Al-Fakhouri: Prisoner Execution Bill Violates International Law, Legitimizes Occupation Crimes

The Knesset’s National Security Committee approved a bill last Tuesday that would allow the execution of Palestinian prisoners, clearing it for second and third reading votes this week. Knesset member Limor Son Har-Melech of Otzma Yehudit, the party led by far-right minister Itamar Ben Gvir, introduced the legislation.

Nahed al-Fakhouri, a specialist in the file, told Shehab News Agency the bill amounts to “a flagrant violation of all international norms and laws, and of the Geneva Conventions and human rights.”

The legislation would “legitimize the organized crimes the occupation and its prison administration commit against Palestinian prisoners and detainees under legal cover,” he said.

The bill threatens more than prisoners’ lives, al-Fakhouri said. It “tramples the core of international humanitarian law and undermines the principles that guarantee peoples’ right to resist occupation and protect human dignity.”

Such a law would “promote a culture of killing under legal cover and turn prisons into grounds for execution and organized killing” in open defiance of international conventions meant to protect human rights, he said.