NBC News reports that the Israeli Knesset passed a new law that "effectively makes death by hanging the default punishment for murderers who kill 'with the intent to deny the existence of the State of Israel' — language that targets Palestinian militants but amounts to a de facto exclusion of Israelis who kill Palestinians."
Under the new law, the death penalty will be administered by military courts that almost exclusively try Palestinians and have a 96% conviction rate, according to B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group.
Capital sentences will now require only a simple majority of sitting judges rather than unanimous agreement, the group said. And the punishment must be carried out within 90 days of sentencing without any possibility for pardons or commutations.
My sense is that the law is intended to speed up the conviction and execution process to forestall these prisoners from being used in prisoner exchanges between Israel and terrorist organizations.
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