The Israeli Minister of Justice proposed this Thursday, October 16, in parliament a special criminal court to try the perpetrators of the massacres of October 7, 2023, in a process that could result in the imposition of death sentences.
The aim of the court will be to try hundreds of inhabitants of the Gaza Strip accused of being agents of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas and who were captured between October 7, 2023 and October 14 of the same year, said Yarin Levin, in statements published by the newspaper Times of Israel.
The suspects face crimes under the 1950 Genocide Prevention Act, based on the 1948 Genocide Convention.
According to the legislation, the court would be composed of 15 members, including judges from the Supreme Court of Israel or international jurists whom the Minister of Justice, in consultation with his Foreign Affairs counterpart, considered to possess appropriate qualifications.
The Israeli state could request the death penalty, although this decision requires the approval of the prime minister in consultation with senior security forces.
The Constitution, Law and Justice Committee of the Knesset (parliament) has already begun deliberations on the proposed law creating the special court, which must go through three readings before a final vote in plenary.
In September this year, a proposal to amend the Penal Code, which establishes the death penalty for those accused of terrorism, was approved in its first reading by the Israeli parliament, despite opposition from its legal advisors.
Israel prohibits the death penalty for most crimes, and is only permitted in extraordinary cases, such as war crimes or genocide.
Since the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, the only case that resulted in capital punishment was that of Adolf Eichmann, one of the main Nazi agents of the Holocaust, whose sentence was carried out in 1962 after being convicted of crimes against humanity.
In recent years, especially since the attacks led by Hamas on Israeli territory on October 7, 2023 and several cases of run-overs and firearm attacks, legislative proposals have emerged to allow the death penalty, led by right-wing and extreme-right parties as a dissuasive measure.
Several legal and Public Ministry advisors, as well as Israeli and international human rights organizations, expressed their opposition to these proposals, alleging the risk of violating fundamental rights and exposing the country to international condemnation.
The head of the Israeli Government, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant have faced arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court since November last year, for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip.
The proposal for a special court being discussed in the Knesset comes at a time when Israel and Hamas have agreed to a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, which resulted in the return of 20 live hostages and nine other dead hostages held by the Islamist group, in exchange for almost two thousand Palestinian prisoners.
Hamas admitted on Wednesday that it was unable to locate the remaining 19 dead hostages yet to be returned under the agreement, which also led Israel to hand over 90 bodies of Palestinians that it kept in its possession.
The 1,968 Palestinian prisoners released on Monday include many convicted of deadly attacks against Israel, as well as 1,700 arrested for alleged “security reasons” since the start of the war in October 2023.
The conflict in the Gaza Strip was triggered by attacks led by Hamas on October 7, 2023 in southern Israel, in which around 1,200 people died and 251 were taken hostage.
In retaliation, Israel launched a large-scale military operation in the Gaza Strip, which caused more than 67,000 deaths, according to local authorities controlled by Hamas, the destruction of almost all of the territory’s infrastructure and the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people.