة أمن الدولة في غزة), which was formed in 1995, issued several death sentences against eight people, as follows: 3 in 1995, 3 in 1997, and 2 in 1999, all of which were in murder cases. Not all sentences were carried out. [1]
![]() | You can help expand this section with text translated from the corresponding article in Arabic. (May 2024)Click [show] for important translation instructions.
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From the Battle of Gaza (2007) until the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip (2023–present), The Hamas movement had control of the interior of the Gaza Strip on the ground, but did not control the airspace, maritime borders, or land borders. [2] Two parallel Palestinian judicial systems carried out executions in the Gaza Strip, civil and military. [3] The judiciary of the Hamas-led civilian government and the military courts of the Ezzedeen al Qassam Brigades. The West Bank and Gaza Strip governments collaborate closely on issues such as health, but on other issues the Gaza Strip authorities act more autonomously. Palestinian law requires approval from the Palestinian National Authority president (currently Mahmoud Abbas) for the death penalty, but authorities in the Gaza Strip have disregarded this rule on multiple occasions. [4]
During the 2014 Gaza War, [5] [6] Hamas executed more than 20 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. [7]
According to an Amnesty International report, 23 Palestinians were executed by Al-Qassam in the course of the 2014 conflict, and 16 of those people had been in prison since before the war began. [8] [9] Some were on trial for espionage, but those trials were suddenly cut short. From among the executed, 6 were killed by a firing squad outside a mosque in front of hundreds of spectators including children. Amnesty claimed that Hamas used the cover of the war, which had a very heavily death toll, [5] to carry out summary executions, to settle scores against opponents under the pretext they were collaborators with Israel. [10] [7] They were also accused of torture. [6]
Most of these executions of alleged collaborators occurred in response to the IDF assassinating Muhammad Abu Shamala and Raed Attar, and the unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Mohammed Deif, which instead killed his 27-year-old wife, Widad, and his 7-month-old son Ali Deif. The following day, 18 of the suspected collaborators were executed by firing squad. [11] [12] [13] [14] The day after that, the body of Deif's 3 year old daughter, Sarah, was recovered from the rubble of the same home. [14] [12] [13]
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights reported in December 2015 that Hamas issued nine death sentences in 2015. Hamas had sentenced four Gazans to death during the first weeks of 2016, all on suspicion of spying. [15]
In February 2016, Al Qassam claimed they had executed of Mahmoud Rushdi Eshtewi (Arabic : محمود رشدي اشتيوي), [lower-alpha 1] [17] [18] one of the group's leading commanders, for very ambiguous reasons. Eshtewi was survived by his two widows and his three children.[ better source needed ] [19] Most reliable sources at the time described the charges as unnamed or undefined. [20] [21] [17] [22] The stated reason was “for behavioral and moral violations to which he confessed” (Arabic : تجاوزاته السلوكية والأخلاقية التي أقر بها) [17] [18] [22] Whatever it may refer to, the confession was probably obtained by torture. [22] [21] Before his death, his family had been told that the death penalty charge - treason (giving information to Israel that causes the deaths of Palestinians) - had been dropped. [22] There is some suspicion that Eshtewi died in custody and was shot after death, from reports of people who saw his body before burial and thought the bullet wounds looked suspicious. [17] [22] The New York Times and other media from the USA interpreted the vague charges as a reference to a "homosexual relationship". [19] [15]
In May 2016, Hamas reportedly executed three men by firing squad and hanging. [23] The execution was performed in the al-Katiba prison. The executed men were convicted for murder. Reportedly, the execution defied protests from the United Nations and "will likely" deepen tensions with the Palestinian government in the West Bank. [23] Hamas defied an agreement with Fatah, the ruling party in the West Bank, by carrying out the executions without the approval of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Hamas later announced that 13 additional prisoners are to be executed. [24]
In April 2017, it was reported that three Palestinians were executed by Hamas in Gaza Strip over alleged collaboration with Israel. [25] Reportedly, the men were hanged at a Hamas police compound, as dozens of Hamas leaders and officials watched the killing. [26] [27]
According to B'Tselem, Hamas courts handed down 13 death sentences in January-August 2022, but had not carried out any since 2017. [4]
On 4 September 2022, Hamas announced they had executed five men, including two men condemned over collaboration with the occupation (Israel), and three others in criminal cases. [28] A resident of Khan Younis born 1968 was convicted of supplying Israel in 1991 with “information on men of the resistance, their residence… and the location of rocket launchpads”; a second man, born 1978, was for supplying Israel in 2001 with intelligence “that led to the targeting and martyrdom of citizens” by Israeli forces, according to Hamas. [4] The other three men had been convicted for murder.
Executed during | Person(s) | Detained | Death sentence | Execution | Sources | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Name or number | Age | Sentenced | Charge(s) | Executed | Method | |||
Operation Protective Edge | Ayman Taha | Treason ![]() | 2014-08-04 [disputed] [upper-alpha 2] | Firing squad [disputed] [upper-alpha 2] | [29] | |||
25 or more people | summary executions | Treason ![]() | 2014-08-21 to 24 August | Various [upper-alpha 4] | [30] | |||
Atta Najjar | Treason | 2014-08-22 | Unknown | [31] | ||||
Mahmoud Eshtewi (also spelled "Ishtiwi") | 34 | 2015 (January) | Undisclosed | Undefined [upper-alpha 5] (see above) | 2016-02-07 | Firing squad [disputed] [upper-alpha 6] | [21] [22] [32] | |
3 people | Murder (3) | 2022 (September) | ||||||
1 person [upper-alpha 7] | 1991 | Treason ![]() | ||||||
1 person | 44 [upper-alpha 9] | 2001 or after [upper-alpha 10] | Treason ![]() | |||||
5 people | 2023-08-06 | Treason [upper-alpha 11] | Sentenced to hanging. [upper-alpha 12] | [33] | ||||
Hamas' Al-Qassam Brigades militant wing have been credibly accused of numerous war crimes including various extrajudicial killings, but commonly told stories about executions in the Gaza Strip have been over simplified, exaggerated, distorted, or completely fabricated. [34] For example, during the Israel–Hamas war, a video described as “Hamas executes people by throwing them off a roof of a building!” circulated on social media, but the video was from 2015 and not from the State of Palestine. [34] A July 2015 report from Al Arabiya, included identical images and states that they were originally shared by the so-called Islamic State, and showed the execution of four gay men in Fallujah, Iraq. [34]
Despite widespread rumors,[ citation needed ] homosexual behaviour is not officially or typically a capital crime in the Gaza Strip. [35] [36] The laws against homosexual behavior in Palestine are a relic of the British and Ottoman[ citation needed ] rule in Palestine, they specify a sentences of a maximum of 10 or 14 years, [35] [36] years in prison, and there in no evidence that these British colonial era laws are actually enforced in Gaza. [35] Some interpretations of these laws say that it does not outlaw consensual gay sex between adults at all, though sex between consenting males remains criminalized.[ citation needed ] In 2018, Anis. F. Kassim (editor-in-chief of the Palestinian Yearbook of International Law) said that Palestinian law (even in Gaza) could be interpreted as allowing non-commercial sex between consenting adult men. [36] However, there remain no laws in Palestine (West Bank and Gaza) that explicitly prohibit sex between consenting women. [37]
The Islamic Resistance Movement, abbreviated Hamas, is a Palestinian nationalist Sunni Islamist political organisation with a militant wing called the Ezzedeen Al-Qassam Brigades. It has governed the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip since 2007.
Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, known as Mohammed Deif, is or was a Palestinian militant and the head of the Ezzedeen al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamist organization Hamas. Israel claims to have assassinated him in an airstrike on Al-Mawasi on 13 July 2024; however, this is denied by Hamas.
The Ezzedeen Al-Qassam Brigades, named after Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, is the military wing of the Palestinian nationalist organization Hamas. Led by Mohammed Deif until his presumed death on 13 July 2024, EQB is the largest and best-equipped militia operating within Gaza today.
Palestinian political violence refers to actions carried out by Palestinians with the intent to achieve political objectives that can involve the use of force, some of which are considered acts of terror, and often carried out in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Common objectives of political violence by Palestinian groups include self-determination in and sovereignty over all of Palestine, or the recognition of a Palestinian state inside the 1967 borders. This includes the objective of ending the Israeli occupation. More limited goals include the release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel and recognition of the Palestinian right of return.
The state of human rights in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is determined by Palestinian as well as Israeli policies, which affect Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territories both directly and indirectly, through their influence over the Palestinian Authority (PA). Based on The Economist Democracy Index this state is classified as an authoritarian regime.
The Gaza–Israel conflict is a localized part of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict beginning in 1948, when 200,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes, settling in the Gaza Strip as refugees. Since then, Israel has been involved in about 15 wars against the Gaza Strip. The number of Gazans reportedly killed in the ongoing 2023–2024 war (37,000) is higher than the death toll of all other wars of the Arab–Israeli conflict.
Homosexuality in the Palestinian territories is considered a taboo subject; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people experience persecution and violence. There is a significant legal divide between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with the former having more progressive laws and the latter having more conservative laws. Shortly after the Jordanian annexation of the West Bank in 1950, same-sex acts were decriminalized across the territory with the adoption of the Jordanian Penal Code of 1951. In the Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip and under Hamas' rule, however, no such initiative was implemented.
The 2009 Hamas political violence took place in the Gaza Strip during and after the 2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict. A series of violent acts, ranging from physical assaults, torture, and executions of Palestinians suspected of collaboration with the Israel Defense Forces, as well as members of the Fatah political party, occurred. According to Human Rights Watch, at least 32 people were killed by these attacks: 18 during the conflict and 14 afterward, and several dozen more were maimed, many by shots to the legs.
Emad Akel also spelled Imad Akel was a commander of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas. He was killed by the Israel Defense Forces.
Marwan Abdel Karim Ali Issa was a Palestinian militant who was the deputy commander of Hamas' military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades.
The 2014 Gaza War, also known as Operation Protective Edge, and Battle of the Withered Grain, was a military operation launched by Israel on 8 July 2014 in the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian territory that has been governed by Hamas since 2007. Following the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank by Hamas-affiliated Palestinian militants, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) initiated Operation Brother's Keeper, in which it killed 10 Palestinians, injured 130 and imprisoned more than 600. Hamas subsequently fired a greater number of rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip, triggering a seven-week-long conflict between the two sides. It was one of the deadliest outbreaks of open conflict between Israel and the Palestinians in decades. The combination of Palestinian rocket attacks and Israeli airstrikes resulted in over two thousand deaths, the vast majority of which were Gazan Palestinians. This includes a total of six Israeli civilians who were killed as a result of the conflict.
Capital punishment as a criminal punishment for homosexuality has been implemented by a number of countries in their history. It is a legal punishment in several countries and regions, all of which have sharia-based criminal laws, except for Uganda.
Yahya Ibrahim Hassan Sinwar, commonly known as Yahya Sinwar, is a Palestinian politician who has been the chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau since August 2024 and the Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip since February 2017, succeeding Ismail Haniyeh in both roles.
Torture in the State of Palestine refers to the use of torture and systematic degrading practices on civilians detained by Palestinian forces in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. As of 2018, Amnesty reported that LGBT people were subjected to arbitrary arrest and ill-treatment.
Mazen Muhammad Suleiman Faqha Arabic: مازن فقها was a senior commander in the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas. He was sentenced by Israel to 9 life terms in 2003 for his involvement in the planning and execution of multiple terrorist acts beginning in 2001. He was released as part of the 2011 Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange and deported to Gaza. After his release, he was one of the founders and leaders of Hamas' section in the West Bank.
Hamas war crimes are the violations of international criminal law, including war crimes and crimes against humanity, which the Islamist Nationalist organization Hamas and its paramilitary wing, the al-Qassam Brigades have been accused of committing. These have included murder, intentional targeting of civilians, killing prisoners of war and surrendered combatants, indiscriminate attacks, the use of human shields, rape, torture and pillage.
On 19 August 2014, the Israel Defense Forces carried out an airstrike at the home of Mohammed Deif, leader of the Al-Qassam Brigades. Deif was unharmed, but his wife Widad Asfura and his two children were killed.
The background to the ongoing Israel–Hamas war focusing on key events from 1967 to 2023, including occupation, the rise of Hamas, multiple military confrontations, economic hardships in Gaza, and the lead-up to the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel.
Hamas announced that the man in charge of a number of the group's tunnels used for smuggling and surprise attacks had been executed for moral turpitude, a Hamas term for homosexuality[ better source needed ] … a Hamas[ who? ] investigation alleged that Ishtiwi had hidden money designated for his unit's weapons, before an unnamed man claimed to have had sex with him, providing details about their meetings. The investigation concluded that the money Ishtiwi had stolen had been used to pay the man for sexual relations or to bribe him to keep Ishtiwi's secret.Note: The phrase translated by this source as "moral turpitude" is translated in other sources as "moral transgressions" and can also be read as "ethics violations", and there is no evidence of it being used by Hamas in any other context to specifically refer to Men who have Sex with Men (MSM).
لتجاوزاته السلوكية والأخلاقية التي أقر بها - For his behavioral and moral transgressions that he acknowledged.
Adding a layer of scandal to the story, he was accused of moral turpitude, by which Hamas meant homosexuality." … "Mr. Ishtiwi, who is survived by two wives and three children…
His family said they discovered that Qassam operatives held him in secret locations until February 7, when the group's Military Information Department issued a statement saying it had executed Eshtewi after sentencing him to death "for behavioral and moral violations to which he confessed".
لتجاوزاته السلوكية والأخلاقية التي أقر بها - For his behavioral and moral transgressions that he acknowledged.
"convicted of collaboration with hostile entities in violation of Article 131 of the 1979 Palestinian Revolutionary Penal Code.
Only men are criminalised under this law.