Israel has its own Yasin Malik. But unlike India, we won’t ask for death penalty

An Israeli prison guard escorts jailed Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti to a deliberation at the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court on January 25, 2012 [File: Reuters/Baz Ratner]

Prima facie, Indian and Israeli security forces influence each other, and the cooperation between the two countries’ intelligence services was an open secret even when New Delhi preferred to downplay its relationship with Jerusalem.

Before 2014, and even prior to the 1998-2004 tenure of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the effectiveness of the cooperation between India and Israel did not require vociferous proclamations. The centrality of the Palestinian conflict in India’s West Asia policy has been questioned many times for producing nothing but empty rhetoric and tokenistic gestures to mask the new realities.

Those who condemn India’s policy in Kashmir point out that there are at least three counts on which Delhi and Jerusalem are tied together. First, the Indian forces use Israeli military technology in the Valley. Second, it applies Israeli methods and philosophy in dealing with violent demonstrations, and third, both nations are committed to settling a loyal population in the heart of a Muslim population (Hindus in Kashmir, Jews in the West Bank) seeking independence.

While some of the comparisons between the Indian and Israeli policies are debatable and indicate intellectual laziness, what’s worth noting is the abysmal difference between the two countries’ stand on capital punishment for terrorists. The Indian and Israeli policies on the death penalty are almost unintelligible to each other, though both view it as punishment for crimes against the State and not strictly for acts of terrorism.

A Malik-Barghouti parallel?

Any comparison between Kashmiri and Palestinian leaders should be taken cum grano salis, and the comparison between separatist leader Yasin Malik and Marwan Barghouti — the former leader of the Fatah armed branch, the Tanzim — is also limited.

And yet, if we dare to compare the two, then just as some critics compared Malik to MK Gandhi (the leader called himself a Gandhian too), many likened Barghouti to Nelson Mandela. Moreover, both Malik and Barghouti were part of an armed struggle, gave it up, and then returned to a violent path.

They have invested a lot of energy on their domestic fronts to prove that they — and not their opponents  — are the authentic and uncompromising representatives of the Kashmiri and Palestinian struggles, true leaders who were never co-opted by the government and who could never be bought. Currently in prison after being convicted of criminal conspiracy and murder, Malik and Barghouti now watch the Kashmiri and Palestinian struggles become shadows of their already reduced selves.

Israel saw Barghouti not only as a terrorist who was convicted of five counts of murder but also as the mastermind behind the al-Aqsa Intifada, which saw 138 suicide attacks by 2004 and the killing of more than a thousand Israelis, most of them civilians.

And yet, Israel never sought a death penalty for Barghouti — and from time to time, Israeli judges have regretted it. In practice, the only death penalty Israel ever carried out was that of Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann in 1962.

Many Israeli leaders have opposed capital punishment in the past. “I unequivocally oppose the death penalty for terrorists. It’s not helpful,” said Nagav Argaman, former Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency or the ISA) chief to the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in the Israeli Parliament in 2018. Another former ISA head, Yoram Cohen, also expressed public opposition to the death penalty and declared: “If we look at the larger picture, the damage… is greater than its small benefit.”

An often-cited rationale is that since Palestinian terrorists anyway fervently wish to die as martyrs, what deterrent can the death penalty possibly have?

Security services in Israel have always tried to placate populist ministers and MPs who aggressively believed in capital punishment as a magic solution, or at least thought that legislation that would allow courts to sentence terrorists to death would improve their political fate. The ultra-Right Benjamin Netanyahu government spoke about a bill to institute the death penalty in February 2023, and we heard loud declarations on the issue, but it didn’t result in any progress — Israel just has no interest in legalising capital punishment.

Meeting with Agha Ashraf Ali

I first heard the name Yasin Malik in the summer of 2005. I was in Kashmir for a month — when there couldn’t be a better time for an Israeli to visit the Valley. International and Indian media were captured by Israel’s disengagement from Gaza; there was hope that it would promote peace between the Palestinians and Israelis. Kashmiris, anti-Zionists who oppose the State of Israel, were curious to hear what caused Israel to withdraw from Gaza without a peace agreement with the Palestinians.

As fate would have it, my hotel was next to the house of scholar and legendary educationist Agha Ashraf Ali, the father of Agha Shahid Ali, the world-famous Kashmiri poet. The news of my visit reached his ears, and he invited me to his home. I knew nothing about him until then, but thereon I got the privilege to hold long conversations with Prof. Ali two or three times a week. The conversation always boiled down to the possible solution he saw to the political crisis in Kashmir. Malik’s name always came up too; he compared him to Gandhi.

In Israel, for a long time, and for certain political fringes now too, Barghouti has remained a despicable terrorist. But he is probably the only Palestinian leader who can compromise with Israelis on the core issues of the conflict without being considered a traitor by his people.

The Israeli vision

Many Israelis do not buy the romanticisation of Barghouti as a freedom fighter whose release from prison may advance the peace process. The Second Intifada pushed Israel further toward Right-wing politics. And yet, it is possible that the Israeli vision regarding the West Bank and Gaza, an outlook so different from India on Kashmir, has something to do with its reservations about the death penalty. There is no weighty political force in Israel that practically promotes the annexation of full Mandatory Palestine, and no significant political camp in Israel sees the Palestinians as the future Israelis.

To the extent that there can be consensus in a country with so many Jews — nearly an 80 per cent majority unofficially — it can be said that most Israelis want Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to enjoy self-government to the maximum possible degree. It should be consistent with Israel’s need for security, full Palestinian legitimacy for the right of the Jewish State to exist, and an agreed arrangement regarding the settlers and the holy sites.

Are the Palestinians entitled to a State — in the full sense of the word, a demilitarised State — or must they settle with autonomy in internal affairs? Here, of course, there are substantial differences of opinion in Israeli society. But the vision of a Palestinian entity of some kind, living apart from Israel, still enjoys wide support in Israel. It entails an understanding that yesterday’s enemies are tomorrow’s tolerable autonomous neighbours, and executing those who your neighbours see as freedom fighters doesn’t contribute to a future vision of reconciliation.

Is it possible that the Indian willingness to use the death penalty — in measure and not following every act of terrorism — is related to the perception that the terrorists are traitors? That they are citizens of India with equal rights who abused the benevolence of the nation? In Israeli eyes, the terrorist is the Other, and those who secretly or openly support them fall into the same category, and at one point or another, a settlement must be reached with them. Perhaps this could be one count on which India and Israel aren’t quite tied together.

Lev Aran is a former coordinator of the Israel-India Parliamentary Friendship League and an Israel-based freelance columnist and journalist. Views are personal.

(Edited by Humra Laeeq)