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Israeli lawmakers approved a bill on Monday setting up a special tribunal with the authority to try and sentence to death Palestinians convicted of taking part in the 2023 Hamas-led attack that triggered the war in Gaza.
The measure passed 93-0 in the 120-seat Knesset, or parliament, reflecting widespread support for punishing those found responsible for what was the deadliest attack in Israel’s history. The remaining 27 lawmakers were absent or abstained from voting.
Rights groups have criticized the measure, saying it makes the death penalty too easy to impose while also doing away with procedures that safeguard the right to a fair trial. Defendants can appeal their sentences, but the appeals would have to be heard by a separate, special appeals court rather than regular appeals courts.
Because the bill empowers a panel of judges to hand down the death penalty by majority vote — and requires the trials to be conducted in a livestreamed Jerusalem courtroom — it has drawn comparisons to the 1962 trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, which was broadcast live on television.
Eichmann was executed by hanging, the last time the death penalty was carried out in Israel, though capital punishment technically remains on the books for acts of genocide, espionage during wartime and certain terror offences.
CBC News visits Kibbutz Be’eri where a former hostage and a survivor of the Oct. 7 attacks remember the day two years ago when more than 100 people in the community were killed and 32 were kidnapped by Hamas and discuss the potential for peace.
Trials will become spectacles, opponents say
Opponents of the bill also say livestreaming the proceedings before guilt is established risks turning the trials into a spectacle. They have raised questions about the reliability of the evidence that may be presented, saying it could have been extracted through harsh interrogation methods.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 as hostages. Israel’s ensuing offensive in Gaza has killed more than 72,628 Palestinians, including at least 846 since a ceasefire took hold last October, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
The ministry does not differentiate between civilians and combatants but says around half the deaths were women and children. The ministry, which is part of the Hamas-led government, is seen as generally reliable by UN agencies and independent experts.
Israeli forces also killed hundreds of militants in battles in the coastal enclave and took an unknown number of suspects into Israeli custody, where they now await trial.
More than 70,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by Israel since its assault on the region began, according to the local Health Ministry. The death toll includes more than 350 Palestinians killed since the Oct. 10 ceasefire began.
Simcha Rothman, one of the bill’s sponsors and a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition, said the overwhelming consensus for the bill in the Knesset shows Israeli lawmakers can come together “around a common mission.”
Several Israeli rights groups — including Hamoked, Adalah and the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel — said Monday that while “justice for the victims of October 7 is a legitimate and urgent imperative,” any accountability for the crimes “must be pursued through a process which includes rather than abandons the principles of justice.”
The bill is separate from a law passed in March that approved the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of murdering Israelis, a measure harshly condemned by the international community and rights groups as discriminatory and inhumane.
That law applies to future cases and is not retroactive, so it could not apply to the October 2023 suspects.
According to the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, the country still holds about 1,300 Palestinians from Gaza without charge in its detention facilities. At least 7,000 Palestinians from Gaza had been held in Israeli custody since October 2023, and 5,000 of them were later released.
The 1,300 number does not include those held on suspicion of attacking Israel on Oct. 7 or involvement in holding the hostages.
