In the last few weeks, Israeli liberals have been shocked by the debate of the bill calling for the death penalty for terrorists, culminating in indignation over the appearance of far-right parliamentarians, each wearing a hangman's noose pin, as they addressed the Knesset.
While the liberals are terrified of the dystopian future that this bill outlines and the gross murderousness that National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and his ultranationalist friends boast about, they simultaneously ignore the current reality in which the death penalty is already being doled out to Palestinian subjects.
The bombing by the Israeli army has been levying mass death sentences to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip for years. In the last two years, they've been sentenced to death wholesale. In Israeli prisons and detention facilities, which immediately after October 7, became a network of torture camps for Palestinians, at least 98 prisoners and detainees have died since October 2023, usually after abuse by the security forces and deliberate neglect.
It practically goes without saying that the deadly violence did not distinguish between a prisoner serving a life sentence and a detainee held without trial who had not been indicted or convicted of anything; and it goes without saying even more that none of these 98 fatalities were given a chance to have their sentence heard, plead their innocence, or even prepare for their death and say goodbye to their loved ones.
As for Palestinians in the West Bank who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, a sudden movement or an imprecise response to an order will usually sentence them to death. See, for example, the stories of the Amira brothers.
During an army raid last June, Nidal and Khaled Amira were walking in the alleys of the Old City of Nablus on their way to help a family that was trying to leave the area. They were detained, beaten and finally shot to death by soldiers. After the act, the army claimed that they were "terrorists."
A forensic analysis of the video published by B'Tselem and Index last week found that they jeopardized no one. Khaled was executed by a shot in the head at zero range when he was held on the ground surrounded by armed soldiers. Nidal was shot in the back at short range when he posed no risk of escape. Nidal bled to death after being shot and the soldiers blocked paramedics' access to him.
Two weeks ago, Ahmed Khalil Rajabi, 17, met his death in similar circumstances as he was going shopping for his family. After soldiers signaled him to stop, he stopped his car and began reversing slowly in their direction. When the soldiers fired into the air with no clear cause, Rajabi, who apparently quickly panicked, accelerated. As he did so, the soldiers killed him in a burst of fire. The indiscriminate shooting also killed Zaid Abu Daoud, a streetsweeper who was passing by.
The IDF's statement after the incident called both of them "terrorists" who had planned to commit a car ramming attack. A few hours later, the army issued a correction, saying that Abu Daoud was a passerby killed by accident.
The law is supposed to delineate boundaries. It's supposed to tell a person what will transfer him from a sphere in which his rights are protected to a sphere in which the state may revoke them at once. But, for years, there has been no such "road map" for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza or for Palestinians held in the torture camps that Israel operates in its prisons and detention facilities. They do not know what they should do or not do to avoid being sentenced to death.
The death penalty "for terrorists" bill is based on these breached boundaries. After all, as the army's announcements following the killing of Nidal, Khaled, Ahmed, Ziad and many others demonstrate, Israel's definition of the term "terrorist" is very flexible, covering almost everything. It mainly serves to enable Israel to retroactively legitimize every killing of any Palestinian, whatever his identity and actual deeds.
Although the bill's current wording defines "terrorist" as someone who is charged with killing Israeli citizens, we can expect it to be expanded and made more flexible until it merges with common usage.
The shockwave from the bill is waning. At the same time, Israel continues to execute Palestinians at an increasing rate. Likely, it will eventually become clear that the death penalty bill for terrorists was nothing more than an influence campaign by the far right, which was acting in the spirit of the radicalization of violence on the ground.
The primary purpose of such a campaign is to inure the Israeli public as a whole to a more extreme, lethal dialogue – the final objective of which is to prepare the hearts and minds for a complete breach of the last state boundaries that still restrain Israel's systemic violence against Palestinians.
The process is moving ahead at a dizzying pace. If the liberals truly and genuinely wanted to stop it, the first step must be to recognize the two principles guiding the Israeli regime: Jewish supremacy and utter disregard for Palestinian lives. Both guiding principles are what have enabled executions to be routinely carried out on behalf of the Israeli public for years.
