Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, unequivocally condemns the passage of the new Prisoners’ Execution Law by the “Israeli” Knesset, a racist and genocidal measure that explicitly targets Palestinian prisoners held in Zionist occupation prisons. This law reflects the true nature of the Zionist legal system as part and parcel of the genocidal war machine; it is a tool of colonial domination, designed to terrorize, collectively punish, and attempt to eliminate Palestinian resistance behind bars.
This legislation is an attempt to legitimize and publicize the ongoing genocide behind bars. Since October 7, 2023, nearly 100 Palestinian prisoners have already been martyred inside the prisons, and hundreds of Palestinians’ bodies were returned to Gaza unidentified, zip-tied or shackled. Most of these martyrs’ bodies remain held hostage by the occupation to this day.
The threatened slaughter of Palestinian prisoners is part and parcel of the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people, throughout occupied Palestine, from the river to the sea. Inside the prisons, nearly 10,000 Palestinians are held under inhumane conditions, including over 3,600 in administrative detention without charge or trial. The occupation’s military courts – and its “civilian” courts that govern Palestinians in Jerusalem and occupied Palestine ‘48 – convict over 96% of the Palestinians dragged before them by occupation soldiers.
This attempt to legalize the execution of Palestinian prisoners is a chilling escalation in a long-standing regime of racialized violence and settler-colonialism. Fascist Zionist minister Itamar Ben-Gvir toasted the passage of the law with champagne; for weeks he has been wearing a pin of a noose, promoting the legalized lynching law for imprisoned Palestinians. However, the occupation’s “legality” has no weight outside its already criminal and illegal context; in all ways, this legislation is illegal, immoral and a call to action for humanity to save the prisoners.
This law is fundamentally racist, applying selectively and exclusively to Palestinians, who are criminalized for resisting occupation, while Israeli soldiers and settlers who commit crimes against Palestinians enjoy impunity. Of course, it is the absolute right of Palestinians to resist occupation by all means, including armed struggle, while occupation soldiers and settlers are an entirely illegitimate presence on the land of Palestine. This exposes, yet again, the true nature of the Zionist regime as one built on Zionist racism, supremacy and the systematic dehumanization of the indigenous Palestinian people.
This measure flagrantly violates international law, including the United Nations conventions that prohibit arbitrary execution, collective punishment, and the denial of due process. It further underscores the complicity of imperialist powers, particularly the United States, in enabling and financing a system that openly embraces policies of extermination, one that mirrors the U.S.’ own use of genocide and execution to target Indigenous, Black and other oppressed communities.
Throughout decades of struggle, Palestinian prisoners have remained at the forefront of the resistance movement, embodying the unbreakable will of a people fighting for liberation. No amount of repression, torture, or threats of execution will extinguish the Palestinian people’s commitment to return and liberation.
Al-Awda PRRC calls upon all people of conscience, human rights organizations, legal bodies, and solidarity movements worldwide to take immediate action:
The Palestinian prisoners are not alone. We will work not only to defend their lives, but to demand and achieve their immediate liberation. On our campuses, in our communities, and in the streets of our cities, we demand an immediate end of all U.S. aid to the Zionist entity – an end to the aggression and war on Iran, Lebanon and Palestine, the return of all of our exiled refugees, and an end to the aggression and genocide against the Palestinian prisoners and our people in Gaza and throughout occupied Palestine.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.
