Overview
- Itamar Ben Gvir uploaded the video on Thursday showing a site under construction with gallows and observation booths and saying victims would be allowed to watch executions.
- The video follows a March Knesset law, pushed by Ben Gvir and backed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that makes the death penalty the standard sentence in military courts for lethal attacks classified as acts of terrorism.
- Israeli human-rights groups and European organizations have condemned the change and an Israeli group has filed a petition with the Supreme Court challenging the law.
- The law applies in practice to Palestinians tried in military courts because Israeli civilians are tried under civil law, a difference critics say creates an asymmetry that rights groups call discriminatory.
- If construction continues, the move could lead to the first routine use of capital punishment in decades in Israel, provoke diplomatic fallout, and prompt urgent legal review of the new sentence and its procedures.