Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Amid the escalating war in West Asia, hundreds of people protested on Tuesday in West Bank against a new Israeli law making the death penalty a default sentence for Palestinians convicted in military court of deadly attacks and murdering the Jews, the media reported.
The legislation has drawn international criticism against Israel, which is already under scrutiny for increasing violence by settlers against Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Israel’s Knesset passed the death penalty legislation on Monday evening in a 62-48 vote.
The new legislation, passed by Israeli parliament on Monday, includes provisions requiring an execution by hanging within 90 days of sentencing, with some allowance for a delay but no right to clemency and the option of imposing a life imprisonment sentence instead of capital punishment, the reports said.
The law was devised by Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right National Security Minister who has worn nose-shaped lapel pins in the run-up to the vote. It is the latest action by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s nationalist-religious coalition to raise concern among Israel’s Western allies, who have also been critical of Jewish settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.
To head off international backlash, Netanyahu asked for some elements of the legislation to be softened, Israeli media reported.
The original bill had mandated the death sentence for non-Israeli citizens in the West Bank convicted in West Bank military courts of deadly terrorist acts. The revised legislation includes the option of life imprisonment.
In Israel’s civilian courts, the new legislation mandates either life imprisonment or the death penalty for anyone convicted of “deliberately causing the death of a person with the intent of ending Israel’s existence.”
Criticism
Even before the vote, the bill drew criticism from the foreign ministers of Germany, France, Italy and Britain, who said it had a “de facto discriminatory” character toward Palestinians.
“The adoption of this bill would risk undermining Israel’s commitments with regards to democratic principles,” they said in a joint statement on Sunday.
A group of United Nations experts said that the bill includes “vague and overbroad definitions of terrorist”, meaning the death penalty could be meted out over “conduct that is not genuinely terrorist” in nature.
Ben-Gvir argued that the death penalty would deter Palestinians from carrying out deadly attacks against Israelis or attempting kidnappings with the aim of forcing swap deals for Palestinians jailed in Israeli prisons.
Amnesty International, which tracks countries imposing death penalty laws, says there “is no evidence that the death penalty is any more effective in reducing crime than life imprisonment.”
The bill has also drawn objections from professionals in Israel’s security and legal establishments throughout its legislation who argued that it was unconstitutional and ineffective.
Israeli rights groups and opposition parliament members said they will challenge the law at Israel’s Supreme Court, which is likely to strike it down.
global trend
Israel abolished the death penalty for murder in 1954. The only person ever executed in Israel after a civilian trial was Adolf Eichmann, an architect of the Nazi Holocaust, in 1962. Military courts retained the option of imposing a death sentence but have not done so far.
Some 54 countries around the world permit the death penalty, including democracies like the United States and Japan, according to Amnesty International. The group says that the global trend on the death penalty is toward abolition, with 113 countries having outlawed it for all crimes.
The Israeli rights group B’Tselem says that military courts in the West Bank, where Palestinians are tried for alleged crimes, have a 96 percent conviction rate and have a history of extracting confessions through torture.
Ben-Gvir, who was convicted in 2007 of racist incitement against Arabs and support for the Kach group on the Israeli and US terrorism blacklists, has oversaw an overhaul of prisons that have led to allegations of abuse of Palestinian prisoners.
Abdallah Al Zughari, the head of the Palestinian Prisoner’s Club, said that Palestinians in Israeli jails had already been subject to “slow killing practices” that have led to the deaths of more than 100 prisoners since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
Hundreds of Palestinians protested across the occupied West Bank to denounce the passage of an Israeli law approving the use of the death penalty against Palestinians convicted of deadly attacks.
The Palestinian news agency Wafa said Palestinian prisoner advocacy groups and national factions staged a sit-in in the courtyard of the International Committee of the Red Cross headquarters in el-Bireh.
Participants displayed photographs of dozens of prisoners who have died in custody over the decades, Wafa added.
More than 9,500 Palestinians are held in Israeli prisons, including 350 children and 73 women. Palestinian and Israeli human rights groups say detainees face torture, starvation and medical neglect, leading to dozens of deaths.
Amnesty International called on Israeli authorities to repeal the law, which it described as “a public display of cruelty, discrimination and utter contempt for human rights”.
“For years, we have seen an alarming pattern of apparent extrajudicial executions and other unlawful killings of Palestinians – with the perpetrators also enjoying near-total impunity,” Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty’s senior director for research, advocacy, policy and campaigns, said in a statement.
“This new law which allows for state-sanctioned executions is a culmination of such policies.”
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