The Workers Party of Ireland condemns the Israeli Knesset Death Penalty Law Against Palestinian Prisoners. This legislation targeting Palestinian prisoners is blatantly racist and discriminatory in both intent and application, singling out an already oppressed and long-suffering people for the most extreme form of punishment, reinforcing the long-standing message that Palestinian lives are less deserving of dignity, protection and justice than others. The law contains no equivalent provision that applies to settlers or Zionist perpetrators of crimes, even in cases where Palestinians are deliberately killed.

The new law targets only Palestinians and permits military courts by a simple majority to impose the death penalty even where the prosecution has not sought or consented to it, such death sentences to be carried out by hanging within 90 days, without the right to appeal or retrial. It also imposes restrictions on access to legal counsel and family visits for those sentenced to death.

This measure, reminiscent of Nazi Germany, is a continuation of the policy of genocide and ethnic cleansing that the state of Israel has been pursuing for decades against the Palestinian people.

This measure which has been condemned by humanitarian organisations, legal experts, and advocates for human rights undermines the fundamental principles of justice, dignity and equality and further exposes the deeply racist and criminal objectives of the Zionist regime. A law that applies the death penalty exclusively or disproportionately to one national, ethnic, or protected group is in gross violation of the norms and principles of international humanitarian law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Palestinian detainees are already held in a brutal system where trials are conducted in military courts, with limited or no access to legal representation, and where coercive interrogation practices and torture, even against children, are the norm.

The recent death penalty legislation advanced by the Israeli Knesset against Palestinian prisoners is not an isolated legal measure - it is a manifestation of a broader system of domination, one in which Zionist state power is deployed to entrench hierarchy, suppress resistance, and maintain control over an oppressed population.

The Zionist state, which already functions as an instrument of coercion and oppression, exclusively targets a people based on their identity and already subjected to structural dispossession and reinforces a system in which Zionist political power is preserved through force, further entrenching inequality and reinforcing state violence against the Palestinian people.

Victory to the Palestinian people!

Release all Palestinian political prisoners!

End the torture!

End the racist death penalty law!

 

Gerry Grainger

International Secretary

Workers Party of Ireland