By Mohamad El Sahily | Staff Writer

The Knesset on Wednesday advanced a government-backed bill to impose the death penalty on terrorists who kill Israelis, approving it in its preliminary reading. The bill was approved 55-9, with the support of the Yisrael Beytenu opposition party, known for its right-wing views and which was in previous governments with Netanyahu. It was passed alongside a near-identical version submitted by Yisrael Beytenu MK Oded Forer, and the two will likely be combined further along in the process. The primary legislation stipulates that courts will be able to impose the death penalty on those who have committed a nationalistically motivated murder of a citizen of Israel. However, it would not apply to an Israeli who kills a Palestinian. 

The initiative has long been weighed by the Israeli right but has consistently faced opposition from the security establishment, arguing that it would not deter future terror attacks, as well as from Israel’s legal establishment which cites legal challenges and warns that such a law could harm Israel in international forums. While previous coalitions ultimately agreed to shelve death penalty legislation, the current hardline ruling bloc led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the most right-wing in Israeli history and the initiative was one of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s central campaign promises. 

Palestinian Authority Civil Affairs Minister Hussein al-Sheikh called Wednesday’s vote “a continuation of a racist approach” by Israel. “The one who should be tried for his crimes is the occupation, not a people suffering under the oppression of the occupiers.” Instituting a death penalty for “terrorists” had already been high on the hard-right coalition’s agenda before a string of deadly Palestinian attacks killed 14 Israelis since the beginning of the year. The terror wave, which comes amid escalating deadly tensions in the West Bank, has re-energized calls for harsher punitive action against Palestinian perpetrators as well as more severe deterrent measures. 

Israeli media reported earlier this month that Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara was set to oppose the law on the grounds that it poses significant constitutional difficulties and goes against Israel’s declarations on the matter in international forums and against the international trend of limiting the use of the death sentence. 

The Ynet news site quoted what it said was Baharav-Miara’s planned legal opinion, saying the law wouldn’t serve as a deterrent, especially when the perpetrators are ideologically motivated and willing to accept being killed anyway. She also purportedly noted that the only Western country that still uses death sentences is the US, and even there only 31 out of 50 states still have it, with seven having nixed it over the past decade. Israel’s penal code includes capital punishment but only for exceedingly rare cases — Nazi mastermind Adolf Eichmann was one of only two people executed by the state in almost 75 years (the other being Meir Tobianski for allegations of treason). Such a codification of capital punishment is expected to garner international condemnation from many countries, especially with the continuation of Netanyahu’s massive judicial overhaul which has already led to strong condemnations from almost all of Israel’s traditional allies and the UAE.