JERUSALEM\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Hundreds of protesters took to the streets across the embattled Palestinian territories on Tuesday after Israel\u2019s parliament passed a measure establishing the death penalty by hanging for Palestinians convicted of murdering Israelis. <\/p>\n
Palestinians young and old held sit-ins and marches in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the territory where the new law is most sweeping. The Fatah political party has called a general strike in the northern part of the West Bank for Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The legislation orders West Bank military courts \u2014 which try only Palestinians \u2014 to make the death penalty the default sentence for those convicted, except in special circumstances. <\/p>\n
\u201cTime is running out and silence is deadly,\u201d read the signs carried by protesters in the central West Bank city of Nablus, which showed an animation of a prisoner wearing the Palestinian keffiyeh scarf next to a noose. \u201cStop the law to execute prisoners, before it\u2019s too late.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bill passed its final vote in the Israeli parliament late Monday to cheers and applause. Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Israeli firebrand minister of national security who spearheaded the push for the legislation, described the law as long overdue and a sign of strength and national pride.<\/p>\n
The law is set to take effect in 30 days but its implementation could be delayed by pending court proceedings at Israel\u2019s highest tribunal. <\/p>\n
The measure is not retroactive and won\u2019t apply to current prisoners. Still, it signaled an extreme hardening of Israeli penal policy that elicited fear from the protesters for all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails \u2014 emblems of national resistance.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are the symbol of struggle, You are the symbol of steadfastness,\u201d the protesters in Nablus chanted, some holding up signs with the faces of friends and family currently in Israeli prisons.<\/p>\n
Palestinian officials released statements saying the death penalty measure violated international law and asking other countries to intervene. Amnesty International has said that the use of the death penalty under the new measure could violate the right to life and the prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, as enshrined in international law.<\/p>\n
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry called for sanctions on Israel\u2019s parliament and its suspension from international bodies. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe law represents a critical turning point in the formalization of extrajudicial killings under a legal guise,\u201d the statement said. \u201cThe Ministry stresses that this law, in its essence, constitutes an institutionalized policy of field executions based on discriminatory and racist standards.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bill\u2019s passage was the culmination of a yearslong push by Israel\u2019s far right to escalate punishment against Palestinians convicted of attacking Israelis. After the vote, Ben Gvir celebrated by popping champagne. A coalition of Israeli rights groups and opposition lawmakers announced they were launching a petition to Israel\u2019s Supreme Court to declare the law null and void.<\/p>\n
In Gaza, dozens joined a demonstration in front of the headquarters of the Red Cross where women in hijab held up large framed photographs of well-known Palestinian prisoners like Marwan Barghouti. <\/p>\n
The law extends also to Israeli courts, giving them the option of imposing the death penalty on Israeli citizens convicted of nationalistic murder \u2014 language that legal experts say effectively confines those who can be sentenced to death to Palestinian citizens of Israel and excludes Jewish citizens.<\/p>\n
Frankel writes for the Associated Press. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JERUSALEM\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Hundreds of protesters took to the streets across the embattled Palestinian territories on Tuesday after Israel\u2019s parliament passed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45025,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[17850,37,2792,9827,18743,18745,2253,3897,18744,14381,6876,12300,5444,18746,6905],"class_list":{"0":"post-45024","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-death-penalty","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-measure","11":"tag-murder","12":"tag-new-law","13":"tag-palestinian-prisoner","14":"tag-palestinians","15":"tag-parliament","16":"tag-prisoner","17":"tag-protester","18":"tag-push","19":"tag-right","20":"tag-sign","21":"tag-symbol","22":"tag-west-bank"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116324381789764615","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}