Israel adopts decried law on the death penalty for Palestinian “terrorists”

It is a most criticized text. The Israeli parliament adopted this Monday evening a law establishing “the death penalty for terrorists”, tailor-made to apply only to Palestinians found guilty of deadly anti-Israeli attacks.

The bill – introduced by deputies from a far-right party that is a member of the government coalition – was definitively validated by 62 votes to 48. Benjamin Netanyahu voted in favor.

The general framework of the law provides that any person “who intentionally causes the death of another with the aim of harming an Israeli citizen or resident, with the intention of bringing an end to the existence of the State of Israel, shall be sentenced to death or life imprisonment.”

But, for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, the text provides that the death penalty is the default sanction if the homicide is qualified as an act of terrorism by Israeli military justice.

According to the new law, the death penalty would be applicable within 90 days after the final conviction, with a possible postponement of up to 180 days.

“We have made history!!! », Wrote on X the Minister of Internal Security, Itamar Ben Gvir (far right), in the wake of the adoption of the law.

“Dangerous escalation”

A few minutes after its adoption in the Knesset, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) announced that it had filed an emergency appeal before the Supreme Court “demanding the annulment of the law”, which it describes as “unconstitutional, discriminatory by nature and, for Palestinians in the West Bank, adopted without legal basis”. The parliament “does not have the power to legislate for the West Bank” where Israel “exercises no sovereignty”, she argues.

This law constitutes “a crime and a dangerous escalation” in Israeli policies, criticized the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on

During the debate preceding the vote, Ram Ben Barak, opposition MP and former deputy director of Mossad (the Israeli foreign secret service), expressed his indignation at the text, which testifies to a form of defeat against Hamas, to the extent that Israel would move away from its own “values” and would adopt, in his eyes, similar behaviors, marked by “hatred” and “revenge”.

Hamas, for its part, considered that the vote on the law demonstrated “the bloodthirsty nature of the occupation and its approach based on murder and terrorism”.

For Miriam Azem, international advocacy coordinator for Adalah, an Israeli NGO defending the rights of the Arab minority, this law “does not come out of nowhere” but “is part of the continuity and escalation of mistreatment and torture inflicted on Palestinians”.

Without wishing to speculate on a possible decision by the Supreme Court, the expert nevertheless emphasizes that it “has been very reluctant to intervene” in the past “and has given the green light to serious abuses against the Palestinians”. “If the Court fails to intervene in this case, it would be a true testament to the current state of the Israeli justice system. »

Death penalty applied twice in Israel

The text was denounced on Sunday by the Council of Europe as well as Berlin, London, Paris, and Rome, which called on the Knesset to abandon a project likely to “call into question Israel’s commitments to democratic principles”.

The Knesset vote came as a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took effect on October 10, more than two years after the start of the war in the Gaza Strip triggered by the Palestinian Islamist movement’s unprecedented attack on October 7, 2023.

The death penalty exists in Israel, but has only been used twice: in 1948, shortly after the establishment of the state, against an army captain accused of high treason, and in 1962, when Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was hanged.