Hundreds of Hamas militants accused of committing war crimes during the October 2023 attacks could face the death penalty after Israel approved late Monday the creation of a special military tribunal to prosecute their cases.
The bill received wide support from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government and many opposition parties, and was passed with 93 votes in favor and zero votes against.
Israel’s parliament on Monday approved a bill entitled “Prosecution Law for the October 7 Massacre” in its second and third readings. The bill would create a dedicated tribunal to function as a military tribunal to handle the prosecution of about 400 Hamas operatives from the elite Nukba Force who have been held in Israel since the attack, Israeli officials told CNN. In the October 7 attack led by the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, attackers killed more than 1,200 people in Israel and took 251 hostages.
The law includes a legal framework that allows for the death penalty for those convicted of genocide. The official said it could take months for the tribunal to be established and the case to begin.
Yulia Malinowski, one of the bill’s sponsors and a member of the opposition Yisrael Beitenu party, likened the court to a “modern-day Eichmann trial,” referring to the 1961 trial of high-ranking Nazi official Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann, a key architect of the Holocaust, was convicted in Israel’s landmark trial and executed in 1962. This is one of only two people executed in Israel’s history.
The special court is based in Jerusalem. Proceedings will be open to the public, recorded with audio and video, and major public hearings will be broadcast on a dedicated website. The Judiciary Committee will be chaired by a current or retired district court judge. The bill also provides that funds for legal representation of defendants will be deducted from funds transferred to the Palestinian Authority, even if West Bank-based authorities were not involved in the October 7 attacks.
Israeli human rights group Adalah condemned the tribunal as “fundamentally inconsistent with the right to life, the presumption of innocence, judicial independence and the rule of law.”
“This bill would consider any death sentence to be an arbitrary deprivation of life, absolutely prohibited by international law and potentially a war crime,” Adallah said in a statement ahead of the bill’s final passage.
Justice Minister Yariv Levin said on Sunday that the law would ensure “not only that justice is served, but that the historical record of the horrific massacre of the victims, hostages and those responsible survives for generations.”
According to the bill’s explanatory text, its purpose is to “regulate the prosecution of those responsible for hostilities, murders, sexual violence, abductions, and looting committed by Hamas and its affiliated organizations as part of a systematic and premeditated terrorist attack against Israeli civilians starting from October 7, 2023.” The text defines these acts as crimes against Jews, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The law also covers crimes subsequently committed against hostages taken to the Gaza Strip, including those who were killed as prisoners of war.
The bill is separate from a death penalty bill approved by the Israeli government in March that expands the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of terrorism and nationalist murders. The law has drawn harsh criticism from foreign governments, human rights groups and the Palestinian Authority, who have accused it of being racist and discriminatory.
