Israel is one step closer to passing a law that would allow Israeli courts to sentence Palestinian prisoners to death. On Monday, the Israeli Knesset passed the bill in a first reading with a majority of 39 votes in favor against 16 in opposition. The bill was presented as “exceptional” law, under a special status that allows it to be passed only with the majority of votes cast, and not the majority of the Knesset members, which is why absentees and abstentions were not counted. It still needs to pass two more readings before entering into force.
The law applies to individuals who are convicted for acts that led to the death of Israelis, if the acts were motivated by “racism or hostility towards the public” and “committed with the objective of harming the state of Israel or the rebirth of the Jewish people,” making it applicable exclusively to Palestinians. It was introduced by Knesset member Limor Son Har-Melech from the ultra-nationalist “Jewish Power” party with a strong support base by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, like Har-Melech herself.
The party is led by Itamar Ben-Gvir, a key ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government coalition. The death penalty for Palestinian prisoners has been a main political demand of Ben-Gvir, who has been behind the worsening of detention conditions of Palestinian prisoners in recent years.
Israel does have the death penalty in its law, but has only been considered applicable in rare situations of grave crimes, like genocide, and was applied once in 1962 against former Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann. The new law introduces three new stipulations which indicate the intention is to use the death penalty on Palestinians.
First, the bill’s wording allows the death penalty on individuals convicted of killing Israelis on “nationalistic or racist” grounds. This limits its application to non-Israelis and employs the euphamism of “nationalistic” crimes which is commonly used to describe Palestinian attacks against Israelis. Second, since it applies to Palestinians in the occupied territory, it gives Israeli military courts, who are the ones who issue penal sentences against Palestinians under occupation the power to put Palestinians to death. Third, it allows the death sentence to be given with a simple majority of judges, and not by consensus.
Even still, Ben-Gvir continues to push to loosen the law’s application even more to give Israeli forces the authority to execute Palestinians in the field. The law has several opponents, including Yair Lapid’s opposition “There is future” party, and the orthodox Haridi representatives. The opponents to the law abstained from voting, and many lawmakers were absent. But since it was introduced as an exceptional bill, requiring only a majority of votes cast, it passed.
Ben-Gvir celebrated the vote in the Knesset by distributing sweets to Knesset members. Opposition leader Avigdor Lieberman commented by saying that “a terrorist has to die, either on the battlefield or in court.” Another opposition leader, Yair Lapid, refused to vote in favor of the bill, calling it a “political stunt” by Ben-Gvir’s party, arguing that there is already a death penalty law in Israel.
The Palestinian Prisoners Club said in a statement that Israeli forces already executes Palestinians in the field through loose rules of use of lethal force, which allow Israeli soldiers to shoot and kill Palestinians “at military checkpoints, especially in the West Bank, or Palestinians who take part in peaceful protests or during raids into Palestinian areas.”
The Prisoners Club also indicated that Palestinian prisoners are exposed to “slow death through systematic deterioration of inhumane living conditions, medical crimes, and torture.” The Club referred to medical neglect of Palestinian prisoners, of which Israeli prison services have been accused in recent years by human rights groups, especially after the death of several ill Palestinians in jail or shortly after release, lacking proper treatment. According to the UN, 75 Palestinians have died in Israeli prison since October 2023.
In reaction to the passing of the bill, Amnesty International’s senior advocacy director, Erika Guevara Rosas said in a statement that the passing of the bill was a “product of ongoing impunity for Israel’s system of apartheid,” which “did not occur in a vacuum.” According to Rosas, the bill “comes in the context of a drastic increase in the number of unlawful killings of Palestinians, including acts that amount to extrajudicial executions, over the last decade, and a horrific rise of deaths in custody of Palestinians since October 2023.”
“The bill’s stipulation that courts should impose the death penalty on individuals convicted of nationally-motivated murder with the intent of ‘harming the state of Israel or the rebirth of the Jewish people’ is yet another blatant manifestation of Israel’s institutionalized discrimination against Palestinians, a key pillar of Israel’s apartheid system, in law and in practice,” Rosas explained.
“It is additionally concerning that the law authorizes military courts to impose death sentences on civilians that cannot be commuted, particularly given the unfair nature of the trials held by these courts which have a conviction rate of over 99% for Palestinian defendants,” she continued.
Mahmoud Hassan, a veteran lawyer who has been representing Palestinians in Israeli military courts for over thirty decades told Mondoweiss that the “Israeli military judicial system is a system of criminalization, where every Palestinian activity, no matter how peaceful, is regarded as a criminal offense, as part of the Israeli military judicial culture.” Hassan explained that “Israeli military judges come from the military institutions with the Israeli security culture, which is already biased against Palestinians.”
“When a Palestinian is charged with a security offense, the baseline understanding is that they are going to be convicted, and as lawyers, we try to bargain an alleviated sentence with the military prosecution, and this is why the conviction rate is over 99%,” explained Hassan.
“So far, the existing Israeli death penalty needed a consensus by judges, and the military prosecution never demanded the death penalty for Palestinians,” Hassan said. “This new law allows the death penalty to be passed with a simple majority, which would encourage the prosecution, if it goes through, to ask the death penalty for a Palestinian based on the claim of nationalistic motivation…while if a Jewish Israeli was charged with murder in the same circumstances, the same criteria wouldn’t apply to them. The death penalty would still need a consensus, and the prosecution would most probably not ask for it,” he said.
Although the bill faces some opposition in Israeli politics, the fact that most opponents chose not to vote, knowing that abstention was not counted, rather than voting against, indicates that the law will most probably pass if it reaches the second and third reading phases. Although as a general rule, laws don’t apply retroactively, Itamar Ben-Gvir has explicitly called for the execution of Palestinian prisoners convicted under ‘illegal combatants’ charges, mainly those accused of being Hamas fighters, captured since and after October 7, 2023.
“Ben-Gvir has been promoting this law along his rhetoric on the need to execute Hamas fighters, using the post-October 7 atmosphere,” Shawan Jabarin, head of Al-Haq human rights organization in Ramallah, told Mondoweiss.
“The law still needs to pass two more readings and enter into effect, but the discussion is already steering on whether it would be applied to those convicted with unlawful combatant charges, and that alone has significant implications,” pointed out Jabarin. “If the law is applied retroactively in one case, on one person, then the rule would be broken, and it would set a precedent that would allow its application, retroactively, on all Palestinians convicted of the same charges,” he added.
The passing of the law arrives as Israel continues to intensify its arrest of Palestinians, both in Gaza and in the West Bank. Since October 2023, Israel has arrested some 21,000 Palestinians, of whom 9,100 remain in prison, including 3,500 under administrative detention, without charges or clear release date, and some 1,000 detained without even administrative detention orders, according to the Prisoners Club.