The Hamas regime in Gaza has launched an all-out manhunt to round up collaborators with Israel, most of whom usually end up executed.
Hamas interior ministry official Mohammed Lafi said, “We monitor the tools and techniques used by the Israeli occupation to recruit collaborators and we are working to dismantle them,” according to the Bethlehem-based Ma’an news agency.
He claimed that that the number of collaborators has decreased in recent years because of “rehabilitation programs,” which may partly true or may be a spooky euphemism for simply sentencing them to death in courts or executing them without trial.
Hamas courts have handed down 30 death sentences in the past six years, mostly against collaborators, and Hamas executed at least eight men last November during the Pillar of Defense counterterrorist operation that ended the latest barrage of missile attacks on Israel.
The executions are brutal.
Last November, masked gunmen, possibly from the rival Salafist terrorist gang, grabbed six alleged informers out of their vehicle and shot them dead, one by one.
People screamed, “Spy! Spy!” and some onlookers spit on the corpses.
One of the bodies, as seen in the video below, was chained to a motorcycle that dragged it through Gaza City’s main streets.
Two other Gaza residents also were murdered the same week, one of them shot dead in public, while the body of the other was found in a garbage can. Human rights groups issued a condemnation of the executions and then dropped the matter.
Israeli intelligence is dependent on informers from Gaza, who have helped prevent hundreds of terrorist attacks and have passed on to Israel information on the location of rocket launching cells.
Intelligence information to counter Hamas terrorism goes far beyond Gaza. The Egyptian newspaper Al-Youm Al-Sabea reported this week that Hamas refused to accept a shipment of 28 advanced long-range missiles from Libya because of fears that Israeli agents placed tracking devices in the weapons.