Israel’s parliament on Monday passed a law approving the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of murdering Israelis, a measure that has been harshly condemned by the international community and rights groups as discriminatory and inhumane.
The passage of the bill marked the culmination of a yearslong drive by the far-right to escalate punishment for Palestinians convicted of nationalistic offenses against Israelis. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu got here to the Knesset to vote for the bill in person.
The law makes the death penalty — by hanging — the default punishment for West Bank Palestinians convicted of nationalistic killings. It also gives Israeli courts the choice of imposing the death penalty on Israeli residents convicted on similar charges — language that legal experts say effectively confines those that could be sentenced to death to Palestinian residents of Israel and excludes Jewish residents.
It’s going to not apply retroactively to any prisoners Israel currently holds, including the Hamas-led militants who attacked the country on Oct. 7, 2023, triggering the Israel-Hamas conflict within the Gaza Strip.
After the ultimate 62-48 vote in favor, lawmakers erupted into cheers and stood up in jubilation. Netanyahu, who remained in his seat, didn’t immediately react or speak.
Israel’s firebrand minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who spearheaded the push for the laws, brandished a bottle in celebration. Far-right lawmaker Limor Son Har-Melech, one in every of the bill’s original sponsors whose first husband was killed in a Palestinian militant attack within the West Bank, smiled through tears.
The law will face legal challenges
The laws, which says it’ll take effect in 30 days, is definite to face legal challenges which will stall its implementation.
Minutes after the bill passed, the Association of Civil Rights in Israel said it had already petitioned Israel’s highest court to challenge the law. It called the laws “discriminatory by design” and said the parliament had enacted it “without legal authority” over West Bank Palestinians, who aren’t Israeli residents.
Amichai Cohen, a senior fellow on the Israel Democracy Institute’s Center for Democratic Values and Institutions, said that under international law, Israel’s parliament mustn’t be legislating within the West Bank, which just isn’t sovereign Israeli territory.
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Many in Netanyahu’s far-right coalition seek to annex the West Bank to Israel.
Concerns raised in Knesset
The vote capped a daylong debate within the parliament. During earlier deliberations, lawmakers raised other concerns, including how the bill doesn’t allow clemency, contradicting international conventions. Opposition lawmakers at times appeared to plead with their colleagues to vote against the bill.
Before the vote, Ben Gvir described the law as long overdue and an indication of strength and national pride.
“From today, every terrorist will know, and the entire world will know, that whoever takes a life, the State of Israel will take their life,” he told lawmakers. On his lapel, he wore a signature pin — a small metal noose.
Gilad Kariv, of the Labor Party, condemned the bill’s stipulation that a unanimous judgment just isn’t required to impose the death sentence.
“A law through which an individual could be sentenced to death with out a unanimous conviction. Is that this justice in your eyes? Is that this the sanctity of life that Israeli tradition has taught us?” he asked.
The bill contravenes international law, he added, and risks turning Israeli soldiers and prison guards into “war criminals against their will.”
Some, like Aida Sliman of Hadash, the leftist Jewish-Arab political party, left the chamber in dismay before the votes were complete.
Experts say the laws has two key elements that may effectively limit the death penalty to Palestinians.
First, the bill makes the death penalty a default punishment for nationalistic killings in military courts, which try only West Bank Palestinians and never Israeli residents. It says that only in special circumstances can military judges change the sentence to life imprisonment.
It gives Israeli civilian courts a greater degree of leniency in sentencing, with judges having the choice to choose from the death penalty and life imprisonment.
The second element is how the bill defines the offense punishable by death: killing that rejects the existence of the state of Israel.
“It’s going to apply in Israeli courts, but only to terrorist activities which might be motivated by the want to undermine the existence of Israel. Meaning Jews is not going to be indicted under this law,” Cohen said.
The foreign ministers of Australia, Britain, France, Germany and Italy released an announcement Sunday urging Israel to desert plans to pass the law, calling it “de facto discriminatory,” and saying the death penalty was unethical and had no “deterring effect.”
Bill breaks with Israeli history
Though Israel technically has the death penalty on the books as a possible punishment for acts of genocide, espionage during wartime and certain terror offenses, the country hasn’t put anyone to death since Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in 1962.
The Public Committee against Torture in Israel says the state has consistently voted in favor of abolishing the death penalty on the U.N. Israel’s Shin Bet’s security agency had — until recently — objected to the practice, believing it could spur further revenge plots by Palestinian militants.
Some opposition lawmakers worry that the bill could harm future hostage negotiations. Israel exchanged some 250 hostages taken throughout the October 2023 attack for 1000’s of Palestinian prisoners.
There may be a separate bill into consideration coping with punishment for the Oct. 7, 2023 attackers in Israel’s custody.