Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel
The controversial law effectively only applies to Palestinians, with Israeli citizens who commit the same crimes carrying a maximum sentence of life in prison.
The Israeli parliament approved this Monday a law that institutes the death penalty by hanging for people guilty of terrorist murder which, in practice, applies only to Palestinians convicted of attacks or attacks against Israel.
The text obliges (with undefined exceptions) Israeli military courts to impose this penalty on Palestinians residing in the occupied West Bank, while courts that try Israeli citizens have the possibility to apply, instead, life imprisonment. The diploma establishes more conditions for application.
The death penalty exists in Israel, but was applied only twice: in 1948, shortly after the creation of the State, against an army captain accused of high treason, and in 1962, when the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was hanged. This punishment is currently prohibited for most crimes, and is only permitted in extraordinary cases of war crimes or genocide.
The bill, presented by the extreme right, was approved with 62 votes in favor and 48 against and is being heavily criticized by human rights organizations and the international community.
On Sunday, the heads of diplomacy from Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom urged the Israeli parliament and government to abandon the plan to expand the possibilities of imposing the death penalty. Previously, the Council of Europe had called for the proposed law to be abandoned.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attended the vote in the plenary session of the Knesset (Israeli parliament) and voted in favor of the reformpromoted by the party of the Israeli Minister of National Security, the ultranationalist Itamar Ben Gvir.
“The law is populist, immoral, not egalitarian“, condemned during the debate the deputy from the opposition party Yesh Atid (There is a Future), Matti Sarfatti, classifying it as “clearly unconstitutional”.
The non-governmental organization (NGO) Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) announced, shortly after the approval of the legislation, that it had filed an appeal with the Supreme Court of Israel to challenge the law.
This law is “unconstitutional, discriminatory in nature and, for Palestinians in the West Bank, approved without legal basis“, ACRI wrote in a statement detailing the reasons for the appeal.
The Palestinian Authority has also reacted, accusing Israel of “legitimize extrajudicial executions“. This law constitutes “a crime and a dangerous escalation in occupation policies that have no sovereignty over the land of Palestine”, wrote on the social network X the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for whom this legislation “once again reveals the nature of the Israeli colonial system“.
The Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MRE) released a note on the social networkcivilizational regression“.
“Portugal, a pioneering country in the abolition of the death penalty, condemns and regrets the decision of the Israeli parliament to approve a law that expands the scope of application of capital punishment”, he states in the note.
“Such a decision represents a civilizational setback that seriously harms human dignity”, he adds.
