A bill to provide for the death penalty against Palestinians who are convicted of killing Israelis made its way out of committee on Nov. 3, paving the way for its first reading in the Knesset. The proposal, tabled by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s far-right Jewish Power party, would allow Israeli courts to impose the death penalty on Palestinians convicted of killing Israelis on “nationalistic grounds.” The legislation does not apply to Israelis who kill Palestinians under similar circumstances.
Israeli security officials had previously opposed the measure, warning that it could endanger Israeli captives held by Palestinian factions in Gaza, reported Middle East Eye. However, following the release of all surviving captives by Hamas in October, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave the green light for the bill to move forward, according to Prisoners and Missing Persons Coordinator Gal Hirsch, who addressed the committee before the vote on Monday, Nov. 3.
He said the earlier objections had “become irrelevant.” Hirsch added that the bill was “a tool in the toolbox that allows us to fight terror and secure the release of hostages,” according to Israeli media reports.
MK Limor Son Har-Melech, according to MEE, a far-right Israeli lawmaker who sponsored the death penalty bill, let the racism underlying the bill hang out for all to see. When asked whether the law would apply to Jewish attackers, the MK replied that “there’s no such thing as a Jewish terrorist.”
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club warned on Nov. 3 that the bill merely legalizes what’s already going on inside Israeli prisons: “the systematic execution of Palestinians through shootings, assassinations, torture, and deliberate medical neglect.”
The Club pointed out that since the beginning of the ongoing genocide, Israeli brutality against detainees has reached unprecedented levels—with 81 prisoners martyred in custody, and dozens more from Gaza executed or forcibly disappeared. The Club described the law as “rooted in British colonial mandates,” which Israel’s far right leadership, including Ben-Gvir and Netanyahu, is now aggressively pushing, seeking to “transform long-standing crimes into official state policy.”
The Club reiterated that what is unfolding is not new: It is the institutionalization of a decades-old system of killing, now being codified into law amid the silence and complicity of the international community.
