Israel's parliament has passed a law establishing a military tribunal to prosecute alleged perpetrators of the October 7 attack, who are currently held in Israeli prisons.
Ninety-three of the Knesset's 120 politicians voted for the bill, while the remaining 27 did not oppose it.
The bill is meant to punish those involved in the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, where 1,200 people were killed. Israel launched a two-year war on Gaza that killed more than 72,000 Palestinians and left most of the enclave razed.
Between 250 and 400 people suspected of involvement in the attack are believed to be held in Israeli prisons without charge.
Israeli rights lawyers and experts warned the law could have devastating consequences, particularly as it comes after Israel enacts a death penalty law that targets Palestinians, indicating a clear step away from Israel’s long-standing unofficial ban on the formal death penalty.
“The worst case scenario is that we will see the mass execution of hundreds of people,” said Miriam Azem, international advocacy co-ordinator for the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (Adalah).
The tribunal is a quasi-judicial court, with similar but less formal rules and procedural safeguards. This is often the case in Israel's military courts, where between 95 to 99 per cent of Palestinians tried are convicted.
“So there is an assumption of guilt [in the trials],” Ms Azem told The National.
There is also a lower evidentiary threshold, which means the reliance on questionable “evidence” that could be obtained either through torture or other coercive practices, she said.
Regular military courts also rely on “secret evidence” that is hidden from the defence team. And although the bill itself does not mandate the death penalty, there will be an “expectation” among politicians that it would be implemented on those found guilty, she added.
A joint briefing by three Israeli-based rights groups, Adalah, Hamoked, and The Committee Against Torture, said that with basic procedural protections that are essential to a fair trial absent, any death sentence imposed will be considered an “arbitrary deprivation of life” which contravenes international law and can be considered a war crime.
“The bill further targets a specific, identifiable category of suspects, a form of personal legislation prohibited under both Israeli constitutional principles and international law,” the briefing said.
International law expert at Yale Law School, Ya'ara Mordecai, said the shortcomings in due process and military court settings risk turning the trials into a political or symbolic “show”.
“Defendants will only attend some hearings and might be forced to testify,” Ms Azem said. That testimony can then be used against them, “violating the fundamental criminal principle of non-self-incrimination and effectively reverses the burden of proof on to the accused”. All the conditions create trials that are “retributive” in nature, she added.
Sari Bashi, executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, said “what’s even more shocking is the widespread parliamentary and public support for this terrible law”, that targets Palestinians.
“The families of the victims and the survivors of the October 7 attacks deserve justice, but they don’t deserve vengeance. These are show trials that will fast-track executions through denial of due process and based on confessions extracted under torture,” she said.
It is unclear when the trials are set to begin and when the executions could start, but that process “will take some time to set up”, Ms Bashi said.
While Israel battles accusations of genocide in international courts, it might be unfairly trying Palestinians for that same crime while continuing to deny them legal rights.
“My concern is that once trials begin, there are numerous provisions for expediting. That’s even written into the law. My concern is that they’re going to try to go fast,” Ms Bashi said.
“However, by turning this over to the military, Israel is providing for it to happen more quickly, so it won’t be interrupted by the elections [due in October]. Because there is such wide public and parliamentary support for the move, it’s unlikely that the next government would make significant changes,” she said.
