A Palestinian man was sentenced to death by hanging on Saturday after being found guilty of "collaborating" with Israel. Another three Palestinians were sentenced to prison terms ranging from three years to 10 years on the same charges.

Yusef Hassan Sinwar, 31, of Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip, was convicted by a Palestinian Authority civil court of assisting the IDF in tracking down and killing wanted activists. In passing the death sentence, the first by the PA in two and a half years, the judges noted that he had "undermined the power of resistance of the Palestinian people by serving as a collaborator with the enemy." ...

The Palestinian Authority has shown an "unacceptable" performance in its failure to prosecute those behind the fatal bombing of a U.S. convoy entering Gaza last year on a cultural mission, the U.S. State Department said Friday.

"We haven't seen them demonstrate either the will, much less the capacity, to investigate the case seriously," department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

"We have seen statements from time to time by Palestinian officials that they know who did it. And if that's true, then they should take immediate action to arrest and prosecute whoever did it," Boucher said.

The three murdered Americans were John Branchizio, 37, of Texas, John Linde Jr., 30, of Missouri, and Mark Parsons, 31, of New Jersey. They were security personnel guarding a convoy of U.S. diplomatic vehicles that was attacked by Palestinian Arab terrorists at the Beit Hanoun junction in the Gaza Strip on October 15, 2003.

The three guards, contractors from the security firm DynCorp, were protecting the convoy on its way to interview Palestinian candidates for Fulbright scholarships...