When Sheikh Mohammed Abu Mustafa stepped out of his mosque in southern Gaza after leading afternoon prayers in early November, a gunman on a motorcycle pulled up and shot him dead.
It was a targeted assassination that that an Islamist militant group said was carried out by local Israeli-backed militia.
A Hamas-linked group later claimed that the slain imam was a jihadist who had concealed Israeli hostages during the Gaza war, and accused the hitman of belonging to a new Israeli-supported militia led by Hussam Al-Astal – a former prisoner in Hamas-ruled Gaza who is now openly working to topple the militant group that has ruled the territory with an iron first for nearly two decades.
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