Israel’s threat to annex West Bank ‘unacceptable’, UAE minister tells UNGA
United Arab Emirates’ Foreign Minister Lana Nusseibeh has told the UN General Assembly that Israeli threats to annex the West Bank are “unacceptable”.
“Nothing can justify targeting tens of thousands of civilians, besieging them, starving them, and forcibly displacing them,” she said. “Nothing can excuse the pursuit of unacceptable expansionist ambitions, including the threat of annexing the West Bank.”
She welcomed the recent wave of recognition of the Palestinian state and called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the release of Israeli captives and Palestinian detainees, and the urgent delivery of aid into the territory.
Israel’s Knesset gives preliminary approval for bill mandating death penalty for ‘terror’ convictions
The Knesset’s National Security Committee has voted to advance a bill that would make the death penalty mandatory for convicted murderers whose crimes are deemed acts of “terror”, according to Israeli media reports.
According to the bill, the death sentence would apply to anyone “who is convicted of murder motivated by racism or hostility towards the public, and in circumstances where the act was committed with the aim of harming the State of Israel and the resurrection of the Jewish people in its land”.
Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has pushed the legislation, claims it will serve as an effective deterrent and show Hamas “there is a price tag for what they did,” according to The Times of Israel newspaper.
The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, reacting to the vote, accused Israel of seeking to legally entrench a crime it has carried out for decades through systematic abuse of Palestinian prisoners.
“Despite the clear stance of international law, which criminalises the death penalty, the occupation’s insistence on legislating this crime and giving it a ‘legitimate’ veneer again affirms” that Israel “acts as though it is above the law and beyond accountability”, said the group.
