A fresh conflict arose in the coalition after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought to remove the bill imposing the death penalty for terrorists from the agenda of the Ministerial Committee for Legislation and to hold a discussion on the issue in the cabinet instead.
At the moment, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is promoting the bill, is refusing the prime minister’s request.
According to the report by Ynet, the Likud party is seeking to table the legislation for not to avoid a move which could inflame tensions ahead of the Jewish holiday of Passover and the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Ben-Gvir made it clear to the Likud officials who reached out to him that under the coalition agreements between Likud and the Otzma Yehudit party, the bill imposing the death penalty was to receive its final approval at the same time as the state budget, which was passed on Friday. However, due to the tight legislative schedule and the Likud’s demand to delay the passage of the bill, the possibility that the bill will not be passed in the timeframe mandated by the coalition agreement.
The bill was submitted by MK Limor Son Har-Melech of Otzma Yehudit. It is scheduled to be discussed today in the Ministerial Committee for Legislation and then voted on in a preliminary reading in the Knesset on Wednesday. A similar bill was submitted by Ben-Gvir last year during the previous Knesset, when Ben-Gvir was in the opposition.
The explanatory notes to the bill state: “In recent years, we have witnessed a growing phenomenon of terrorist attacks in which Jews were murdered solely for being Jews. The common denominator of all these attacks&mdashthe murder of Jews solely for being Jews, citizens of Israel, with the aim of harming the State of Israel and the national revival of the Jewish people in its land.
“The purpose of this bill is to curtail terrorism and create a weighty deterrent. No more prisons with ‘all-inclusive’ conditions no more releases of terrorists after serving half their sentence.”
Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara has voiced her opposition to the bill, calling it “unconstitutional” under the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Freedom.
In her opinion, the attorney general states that “our professional position is that the death penalty should not be established for the crime of murder. The death penalty is not a deterrent and there is concern about the punishment, which by its nature is irreversible.”
Baharav-Miara demanded that the bill be removed from the agenda of the Ministerial Committee for Legislation and that a debate be held on it in the cabinet so that the full consequences of its implementation can be examined.
