‘A silent law made formal:’ Israel designs penal tool to execute Palestinians

Israel’s parliament passed on Monday a law mandating the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel who are convicted of lethal attacks labelled as “terrorism.” The amendment to Israel’s Penal Code bars any possibility of pardon or commutation, in what Amnesty International described as “one of the world’s most extreme death penalty laws.” According to Hassan Abady, a lawyer specializing in Palestinian prisoners’ cases in Israeli courts, the law mandates the death penalty for anyone charged with causing a death in circumstances that fall under Israeli law’s definition of a terrorist act. Effectively, it presumes a Palestinian defendant and an Israeli victim, he tells Mada Masr. Fathy Nimr, a policy fellow in the Palestinian policy network, Al-Shabaka, tells Mada Masr that while the law formally applies to both Palestinian and Israeli citizens, a key clause makes its application to Israelis highly unlikely: the killing must be legally determined to have been done with the intent of “the intent of rejecting the existence of the State of Israel,” according to the wording of the law. Alaa Skafy, the head of Al-Dameer Association for Human Rights, tells Mada Masr that he anticipates that the motive for the law’s passage was to target Palestinian detainees from the Gaza Strip, and particularly 300 current detainees categorized by Israel as “elite fighters,” those accused of involvement in the attack on Israeli settlements in the Gaza envelope on October 7, 2023. The 300 detainees, who have not been tried and are currently held in remand detention subject to routine renewal, could be tried and sentenced under the new law, Skafy says. Otherwise, “the law won’t be retroactively applicable” and will only come into effect once it is ratified by Israel’s Supreme Court, which has previously upheld decisions legalizing the demolition Palestinian homes and revocation of their Israeli citizenship, says Nimr. On Monday night, a group of Israeli human rights organizations, including Adalah-The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel and the legal rights group HaMoked, along with Arab members of parliament filed a petition with the Israeli Supreme Court to overturn the death penalty law, Kamal Bani Odeh, the director of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society, tells Mada Masr. The petition argues that the legislation denies the right to life, imposes cruel and inhumane punishment and enshrines execution by hanging in a manner that specifically targets Palestinians, according to Bani Odeh. In response, the Israeli court ordered the occupation government to respond and issued a precautionary order, which freezes the law, valid until May 24, Bani Odeh says. The law excludes settlers and is effectively only applicable to Palestinians who it deems to have participated in “resistance activity,” he adds. The Israeli law would come into effect after its publication in the state’s official gazette after the president, head of the Knesset, prime minister and head of national security have added their signatures — which normally occurs around eight to ten days after a law’s approval. *** The new law approved Monday stipulates the penalty be applied without the need for judicial consensus, and that it should be carried out by hanging in the 90 days following the conviction. . According to Skafy, several measures outlined in the law violate criminal legislative standards, particularly the exclusive designation of execution as the only penalty available to the judge . “In its entirety, this law lacks all the guarantees of a fair trial,” he says, describing it as a “political instrument to legitimize the killing of Palestinian detainees, especially in the midst of the current extremism within the Israeli government.” The law establishes two legal tracks, one for Israel’s civilian criminal courts and another for military courts empowered to try people from occupied Gaza and the West Bank. According to the bill’s wording, “a person who intentionally causes the death of another with the aim of harming a citizen or resident of Israel, with the intent of rejecting the existence of the State of Israel — his sentence shall be death or life imprisonment, and only one of these penalties.” But for Palestinians convicted in military courts, the “sentence shall be death, and this penalty only.” Military courts are restricted from issuing life sentences instead of the death penalty unless they can determine “special reasons,” which the law does not define. “Israel is brazenly granting itself carte blanche to execute Palestinians while stripping away the most basic fair-trial safeguards,” Amnesty International said in its Monday statement. There are legal infractions in the law, says Bani Odeh, since the West Bank is in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and therefore its affairs, including prisoner affairs, are subject to decisions from the Israeli military head, not the Knesset. The right to legislate and impose legislation in the occupied West Bank belongs only to the general commander of the Israeli military as de facto ruler, and should not legally lie with the Knesset, Abady confirms. *** According to Nimr, the law has long been in the making and the Knesset had ruled out passing earlier versions. A member of Fateh, speaking to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity, notes that Israel has previously carried out only two executions: one of the Nazi Adolf Eichmann, in 1962, and the other of an Israeli national charged with espionage, in 1984. But since then, and especially since October 7, 2023, Israeli society has leant increasingly to the right side of the political spectrum, Nimr says. Salah Hamed, a former prisoner in Israel, a grees that the steady shift to the right has also allowed for the bill to pass this time, where multiple drafts previously put to the vote failed to reach the necessary majority.” In the latest round, however, the bill, introduced by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who is also heads the anti-Arab and far right Jewish Strength Party, and Knesset member Limor Sonn Har Melech of the same party, was passed with a majority of 62 votes, after more than three decades of attempts to enshrine such legislation. Israel is simultaneously working to pass another law, says Nemr, which would also introduce execution as a penalty for “unlawful combatants.” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant issued a decree in October 2023 designating any fighters from Gaza “unlawful combatants.” The designation sidesteps the international legal protection that would come from designating Palestinians from Gaza as prisoners of war. It is currently used for around another 1,500 Palestinians from Gaza who were detained by occupation authorities after the October 7 operation, says Skafy. Basel Farraj, a Palestinian researcher focused on prisoners’ affairs, argues that even in the absence of legal provisions, the death penalty has been a de facto feature of the Zionist system. Bani Odeh agrees, saying the legislation formalizes a “silent death penalty law” that Israel has long been imposing on Palestinian prisoners. Over 100 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli prisons since October 2023, of whom the identities of around 89 are known, he says. This brings the total number of Palestinian prisoners who were killed or have died in Israeli prisons since 1967 to 367 people, two-thirds of whom were effectively executed through severe beatings, starvation and deliberate medical neglect. “What is happening now is the legalization of the Zionist policies,” Farraj says, citing the case of Arafat Hamdan, a diabetic who died after two days in Israeli custody after he was denied access to insulin, in the first days of the Israeli aggression on Gaza. Farraj pointed to a “constant harmony” between Israeli courts and legislation passed by the Knesset. “While these courts give Israel the image of a liberal democracy,” he says, “they form part of a colonial structure that backs the Zionist system.” Such policies have not weakened prisoners’ morale or their commitment to their cause, Hamed stresses. He adds that in practice, Israel is already carrying out “what is worse than execution, through daily killings in streets and squares — including of children — outside any legal framework.” The post ‘A silent law made formal:’ Israel designs penal tool to execute Palestinians first appeared on Mada Masr .