JERUSALEM--Israel's parliament passed a law on Monday making death by hanging a default sentence for Palestinians convicted in military courts of deadly attacks, fulfilling a pledge by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right allies.
The law would only apply to Israelis convicted of murder whose attacks aimed at "ending Israel's existence", meaning it would mete out the death penalty for Palestinians but not for Jewish Israelis who committed similar crimes, critics say.
The legislation has drawn international criticism of Israel, which is already under scrutiny for increasing violence by Jewish settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and its war in Gaza.
The measure includes provisions requiring an execution by hanging within 90 days of sentencing, with some allowance for a delay but no right to clemency. It provides the option of imposing a life imprisonment sentence instead of capital punishment, but only in unspecified "special circumstances".
Israel abolished the death penalty for murder in 1954. The only person executed in Israel after a civilian trial was Adolf Eichmann, an architect of the Nazi Holocaust, in 1962. Military courts in the West Bank can already sentence Palestinian convicts to death but have not done so.
The measure was promoted by Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right national security minister who wore noose-shaped lapel pins in the run-up to the vote. "This is a day of justice for the murdered, a day of deterrence for enemies," Ben-Gvir said in parliament. "Whoever chooses terror chooses death."
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the legislation as a breach of international law and a doomed bid meant to intimidate Palestinians. "Such laws and measures will not break the will of the Palestinian people or undermine their steadfastness," Abbas' office said in a statement."Nor will they deter them from continuing their legitimate struggle for freedom, independence, and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital."
Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad called on Palestinians to launch attacks in revenge for the law.
Israel's leading rights groups decried the law as "an act of institutionalized discrimination and racist violence against Palestinians." The Association for Civil Rights in Israel said it filed an appeal against the law with Israel's Supreme Court.
The law is the latest action by Netanyahu's nationalist-religious coalition to raise concern among Israel's Western allies, who have also been critical of settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.In an effort to head off international backlash, Netanyahu asked for some elements of the legislation to be softened, Israeli media reported. He voted in favour of the bill, which won the backing of 62 of the Knesset's 120 members.
The original bill had mandated the death sentence for non-Israeli citizens convicted in West Bank military courts of deadly terrorist acts. The revised legislation includes the option of life imprisonment.
In Israel's civilian courts, the new legislation mandates either life imprisonment or the death penalty for anyone convicted of "deliberately causing the death of a person with the intent of ending Israel's existence."
Critics of the bill say that language effectively confines those Israelis who can be sentenced to death to members of the country's 20% Arab minority, many of whom identify as Palestinian, and not to Jewish citizens. Even before the vote, the bill drew criticism from the foreign ministers of Germany, France, Italy and Britain, who said it had a "de facto discriminatory" character toward Palestinians and undermines Israel's democratic principles.
A group of U.N. experts said the bill includes vague definitions of "terrorist", meaning the death penalty could be meted out over "conduct that is not genuinely terrorist".
