Gazan gets 15 years’ hard labor for ‘spying’ for Israel

A court in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip has handed a Palestinian convicted of “spying” for Israel to 15 years’ hard labor, a judicial source said on Monday.

The 53-year-old man was found guilty of “providing the occupier personal names and the location of sites belonging to the resistance,” said the source.

The defendant had been found to have “collaborated with the occupier since 1988” and had spent a year in the Jewish state.

Under Palestinian law, those convicted of collaboration with Israel, murder and drug trafficking face the death penalty.

Since the start of the year, at least one person convicted of “collaboration” with Israel has been sentenced to death in the West Bank.

A Gaza-based human rights watchdog in January called on authorities in the Palestinian territories to abolish the death penalty.

Hamas, the Islamist terror movement that controls Gaza, executed 18 men in August for collaboration with Israel during their 50-day war, having executed two others in May last year on the same charge. Hamas is avowedly committed to the destruction of Israel.