Israeli lawmakers to deliberate death penalty for Palestinian attackers

Rasa - Israeli minister of military affairs Avigdor Lieberman says members of the Knesset (parliament) are going to deliberate a bill next week, which will make it easier to sentence Palestinians convicted of carrying out stabbing or car-ramming attacks to death.

News ID: 441413

Date: 07 November 2018 - 13:07

RNA - “After over three years of a stubborn struggle, the death penalty … will finally be brought to the law committee next Wednesday [November 14], and then for its first reading in the Knesset plenum,” Lieberman wrote on his official page on Twitter on Tuesday.

He added, “We won't relent or stop until completing the mission.”

The bill would ease the requirements that military courts in the occupied West Bank must meet to sentence Palestinians to death. It passed a preliminary vote by the full parliament in January.

As the law stands now, a panel of three military judges must unanimously approve any death penalty in military courts.

The new bill, put forward by the members of Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu secularist and right-wing political party, would change the requirement to a majority instead of unanimity.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has on occasions expressed support for the death penalty against Palestinians.

The report came on the same day that Israeli military forces shot and injured a Palestinian woman after she allegedly tried to stab a border police officer near a gas station and in close proximity to the Kfar Adumim settlement.

Israeli police claimed that the 37-year-old unidentified woman had been in the falafel stand in the gas station compound, and had refused to leave.

When border police arrived at the gas station, the woman left the stand and started walking towards the Allon settlement.

The border police called at her to stop and sought to arrest her for no specific reason.

The woman then pulled a pair of scissor out of her bag and ran at Israeli police officers yelling in Arabic. One of the officers opened fire and moderately wounded her.

According to Press TV, Israeli forces later searched her bag and purportedly found a knife inside it.

She was transported to the Hadassah Medical Center in occupied Jerusalem al-Quds.

Tensions continue in the occupied Palestinian territories as part of the aftermath of US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem al-Quds as Israel’s capital and relocation of the US embassy to the occupied city.

On December 21 last year, the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly voted in favor of a resolution that calls on the US to withdraw its controversial policy shift.

Despite the vote, the US went ahead with the embassy transfer on May 14, triggering demonstrations in the occupied Palestinian territories, Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Algeria, Iraq, Morocco and other Muslim countries.

Israel’s crackdown in Gaza left over 60 protesters dead in the impoverished coastal enclave on that day alone.

Angered by Trump’s move, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas boycotted his administration, saying Washington is no longer qualified to serve as the sole mediator in the decades-long conflict with Israel, and that an international mechanism should be devised to replace the US in the so-called peace process.

847/940