Flouting legal advice and a warning from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s point man on the hostages, lawmakers in the Knesset National Security Committee voted 4-1 on Sunday afternoon to advance a controversial bill to impose the death penalty on terrorists who kill Israelis, paving the way for the first of three plenum votes necessary for it to become law.
The primary legislation stipulates that courts will be able to impose the death penalty on those who have committed a nationalistically motivated murder of a citizen of Israel. It would not apply to an Israeli who killed a Palestinian.
Its sole opponent on the committee was The Democrats MK Gilad Kariv, who was removed from the discussion after screaming, “Shame on you, there are hostages.”
The legislation was approved despite the warning of the committee’s legal adviser, Iddo Ben Yitzhak, who asserted that any vote held on the bill during the Knesset recess is invalid because the committee discussion preceding the vote did not include input from representatives of security agencies, and lacked a substantive debate on the bill’s provisions.
The bill, introduced by Otzma Yehudit MK Limor Son Har-Melech, was also opposed by Netanyahu’s hostages point man, Gal Hirsch, who warned legislators that the move could negatively impact those held in Gaza and efforts to release them.
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Officials fear the passage of such a law will set back talks for the release of hostages in exchange for Palestinian terror convicts.
The Democrats MK Gilad Kariv is removed from a session of the Knesset National Security Committee, September 28, 2025. (Noam Moskowitz, Office of the Knesset Spokesperson)
Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are holding 48 hostages, including 47 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023. They include the bodies of at least 26 confirmed dead by the IDF. Twenty are believed to be alive and there are grave concerns for the well-being of two others, Israeli officials have said. Also held in an IDF soldier killed in 2014.
“It’s not for nothing that we are asking not to hold this discussion. I completely disagree with your assessment of the situation, Minister [Itamar] Ben Gvir. Especially when we are engaged in a combined military and diplomatic effort to bring back the hostages, this discussion does not help us,” Hirsch told Otzma Yehudit chairman Ben Gvir, the national security minister.
In a Hebrew-language post on X following the vote, Hirsch continued to express opposition, writing that he had requested of Netanyahu “that the issue being discussed today in the committee not be brought to the plenum before a thorough discussion is held in the cabinet, where I will be able to present the full picture and my own assessment.”
While Netanyahu does not have the authority to halt a plenum reading on the bill – a decision that rests with Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana – Hirsch was seen as indicating the premier should press Ohana to delay the reading.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hostage point man Gal Hirsch attends a meeting of the Knesset National Security Committee, September 28, 2025. (Noam Moskowitz, Office of the Knesset Spokesperson)
Ben Gvir said that he had been approached by “people in the Prime Minister’s Office”who asked him to postpone the death penalty discussion over concerns that it could complicate efforts to free the hostages, but had refused.
Instead, he claimed, the bill will “bring deterrence” and “advance the return of the hostages” while showing Hamas that “there is a price tag for what they did” on October 7.
He noted that he had not been allowed to downgrade the conditions of terror inmates in Israeli jails because “it’s not right, not appropriate, that it will infuriate the terrorists and could result in an intifada.”
Earlier this month, the High Court of Justice ruled that Israel was not properly feeding Palestinian security prisoners, a decision that Ben Gvir — who has bragged of degrading inmates’ conditions — has suggested had led to a deadly shooting attack in Jerusalem the following day.
Following the attack, Otzma Yehudit announced that it intended to raise the death penalty issue in the Knesset again, with Hebrew media reporting that the far-right party believed the coalition has failed to advance the issue fast enough and the discussion needed to be expedited.
Otzma Yehudit MK Limor Son Har-Melech attends a Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee meeting at the Knesset, in Jerusalem on February 23, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
In March 2023, lawmakers voted 55-9 in support of the bill, but it ultimately did not advance further despite having been part of the ruling Likud party’s coalition agreement with Otzma Yehudit, due to high-level opposition within the government and security services.
“Today, the Knesset made a clear moral statement,” sponsor Son Har-Melech, whose first husband was killed in a terror attack in 2003, posted on X following Sunday’s vote.
“I hope the law will soon pass its first reading in the plenum, and I call on the prime minister to advance the law to its second and third readings as soon as possible,” she wrote.
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