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Israel has passed a law that would impose the standard death penalty for Palestinians in the West Bank convicted of killing Israeli citizens.
That English, German, France And Italy criticized the law, and said in a joint declaration that the law would “significantly expand the possibility of applying the death penalty”.
Allies called the law “de facto discriminatory” and said that by passing it, “Israel risks undermining its commitment to democratic principles.”
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The death penalty “is an inhumane and degrading form of punishment with no deterrent effect”, adding that rejecting the death penalty “is a fundamental value that unites us”, the four countries said.
Israel’s right-wing National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who wore a noose-shaped lapel pin ahead of the vote, has campaigned for harsher sentences for sex offenders. Palestine convicted of nationalist offenses against Israel.
“We have made history,” said Ben-Gvir, in a post on X. “Every terrorist who commits murder should know – he will be sent to the gallows.”
He also hit out at criticism from the European Union, adding: “we are not afraid, we are not giving up”.
Law allows ‘extrajudicial killings’
But the Palestinian Foreign Ministry said the law “constitutes a decision to carry out extrajudicial killings instituted in accordance with racist standards”.
“The ministry emphasized that Israel does not have sovereignty over Palestinian land and Israeli law does not apply to the Palestinian people,” the statement added.
Opponents of the bill, which requires executions to take place within 90 days of sentence, say it is racist, cruel and unlikely to deter attacks by Palestinian militants.
People greet Palestinian prisoners released by Israel under a ceasefire agreement as they arrive in Gaza. File photo: AP
Critics of the bill include Israelis and Palestinians, international human rights groups and the United Nations, some of whom fear the death penalty would only be applied to Palestinians convicted of killing Jews in Israel.
The punishment will be applied by a military court to anyone found to have killed Israeli citizens “as an act of terror.”
Such a court simply adjudicates West Bank Palestinians, who are not Israeli citizens. The bill says military courts can commute sentences to life imprisonment in “special circumstances.”
Israeli courts, which try Israeli citizens, including Palestinian citizens of Israel, can choose between life imprisonment or the death penalty in cases of murder aimed at harming Israeli citizens and residents or “with the intention of rejecting the existence of the state of Israel”.
‘Discriminatory by design’
Amichai Cohen, a senior fellow at Israel’s Center for Democratic Values and Institutions, said the distinction is discriminatory because in effect, Jews “will not be charged under this law.”
Additionally, the West Bank is not Israel’s sovereign territory, so under international law, Israel’s parliament cannot legislate regarding the territory, Cohen said.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel said it had petitioned the country’s highest court to challenge the law, calling it “designed to be discriminatory” and “carried out without legal authority” against Palestinians in the West Bank.
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Israel already applies the death penalty, but this country has not sentenced anyone to death since the Nazi war criminal, Adolf Eichmann, in 1962.
The bill would not apply retroactively to any militants detained by Israel who attacked the country on October 7, 2023.
