The Knesset already passed the first reading of a bill imposing the death penalty on Palestinians in November last year. Specifically, the text excludes Israelis from the death penalty, as it partly reads that it would apply to individuals “with the aim of harming the state of Israel and the revival of the Jewish people in its land.” Palestinians have been extrajudicially killed by Israel for much less. The genocide in Gaza is one example – Palestinians were killed for simply existing on their land. And what happens in the occupied West Bank, where Zionist settler-colonists kill Palestinians with impunity and full backing of the Israeli military?
Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who proposed the death penalty bill, also called for killing Palestinian officials for pursuing diplomacy at the UN. “If they accelerate the recognition of the Palestinian terrorist state, and the UN recognises a Palestinian state, targeted assassinations of senior Palestinian Authority officials, who are terrorists for all intents and purposes, should be ordered,” Ben Gvir asserted.
In December last year, Israeli media reported that the Israeli Prison Services were examining a proposal by Ben Gvir to establish a prison for Palestinians “surrounded by crocodiles”. Ostensibly modelled on the US prison in the Everglades National Park, crocodiles would be the Zionist low-cost solution for any Palestinians attempting to escape.
The world is witnessing an ongoing genocide that Israel is now managing in ways that will not elicit condemnations. Not that the weak condemnations halted Israel’s genocide in Gaza, but no attention is better than weak attention for Israel. An Israeli official openly advocating for the murder of Palestinians for engaging in anti-colonial struggle or diplomacy truly leaves Palestinians with no options for survival.
It is not the deterrent that makes Ben Gvir’s proposal scary. It is entertaining the notion that any Palestinians attempting escape would be devoured by crocodiles. We have seen Palestinians blasted into the air by bombs, torn to shreds and decapitated. Is there no limit to what Zionism can imagine in terms of violence? And has the world not yet reached its limit generating impunity for the colonial manifestation that is Israel?
As for the PA, which has toed the diplomatic line imposed by its donors and Israel, what sort of betrayal is betraying one’s own? The only reason the PA still exists is because Israel needs it for its colonial process, and so does the international community. If Israel does implement Ben Gvir’s suggestion – to kill PA leaders for pursuing state recognition at the UN – how will the international community justify the targeted assassinations of officials that are far removed from Palestinian resistance movements? The masks have already fallen, but the rhetoric has not. However, one can safely say that the UN has created more space for horror that it has for its human rights charter. Will the international community stop acting like killing is a human right?
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