The Otzma Yehudit party's bill to impose the death penalty on terrorists was passed in its preliminary reading in the Knesset Wednesday.
The bill passed with 55 MKs voting in favor and nine MKs voting against it. The opposition Yisrael Beytenu party voted for the bill, while the haredi United Torah Judaism party was absent from the vote.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said at the Knesset plenum that "if we do not enact this law we will not behave humanely towards our children, towards our families."
"Since the founding of the State, terrorists have been killing Jews just because they were Jews. Because of this, the lives of Druze, Circassians, citizens of the State of Israel, have also been destroyed," he said.
Ben-Gvir said that this is why he acted to shut down the terrorists' bakeries and to reduce their use of hot water in Israeli prisons.
"Under, this proposal, a terrorist who is convicted of murder with a motive of racism, with acts that have the purpose of harming the State of Israel and the Jewish people, will be sentenced to the death penalty.
MK Limor Son Har-Melech (Otzma Yehudit), who initiated the bill, said that "the series of recent attacks in Huwara and the Jordan Valley in which the terrorists managed to escape and leave the scene alive, only illustrates to us more than anything the importance of this law."
"It cannot be that any such person, even if caught, to be released in a few years, to return to engaging in terrorism and worst of all - to become a symbol and example of Palestinian terrorism. These human savages have no place on this earth, and every additional moment they continue to breathe is a sign of disgrace to the State of Israel and the people who live in Zion,'' added Son Har-Melech.
Yisrael Beytenu chairman MK Avigdor Liberman, said: "I already passed this law in a preliminary reading in 2018 and then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made sure to smear and bury it in the discussions in the defense cabinet. I am now telling the initiators of the law to have no illusions , it will go through a preliminary reading and the prime minister will once again make sure to bury it in a grave with endless discussions in the cabinet, in the end in he will not let it be passed in its third reading."
Ben-Gvir promoted the bill to impose the death penalty for terrorists following the massacre outside a synagogue in the Neve Yaakov neighborhood of Jerusalem over a month ago. Seven people were murdered in the attack as they left Shabbat prayer services. Seven more people have been murdered in terrorist attacks since then, including three in shooting attacks in Judea and Samaria this week,
The explanatory notes to the bill state: “In recent years, we have witnessed a growing phenomenon of terrorist attacks in which Jews were murdered solely for being Jews. The common denominator of all these attacks—the murder of Jews solely for being Jews, citizens of Israel, with the aim of harming the State of Israel and the national revival of the Jewish people in its land.
“After each terrorist attack, the top officials of the defense establishment promise that the 'long arm of the State of Israel will settle the score with the murderers.' However, in practice, all the murderers receive comfortable conditions in prison and salaries from the Palestinian Authority, and in time most of them are freed in various deals.
“The purpose of this bill is to curtail terrorism and create a weighty deterrent. No more prisons with 'all-inclusive' conditions; no more releases of terrorists after serving half their sentence."