Israel implements death penalty in West Bank military courts, excluding Israelis from same system
Original framing: “Israel expands death penalty regime in the occupied West Bank” — Middle East Eye
Palestinian civil society, human rights organizations, and legal scholars have long warned about the dangers of a dual legal system. Their voices are often excluded from mainstream discourse, despite being central to understanding the human impact of such policies.
The expansion of the death penalty in the occupied West Bank is not an isolated legal decision but a symptom of a deeper systemic injustice rooted in colonial legal structures and power imbalances.
This policy reflects historical patterns seen in other settler-colonial regimes, where legal systems are used to dehumanize and control indigenous populations. Indigenous legal traditions and cross-cultural models of justice offer alternative frameworks that prioritize reconciliation over punishment. By amplifying marginalized voices, applying international legal pressure, and promoting restorative justice, there is a path toward dismantling the structural violence embedded in this policy. The role of the trickster in this context is to expose the absurdity of a system that claims to uphold justice while denying it to those it governs.