Israeli Parliament Votes 93-0 to Extend Death Penalty Law to Gaza Palestinians

Israel's parliament voted 93-0 to approve legislation establishing special tribunals able to impose the death penalty on Gazan Palestinians for alleged participation in crimes against humanity. The Knesset approved the measure out of 120 parliamentarians as part of a legislative package that mandates capital punishment for Palestinians but not for Israelis.

The tribunals will operate using a legal framework last applied in the 1962 execution of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. The legislation extends earlier measures passed on March 30 that require all Palestinians convicted of murdering Israelis in nationalist acts or terror attacks to be hanged.

It applies to ethnic Palestinians who hold Israeli passports and residents of the West Bank but does not apply to ethnic Jews in those areas. At least 1,000 Gazans are currently held in administrative detention in Israel as unlawful combatants, with additional Palestinians imprisoned in the West Bank.

Those affected will be tried in military courts where the conviction rate exceeds 90 per cent, according to Israeli human rights groups. The new tribunals will handle cases related to the deaths of about 1,200 people, many of them civilians, on October 7 2023.

Hearings will be televised, as occurred during the Eichmann trial.

Israel has not carried out a death sentence following court proceedings since 1962, though it has conducted hundreds of extrajudicial targeted killings. The only prisoner executed after a court process was Israeli soldier Meir Tobianski, who was shot in 1948 and later exonerated.