Ben-Gvir Calls For Execution of Palestinian Hostages with ‘Shot to the Head’

Israeli Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, called on Sunday for the execution of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails by shooting them in the head.
In a video statement, Ben-Gvir insisted that Palestinian prisoners should be killed with a ‘shot to the head’.
He urged the passing of the bill in the Israeli Knesset for executing prisoners, promising to provide minimal food to keep them alive until the law is enacted.
The Israeli Knesset's General Assembly approved the preliminary reading of the bill in early March 2023, which imposes the death penalty on Palestinian prisoners.
The proposed law, requiring two more readings in the Knesset to become effective, mandates courts to impose the death penalty on those “committing a murder offense motivated by racism and intending to harm the State of Israel.”
Fighting Any Palestinian Presence
Since October 7, 2023 when Israel waged a war on the Gaza Strip, Palestinian prisoners have been living in horrific conditions. Many died under torture or due to difficult living conditions.
According to the head of the Prisoners' Club, Abdullah Al-Zaghari, “The statements of fascist and extremist Minister Ben Gvir represent a system that practices genocide against the Palestinian people, and only speaks in the language of killing and fighting any Palestinian presence in any form.”
He noted that Ben Gvir's statements went beyond the stage of threat.
Since Israel waged its war on Gaza, “the occupation prison administration, which falls under Ben-Gvir’s authority, has actually executed Palestinian prisoners and detainees,” Al-Zaghari said.
The Israeli occupation forces have arrested more than 9,450 citizens from the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem, since last October 7, along with thousands of citizens from Gaza, and hundreds of Palestinians from the territory occupied in 1948.
According to the Palestinian Prisoners Affairs Commission and the Palestinian Prisoners' Club, there has been a simultaneous and unprecedented escalation of torture against detainees.
They also mentioned unprecedented crimes against detainees, most notably torture, starvation, medical neglect, forced disappearance, in addition to the tragic and cruel conditions of detention, mass isolation, and torture, apart from the tragic and cruel conditions of detention, mass isolation, and torture.
Unprecedented Arrests
The Palestinian Prisoners Affairs Commission and the Palestinian Prisoners' Club said the detainees include those arrested from their houses, on checkpoints, those who surrendered under pressure and those arrested as hostages.
They added that the detention campaigns carried out since October 7 are accompanied by escalated crimes and violations such as humiliation, brutal beatings, threats against detainees and their families, besides vandalism and destruction in detainees’ houses, confiscating vehicles, gold and money, in addition to the destruction of infrastructure.
The Commission and the Prisoners’ Club also confirmed that 18 Palestinian detainees have died in Israeli prisons and detention camps since Israel waged its war on the Gaza Strip.
Earlier, a CNN investigation revealed grave violations committed by Israel against Palestinians in the secret detention center located in the Negev Desert.
The American news channel said it spoke to three Israeli whistleblowers who worked at the Sde Teiman desert camp, which holds Palestinians detained during Israel’s invasion of Gaza. All spoke out at risk of legal repercussions and reprisals from groups supportive of Israel’s hardline policies in Gaza.
They paint a picture of a facility where doctors sometimes amputated prisoners’ limbs due to injuries sustained from constant handcuffing; of medical procedures sometimes performed by underqualified medics earning it a reputation for being “a paradise for interns”; and where the air is filled with the smell of neglected wounds left to rot.
According to the accounts, the facility some 18 miles from the Gaza frontier is split into two parts: enclosures where around 70 Palestinian detainees from Gaza are placed under extreme physical restraint, and a field hospital where wounded detainees are strapped to their beds, wearing diapers and fed through straws.
“They stripped them down of anything that resembles human beings,” said one whistleblower, who worked as a medic at the facility’s field hospital.
After an outcry, Israeli Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said the military launched a probe into the allegations of mistreatment at detention facilities that fell under the responsibility of the Israeli army.
Last week, the Haaretz newspaper said Israel's High Court of Justice ordered the state to provide details of the conditions under which Gazan prisoners are held in the Sde Teiman detention center in southern Israel, despite the state's declaration that it intends to empty the facility.

Iran must make a first step towards improving relations with countries in the region and the United States by making it clear it does not aim to develop nuclear weapons, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday.

He also said he hoped all parties in Gaza would realize they would benefit from a permanent truce that could open the path to negotiations over a two-state solution and urged countries to ease sanctions on Syria.

"The most relevant question is Iran and relations between Iran, Israel and the United States," Guterres said as he discussed the situation in the Middle East at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

"Here my hope is that the Iranians understand that it is important to once and for all make it clear that they will renounce to have nuclear weapons, at the same time that they engage constructively with the other countries of the region."

The UN nuclear watchdog chief, Rafael Grossi, touched on the same theme in Davos, saying Iran is "pressing the gas pedal" on its enrichment of uranium to near weapons grade.

Iran has always said its program is entirely peaceful and it has the right to enrich uranium to any level it wants.

Reflecting on the situation in Gaza, Guterres said the ceasefire there had so far been successful in allowing in aid to the enclave, but had a warning over any further future action.

"There is a possibility of Israel feeling emboldened by the military successes to think that this is the moment to do the annexation of the West Bank and to keep Gaza in a kind of a limbo situation," he said.

"That would be a total violation of international law ... and would mean there will never be peace in the Middle East."

SYRIA SANCTIONS

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not articulated a vision for Gaza's postwar future beyond insisting the Islamist group Hamas can play no role and stating that the Palestinian Authority – which partially administers the occupied West Bank - also cannot be trusted under its current leadership.

Israeli security forces raided the volatile West Bank city of Jenin on Tuesday in what Netanyahu called a "large-scale and significant military operation". Hamas called on Palestinians in the territory to escalate fighting against Israel.

The UN chief said he was more optimistic about Lebanon, where he believed the ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel was holding.

Guterres called on countries to ease their sanctions on Syria, to help the country transform after the ousting of Bashar al-Assad, while saying the new government still has to prove it will represent all minorities.

"We still have a strong risk of fragmentation and of extremism in at least parts of the Syrian territory," he said.

"It is in the interest of us all to engage to make things move in the direction of an inclusive form of governance and I think some gesture must be made in relation to the sanctions."

Ben-Gvir Calls For Execution of Palestinian Hostages with ‘Shot to the Head’