Stone throwers could be jailed for 10 years under new Israeli bill

An Israeli ministerial legal committee has approved a controversial amendment that would make it easier to jail stone throwers for up to 10 years.

The amendment, proposed by Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked of the far-right Jewish Home party, would add another tier to an older bill already under consideration.

The existing drive to tighten sentences was initiated last November under former Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and called for allowing stone-throwers to be jailed for up to 20 years. However, it required prosecutors to prove the “intent to harm an individual” in order to push for the lengthy sentence – this proof of intent would be seriously diluted if the new amendment is passed.

The new version - which still needs to pass several parliamentary stages before becoming official - instead requires prosecutors only to prove that “throwing stones or other objects at travelling vehicles in a manner that could endanger the passenger’s safety or harm the vehicle” in order to ask for a 10-year jail term.

The original bill was not finalised by the time the parliament was dissolved ahead of the 17 March snap elections but now looks slated to be fast-tracked through to the final vote in parliament where the coalition led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holds 61 out of the 120 seats.  

Shaked, who presented the bill and heads the ministerial committee for legislation that approved it, noted that stone-throwers were currently receiving “very soft punishments compared to their crimes”, since intent was difficult to prove.

“The amendment to the law effectively places the responsibility on the stone-thrower and not the prosecutor,” she wrote on her Facebook page. “Anyone who throws stones at cars or people has to assume someone will get hurt.”

Currently, Israeli prosecutors tend to seek sentences of no more than three months for rock-throwing that does not cause serious injury.

Palestinian officials have been quick to condemn the latest amendment.

“When it comes to the Palestinians and Israelis, Israel has two different judicial systems. One is applicable to Israeli citizens and the other for Palestinians,” Maen Rashid Areikat, the chief of Palestinian Liberation Organisation Delegation in Washington DC, told Al Jazeera.

“I don't think it [the bill] will have any effect on Israelis, because it is, in terms of content, only applicable to Palestinians. It is discriminatory, singling out Palestinians.”

Palestinians target Israeli cars on West Bank roads with stones on an almost daily basis, and clashes between Palestinians and Israeli police in the West Bank and east Jerusalem tend to involve stone-throwing.

The original legislation was promoted by a wave of violent Palestinian protests in Jerusalem in 2014 that included frequent stone-throwing at the city’s light railway.

These demonstrations erupted after the kidnapping and killing of a Palestinian teen in the city in July. Three Israelis are accused of murdering him in revenge for the deaths of three Jewish teenagers killed in the occupied West Bank.