On May 11, the Knesset voted 93-0 in favour of a law providing a legal framework for the prosecution of terrorists involved in the October 7, 2023, Hamas invasion. The law was hailed as “historic” by its legislators.
The legislation details how judges and prosecutors are to be selected, how trials are to be conducted, and provides for an appeals process.
“The purpose of this law is to regulate the prosecution of perpetrators of acts of hostility, murder, sexual crimes, kidnapping and looting carried out by the Hamas terrorist organisation and its partners as part of the murderous terrorist attack,” its explanatory section read.
Analysts whom JNS spoke with hope that it will facilitate the trial and conviction of the terrorists responsible for the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Gazan invaders killed at least 1,200 people and took 251 others hostage.
The law establishes a special military court in Jerusalem dedicated to trying the terrorists involved in the attack on October 7-10, 2023. These will include the Nukhba terrorists, the “elite” Hamas force that spearheaded the attack.
There are an estimated 300 Nukhba terrorists in Israeli prisons. They are among several thousand terrorists and suspected terrorists detained by Israel since the war’s outbreak.
Indictments are expected to be brought against 400 suspects. That number may increase depending on ongoing investigations.
Judge Haran Fainstein, a retired Israeli judge who teaches at Bar-Ilan University’s Department of Criminology, told JNS: “The ‘regular’ courts and the military courts do not have the manpower or the facilities to handle such complicated cases.”
Knesset member Simcha Rothman of the Religious Zionism Party, who sponsored the law together with Yulia Malinovsky MK of the Israel Beiteinu Party, told the Knesset Channel this week that a regular court would have taken a minimum of 15 to 30 years to reach a verdict.
“Here, we will start to see verdicts within three to five years, even less," Rothman said.
Avraham Russell Shalev, an international law expert at the Jerusalem-based Kohelet Policy Forum, told JNS: “The recently passed law is a rare opportunity for justice to be done.
"While Israel is falsely accused of atrocities, the world has mostly forgotten the real horrors perpetrated by Hamas on October 7. This is a chance to remind the world and punish the perpetrators.”
Rothman referred to the importance of the educational component of these trials.
“There’s an interest in broadcasting this to the world and broadcasting it to the public in Israel. Everything will be recorded and preserved in the archives for the coming generations,” he said.
Justice Minister Yariv Levin, of the Likud, also referred to the historical aspect of the trials. "This law ensures not only justice, but also historical documentation,” he said.
Malinovsky added: “There will be an orderly, filmed and broadcast legal proceeding. These will be the trials of the modern Nazis, and it will go down in the history books.”
One of the law’s key provisions permits courts to apply the death penalty, not only for acts of murder but for extreme crimes such as rape.
It also prohibits the inclusion in prisoner release deals of terrorists who are “suspected, charged or convicted of an offence committed” in connection with the October 7 atrocities.
Speaking from the Knesset plenum before the vote, Rothman said: "This is a historic plan designed to do justice and bring to justice the terrorists who carried out the most horrific massacre in the history of the state.”
And Malinovsky said in her speech: "The State of Israel is a state of law. These terrorists will be tried in court, according to all the rules, and the judges will sentence them... I dedicate this law to all the murdered, the hostages and the families.
"In the end, our spirit and our ability to cope and face the immense pain—that's what makes us great.”
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