Israel’s Execution Law Advances
The occupation’s Knesset security committee has approved a law allowing the execution of Palestinian prisoners, clearing it for second and third readings. The Palestine Center for Prisoner Studies called the vote the beginning of a bloodier chapter, one that formalizes what the occupation has practiced for decades through quieter means.
The occupation has never stopped killing prisoners, the Center said. Since it seized Palestinian lands and turned prisons into graveyards, it has killed them through torture, medical neglect, and starvation. More recently through rape and conditions designed to break them. Now it wants to make the killing quick and official.
Riyad al-Ashqar, the Center’s director, warned that passing the law would open a new phase of state killing and terrorism. It will serve as a pretext to liquidate prisoners, particularly leaders of the prisoner movement and Gaza detainees arrested since October 7 whom the occupation labels “elite prisoners.”
Getting rid of prisoners rather than bearing the cost of holding them is an old occupation dream, al-Ashqar said. Hundreds have been killed during arrest operations, shot on sight instead of taken alive. Hundreds more died inside prisons. In two and a half years alone, 88 were killed. The current extremist government sees its opening: the political climate since October 7, 2023, gives it cover to push the law through.
The law’s reach does not stop at prisoners who carried out resistance operations that killed soldiers or settlers. It could extend to anyone connected to an operation: those who gave orders, provided funding, or supplied weapons. Dozens serving stacked life sentences never took part in operations themselves. They were sentenced for giving instructions or logistical support. Under the new law, all could face execution.
Gaza’s prisoners face the greatest danger. The occupation accuses them of storming the border on October 7, 2023, and killing hundreds of soldiers and settlers. Ben Gvir has threatened them with execution repeatedly. They shattered the occupation’s image of invincibility, al-Ashqar said, and the government has not forgiven it.
The law exposes the racist core of the occupation’s fascist government, al-Ashqar said. It amounts to a war crime and a direct violation of international law.
Prisoners’ lives will rest in the hands of extremists with no regard for human life or international conventions. If the law takes final effect, as Ben Gvir and his allies want, the killing of prisoners will become routine, this time with legal cover and official approval from the Knesset, the occupation’s highest legislative body, because the prisoners killed Israelis or supported those who did.
The Palestine Center called on the international community and human rights organizations to intervene immediately, saying the occupation’s crimes against prisoners have reached a peak with a law that gives it a green light to kill openly, stripped of any moral or legal pretense.
