Death by Hanging: Inside Israel's new laws for Palestinians

I'm Nicole Johnston and you're listening to seven am. Israel's passed a new law to execute Palestinians convicted of deadly attacks. It passed through the country's parliament despite the opposition of both Israeli and international human rights groups, as well as the UK, Germany, France and Italy. Israel's National Doctors' Union has refused to carry out lethal injections, so those convicted

This week, Palestinians protested a new Israeli law that expands the death penalty for killings classified as acts of terrorism. Human rights groups say the law is expected to apply exclusively to Palestinian prisoners in the occupied West Bank.

Amira, you've lived in the West Bank for almost thirty years. Could you stop by explaining to us what this new death penalty law is and why are some experts saying it'll be used against Palestinians but not Israelis who are convicted of similar crimes.

Look, you don't need experts to know that this law only applies to Palestinians. First of all, Israeli Jews who live in the West Bank are under Israeli civil law, not military law, and if they commit a felony or a crime, they are being prosecuted in Israeli civil courts, not military courts. So this is one thing. The second thing is that in Israel proper, the Israeli civil court is mandated two sentenced to death anybody who committed the crime of murder and terror in the intent to deny

So how would these executions be carried out by hanging?

Those convicted have to be hanged within ninety days without the possibility of an appeal.

The guards of the Israeli prison service are supposed to hang them. They will be there and they will be hooded, they will be their faces will be covered. They will not be seen by the doctors who will be present or the other official that will be present. They will not be known or seen.

But if you look at the wording of the text, it talks about those convicted of killing Israelis with the quote intent to negate the existence of the state of Israel, meaning it won't apply to extremist Israelis who kill Palestinians like we've been seeing recently in the West Bank for example.

Now, this law was passed through the Israeli kannessed by the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ruling coalition. How are they justifying the law and how much support for it is there in wide or Israeli society.

The main argument that they give is that this law is supposed to deter Palestinians from committing theorist the texts.

As they are called in Israel.

In a recorded message that Israeli citizens have received, including myself, over the phone, we heard the voice, the very cheerful voice of the Minister of National Security it Am Bevis where he said he was proud about the passing of this law that his party were promoting for several years.

Already they've already started ordering red uniforms, that opening a death throw wing setting up a facility, because you need to have a facility.

He said that this law will make Israel more secure, moral and more just. These are his words, but this is complete nonsense, because many of the Palestinians who do resort to very extreme acts of killing are known to be ready to die.

Death does not deter them.

Even those who throw stones know that now soldiers are very likely to shoot at them and to kill them.

Settlers are being emboldened, they are taking matters into their own hands, and that they are being protected effectively by the military and by the police.

Or even if they don't throw anything and are just demonstrating the Israeli rules of engagement now are so lenient that a soldier or a policeman can shoot it a car full of civilians and then say I felt threatened and that it will.

Be excused grief and fury in the occupied West Bank, as mourners took to the streets of Tamen on Sunday to bury a family of four shot dead by Israeli forces while driving through their own village.

Now, as for the number of people who support it, I haven't seen polls that are connected to the law that has just been passed. But in November twenty five, eighty percent of the people asked, and I believe that these are Jews who were asked, supported the death penalty to the Nuba members. This is the unit that perpetuated the onslot on October seventh, Hamas unit, but the law that was past does not apply to them because it

I know that this issue of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails is also at the core of Palestinian national identity. One in five Palestinians has been inside and Israeli jailed one time or another. So how is this law being received across the West Bank? Or is it a case that Palestinians right now have focused on much more immediate problems settler violence and land grabs, that the law hasn't registered so much.

Both of true.

I mean there were demonstrations in several cities, also in Ghaza and in the West Bank.

Hundreds of protesters have taken to the street across the Palestinian territories that after Israel's parliament passed a measure establishing the death penalty.

People are alarmed, of course, because if there was any hope until October seven of prisoners and their families to be released, the only hopes were either political agreement that has become more and more impossible in the last fifteen or twenty years even and the other option was an operation of taking soldiers as prisoners or others, and this has failed, as we see.

After October seven, because the price.

Of the Palestinian society, and especially the Palestinian society in Gaza, the price that they had to pay for the few hundreds of prisoners who were released, was far too high for people to support it. Now.

But looking at the breakdown of the data from the Health Ministry as of January twenty sixth, let's take a look. You'll see that they that seventy one thousand, six hundred and sixty people have been killed at least one hundred seventy one thousand, four hundred and nineteen Palestinians have been injured, many with life altering wounds. That's one out of every fourteen people in Gaza.

I think that right now this best penalty shows that Israel is getting more and more extreme in its policies towards the Palestinians. It comes together with all the other policies of economical strangulation of conditions in prisons that are really statistic.

I don't have any other world for this.

This is an analysis in October of last year that argue that the real number as of October of twenty twenty five, of course, was closer to one hundred thirty thousand people killed.

More and more annexation of lend inside the West Bank.

In August, the Israeli government announced plans to proceed with East Or E one, a plan to build thirty four hundred homes for Israeli settlers on Palestinia territory that would essentially split the occupied West Bank in two of.

Taking the half of the of the Gaza strip and actually concentrating the whole population in half of the territory that was anyway so small before October twenty three.

It is a landscape of complete and utter devastation. Very hard to see a single building that hasn't either been destroyed or blown up. And there are no civilians, no signs of life.

Here.

It goes together with the unchecked a text of settlers against Palestinians, a text that brought to the expulsion of thousands of Palestinians in the last two or three years, and also before service of October. So everything is so intimidating. This is what's so frightening that it's a society that in its most part stands behind the government, the most extreme right wing government ever and support it.

Coming up as the world focuses on Iran, has Gaza in the West Bank been forgotten? Amera Even before the war in Gaza started after October seven, Israeli settlements had been expanding. And this year we also had the Israeli government introduce some new laws which activists say have strengthened Israel's legal control over the West Bank and weakened the Palestinian authority. And they've also made it easier for Israeli

All of the same and more than that. And actually what is happening since before October seven, but more so after October seven, is the carrying out of the execution of a plan that the Israeli Minister of Finance now and he is also in the Ministry of Defense. This

When I published the Decisive Plan and later another chapter about Gaza, I wrote that we would have to conquer Gaza.

One is to accept this reality of no national rights and that they will actually be second or third, or fourth or fifth great subjects in Israel, greater Israel between the river and the sea. The second option, the one that he prefers, is that they will emigrate outside of the country.

And the third option, if they.

Rejected the two first ones, is that the army and the Israeli security authorities will show them.

We know how to deal with them.

We will settle Gaza. We will apply sovereignty in Judea and Samaria. Yes, and we will encourage the immigration of the enemy out of here. There is no other solution.

Now, on top of this, about half a year ago he came out with the map. He showed a map of the West Bank with the six enclaves. These six enclavism, if I'm not mistaken, comprise eighteen percent of the land of the West Bank, and that's where Palestinians are supposed to be. And this is the process which is happening now.

People will hang me for this, but these.

Are areas where Palestinians will be concentrated, so that the majority of the seventy two percent of the West Bank will be free for Jewish settlement. This is what is being carried out now.

So Amera we know that the world's now focused on Iran. So do you see anything changing on the ground in the West Bank or do you think it's more likely that while the international communities occupied elsewhere, it's looking away that we see Israel continue to change laws to strengthen its control and, as its critics say, to give settlers a free reign in the West Bank.

You know, the settlers. The free rend that the settlers have is because the state is behind them, So we should not see the settlers as something set rate. Look. I usually say that I don't like to give prophecies, but it seems that right now the world really doesn't listen. Israel is really committing so many crimes and violations and enhancing its expulsion policy, then the Palestinians rightly feel completely

Amira, Thank you for joining us today.

Thank you.

Also in the news, Iran has dismissed a Donald Trump's declaration that the US will soon begin blockading ships entering or leaving the Strait of hor Moves after peace talks between American and Iranian negotiators collapsed over the weekend. Trump said the US Navy would stop any and all ships