On Monday, the Israeli government passed a law instituting the death penalty for "terror offences," allowing for the execution of convicts within an accelerated 90-day period. The law comes as no surprise to Palestinians; it is merely another step in a longstanding strategy of elimination. Over the past two and a half years, at least 87 Palestinian detainees have been killed under conditions that human rights organizations describe as a "network of torture camps"—the highest recorded number since 1967.
The timing of the law's passage is not incidental. It is part of Israel's efforts to legalize a pattern of impunity. The law was enacted less than a month after Israel dropped all charges against soldiers accused of mass raping Palestinian detainees at the notorious Sde Teiman detention camp. This situation highlights how one population is granted explicit impunity for organized sexual violence, while the other is now subject to execution within 90 days under a military court system that convicts 96% of Palestinians, often based on confessions extracted through torture.
The law arrives amid visible and intensified Israeli violence in the occupied West Bank. In the last month alone, concurrent with the US and Israeli war on Iran, armed Israeli militias carried out over 7,300 violations against Palestinians in the West Bank, including killings, raids, arrests, property damage and destruction, and restrictions on freedom of movement. In late 2023, the entire population of Khirbet Zanuta in the southern West Bank was forcibly displaced after relentless settler attacks made remaining impossible.
The death penalty law remains consistent with Israel's longstanding practice of apartheid and segregated justice frameworks. It is carefully worded to ensure its application solely to Palestinians. The most dangerous aspect of this law is not its discriminatory structure but the logic encoded within it. It imposes the death penalty or life imprisonment on "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." This clause criminalizes not violence but the very political condition of being Palestinian under Israeli occupation.
To view this law solely as a policy focused on detainees is to entirely miss its purpose. Palestinians are already being executed in their own homes and streets without trial, charge, or a 90-day waiting period. This law, the legalization of settlements, military courts, demolition orders, and the siege on Gaza should not be seen as separate policies responding to distinct problems. They are instruments of a single project aimed at the total conquest of Palestinian lands through total control over Palestinian bodies. Each targets different groups in different contexts but serves the same agenda of elimination.
Source: www.aljazeera.com