Amira Hass

Death does not deter them.

Even those who throw stones know that now soldiers are very likely to shoot at them and to kill them.

Or even if they don't throw anything and are just demonstrating.

The Israeli rules of engagement now are so lenient that a soldier or a policeman can shoot at a car full of civilians and then say I felt threatened and that it will be excused.

Now, as for the number of people who support it, I haven't seen polls that are connected to the law that has just been passed.

But in November 25, 80% of the people asked, and I believe that these are Jews who were asked, supported the death penalty to the NUHBA members.

This is the unit that perpetuated the onslaught on October 7, Hamas unit.

But the law that was passed does not apply to them because it is not retroactive.

So what I see in this law is mostly a manifestation of...

revenge and intimidation and terrorising the Palestinians, not really deterrence of terror.

Both are true.

I mean, there were demonstrations in several cities, also in Gaza and in the West Bank.

People are alarmed, of course, because if there was any hope until October 7 of prisoners and their families to be released, the only hopes were either political agreement that has become more and more impossible in the last 15 or 20 years even,

And the other option was an operation of taking soldiers as prisoners or others.

And this has failed, as we see, after October 7, because the price of the Palestinian society, and especially the Palestinian society in Gaza, the price that they had to pay for the few hundreds of prisoners who were released was far too high for people to support it now.

I think that right now this death penalty shows that Israel is getting more and more extreme in its policies towards the Palestinians.

It comes together with all the other policies of economical strangulation, of conditions in prisons that are really sadistic.

I don't have any other word for this.

More and more annexation of land inside the West Bank.

of taking half of the Gaza Strip and actually concentrating the whole population in half of the territory that was anyway so small before October 23.