Death penalty for Palestinian terrorists passes preliminary Knesset vote

A government-backed bill to impose the death penalty on terrorists who kill Israelis is approved 55 to 9 in a preliminary reading in the Knesset on Wednesday afternoon.

The bill, which is also supported by the Yisrael Beytenu opposition party, states that someone who kills an Israeli citizen due to “racist motivations” or “hostility towards a [particular] public and in order to harm the State of Israel and the revival of the Jewish people” should be given the death penalty.

The law would not apply to an Israeli who killed a Palestinian.

Far-right MK Limor Son Har Melech of the Otzma Yehudit party, who sponsored the bill, says that even when Palestinian terrorists are tried and convicted, they enjoy “pleasant” prison conditions, receive stipends from the Palestinian Authority, and are often released in prisoner exchanges.

“For years, an absurd situation has prevailed in the State of Israel, in which despicable terrorists who murdered Jews are imprisoned in an Israeli prison for a few years, are released in a terrorist release deal or a plea bargain, and return to walking among us as any other person,” says Son Har Melech during the debate in the Knesset plenum on the bill.

The ultranationalist MK, whose first husband was killed in a terror attack in 2003, says imposing the death penalty on terrorists is “the ethical, just, and necessary” thing to do.

Ta’al MK Ahmad Tibi says his party is ideologically opposed to the death penalty in all circumstances, and noted that Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef recently came out in opposition to the death penalty, as did previous chief rabbis.