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Mon, Sept 20, 2010 | CBN.com | DryBonesBlog | By Tzippe Barrow and Yaakov Kirschen

Palestinian Authority: Death Penalty for Selling Land to Jews

Israel’s peace partner reaffirmed on Sunday that Palestinians convicted of selling land to Jews would face the death penalty for “high treason.”

PA officials claim the death penalty deters Arabs from selling land to Jews living in Judea and Samaria, which they envision free of Jewish residents in a future Palestinian state.

But one Palestinian affairs expert said while such laws may deter the sale of land, they give credence to the perception of Palestinian terrorism.

Dr. Hillel Frisch of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University said imposing the death penalty for the sale of land is “pretty stringent in the modern conception of human rights.”

“It certainly reflects that a Palestinian democracy has already been placed in the coffin a long time ago,” Dr. Frisch told CBN News. “The idea even of a semi-liberal state is long past us,” he said.

Sunday’s ruling (by Judge Ta’et At-Twil following an appeal by PA Prosecutor-General Ahmed al-Mughni against a lower court decision that such acts were a “minor offense,”) was based on the PA’s “Property Law for Foreigners,” an updated version of a Jordanian law entitled, “Law for Preventing the Sale of Real Estate to the Enemy,” enforced between 1948 and 1967 when Jordan occupied Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem.

Read more here.