Israeli MPs debate 'lethal injection' death penalty for Palestinian prisoners

The Israeli parliament's National Security Committee on Wednesday debated a bill to impose the death penalty on Palestinians convicted of terrorism, with "lethal injection" proposed as the method.

The bill, initiated by MK Limor Son Har Melech of the far-right Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, passed its first reading last week, and the National Security Committee is now preparing it for its second and third readings before it can become a law in Israel.

On Tuesday, the committee chair, MK Tzvika Foghel - also from the Otzma Yehudit party - published the guiding principles of the proposed law.

After the Hamas-led attack on 7 October 2023, Foghel wrote: "The people of Israel understand very well that nothing is more just and fitting than the death penalty for terrorists.

"Besides being just, the death penalty will ensure that there are no more bargaining chips and no more deals paid for with future Jewish blood," he wrote.

Jewish Power, which is led by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, opposed the recent ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel, which led to the release of nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.

The bill states that "anyone who murders a Jew solely because they are Jewish, including planners or dispatchers, shall be punished only by death".

"The penalty shall be imposed by a regular majority, without judicial discretion, without the ability to appeal the type of punishment, without the ability to commute the sentence through a ‘deal’ or through a pardon," states the draft bill.

In addition, "in order to prevent any possibility of evading implementation of the sentence,” the bill determines that executions, which will be done by "lethal injection," must be carried out within 90 days of the sentence.

'A racist law'

During the parliamentary debate, heated confrontations broke out between Otzma Yehudit lawmakers, including Ben Gvir, and left-wing MPs who were removed from the session as a result.

"A state cannot be run according to feelings of revenge," said MP Gilad Kariv of the centre-left Democrats party before being expelled from the session.

Kariv added that it was “a racist law" because is applied "only when it is the life of a Jew being taken".

Kariv then directed his remarks at Ben Gvir.

'A state cannot be run according to feelings of revenge'

-  Gilad Kariv, MP

"During your tenure, the highest number of Jews have been murdered, the most people killed in car accidents, and the most women killed.

"You are a person with records of Israeli and Jewish blood flowing in the streets. Are you responsible for national security? You are a clown," Kariv said.

MK Aida Touma-Sliman of the left-wing Hadash party was also removed from the session after she told Ben Gvir he was “a supporter of terror,” to which he shouted back at her, mockingly, "out" in Arabic.

In 2007, Ben Gvir was convicted, by an Israeli court, of support for the banned far-right Kach party.

The bill drew criticism from the Public Defense’s Office at the Ministry of Justice.

"The overwhelming majority of executions worldwide are carried out in China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Yemen. Numerous studies conducted around the world have not found that the death penalty has a deterrent effect," a Public Defense representative said during the debate.

The bill passed last week with the support of the coalition parties and the right-wing opposition party Yisrael Beiteinu, which had proposed a similar law.

The centrist parties Yesh Atid and Blue and White were absent from the vote.

Netanyahu 'in favour'

Earlier this month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's representative declared that “the prime minister is in favour of the death penalty," during a debate.

The proposed law states that "since imprisonment is not sufficiently deterrent, it is proposed to determine that the punishment for terrorists for acts of murder they committed will be death".

Under the bill, any act of terror that causes the death of a person and is carried out with “a motive of racism or hostility toward the public, and with the aim of harming the State of Israel and the revival of the Jewish people in their land,” will lead to the imposition of the death penalty.

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Israeli law currently allows the death penalty in certain cases, but it has not been carried out since the Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann was executed in 1962 for his role in the Holocaust.

Before that, only one other person was executed in Israel - in 1952, Yehezkel Ingster, a Jewish man who had been a collaborator in Gross-Rosen concentration camp, was executed.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel stated last week that it "categorically opposes the death penalty".

"The death penalty contradicts the most basic foundation of human rights: the sanctity of life and human dignity," it said.

The organisation added that “the bill designates the death penalty for Palestinians only," and that it "cannot be viewed in isolation from the general conduct and policies towards Palestinian prisoners and detainees since the outbreak of the war".

According to a report published this week by Physicians for Human Rights Israel, at least 98 Palestinian detainees have died in Israeli detention facilities since October 2023, with the real number likely much higher.

The report states that most of the detainees who died were civilians who had not been charged with any crime by the Israeli justice system.