Freshman Jewish Home MK Yinon Magal accuses a former Israeli Foreign Ministry director of committing a capital offense: advocating for a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Right-wing elements in Israel have long claimed that the two-state solution is national suicide. Logically, it follows that advocating for such an outcome would constitute treason.
That was exactly the view espoused by former journalist and high-profile freshman Knesset Member Yinon Magal of Naftali Bennett’s Jewish Home party on Tuesday.
On his Facebook page, Magal posted a video published on +972 Magazine last month, in which former Israeli Foreign Ministry director-general Alon Liel discusses how he is lobbying European countries to recognize the State of Palestine.
By advocating for a Palestinian state — with East Jerusalem as its capital — Liel is encouraging ceding “sovereign” territory that the world doesn’t recognize as Israel’s, to a “state” that Israel doesn’t recognize as existing. At least that is Magal’s logic.
“In addition to the fact that, in my opinion it is reckless behavior, it violates section 97(b) of the penal code,” Magal concluded.
Section 97(b) is the first subsection defining treason in the Israeli penal code.
If a person commits an act liable to remove any area from the sovereignty of the State or to place it under the sovereignty of a foreign state with the intention to bring that about, then he is liable to the death penalty or to life imprisonment.
Magal clarifies that he does not think Liel should be sentenced to death, but is adamant that he has committed treason — for advancing the two-state solution.
Because of the drawn-out process of forming a new coalition there have not been many opportunities for freshman MKs to make headlines since the elections. But it is indicative of the type of rhetoric we can expect to see over the next four years in the fourth Netanyahu government.
