AMP Condemns Israeli Knesset’s Passage of Death Penalty for Palestinians

American Muslims for Palestine condemns, in the strongest terms, the execution bill passed by the Israeli Knesset yesterday. Under the new law, Palestinians tried in military courts in the occupied West Bank can be sentenced to death by hanging, disregarding basic notions of due process and virtually no meaningful appeal. The bill’s passage does not create a new reality; it intensifies an already existing one: Israeli apartheid, where a two-tiered legal system, built on race and nationality, and enforced through state violence, now increases its power of legalized execution.

To be clear: Israel’s parliament has no legitimate authority to legislate for Palestinians in the West Bank at all. Israel is the belligerent occupier in the West Bank & Gaza, and as such has no sovereign authority, despite ongoing efforts by the Israeli government to entrench de facto annexation.

Palestinians are now subject to death sentences, often in the context of resisting occupation, an internationally protected right. This law only applies to Palestinians, including Palestinian citizens of Israel, if the crime is committed with the “aim of negating the existence of the state of Israel.” Because Israel is self-defined as the “national home of the Jewish people,” this ideological requirement for intent is a euphemism for Palestinians. Moreover, the law does not apply to Israeli settlers, who continue to raid Palestinian villages, carry out organized attacks, burn homes, and kill Palestinians and even Americans with total impunity, and often with the support of the Israeli occupation forces. There is no equivalent law, no mirrored accountability, and no death penalty, let alone any accountability, for settler violence.

As if it isn’t already horrifying enough, as the law was being passed, Israel’s Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, openly celebrated, shamelessly popping champagne with Knesset members as the legalization of executing Palestinians was treated as a political victory. Israeli leaders are not only legalizing the most horrific war crimes and crimes against humanity, but they have reached a point of celebrating the dehumanization of Palestinian with zero remorse, displaying their inhumanity in full force.

This is just another step in Israel’s agenda to completely dominate the occupied territories, and it cannot be treated as an isolated event from any other crime it’s committing. Over the last three years alone, Israel has been allowed to act with total impunity: committing the most well-documented genocide in our history, raiding, killing, and arresting Palestinians in the West Bank, and bombing Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and beyond. The result is a government emboldened enough to legislate execution for an occupied people and celebrate it publicly.

This bill must be condemned in the strongest possible terms, and concrete action must follow. The United States and the international community must immediately move to demand an immediate repeal of this draconian law, hold the Israeli government accountable, end military, financial, and diplomatic aid, impose an arms embargo, and impose real consequences for violations that have gone unchecked for far too long.