TPC Staff
The Palestine Chronicle / September 2, 2024
Ben-Gvir’s call came as Israel continued a large-scale military operation in the northern West Bank, killing at least 26 Palestinians, arresting dozens, and inflicting huge damage to infrastructure.
Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has called for the restriction of movement of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank as well as the death penalty for Palestinian detainees.
“The right to life prevails over the freedom of movement of the residents of the Palestinian Authority,” Ben-Gvir said on X on Sunday.
Calling the killing of three Israeli police officers at the Tarqumiya checkpoint, west of Hebron (Al-Khalil) in a resistance operation on Sunday the “dire consequences of terrorists roaming freely in the area,” Ben-Gvir said “our right to live and not to be murdered, prevails over their right of movement.”
“We need to close the traffic lanes we travel on in front of the residents of the PA,” he added.
‘Return of checkpoints’
The far-right minister also called for the “death penalty” for Palestinian detainees as well as “the return of checkpoints” across the occupied territory, saying it was “the order of the hour.”
In a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and National Security Council chairman Tzahi Hanegby, Ben-Gvir demanded the approval of legislation for a bill to introduce the death penalty for detainees “who participated in the October 7” resistance operation.
He wrote that “the answer to Hamas murdering our hostages requires an Israeli response that will be very painful to Hamas. The Death Penalty Law … can definitely serve as such a response,” according to a report in The Jerusalem Post.
The bill, the report said, “already passed its preliminary vote in the Knesset plenum in March 2023 but requires approval of the National Security Cabinet to proceed.”
Ben-Gvir’s call came as Israel continued a large-scale military operation in the northern West Bank, killing at least 26 Palestinians, arresting dozens, and inflicting huge damage to infrastructure.
In a statement, the Palestinian Resistance Movement Hamas said that “the Al-Khalil operation is a natural response to the crimes of the occupation against our people, and the resistance will only grow stronger and more fierce.”
‘Unlawful force’
The UN Human Rights Office has condemned the use of “unlawful force” in the West Bank and called on Tel Aviv to halt immediately its offensive in the Jenin camp.
“The use of military weapons and tactics during law enforcement give rise to grave concerns of a systematic disregard for the rights of the Palestinian population and contribute to an escalation in violence and insecurity,” the Office said in a statement on Sunday. “The only way to ensure security for Palestinians and Israelis is to end the occupation.”
The UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, on Friday also slammed Israel for claiming self-defense to justify its military offensive in the occupied territory.
“Israel claims that what it is doing in the West Bank is justified under the law of self-defense. This claim has no validity,” Albanese said on X.
ICJ ruling
Albanese pointed out that “Twenty years ago the @CIJ_ICJ determined that Israel could not invoke self-defense under article 51 of the UN Charter to justify its Wall in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt).”
This past July, she stressed, the Court “indicated that Israel’s very presence in the oPT is itself unlawful.”
Albanese argued that “as an ongoing unlawful use of force,” Israel’s occupation of the oPT cannot be justified by any claim of self-defense.
“Israel’s perversion of the law on self-defense must be recognized for what it is: a brazen attempt to provide an imprimatur of ‘legality’ to the maintenance of its unlawful aggression against the territorial integrity and political independence of the State of Palestine.”
On July 19, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian land “illegal” and mandated the dismantling of settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
