On Tuesday, October 14, Hamas handed over four bodies to Israel as part of an exchange of the dead under a U.S.-brokered ceasefire in Gaza.
Israeli forensic experts quickly identified three of the bodies as Israeli soldiers. The fourth did not belong to any of them. Hamas insisted it was an Israeli soldier. “It’s one of yours,” the terror group was quoted as saying. In a sense, both sides were partly right.
The body was that of Khalil Dawas, a Palestinian from the Aqabat Jabr refugee camp near Jericho, suspected by fellow Palestinians of collaborating with Israeli forces. His story, recounted by residents and Palestinian fighters interviewed by the Guardian, reflects the murky world of informants, coercion and betrayal that shadows the conflict.
According to camp residents, Dawas had once been part of Palestinian militant activity before they came to believe he had turned informant. The Guardian reported that these accounts illustrate how Israeli forces recruit or pressure Palestinians, sometimes through detention, threats or money, to sustain intelligence operations in the West Bank.
Dawas was born and raised in Jabaliya in northern Gaza. His family later moved to the West Bank, first settling near Nablus and eventually relocating to Aqabat Jabr in 2014.
“They were a modest household with five children,” said Nasser Shaloun, head of the refugee camp and a board member of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club. “They moved here in 2014 and bought a small home.”
In his 20s, Dawas joined one of the Palestinian factions operating in the camp, which is dominated by supporters of Fatah but also includes Hamas and Islamic Jihad. That same year, he was arrested along with his brother.
Dawas spent a total of six and a half years in Israeli prisons following two arrests, including six months of administrative detention in 2020 at Ofer prison, according to Palestinian officials. Camp sources believe that period may have marked the beginning of his alleged cooperation with Israel.
After his release, residents said his behavior changed.
“He started selling bullets,” Shaloun said. “He sold a box of ammunition for 200 shekels, when it normally cost 1,500. That began to alarm members of the resistance.”
Suspicion grew, he said, and intensified after an Israeli raid on the camp in February 2023 in which at least five Palestinians were killed. Days later, Dawas was arrested by the Palestinian Authority on suspicion of collaboration but released due to lack of evidence.
“He came back to the camp, but no one trusted him,” Shaloun said. “Some men grabbed him in the street and tortured him for hours. They told him to leave Jericho and never come back.”
For more than a year, Dawas disappeared.
In May 2024, Hamas claimed its fighters had lured Israeli troops into a tunnel in Jabaliya and captured their bodies, a claim Israel denied. The group later released video of a bloodied body in military uniform being dragged along the ground.
Camp residents recognized the man as Dawas.
“People in the camp recognized him and tried to storm his family home,” Shaloun said. “His mother and brother came to me for help, and I urged them to issue a statement disowning him to prevent reprisals.”
The family issued a public statement the following day, saying his actions did not represent them and violated their moral, national and religious values.
Dawas’ body remained in Gaza for more than a year. When Hamas returned four bodies in October under the ceasefire agreement, forensic tests confirmed three Israeli soldiers. A security official later said the fourth body was Palestinian.
Hamas maintained that Dawas had been wearing an Israeli uniform, with a senior official telling Al Jazeera that the body belonged to a soldier captured by the group’s military wing.
“A few days later, the family called me,” Shaloun said. “They said the Israelis had offered to return Khalil’s body, and they refused.”
A Palestinian Authority official in the Jericho governorate told the Guardian that accepting the body would have carried consequences.
“People in the camp said that accepting and burying the body would only encourage others to follow his path,” the official said. “So he will not be accepted, dead or alive.”
To this day, it remains unclear where Dawas’ remains lie.