A Palestinian armed organization announced yesterday Sunday that it had killed a “traitor” in the occupied West Bank.

The Lion’s Den, a Palestinian militant organization in Nablus, in the northern West Bank, said via Telegram that a “traitor” had been located and “cleansed,” without elaborating on his identity or activity.

The Independent Commission for Human Rights, a Palestinian public body, also said a man “accused of spying for the benefit of the Israeli occupation” was killed on Saturday night.

The committee denounced the murder and in general “every extrajudicial execution”. Treason may be a “horrible crime”, but it must be punished by a court, he added, stressing that no one “can take the law into their own hands”.

According to a source close to the security services in Nablus, who asked not to be named because of the sensitive nature of the case, the man killed by the Lions’ Den is the one who appears in a video circulating on social media sites that shows him confessing that he spied on the armed organization on behalf of Israel. AFP is unable to verify whether this video is authentic.

We will “give explanations publicly (…) when we take certain security measures,” says a statement from the Lions’ Den.

“This is a direct message to every traitor, who sells his religion, his conscience, his honor and his nation,” adds the organization, which emerged in 2022 and has claimed responsibility for various attacks against Israeli targets here and there time, including one that killed a soldier in October.

Since the beginning of the year, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has claimed the lives of at least 93 Palestinians, 18 Israelis, a Ukrainian woman and an Italian, according to an AFP tally based on announcements from official sources, both Israeli and Palestinian.

These numbers include on the Palestinian side fighters and civilians, including children, and on the Israeli side mainly civilians, including children, as well as three members of the Arab minority.