“We will amend penal code law to include the death penalty for this group who wish to ruin society by playing a non-patriotic, inhuman and immoral role.”

Police commander Abu Ubayda Al-Jarrah told the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency that a number of drug dealers had already been caught and charged.

“The death penalty is only for drug producers and dealers,” Ihab al-Ghussein, a spokesperson for the de facto government’s Ministry of Interior told The Media Line. “We give them a chance to repent and to stop selling these drugs. If they don’t follow our orders and come back to the people, then we are going to follow them, put them in jail, sentence them in front of the court and give them this penalty.”

“Yesterday a large amount of drugs were burned in the police compound,” he said. “This is the result of a big national campaign against drugs which began on June 26, the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking.”

The announcement comes three months after the Hamas-led government carried out the first judicially sanctioned executions in Gaza since the summer of 2005, and less than a year after Gaza’s de-facto government adopted an Egyptian law that would permit the execution of convicted drug dealers.

“We started using the Egyptian law at the beginning of this year, al-Ghussein said. “From now on, anyone who sells or deals drugs, this penalty will be put upon him as the law states.”

Following the Hamas takeover of Gaza in the summer of 2007, Hamas set up a law enforcement and judicial apparatus that has been repeatedly criticized by local and international human rights organizations for lacking accountability mechanisms and trained personnel...