Summary Executions During the Gaza War

A summary execution is a deliberate killing carried out outside a lawful judicial process. During the Gaza war, the term encompassed reported public shootings and hangings of Palestinians accused of collaboration with Israel, killings of hostages held in Gaza, attacks on clan or militia rivals, and contested allegations of unlawful killings by Israeli forces.[1][4]

In 2024, numerous reports alleged that Hamas committed arbitrary or unlawful killings targeting civilians, including extrajudicial killings; the same official reporting also recorded allegations involving Israeli and Palestinian authorities or their agents.[3] The June 2026 UN report said punishments were imposed by Hamas's military wing and police units rather than courts or judges and concluded that the executions amounted to war crimes.[1]

A June 2026 UN human-rights report documented 249 cases involving executions and severe physical violence between August 2024 and January 2026, including 108 deaths. Hamas-affiliated forces were involved in nearly one-fourth of the cases, while other Palestinian armed groups were implicated in additional cases.[1] Reported methods included executions, beatings, kneecapping, and bone-breaking. Victims included people accused of collaboration with Israel, looting aid, theft, drug offenses, anti-Hamas activism, and affiliation with rival clans or armed groups. The report said the punishments were imposed outside the courts and were sometimes publicized to intimidate Gaza's population.[1]

Hamas terrorists and police units beat, maimed, and publicly executed dozens of Palestinians in acts the UN report described as amounting to war crimes.[5] The U.S. State Department's 2023 human-rights report documented that Hamas and other armed groups executed people suspected of spying for Israel, without providing a total or case-specific details. By November 30, Hamas authorities had sentenced 25 people to death in Gaza, including 13 for alleged collaboration with Israel; the report emphasized that this was a count of sentences, not executions, and said Hamas carried out executions without the Palestinian Authority presidential ratification required by Palestinian law.[2]

In March 2024, media reported that Hamas executed the leader of the Doghmush clan in northern Gaza after public reports that Israeli authorities had contacted the family about overseeing aid distribution in the area. Media and NGOs also reported that Hamas continued politically motivated killings throughout the year.[3]

In May 2025, N12 relayed a Saudi report, attributed to Palestinian sources, that at least five Palestinians had recently been executed in Gaza City by shooting or hanging on suspicion of collaboration with Israel. The account said armed-group security personnel were investigating alleged information-sharing with Israeli security agencies but did not independently verify the reported executions.[6] A Telegram channel identified as Amsak Amil separately claimed that 11 Palestinians had been executed during the period: seven for alleged involvement in an attack on an aid convoy, two for informing on families' locations, and two for collaboration with Israel in an attempt to locate hostages. It claimed nine were shot and two were hanged.[7]

The UN report cited a September 2025 public execution outside Gaza City's al-Shifa Hospital, where three blindfolded men were shot in front of a crowd. It also described an incident the following month in which eight men accused of being spies, traitors, or collaborators were dragged to a public square in Gaza City and shot.[1]

After a ceasefire took effect on October 10, 2025, Hamas forces moved against rival clans and people accused of collaboration. On October 13, the Hamas-affiliated Arrow Unit publicly executed eight members of Gaza's Doghmush clan, accused them of collaborating with Israel, and posted footage accompanied by a warning.[8] A separate account said the Rada Force claimed responsibility for executing seven people identified as members of the Doghmush and Habib clans, while clan head Nizar Doghmush claimed eight clan members had been killed. Neither count was supported by forensic documentation in that account.[9]

The crackdown also included footage showing armed Hamas personnel executing eight blindfolded, bound, kneeling men in a Gaza City street. Hamas characterized those killed as collaborators and outlaws. The Palestinian Authority condemned the killings as heinous and unjustifiable, while the Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights demanded an end to extrajudicial executions. Sources inside Gaza attributed at least 33 deaths to Hamas after the ceasefire began, although the figure was not broken down by incident or independently verified.[10]

Israel's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories later published footage described as showing Hamas operatives shooting a Gaza resident in a Gaza City square in June 2025, following a Hamas announcement of executions targeting alleged collaborators and aid thieves. The Abu Shabab militia separately claimed that it had killed six members of Hamas's Sahem unit, which it identified as responsible for killing alleged collaborators.[11]

The execution of Israeli hostages held in Gaza constitutes a distinct and well-documented category. According to Israeli officials cited in the State Department's 2024 human-rights report, Hamas executed six hostages on August 29, 2024. The six had been taken captive during the October 7, 2023 terrorist attack and abducted to Gaza.[3] The State Department's 2024 terrorism report said their bodies were found with multiple gunshot wounds, indicating that the hostages had been executed; one of the six was a U.S. citizen.[4]

By the end of 2023, at least 23 hostages were believed to have been killed in captivity, according to press reports cited by the State Department. That figure included three hostages mistakenly killed by Israeli forces and was not presented as a count of executions.[2] A July 2024 Human Rights Watch report also found that Palestinian terrorists repeatedly attacked civilians and summarily executed people in their custody during the October 7 attack in Israel. Similarities in the killings across different attack sites suggested that some had been planned.[12]

A separate body of allegations accused Israeli forces of carrying out summary executions of Palestinian civilians, although the claims were contested, unverified, or retracted to varying degrees.

In December 2023, Hamas claimed Israeli forces had summarily executed 137 Palestinian civilians in northern Gaza since the start of the ground offensive. A BBC radio bulletin broadcast on Christmas Eve repeated the allegation. The BBC later apologized, saying it had not made sufficient efforts to find supporting evidence, while the IDF said it was unaware of the alleged incidents.[13] A UN communication dated February 7, 2024 — AL ISR 1/2024 — alleged that "The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) has reportedly carried out summary executions of Palestinian civilians." The word "reportedly" qualified the allegation rather than presenting it as an established finding.[14] The Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs argued that UN experts publicized related allegations on February 19, before Israel received the communication on February 21 and submitted its response on April 11.[14]

A separate allegation concerned killings at the Al Awda building in Gaza City's Al Remal neighborhood on December 19, 2023. Accounts circulated by media and Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor alleged that Israeli forces separated men from women and children and shot at least 11 men. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said it had confirmed killings at the building but that the circumstances remained under verification, and it called for an Israeli investigation. Israel rejected the allegations and said its review found no record of an operation in the neighborhood supporting them.[15]

Allegations also arose from the killing of 15 paramedics and aid workers in Rafah on March 23, 2025. Witnesses and Palestinian officials alleged that some victims had been bound and shot after detention; a doctor said he saw bodies with gunshot wounds to the head and chest. The IDF said its forces opened fire on suspicious, uncoordinated vehicles in an active combat zone and that an initial inquiry identified nine of those killed as Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives. The reporting said autopsies had been conducted but did not provide the findings or an independent forensic determination.[16]

Claims circulated separately that Palestinians recovered from mass graves at Nasser and Al-Shifa hospitals had their hands tied, allegedly indicating execution-style killings by Israeli forces. The claims were disputed as unverified, and the cited account said evidence linking Israel to the bound bodies had not been presented. The IDF said it had exhumed graves while searching for Israeli hostages and reinterred bodies after determining that no hostages were buried there.[17]

A Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies study examined a database of accusations from UN agencies, human-rights organizations, and media. Its authors identified incidents involving evidence or specific allegations of deliberate killing accounting for 61 fatalities out of the 50,021 war casualties reported by Gaza's Health Ministry through March 2025. They said they found no credible forensic evidence substantiating close-range mass killings of civilians or executions of helpless noncombatants, while acknowledging evidence that could indicate war crimes by individual Israeli soldiers, including in the March 2025 attack on paramedics. These were the study authors' assessments, not an independent adjudication.[18]

The evidentiary basis underlying reports of summary executions varies considerably. Several May 2025 accounts relied on unnamed Palestinian sources, Telegram channels, or statements by armed groups and were not independently verified.[6][7] Reported counts also differed for the October 13, 2025 Gaza City executions: one account reported seven people killed, while a clan leader cited in the same account and FDD's Long War Journal reported eight.[9][8]

The State Department's 2024 human-rights report attributed the six-hostage execution to Israeli officials and the Doghmush clan killing to media reporting rather than presenting either as an independently adjudicated finding.[3] The June 2026 UN figures covered 249 combined cases of executions and severe physical violence, not 249 executions or deaths. The report recorded 108 deaths and said Hamas-affiliated forces were involved in nearly one-fourth of the documented cases, with other armed groups also implicated.[1]