Case Explained: Global condemnation as Israeli ministers celebrate death penalty law targeting Palestinian prisoners – Mondoweiss – Legal Perspective

With a smile on his face and a bottle of champagne in his hand, Israel’s hardline National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir celebrated on the Knesset floor Monday the passing of the new Israeli death penalty law targeting Palestinian detainees. First introduced as a bill by Ben-Gvir’s own Jewish Power party in November of last year, the law underwent its second and third readings in the Israeli parliamentary body earlier this week, passing with a majority of 62 to 47 votes. The objective of the law? To seek the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of acts that led to the death of Jewish Israelis.

The bill first sparked controversy when introduced over four months ago due to its explicitly discriminatory wording, which at the time was phrased as targeting individuals convicted of killing Israelis on “nationalistic or racist” grounds, and with the intent of “harming the state of Israel or the rebirth of the Jewish people.” Since then, Israeli lawmakers have sought to mitigate the controversy by tweaking the bill’s wording.

The final version that was passed into law targeted those convicted of actions that led to the death of Israelis, with the intent of “ending Israel’s existence.” 

Despite the slightly less racially-charged language, the text of the law still applies almost exclusively to Palestinians, even pushing the Foreign Ministers of Australia, Germany, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom to condemn the law in a joint statement due to its “de facto discriminatory character.” UN human rights head, Volker Türk, said that the law’s application to Palestinians would be considered a “war crime,” and was “deeply discriminatory.”

Meanwhile, the global human rights community lambasted the law as yet another legal facet of Israeli apartheid. Amnesty International emphasized that the law is the first in “what threatens to be a series of laws” that would execute Palestinians “in a public display of cruelty, discrimination and utter contempt for human rights,” adding that the law “dismantles fundamental safeguards to prevent the arbitrary deprivation of life” while further entrenching “Israel’s system of apartheid.” For its part, Human Rights Watch stated that the law “entrenches discrimination and a two-tiered system of justice, both hallmarks of apartheid.”

Shawan Jabarin, the head of Palestine’s leading human rights group, Al-Haq, told Mondoweiss that “this is the first time that a law is passed by one group to apply exclusively to another, without at least a formal equality of application.” 

Jabarin clarified that “there is an Israeli military order concerning Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza that allows for the death penalty, but it requires that the death penalty be sought by the military prosecutor and approved by a consensus of judges.” The law passed by the Knessset on Monday, in contrast, is not a military order, but a “penal law,” Jabarin explained, “which makes it possible for judges to issue the death penalty by majority, not consensus, and without being sought by the prosecutor.”

Jabarin points out that despite the fact that the law is formally different from military orders, the logic behind it is the same as the military judicial system that applies to Palestinians. “In Israeli military courts, the rate of conviction of Palestinians is higher than 99%, because there are no guarantees of a fair trial,” he explains, as they accept confessions extracted under torture or coercion, “making the possibility of appeal completely futile.”

Families of prisoners ‘left alone’

Palestinian families of prisoners have been bracing for this law to be passed for months, and yet the passing of the law with such ease came as “a shock” to them, according to Ayah Shreiteh, spokesperson for the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club.

“The law does not apply retroactively, which means that it doesn’t apply to prisoners who have already been convicted,” Shreiteh told Mondoweiss. “However, there are some 40 Palestinian prisoners charged with acts that led to killing Israelis who haven’t yet received sentences, and they are in the direct crosshairs of the death penalty law,” she added. 

Out of the roughly 9,000 Palestinians currently in Israeli prisons, only a few hundred are charged with attacks leading to the death of Israelis, and more than 4,000 are held without charge, 3,000 of whom are held under “administrative detention,” a policy that allows Israel to hold Palestinians based on a “secret file” that is not shown to the defense.

“Many families are from a simple background, and they came to the club completely devastated, anxious about the fate of their loved ones and asking if they will be executed,” she said. “The most difficult thing for families is the feeling of being left alone.”

Shreiteh says that Palestinians have been subjected to one tragedy after another over the past two years, from the Gaza genocide, to starvation, to settler violence, and annexation plans, while the question of prisoners remained in the background of most news. “This makes families of prisoners feel that they are alone in this,” Shreiteh explained. 

This is further compounded by the fact that the Palestinian Authority has recently cut off the salaries of families of Palestinian prisoners and martyrs under international pressure, based on Israeli propaganda painting the fund as a “pay-for-slay program” rewarding “terrorism.”

“There is a feeling of helplessness in the face of the impunity in how prisoners are being treated,” Shreiteh added. “And this law came as an additional blow to the morale of the families of Palestinian prisoners.”