The Israeli Parliament on Monday passed in its first reading a bill proposing the death penalty for “terrorists,” a measure that could be applied to Palestinians convicted of deadly attacks against Israelis.
The amendment to the Penal Code, demanded by the far-right Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, and approved by the National Security Committee, was passed by 39 votes to 16. It must pass a second and third reading before becoming law.
Although the death penalty exists for a small number of crimes in Israel, the country has become a de facto abolitionist country: the perpetrator of the Nazi Holocaust, Adolf Eichmann, was the last person executed in 1962.
Ben Gvir had threatened to withdraw his party, Jewish Power, from the governing coalition if the law was not put to a vote.
During the plenary session in which the law was discussed, Ben Gvir stated that, if definitively approved, “it will be the most important in the history of the State of Israel ”.
“Every terrorist will know: this is the law that will deter. It is the law that will instill fear,” Ben Gvir said.
A statement from the security committee, which included the explanatory note for the bill, said: “Its aim is to cut terrorism off at the root and create a strong deterrent.”
“It is proposed that a terrorist convicted of murder motivated by racism or hatred towards the public, and in circumstances where the act was committed with the intention of harming the State of Israel… be sentenced to the mandatory death penalty,” the statement said.
Monday's vote took place amid a tense truce with Hamas in the Gaza war, which had erupted since the terrorist group's attacks on October 7, 2013. The government continues to discuss with the United States and other countries the conditions for extending the measure.
Condemnation by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority
Hamas stated on Tuesday that the proposed law seeks to “legalize the systematic and mass killing” of Palestinians.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry, based in Ramallah, called it"a new form of escalation of Israeli extremism and criminality against the Palestinian people."
In a statement, several Palestinian human rights organizations, including the Palestinian Center for Human Rights and the Independent Human Rights Commission, stressed that, if passed, “the bill would impose the death penalty on anyone who kills an Israeli for nationalist reasons.”
Israeli authorities use the term"terrorist" to refer to Palestinians who attack their soldiers or settlers residing illegally in the West Bank, as well as those who carry out attacks on Israeli territory.
According to figures from the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), under Ben Gvir's mandate, which began in December 2022, 95.5% of criminal investigations for the crime of inciting terrorism are against Palestinian citizens of Israel.
