Knesset Condemns Palestinian Prisoners to Death

• CrossFireArabia
• March 30, 2026

Israel’s Knesset voted Monday evening to pass a law to allow the execution of Palestinian prisoners, in a move that has triggered outrage from human rights groups.

A contentious bill, introduced by the far-right Jewish Power party led by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, was approved in second and third readings in the Knesset by 62-48 votes.

According to Israeli media, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voted in favor of the bill.

The bill passed its first reading in November.

What does the bill propose?

The law would permit Israeli courts to impose the death penalty on individuals convicted of carrying out deadly attacks. Supporters argue the measure is aimed at deterrence and combating what they describe as “terrorism.”

However, critics say the bill’s scope would, in practice, apply almost exclusively to Palestinian prisoners, raising concerns over discriminatory enforcement.

Controversy in Israel

Before its passage, Israeli opposition lawmakers and rights groups have warned that the bill introduces a legal framework that could institutionalize unequal treatment.

Ofer Cassif, a Knesset member from the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality, called the proposal “legislation for genocide,” arguing it targets Palestinians specifically.

“The death penalty, beyond being state-sanctioned killing, corrupts society and entrenches extremism,” he said during a parliamentary debate.

Sameer Bin Said of the Hadash-Ta’al alliance also opposed the bill, warning that capital punishment is irreversible and carries risks of judicial error.

The law “raises serious concerns regarding its discriminatory nature and does not provide a real solution, but may instead contribute to further complicating the existing situation,” Bin Said added.

He said Arab lawmakers and opposition members who oppose this law “will turn to the Supreme Court to challenge it, in a step aimed at safeguarding fundamental values and protecting human rights.”

The debate comes amid heightened tensions and scrutiny over Israel’s treatment of Palestinian detainees.

According to Palestinian figures, more than 9,300 Palestinians are currently held in Israeli prisons, including women and minors. Numerous deaths were reported among Palestinians in Israeli custody due to torture, starvation, and medical neglect, according to human rights groups. Anadolu

Palestinians Hold On Their Land

• CrossFireArabia
• March 30, 2026

On 30 March 1976, Israeli police killed six Palestinian citizens of Israel as they were protesting Israel’s expropriation of thousands of dunums of Palestinian land in the Galilee. Despite the Israeli attempt to displace, dispossess and dominate Palestinian citizens of Israel in the newly established state under an 18-year brutal military rule and the following attempts at Judaizing the Galilee and confronting its “radicalized Arabs”, the 1976 protests constituted mass collective action among Palestinian citizens of Israel, embodying the weariless steadfastness and resistance of the Palestinian people against the Israeli settler-colonial regime and affirming the inseparability of the Palestinian people as a whole despite Israeli attempts to systematically fragment them as part of its apartheid regime.

Since then, the 30th of March has been marked as Land Day, a central date in the Palestinian collective memory. The memory of the 1976 land dispossessions and the brutality of the Israeli response to Palestinian resistance echoes the Palestinian reality before and after that date. Since the inauguration of the Zionist settler-colonial project about a century ago, the Palestinian people have endured and resisted a ruthless project that aims at dominating the whole land of historic Palestine with the least Palestinian indigenous population as possible.

6000 Israelis Injured in Attacks on Tel Aviv

• CrossFireArabia
• March 30, 2026

US/Israel Seek New Strategy on Iran

• CrossFireArabia
• March 29, 2026

By Amer Al Sabaileh

With the shift toward systematic assassinations, the Israeli-American effort is gradually entering a new phase: Operating inside Iran in a qualitative and unconventional manner. Repeated assassinations are not merely the result of intelligence work, surveillance and long-term penetration, but of a structural and continuous breach sustained by active intelligence operations around the clock.

Their core effect lies in transferring doubt and mutual suspicion into the regime’s own corridors and institutions, creating a hesitant operational reality, increasing exposure, and striking directly at the regime’s decision-making mechanism. In parallel, Israel and the United States are moving toward complex strikes targeting the Iranian regime’s internal infrastructure, most notably its military capabilities and military-industrial facilities.

At the same time, they are also striking the regime’s internal pillars, namely its internal security capabilities and personnel. This means that the Basij, as a central instrument of internal control, has effectively become a primary target at this stage, alongside the Revolutionary Guard. This points to a practical translation of what President Trump had previously said about creating internal conditions for change from within.

At the same time, the intensive targeting of the regime’s military assets along the western and southern coastal areas appears to be preparation for something larger. The targeting of military infrastructure, bases, headquarters, as well as Iranian ports and naval craft, points to one objective: preparing the ground for qualitative operations ahead. This is likely what the American administration needs in order to demonstrate a tangible achievement on the ground and move toward a strategy of controlling strategic Iranian areas.

Such a move could be carried out through special forces operations with clearly defined missions: abduction, liquidation, or seizure of strategic areas after ensuring full security and containing any threat to an American presence, particularly on the Iranian islands, most importantly Kharg Island.

This qualitative shift may reflect the evolutionary path of gradual American operations built in stages, beginning with striking the head of the regime, then its infrastructure, and eventually reaching the assassination of its leaders and the targeting of its internal bases. This may represent the most important step in translating this strategy, especially with the parallel suggestion of activating internal components in the border regions, whether Kurdish, Azerbaijani, or Arab in Ahvaz.

From the Iranian side, Tehran has demonstrated an ability to sustain attacks using missiles and drones, and to diversify its strikes in a way that preserves the impression that it remains capable of targeting the Israeli interior on the one hand, and threatening the Gulf states and energy centers on the other, especially in light of the notable evolution in the targeting of energy sites in Qatar, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia.

Iran’s strategy of maximizing the war’s global impact has pushed it toward a propaganda discourse built around threat. This includes threatening places linked to financial stability and the energy market, such as the UAE, while trying to display the capability to strike these states and simultaneously directing internal messaging calling for distancing from ports and installations. This reflects the Iranian need to preserve the image of a regime still capable of threatening, acting, and disrupting regional stability whenever it chooses.

The Iranian approach, based on linking the war to dangerous international repercussions, begins with threatening the Gulf states and magnifying the danger to energy markets and international navigation. It also extends to nuclear leak scenarios and to highlighting Iran’s ability to launch long-range missiles, such as those fired toward Diego Garcia.

After the third week of the war, the United States appears to be deepening its strikes inside Iran, targeting the regime’s structure, instruments, and military facilities in their entirety. The acceleration of this process suggests a desire to move into a phase in which these strikes are translated into steps on the ground, preserving acceptance of the American settlement as the only option left for any internal Iranian actor. At the same time, a new Iranian reality is being created, one in which it becomes difficult for any future regime to return to the form in which the current one ends.

Neutralizing Iran, ending its threat, eliminating its military capabilities, and confining any Iranian future to reconstruction and internal recovery detached from regional policies now appears to be the clearest objective of this phase.

By Amer Al Sabaileh is a columnist in The Jordan Times.