Tel Aviv / PNN /

 Israeli media reported that the Knesset’s National Security Committee held an urgent meeting today, Monday, to vote on a draft law that would impose the death penalty on Palestinian prisoners accused of killing Israelis.

The committee this morning approved submitting the draft law on executing Palestinian prisoners to the Knesset plenary for a first reading.

During the session, the Coordinator for Prisoners and Missing Persons in the Prime Minister’s Office, Gal Hirsch, said that Benjamin Netanyahu supports the bill, after he previously opposed its discussion at the time before a prisoner‑exchange deal between Israel and Hamas.

Hirsch remarked: “In the previous session I strongly opposed discussing advancing the legislation and dealing with it, because of the danger it posed to the living abductees.” He added: “Since then we have been amid negotiations, and our military‑political arm has tightened the noose on Hamas. The living hostages and the dead have returned—but not all of them, and the mission is not yet completed.”

He also noted that Netanyahu supports granting the Coordinator the right to request sentencing changes by submitting a “secret report before the decision” to the court; to which the far‑right National Security Minister Itamar Ben‑Gvir responded: “That will not happen. Every ‘sabotager’ must know that there is only one penalty for killing children, women and the elderly— the death penalty. They must not be granted hope or motive for another sentence.”

In a tweet on platform X after the committee approved forwarding the bill for a first reading, Ben‑Gvir said: “I thank the Prime Minister for his support of the death penalty law ‘for the saboteurs’, but the court must have no discretion — let every ‘saboteur’ who commits murder know he will be judged by execution only.”

The draft law, initiated by Ben‑Gvir and Deputy Speaker of the Knesset Limor Son Har‑Malek, aims to apply the death penalty to a prisoner convicted of killing for a nationalist motive. According to explanatory notes: “A prisoner convicted of killing motivated by racism or hostility toward the public, and under circumstances in which the crime was committed with the intent to harm the State of Israel and the Jewish people, will be sentenced to death — as a mandatory sentence. Not by permission, not by discretion. It is a compulsory verdict.” The bill also states that the death penalty may be imposed by majority vote, and once a final sentence is given it may not be reduced.

The National Security Committee approved the draft law on imposing the death penalty on Palestinian prisoners, paving the way for its introduction to the plenary for a first reading.

The parliamentary committee convened to discuss the bill despite opposition from Prime Minister Netanyahu and efforts by Hirsch to cancel the deliberations and confine them to the Security Cabinet (the “mini‑cabinet”).

During a faction meeting of his party in the Knesset, Ben‑Gvir threatened that if the death‑penalty bill for Palestinian prisoners is not brought within three weeks, his party Otzma Yehudit will not vote for coalition legislation until the bill is presented. According to him, the coalition agreement between his party and Netanyahu’s Likud stipulates that a death‑penalty law must be enacted during the current Knesset term, and that the Likud had refrained from enacting such a law before the war in Gaza.

He added that since the war began “they found a new excuse: that the law cannot be advanced lest it affect the living hostages”, and he described the law as “a major pressure lever on Hamas as part of Israel’s toolkit in the war.”