Just hours after inking a peace agreement with Israel, Hamas wasted no time revealing its true colors. On Monday, the terror group carried out public executions in broad daylight.
Gruesome video circulating online captures eight blindfolded and bloodied men, forced to their knees on a Gaza City street, before being summarily executed by Hamas gunmen. The killing spree played out before an applauding crowd, underscoring the mob-rule mentality that still dominates Hamas-controlled Gaza.
According to the BBC, Hamas claimed — without offering any evidence — that the men were “criminals and collaborators with Israel.” One of the victims, Ahmad Zidan al-Tarabin, was reportedly targeted for allegedly helping recruit fighters for a non-Hamas-aligned faction, as reported by Israel’s Ynet News.
These executions are just the latest in a wave of brutal reprisals unleashed by Hamas in the wake of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) pulling out of Gaza. Rather than laying down arms and honoring the terms of the ceasefire, the group appears more focused on consolidating its iron-fisted control over the battered enclave.
And it didn’t start Monday. Over the weekend, Hamas militants clashed with the powerful Dagmoush clan — a well-armed family network accused of being cozy with Israeli intelligence. By Sunday, 52 clan members were dead, along with 12 Hamas operatives, one of whom was reportedly the son of senior Hamas official Bassem Naim. Reports from inside Gaza say Hamas used ambulances as Trojan horses to breach the neighborhood before launching the deadly assault.
“They’re dragging people away, children are screaming and dying, they’re burning our houses. What did we do wrong?” one woman, the daughter of a clan member, told Ynet in horror.
Despite agreeing to a U.S.-brokered peace framework, Hamas has made it clear they’re not disarming — and certainly not surrendering control of Gaza. “Hamas won’t give up arms or Gaza control,” a group spokesman stated bluntly, even as international media tried to paint the ceasefire as a step toward de-escalation.
President Trump, who helped negotiate the peace deal, appeared cautiously optimistic — if not somewhat resigned — about Hamas’s role in post-war Gaza. “They [Hamas] do want to stop the problems, and they’ve been open about it, and we gave them approval for a period of time,” Trump said aboard Air Force One. His comments came as part of the plan to secure the release of remaining Israeli hostages.
Scenes from Gaza show heavy machinery clearing rubble, as close to 2 million Palestinians return to destroyed neighborhoods with no functioning infrastructure and no clear future. As Trump put it, “We want it to be safe. I think it’s going to be fine. Who knows for sure.”
Meanwhile, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) transported released Israeli hostages through the Gaza Strip under the watchful eye of masked Hamas fighters — a bizarre contrast to the simultaneous executions and street warfare unfolding nearby.
For all the international talk of peace and reconstruction, Hamas seems laser-focused on eliminating dissent and cementing its power — even if that means turning Gaza into an open-air execution ground.
