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Israel is set to set up public military courts to try suspected Hamas operatives and other militants involved in the October 7, 2023 attacks, with politicians pushing the idea of those convicted facing the death penalty.
The Israeli parliament, or Knesset, overwhelmingly approved the legislation by 93 votes to 0 at the start of the body's summer session, in a rare show of consensus between the ruling coalition and the opposition. Twenty-seven lawmakers abstained or did not participate in the vote Monday evening.
According to the draft law, special military courts, which will be based in Jerusalem and broadcast on television, will try imprisoned militants for crimes of genocide, murder, violating the sovereignty of the state of Israel, waging war and other crimes related to terrorism.
While Israeli critics warned that they would constitute “spectacular trials,” the bill’s co-sponsor, Yulia Malinovsky, compared them to the 1961 trial and subsequent execution in Israel of Nazi war criminal and Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann.
" These trials are the trials of the new, modern Nazis. This will go down in the history books and our children and grandchildren will learn about this ," Malinovsky, an opposition lawmaker with the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party, said in a speech in the Knesset.
Some 1,200 Israelis were killed during Hamas' cross-border attack from Gaza into southern Israel, with more than 250 taken hostage - the greatest loss of life in Israeli history and the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.
Several hundred Hamas operatives, including the Nukhba fighters, considered the elite force that led the attack, are estimated to have been captured by Israeli forces in the days following the October 7 attack and are currently imprisoned in Israel.
More than 70,000 Palestinians were killed in Israel's subsequent military offensive in Gaza, according to Palestinian figures. A fragile U.S.-backed ceasefire in October has ended the worst of the fighting in the devastated enclave, although progress toward a more permanent solution has largely stalled in recent months.
The Israeli military justice system is known for its overwhelming rate of convictions against Palestinians and a legal process that often invalidates evidence from defendants on grounds of "national security."
A panel of three judges, composed of serving or retired district court judges, nominated by the Israeli army chief and formally appointed by the Israeli president, will preside over the trials.
The Committee Against Torture, a left-wing Israeli NGO, criticized the special courts as a deviation from the rules of evidence and procedural protections that could potentially pave the way for the executions of dozens and perhaps hundreds of people.
" The survivors of the October 7 attacks and the families of the victims deserve justice, not revenge in the form of show trials and death sentences based on confessions extracted under torture ," the group added in a statement.
Separately, an Israeli civil society group, the Civilian Commission for the Crimes of October 7, released a 300-page investigation on Tuesday into sexual crimes committed during and after the Hamas offensive by Palestinian militants, including against Israeli hostages held in Gaza. It outlined widespread and systematic incidents of rape, gang rape, sexual terrorism and mutilation, among other alleged atrocities.
Eichmann was the last person to be sentenced to death by Israel. Israeli law allows the death penalty for crimes such as treason and genocide, while the Knesset in March passed a controversial bill that seeks to impose the death penalty on Palestinians convicted of killing Israelis in acts of terrorism, but not on Jewish Israelis who kill Palestinians.
Far-right Israeli politicians, including Simcha Rothman of the Religious Zionist Party and co-sponsor of the military court bill, took pride in its passage, calling it the "Nukhba Law."
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