More than 10 months have gone by since the cataclysmic October 7 invasion and atrocities committed by Hamas, without any indictments having been filed against the hundreds of terrorists captured by Israeli forces on that day, and in the subsequent ongoing war.

With the State Attorney’s Office remaining tight-lipped on the issue, some politicians have sought to move the process forward.

MK Oded Forer of the Yisrael Beytenu opposition party recently introduced a bill to the Knesset which would establish a special legal mechanism to try Palestinian terrorists who participated in the atrocities and sentence them to death.

Some experts doubt the wisdom of such a step, however, either arguing that it is not necessary since Israel already has laws on the statute book allowing the death sentence for crimes committed by the October 7 terrorists (though it has never before applied it for such acts), or raising concerns about the criminal trial process itself.

Some 3,000 Palestinian terrorists, mostly from the Hamas terror organization, burst across the Gaza border on October 7, and massacred civilians in numerous small communities in the region as well as at the Nova music festival, while also committing mass rape, torture, and other crimes, and kidnapping 251 hostages who were taken captive to Gaza.

Following that assault, hundreds of terrorists were captured by Israeli security services in Israel in the days after the attack and in Gaza during the IDF’s ground operations in the territory.

According to the Hamoked organization, there are currently 1,584 unlawful combatants being held in Israeli detention facilities, a category of prisoner that refers to the terrorist combatants who crossed the border into Israel or who fight in Hamas’s terrorist militia.

Forer’s bill would create three broad categories of crimes, including crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, and further defines those crimes to include many of the atrocities committed on October 7.

Anyone found guilty of these crimes would be subject to the death penalty.

“In view of the horrific mass atrocities and crimes against humanity committed by Hamas and their helpers as part of the October 7 massacre… against a helpless and defenseless population including the elderly, women and children, appalling horrors characteristic of the crimes of the Nazis, it is proposed to apply the norms established by human society for Nazi criminals and everyone who was complicit in these crimes against our people and against humanity,” Forer’s bill says in its explanatory notes, in reference to the death penalty.

There are three likely avenues for prosecuting the October 7 terrorists, including a criminal trial in Israel’s civil courts, a trial in the IDF’s military court system where Palestinian terror suspects are often prosecuted, or a special court or tribunal established by new legislation.

Although the State Attorney’s Office refuses to comment on the issue, it seems likely that a decision as to the legal framework that will be chosen is yet to be made.

Yuval Kaplinsky, a former head of the International Law Department at the State Attorney’s Office, said it was common for the State Attorney’s Office to take a long time to make such decisions regarding complex cases, and has predicted that indictments may only come at the end of 2025.

But he also foresees serious problems in the criminal prosecutions of these terrorists, as proposed by Forer and others.

Kaplinsky argues that a criminal process for the hundreds of terrorists who would be prosecuted could take decades.

“When you prosecute under criminal law you get problems. It generates massive amounts of investigative material [for each defendant] and the defendants get numerous rights such as the right to see the material, the right to an attorney, and others,” Kaplinsky told The Times of Israel.

“Given these rights, and when there are so many potential indictees, the ability of defense attorneys to delay proceedings is practically infinite.”

Kaplinsky pointed by way of example to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s criminal trial, which has lasted for over four years so far, with the defense yet to begin its case. He predicted that criminal trials for the hundreds of October 7 terrorists could take as long as 20 years.

Even in a military trial, the defendants would enjoy many of the same privileges afforded them in the civilian criminal process, and the death penalty would glorify the terrorists, Kaplinsky asserted.

Instead, he proposed applying an administrative process for these terrorists, by amending Israel’s Law for Unlawful Combatants, to allow long-term detention without trial, renewable every few years.

This would create a situation akin to the manner in which the US has held terrorists responsible for the September 11 attacks and other terror attacks in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

At a conference of the Israel Law and Liberty Forum in March, conservative legal scholar Dr. Rafael Biton took issue with the notion of not prosecuting the October 7 terrorists in a criminal process.

Biton contended that a criminal process would help create “a historic narrative” for the October 7 invasion and atrocities, noting the strong impact the Nuremberg trials and the trial of Adolf Eichman in Israel had on the narrative of the Holocaust.

“This is an historic event. Our legal behavior must be in keeping with this historic vision,” said Biton.

He was, however, against criminal prosecution on an individual basis for every defendant, arguing that the October 7 attack was a “collective invasion” and therefore a “collective crime.”

Instead, Biton said that a special law should be passed to try October 7 terrorist suspects on a collective basis, with a presumption that if they were caught by Israel’s security forces in Israel on or after October 7, they took part in the attacks, unless there is compelling evidence to the contrary.

Treating the perpetrators in this way would remove many of the obstacles mentioned by Kaplinsky, including prosecuting each defendant on an individual basis and connecting his actions to a specific victim, with all the investigative work that that requires.

“This was a collective invasion to carry out genocide, crimes against humanity, and crimes against Israeli sovereignty, this was not a group of individuals, they didn’t gather together accidentally,” said Biton.

This crime, he noted, can carry a death sentence in Israel, which he said should be imposed.